“The what?” My question came out as an inaudible whisper. Was this hand-to-hand combat, or the Kama Sutra? I refused to be on the receiving end of a Rear Naked Choke.
“One of you can practice the move on the other,” Cuthbert said. “We will start in the rear mount position—”
“No way am I letting Courtney subject me to something called aRear Mount Position.”
“You might like it,” she crooned.
“Oh, definitely not.” Cuthbert beamed. “It can be quite painful.”
“Nothing like a little light choking to start the morning, right, Bryce?” Courtney asked sweetly.
CHAPTER 18INWHICHI SUFFERACRUSH-INGDEFEAT
COURTNEY
Sex with me is sounding pretty good right now, isn’t it?” Bryce hissed, his forearm around my neck, his thighs caging my hips. “All this training, all this being nice to everyone, it must be killing you.” His arm held me almost protectively against his chest. It was perhaps the softest and least impressive attempt at a choke hold ever.
Him throttling me should not make me need to throttle my feelings, yet it did. His touch spread awareness through my nerves, sparking a needy desperation between my thighs.
“I would rather volunteer at a hospital, help raise a neighbor’s barn, and give a compliment to a stranger than have sex with you,” I whispered viciously, trying not to notice the pale hair dusting his freckled forearm.
“That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
After approximately two minutes of watching Bryce and me half-heartedly flailing around as we tried to grapple without actually touching each other, Cuthbert realized we were a lost cause and hollered for us to move on to sword training.
Bryce detached from me and stood. Fixing a pleasantexpression on his face so no one would know we were arguing, he held out a hand for me.
Taking his hand and hoisting myself up, I followed his lead and arranged my face into a frozen mask of friendliness. “Sex with you would only make me like certain parts of you less,” I said under my breath.
“I think you’d like it,” he said brightly, talking through his smiling teeth. “I’d whisper dirty things about plaque in your ear. I know how that gets you going.”
I released his hand and made a show of wiping mine on my dress. “Why are you obsessed with me? Am I, like, the light of your life?”
“If that light is a burning trash fire, then sure.”
Being called a trash fire should not make me feel giddy and special. Except that I bet Bryce wasn’t calling other girls his trash fire, and that fact made me want to go around bragging to everyone that, sure, maybe I was a trash fire, but I wasBryce’strash fire.
Eager fire licked between my ribs. Bryce’s insults felt like pulled pigtails on a playground; I knew it was messed up, but they made me feel like the most special girl in the world.
I was like a crush-prone hormonal teenager, blinded by glitter-gel-pen hearts. The whole world had turned into the magical white-and-blue landscape of a homework margin. I could practically see purple and pink doodles surrounding everything Bryce did. At his every movement, the wordhotdanced before my eyes, underlined three times. Swoopy arrows pointed at all his best features, like his veiny hands, his intelligent eyes, and the lines bracketing his mouth that appeared when he was holding back a smug smile.
Oh my god. This was truly sad. Even watching Cuthbert beat the snot out of Bryce during sword practice couldn’t dampen my crush. Every time Cuthbert’s sword connected with Bryce’s body, little imaginary hearts and butterflies sprang out. I rested my chin in my hand while my mind had a field day witha fantasy of nursing Bryce back to health that would, of course, involve me gently removing his clothes in the firelight, and him wincing and gasping, our eye contact the only thing keeping him tethered to the mortal plane. I’d give him alcohol to numb the pain, and he’d grimace, his Adam’s apple lurching and sweat rolling down his chest. He’d probably grow delirious and confess that he’d been in love with me since, like, the dawn of time.
As the training session went on, Bryce’s posture began to slump, the life in his eyes chipping away, exposing something hollow and empty inside. A feeling nagged within me, intensifying with each passing minute. Nervous energy built up until I thought I might explode.
Worry. That’s the only thing it could be.
I had to occupy my hands before they did something unsavory. Like try to fulfill my fantasy of nursing him back to health.
All I wanted to do was march across the room, smack the sword out of Cuthbert’s hands, and tell him,Enough. Bryce was never going to be that kind of fighter—the type that was bold and flashy and violent. His strength was the type that went unnoticed. He persevered. He stayed. Hefelt. It was admirable, the way he worried on behalf of the whole universe, fighting, in his own way, for people like me who had given up fighting for themselves.
The unsettled feeling within me grew more unsettling. Something was compelling me to try to make Bryce’s lifelessmiserable instead ofmoremiserable. I… wasbothering. The very thing Bryce did that pissed me off.
What did Brycedoto me? Quitting things had become easy, but I couldn’t quit him.
It didn’t help that my village groupies were encouraging the situation. They sat clustered around me, whispering and giggling, prodding me and smiling knowingly.
An agonized moan snapped me out of my fantasy.
