Page 30 of I Was Always Yours (RCA: Royal Crown Academy)

He turns on his heel and descends on Max who watches his darkly approaching form with a terrified look on his face.

He cringes, throwing his hands up to protect his face. Phoenix grabs his palm and wraps his fingers through his, interlocking them together.

He uses the grip he has on Max’s hand to twist his arm at a painful angle and then applies pressure on a pain point to lift him partially off the ground, holding him there.

Phoenix turns and faces me, pulling Max with him. He stares me down, his eyes so captivating that I don’t catch what he does next, but I hear a loud snapping sound followed by an agonized howl. He releases Max who clutches his arm as he falls back to the ground.

“You broke my arm!” Max screams, writhing on the ground.

My eyes drop to him in horror.

Well, most of me is horrified. A small part is fired up at this insane display of emotion and the associated act of violence.

He’s so much worse than I imagined. I thought he was vengeful and mean, that his anger might eventually lead him to hit someone, but not this. This was methodical, targeted, and so effortless it looked almost lazy.

He’d wanted to inflict maximum damage with minimum effort, and he had.

I’d Googled him a couple of times over the years, unable to resist the lure of information I could get about him. I’d seen his impressive ranking in junior international competitions.

He always medaled.

There’s no judo training at RCA so he joined the football team instead. I heard that he continued martial arts as an extracurricular activity, but I wasn’t sure where.

Clearly, those years of training have paid off.

I don’t move to help Max.

Maybe that’s cowardly of me, but he also kissed me without asking first so… fuck him.

One second I’m looking at Max, the next Phoenix is in front of me, blocking him out of my line of sight, his movements so quick and stealthy that I blinked and there he was.

His hand closes around my throat and fear slithers into my veins as he squeezes. I’m afraid he’s going to snap my neck like he did Max’s arm, gratuitously ending my life because he felt like it.

He wouldn’t spend another second thinking of me, I’m sure. He’d squeeze and do it with the ease of flicking a light on and off and he’d feel no remorse.

His mask is back in place, but his hold on it is tenuous. I see flashes of rage twisting his features every few seconds as he works to keep his anger under control.

I squeak when he squeezes again, harder this time, the sound almost comical against the background of Max’s tortured groans.

Phoenix’s eyes drop to my mouth and my lips part as he watches them, as pathetically desperate for him as the rest of me. When they do, he makes a disgusted sound and forces me to my knees before him.

He’s trying to humiliate me and, with other club activities letting out now, he gets the audience he needs to accomplish his goal.

He’s still silent and it feels like I haven’t heard the spoken word in weeks. I’m aching for him to do something, to say something, anything to take me out of this purgatory.

When he finally speaks, I regret that thought instantly.

“I knew you were a worthless bitch,” He says, his voice barely a whisper and yet so vicious that I can’t even make eye contact, “And now I see you’re a faithless whore, too.”

I don’t ever engage when he attacks me with his words or his actions, and I don’t change that now that he’s escalated into physical aggression.

This is different than when he shoved me at the funeral or checked me into the lockers last year, this is his fingers wrapped around my neck, his hands holding my life at his mercy.

I don’t look at him, not even when the insult lands and I flinch. I simply let him hold me like a lifeless doll until he decides he’s done with me.

This feels different, like we’ve cut across some invisible line. Why is he calling me a whore? Who am I being allegedly faithless to?

He releases me with a grunt and my weight falls into my hips as I kneel in front of him and look down. Out of the corner of my eyes, I watch his legs walk away, past a still prone Max, until I can’t see them anymore.

---