Page 31 of Wristlocked
“If you need to go,” she offers, “I can pack up the chains.”
“I’ll do it,” I tell her, but I slide down the wall and run my hands into my hair, head hanging.
“Are you okay?” The compassion in her voice nearly undoes me.
“I said I’vegot it.” I look at her now, letting my frustration light the fire in my eyes. She recoils, and I’m savagely glad, even as a piece of me crumbles in shame.
“Fine,” she says, gathering her things. At the door, she pauses. “See you in the gym tomorrow?”
“Looks like I’m not going to be skipping any more classes.” I heave myself up with a sigh and start undoing the rigging. She stilldoesn’t leave. “She’s pissed I put you in the show, Laurent. Remember when I said you weren’t ready? She agrees.” I let the chains fall with a clatter, and she flinches—from the violent action or the cold cruelty of my words, I can’t tell.
“Gale—”
“You can’t help, Gia.” I turn my back on her. “Get the fuck out.”
18
Gale
The meeting with Celeste is every bit the humiliating hellscape I knew it would be. I waste as much time as I dare before going to see her, cleaning up the room and swapping my sweats for a pair of jeans from the stash I keep in one of the room’s cubbies. By the time I saunter into her office, she’s ready to string me up by my balls, and of course I can’t keep myself from mouthing off, which only makes her tighten the leash. When she finally cuts me loose, my rage is a vital, hungry thing, and I know exactly who I want to unleash it on.
Except I can’t fucking find her.
I go to the dorm first, scanning the evening crowd in the lounge and sticking my head into the café on my way to the elevators. Her friends are eating dinner at one of the booths, but I see no sign of her flaming curls. I try her room next, pounding on her door for five minutes like an idiot, but she doesn’t answer, and I don’t hear anything through the door.
Fuck.
I’ve got Celeste’s fucking voice in my head, poking at all the cracks in my confidence, and Gia’s pale skin under the chains behind my eyes, driving me crazy with treacherous wants. Theneed to lash out and wreck something is so strong that I’m tugging on the chains draped over my shoulders, grinding the coils into the back of my own neck. I stand there for another minute, forehead pressed to her door while I struggle to get my breathing under control, then turn and head for the stairs. If I can’t spill this torment into Gia, I can settle for the next best victim.
“Where is she?” Thanks to years of practice, my voice comes out dry and casual. The girls and the blond rope guy, Campbell, look up at me in surprise. Elliot Chace ignores me.
“We haven’t seen her,” the shorter girl says, giving me a curious once-over. “I thought she was still at practice. You know, with you?”
I lean down and rest my hands on the table, letting the chains swing into Chace’s shoulder as I get in his face.
“I bet you know where she is.”
When he looks at me, I see my own fury mirrored in his eyes, a lightning flash, before he tamps it down.
“I have no idea. And I don’t give a shit.”
Liar. Takes one to know one, pretty boy.
“Bullshit,” I say. He’s as deep in her storm as I am. Deeper.
“If you lost her already,” he says with a wry twist of his lips, “that’s your fucking problem.” He’s staring me down now, shrugging off the warning hand of the glasses-wearing stunner beside him, but he’s still way too fucking calm. I know I should be patient, work him up and let him make the first move. The last thing I need tonight is to end up back in Celeste’s office for starting shit, but I’m wound way too tight to keep my fucking hands under control. Before I can stop myself, I’m shoving his head back with a fist in his hair.
“I haven’t lost her,” I assure him. “We’re just getting started.” I lean in further and whisper the final taunt into his ear. “I know what she tastes like.”
It works. He jerks his head out of my grasp and stands, forcing me upright and using his extra height to try to loom over me. His mask of indifference shatters, and my deviant heart rejoices at the raw pain underneath. I shrug the chains from my shoulders and stand my ground, unable to keep a slow smile from spreading across my face.
“Lyot.” Glasses girl is tugging at his arm in earnest now, alarm painted on her features. Campbell is shoving the other girl out of the way, scrambling to reach me. I kick the chains away so my feet won’t get tangled and keep my hands loose and light, ready to give Chace a chance at one good shot before I lay him out. Maybe he’ll split his knuckles on my jaw and I’ll get to see his blood on the straps in class tomorrow when the scabs tear open. But he doesn’t swing, and his friends hesitate, watching us.
“I know what she wants from you,” he says, his voice pitched so only I can hear it. “Be very, very careful how you give it to her.”
“If that’s your advice, pretty boy, I can see why she came to me.”
“It’s not advice. It’s a warning.”
