Page 11 of Wristlocked
“Showcase is for seniors, Gale.” She curls her finger, testing my grip. “You haven’t even begun choreography or directing classes yet.”
“I start both next week.”You owe me,I want to say, but it’s only half the truth. She hears it anyway and gives me a look.
“Why the sudden interest? Even if I say yes, you can’t put a freshman in your act. There are only so many rules I can break for you, and you know it.”
Ignoring the question and the subtle reproach, I drag her hand down to the button of my jeans, wishing like I always do that she understood me a little less.
She smiles, victorious, and leans in. “I’ll consider it.”
I push her back against the desk and fist my hands in her hair the way I know she likes.Give her what she wants before she takes it anyway. At least today I might get something too. When she slides her tongue between my lips and frees my cock, I don’t resist, letting her stake her claim.
Celeste thinks she owns me. Knows she could still take it all away and ruin me.Two more years. Two more years of being at her beck and call while still fucking my way through half the girls in school to show her she can’t have all of me.
But now…Gia Laurent in my fucking gym, on my fucking straps. Gia Laurent, with her superstar parents and her own connections and her vicious mouth.
And her pretty boy guard dog.
“Shall I inform Ms. Laurent of my decision?” Celeste asks when it’s over, straightening her skirt and reaching for the mirror she keeps in her purse.
“No.” I toss the condom into the trash next to her desk without bothering to look for the wrapper. She wrinkles her nose at it—not because she gives a fuck what the cleaning service thinks but because it’s crude and messy.
I do it every time.
“The princess has a serious chip on her shoulder. She’s not gonna take anything if you hand it to her on a silver platter.” That much is obvious from the way she lashed out at me in the orientation earlier. Celeste narrows her eyes but doesn’t press.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” she murmurs, opening the little mirror and fussing with her hair. “Her audition was good, but I’m not sure she’s ready to…” She gives me a pointed look. “Meet your expectations.”
My expectations.Ha. Pretty sure she’s already blown them out of the fucking water, but I’m not abandoning the plan now.
Gia Laurent ismine.
8
Gia
Aweek later, Gale Shepard is still an asshole, and Lyot is still mad at me. It makes our straps classes very…interesting. My masochistic monster has never been happier.
Having only a fraction of Lyot in my life is a kind of slow torture. I take myself too seriously without him grounding me, and being in a new environment without knowing he’s got my back adds a layer of anxiety to the restlessness Gale Shepard evokes. And despite the fact that I’m trying not to think about it, my body misses him too. I spent my third night at school drinking shitty boxed wine in Jules and Vaya’s room, vaguely lamenting Lyot’s stubbornness and my own heartache, while blatantly dodging their curious questions. I guess I have new friends now.
Despite our little confrontation at orientation, Gale treats me the same way he seems to treat everyone here—with disdainful boredom, as if we are all a waste of his time. Only the low thrum of energy that snaps between us anytime we get too close, and the way I sometimes catch his eyes on me, burning with green faerie fire, keeps my sick fantasies alive. I catch him watching Lyot sometimes, too, with a different kind offire in his eyes, although Lyot has given up any show of open challenge in favor of ignoring Gale entirely.
Luc, our head straps coach, has a deceptively laid-back approach to our training, laying out implacable instruction as if merely offering suggestions. When we listen and do as we’re told, he is supportive and encouraging, but he has little patience for fear and a startlingly wicked temper that flares at the slightest hint of disrespect for himself or the apparatus.
We discover the latter the following Tuesday afternoon, when he and Gale get into it about a technicality in a roll-ups drill during our core-skills workout. They spend five white-hot minutes trading scathing insults until I’m sure I’m about to see what it looks like when Gale’s own monster snaps its leash. Before I get to experience that particular fantasy, however, Luc throws him out of the gym.
The exchange leaves me flustered and useless for the rest of class, earning me a few sharp comments of my own from Luc, and prompting Lyot, who’s finally started speaking to me in more than single-word sentences, to toss up his hands in disgust and retreat back into his sulk.
The next afternoon, Chloe Laurent walks into our open-gym session and shatters the last of my fragile nerves.
I’m messing around on the rope with Vaya and Jules, giving them tips on how to roll up from a one-arm flare, when I spot her walking toward us across the gym.
I get most of my looks from my mom, although she’s a few inches shorter and also harder than me. The years of nonstop performing having whittled her down to muscle and bone, the ripeness of youth long gone. But we share the same dramatic coloring. She has the red hair—hers now darkened to a rich auburn—and the creamy, freckled skin. Only my curls and the deep blue of my eyes come from my dad.
The whole gym grinds to a halt at her approach, heads turning to follow her confident progress. She wears the self-satisfied smile that always accompanies being the center of attention, and my breath comes short and painful at her approach. Vaya disentangles herself from her latest unsuccessful attempt on the rope, her eyes wide, and Jules moves up beside me as if she might lay a comforting hand on my shoulder but hesitates when my mother hits her with the ice in her pale-blue eyes. As always, she has me isolated, brittle in her grasp, and I have to force my fists to unclench at my side.
“What are you doing here?”
“Nice to see you too, darling.” Invading my space like it belongs to her, she presses a cool kiss to my brow. “Are you going to introduce me to your new friends?” The smile she gives Jules and Vaya is a press conference curve of painted lips and perfectly manicured brows.
