Page 85 of The Spice Play

I stood there, fists still clenched, adrenaline coursing through every inch of my body, staring — watching as his car disappeared out the exit. I waited and waited, and waited until I didn’t have the patience anymore. I let out a shaky breath and leaned against the car behind me as Luke finally let go of my arm.

“Seriously, Seb?” he mumbled, his head shaking as he looked from me to the empty exit. “What the fuck were you thinking?”

I swallowed. “I wasn’t,” I admitted, running a hand through my hair. My cheek and eye throbbed, my knuckles sore, my head spinning — but fuck, it didn’t matter. None of this mattered. But I’d gotten a hint of my anger about theNelly situation out, and I’d made it clear that his actions had fucking consequences.

Maybe it was a white-knight move. Maybe it was stupid. But I didn’t care.

————

I’d stared at myself for five straight minutes in the rearview mirror of my Audi before finally getting the nerve to walk into the house. A jagged cut that I hadn’t even felt had opened up beneath my eye, and dried blood and dirt were stuck to the side of my cheek. The area around my eye socket had deepened in color drastically, and by the end of the evening, I was positive I’d have a full-on black eye.

I didn’t want Nelly to see it. But more importantly, I didn’t want Matty to see it and question me about it.

But I couldn’t avoid that forever. I had to deal with this, and it was better to get it out of the way now.

I opened the front door, the sound of cartoons filtering into the half-lit foyer. The sun was moments away from setting, so if I could just avoid Matty seeing the left side of my face for an hour, I could get away with it for tonight.

Nelly, though, was unavoidable.

She clocked me as she stepped out of the living room.

“Seb?” she said, her eyes narrowing on the left side of my face as I set my bag down. “Oh my God.”

Her footsteps echoed as she rushed toward me. She’d been distant again the last couple of days, and the change of pace was almost a relief — a part of me wantedto thank Bryan for giving her a reason to want to speak to me. “Please don’t freak out,” I muttered.

Wide eyes darted between mine and the damage. She stood there, one foot from me, in her tight shorts and oversized shirt, her hair up in a messy bun. Her mouth parted, her brow furrowing in worry, and I just wanted to kiss her, just wanted to hold her, just wanted to tell her what had happened and tell her I was sorry and that I just needed us to go back to normal — I couldn’t take this distance from her. Not again.

“I don’t want Matty to see,” I rasped. “At least not like this. Can you distract him while I clean up?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she sighed. She took a few steps to the opening of the living room, poking her head around the corner. “Matty, your dad and I need to talk upstairs for a few. Are you okay to watch cartoons on your own?”

“Daddy’s home?” Matty’s voice carried excitedly through the foyer, and my heart lurched, wanting to go to him, wanting to scoop him up in my arms and hug him. But I didn’t want to upset him, either.

“Heis, but we just need to take care of something real quick and then you can say hi, okay?” Nelly said, glancing back at me with worry deepening in her expression.

“Okay,” Matty bleated.

She walked back to me, one hand extended, and wrapped her fingertips around my wrist. “Come on,” she said.

I walked up the stairs with her in almost shameful silence. She didn’t look back at me as she led me to my bedroom, deposited me on the bed without a word, and stepped into the bathroom.

Drawers opened and closed, the faucet turned on and off, paper ripped, caps unturned.

By the time she’d come back through, the pain in my knee and my face was gnawing at me far more uncomfortably than it had before. “Take these,” she said softly, passing me a couple of the pills I took for my knee pain and a small cup of water.

I downed them.

“What the fuck happened, Seb?” she asked, her gaze meeting mine briefly as she lifted a warm, damp washcloth to my cheek.

I hissed from the pain the moment she started to flake away the dried blood. “I, uh, got into a fight with Bryan,” I muttered, swallowing down the discomfort the moment the washcloth touched the wound.

“Fuck’s sake,” she sighed. “Please don’t tell me his skate did this.”

“No,” I said. “His fist. We were in the parking lot.”

Her mouth formed into a straight line. “That explains why you didn’t go seeZoefor this.”

No. Please. Not again.I caught her by the wrist, stopping her before she could touch the wound again with the white and bloodied cloth. “Nell,” I rasped. “Please. I told you, there is nothing going on there.”

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