Page 32 of Bound By Fury

He tries to pull away from me, but I mirror his every step. “You’re a fucking liar.”

I shove him again, and this time he catches my wrists and pulls me to him until our chests are brushing. He glares down at me, and I trace the shape of his sneer with my eyes. I can pick out every new nick and scar he must have gotten from the accident.

The only sound is my heart pounding in my ears and the heavy whoosh of our mingling breaths.

I’m so pissed off, I almost laugh. “I just want to know why.”

“You know why.” It’s barely more than a growl. Everywhere his eyes roam across my face burns with pent-up emotion. His fingers dig into my arms hard enough to hurt, but I lean in to them anyway, hungry for any feeling loud enough to drown out my despair.

I shake my head in exasperation, blowing out a breath.

I’ve spent so much time playing and replaying that night in my head, even when I’m doing everything in my power to forget it.

At first I thought he was going to let it go, what he saw in the creek the day he got back from football camp. Because it was a mistake, I was sure of it. I didn’t know what came over me, the way I’d fallen into the arms of the wrong guy. Because Lucas was definitely the wrong guy, right?

It was always supposed to be Kai.

Never mind the blood splatter across my face when Malachi’s fist met Lucas’s nose, or the way they tumbled to the ground, interlocked like two ball pythons in a death spiral. We would work it out. Just like we always did.

But later that night he’d come to me with bleary eyes and trembling lips, rain misting lightly against our faces.

“I’m sorry,” he’d begged. “I’m not—I don’t know what’s wrong with me…”

It’s not the fight that upset me, because we’d all fought one another plenty over the years. It was the look in his eyes. An uncontained fury. A darkness I hadn’t seen before. And maybe it wasn’t his fault. Maybe it came naturally to him.

Maybe fruit grown from a tree with rotten roots is always destined to sour.

I’d known all our lives that Josiah Matsoukas was an evil man. I knew that Kai sometimes got slapped around. But I’d never seen him like this.

Bracing his side and limping, face swollen and purple, the whites of his eyes gone a scarlet nearly as deep as his hair.

“You can’t stay with them,” I’d cried, fingers gently prodding the bruises on his face, cradling his head in my lap. “You have to call the police. You should tell someone. For Lexie.”

He was staring into the sky, gaze trained on the stars.

“You don’t understand…”

“So tell me.”

He shook his head.

“Kai…”

“I can handle it on my own,” he huffed bitterly.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re being ridiculous.” What was it about guys feeling like they couldn’t ask anyone for help?

After a beat of silence, his voice was barely a whisper. “Do you love him?”

“What?” I asked, incredulous. It was a one-off moment, a mistake. But it had resulted in so much pain.

“You heard me.” He sat up, his lips peeling back. “You do, don’t you?”

“No, I—”

“He’s not right for you,” he said, more forcefully this time.

I leaned back. “What’s wrong with you? Why are we even talking about this? It isn’t—”