Page 35 of Wristlocked
I end up jerking off in the shower while picturing her chained to my bed, begging for a mercy she’ll never receive, but the fantasy fades as I make my way over to the aerial gym for Luc’s class. When I’m with her, my demons rage content, caught in the siren song of her willing monster. Without her, they remember how much they hate me.
I’m early, for once, but she’s already there, and our eyes find each other the second I walk through the door, slaves to the inescapable magnetism between us. Something twists in my chest when I see her in a strappy sports bra and leggings, not even trying to hide the marks I’ve left on the pale contours of her skin. We don’t talk, but the blazing look in her eyes when I join her on the mat is yet another incentive to get her alone. The look on Chace’s face when he sees her, however, makes me savagely glad we’re in the gym. I don’t even fucking try not to rub it in. With every bitter, tortured glance from him, Gia wages war on herself, caught between guilt and stubborn vindication, and I watch the last hope of reconciliation die between them.
It should be satisfying as hell, but for some reason, I can’t fucking let it go.
I can do it in ten.
Six words that set off this chain of destruction we’re all three a part of. Just because Gia and I thrive in the tempest doesn’t mean we won’t be torn to pieces, and fuck if I’m letting the pretty boy play the martyr and take the quick death.
So I pick at his wounds, and think about safewords and leaving the studio door unlocked next time I get her alone.
20
Lyot
As soon as I walk into the gym, I can tell something’s shifted. I’ve been telling myself Shepard was lying last night when he taunted me about tasting Gia, but if he was, it’s no longer a lie.
“Guess where I found her?” he whispers, jostling my shoulder with his own as he walks past on his way to the point. I refuse to give him the satisfaction of seeing me shaken, but the whole class is a slow torment, and it takes everything I have not to turn around and walk out.
Gia keeps shooting me wary, pleading looks, but I can’t stop myself from cataloging the fresh bruises on her forearms, the fingermarks on her pale throat, or the ring of small scabs left by his teeth on the swell of her breast. Every time I see her wince or shiver, I wonder what other wounds lie hidden beneath her clothes.
I want to fucking destroy him, but the sated, secret smiles I catch on her lips when she looks at him slowly grind my fury into heartbreak. Worst of all is the new passion when she throws herself into the trick we’re training, and the primal, possessivefire in his eyes as he watches her. Their connection is achingly obvious, and I can’t keep telling myself it was all a mistake.
She’s coming alive, and I’m falling apart.
As the weeks drag on, I start to wonder if this is what dying of cancer feels like—to have some essential piece of yourselfturn against you; to be confronted daily with the source of your own slow decay and watch it grow stronger and more vital, feasting on the wreckage in its wake. Every day, she tries to reach me—in the shared classes I can’t avoid, in the dorm with our friends, in the courtyard alone. And every time, I shut her down, unable to break the surface of the rage and hurt I’m drowning in. Jules and Vaya continue to plead her case, but Ren stops pushing once I break down one night after too many beers and tell him the whole story.
Gia eventually retreats into sad silence, but Gale Shepard refuses to be ignored. He dominates every straps class, baiting me with casual collisions and barbed comments and his challenging smile. In my frayed, volatile state, I can’t help losing my cool, and we have more than one altercation in the gym before Luc eventually snaps and tells us to get our shit together or get the fuck out and stop wasting his time.
I’m becoming a fixture at 5 Mile and the two other bars Ren and I find that will let us in. It’s stupid, self-destructive, and hell on my training, but after a full day of torture at school, there’s no way I’m subjecting myself to seeing them together in the dorm. Trying to fall asleep when I’m sober enough to picture what might be going on in the room on the eighth floor is another impossibility that keeps me out until I’m too drunk to think.
Ren sticks to me like a burr, doing his best to keep me out of trouble and making sure I eventually make it home every night. He listens patiently while I rant about Shepard, doesn’t judgewhen I let random guys blow me in the bar bathroom, and even suffers through a forty-minute bus ride the night I decide to go looking for Caleb. Luckily for both of us, he’s nowhere to be found, although I do end up scoring an eighth of weed and drag Ren back to my mom’s apartment to smoke it.
I still have a key, but it’s back in our room, so I bang on the door until it opens.
“Lyot,” she exclaims, stretching up to plant a kiss on my cheek. “What the hell happened?” she asks Ren when I brush past her, heading for the rolling papers she keeps in the cabinet above the fridge.
“How long has it been since you talked to him?” he asks. “I’m Ren, by the way.”
“Jo,” she replies, drawing him into the hallway by his proffered hand before following me into the kitchen.
“I know.” He gives her his trademark dimpled grin. “The cunt talks about you all the time. Shit. Sorry.”
She waves a hand and gestures for him to take a seat at the small table.
“That’s nice to hear. Wouldn’t know it by how often he checks in.” The look she gives me is both fond and concerned.
“You don’t need to talk about me like I’m not here,” I say, joining them at the table and laying out the weed. “Got any beer?”
Ren gives her a quick shake of his head.
“How about tea?” she offers, standing and moving over to the stove. Ren watches me roll the joint while she retrieves three mugs and a box of Darjeeling from the cupboard. “You must be the roommate. Lyot mentioned a cute Aussie.”
“That’s me. Cute roommate and sometimes babysitter.”
“Fuck you,” I say, lighting the joint and taking a long drag.
“In your dreams.” He snaps his fingers, and I pass it over. My mom sets the hot drinks on the table and grabs a carton of half-n-half out of the fridge. She brings it over with the sugar bowl and a couple of spoons and takes the seat between me and Ren. Snagging the joint from Ren as he holds it out to me, she takes a drag of her own and leans back in her chair.
