Page 25 of Wristlocked
“Lyot?” I bang on the door again, this time with the back of my head. Vaya and Jules kicked me out when Ren showed up—after a big fuss about whether I was okay to be alone—but at least they let me take the last of the whiskey. The bottle is empty now, lying on its side a few feet away from where I’m slumped outside Lyot’s room. I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes beating on the heavy door, alternately calling him a coward and making slurred apologies. I know he’s inside because the light shining through the crack beneath flicked off about five minutes after I got here, but aside from that, I’ve heard no movement from inside the room. Someone stuck their head out of a door down the hall at one point, but they took one look at me in my pathetic state and retreated without a word.
“I’m not giving up on us,” I call out. It sounds true in my head. Convincing. Out loud, it sounds desperate and sad. My head is sore and my heart is confused, and I’m cycling back toward anger again. We’ve had fights before, including some truly epic ones during his stint with Caleb last year, but never once in our five years of friendship has he given me the silent treatment. I know I fucked up. I know I’ve taken his trust andtwisted it, carved my own demons into his skin and rubbed salt in the wounds. But how am I supposed to fix it if he won’t fucking talk to me?
Another small, selfish part of me whispers that I’ve been betrayed by him too. He pushed me to tell him about Gale until I laid the layers of that longing bare. Most of them. The ones I understood. The ones Lyot should have recognized with his dreams and his drive. I know he never wanted to leave me behind. So why is he punishing me for chasing the chance to catch up?
“What the fuck, Lyot.” I thump my head against the door again for emphasis.
“Gia.”
Ren hurries toward me from the stairwell, barefoot and shoving his arms through the sleeves of his shirt. Hope stirs feebly in my chest.
“Did you come to let me in? I need to talk to Lyot.”
“I know, Bluey,” he says, bending to hook his arms under my shoulders before dragging me to my feet. “Can you walk?”
“Yes,” I declare, leaning heavily on his chest as the floor tilts alarmingly.
“All right, then. Let’s get ya to bed.” He slings my arm across his shoulders and coaxes me toward the elevator.
“Okay.” I let him half carry me down the hall. “Did he tell you to come get rid of me?”
Ren gives me a look.
“It’s okay,” I assure him. “I know he did.”
“Give him some time, yeah?”
“Is he…Does he really hate me?”
“A little.” He shrugs, and I stumble as the shoulder supporting me shifts. “Mostly, he’s hurt, and it’s easier to be angry.Right?” We reach the elevator, and he gets us inside and leans me up against the wall while he pushes the button for my floor.
“What can I do? God, I’m sopissedat him.”
“See?” He chuckles. “Anger is easier. Look,” he continues, more soberly. “You want my advice? Do your thing and be yourself. You’re the one he loves. He’ll find his way back eventually.”
“Even if he—” Heat floods my cheeks.
“Has to share you with some dirty-blond asshole with a lip ring?”
“What is it with Lyot and the lip ring?” I ask, curiosity pushing some of my sorrow aside.
“Maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll find out someday.” He grins at me, pushing off the wall as the doors slide open. “But tonight? Bed for you.”
“Tragically alone,” I sigh, fumbling for my key as we approach my door.
“Don’t get any ideas, Bluey.” He bends my head to his and plants a swift kiss on the top of it. “I’ve already got way more than I can handle waiting down the hall.”
I spend the next day wallowing in bed, skipping all my classes and venturing out barely enough to keep myself stocked in coffee and Kind bars from the downstairs café. By the time Vaya shows up with greasy pizza from the joint around the corner, I’m thoroughly sick of my own self-pity and am determined to follow Ren’s advice. Lyot and I are broken, and I can’t fix us while I’m still in pieces.
It’s time to see if Gale Shepard’s power can be harnessed, and the only permission I need is my own.
I stalk into the rehearsal room two days later, ready for battle, and stop cold. Dara Feltz, a senior from our straps class, is kneelingin the corner, fiddling with a Bluetooth speaker. And Gale Shepard is not wearing a shirt.
He’s facing away from me, wrapping his wrists in the straps, and his tattoos are fully visible for the first time, carved across the muscled expanse of his back. His gym pants hang low on his hips, exposing the form of a sleeping dragon curled around the left one. No, not sleeping—chained—in black and shades of slumbering green as dark as leaves in twilight shadow. Above the bound and coiled creature, a second one stretches up his back, chains dragging from wings half-unfurled, rippling in the grooves of muscle that bracket his spine.
The greens among the bold black lines are waking here, sparks of emerald in the haunted forest of scales. The third and final dragon is unfinished, only an outline and the first layers of grayscale shading. It launches from the swell of his right shoulder blade, wings outstretched, wrapping around the contours of his shoulder and licking up the side of his neck.
The sight renders me breathless, and an ache swells in my chest, the undertow of memory washing out the man in front of me with the image of a desperate boy in a green mohawk.
