The Relentless Warrior (18 page)

“We’ll just go help Bastian, then,” Xander offered with a pat on my shoulder.

Roxie followed them, jumping out of the pool and grabbing a towel without bothering
to use it outside. They hadn’t even made it a foot indoors before they were a hysterical
gaggle of laughing hyenas at my expense. Apparently I wasn’t very subtle about the
direction of my thoughts.

At least they were nice enough to leave us the hell alone.

We had things to discuss.
 

I toed off my topsiders, noting the speckles of blood tainting the usually clean leather.
I dropped down where Xander had been sitting and let my feet sink into the warm water.
The freshness of the saltwater pool felt incredible after the stifling, suffocating
heat of the basement.

“You scared everyone away,” Olivia said over her shoulder.

My eyes were riveted on the back of her head and the blurry body that moved beneath
the surface of the water. She was a siren, calling me to the depths of the sea with
a song that spoke to my very soul. And I was a sailor that would follow her down,
lured by her beauty and by the light that promised me life more than any other thing
that awaited me down in those fathomless depths.

“I didn’t mean to.” My voice sounded harsh and raspy to my own ears. I could only
imagine what Olivia thought of me. She turned around to face me but stayed in the
middle of the pool, shoulders moving beneath the surface. Her eyes glittered above
the sparkling water, their ice blue color indefinable under the decorative patio lamps
and moonlight. I felt lost, so lost my chest hurt and my stomach churned. But at the
same time I felt found, so severely found that I knew there was no other place for
me on this earth. This moment was important. This moment was profound.

This moment would change us both.

Forever.

And "forever" was one of those words that meant something to me.

“You sounded like you were having fun.”

She gave me a curious expression and admitted, “I guess we were having fun.”

“You sound surprised.”

“It’s just…” She turned back around and cleared her throat. “It’s just I haven’t had
fun in a long time. I guess, I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it.”

My chest clenched in pain, “I bet it feels like forever since you were back home,
back to a life without Magic and crazies that want to experiment on you.”

She snorted and my body pulsed with the need to kiss her. I almost laughed out loud
at how ridiculously sexy I found that indelicate sound coming from her. I’d really
lost my mind this time.

“It feels like
years
,” she groaned. She’d coasted a little bit closer to me, although I didn’t think she’d
noticed yet. “But that’s not what I meant. There’s a reason I took this trip with
my sister.”

An awkward silence fell between us, most of the discomfort coming from her. She seemed
suddenly anxious to be anywhere but here. I guessed it had something to do with her
confession.

So I hedged, “Because your family actually likes each other?”

She laughed with that throaty voice of hers and without consciously deciding to do
so, I slipped into the water fully clothed. I yanked off my wet t-shirt, tossing it
back to the patio. My linen shorts weren’t exactly easy to move in underwater, but
I needed to be closer to her- I needed to share the same space with her before I took
my next breath. Her hypnotic call had crescendo-ed into a gravitational pull. She
was the sun and I was only Icarus, only a man. I would fly as close to her as I could
until I caught fire.

Until her heat became my undoing.

Until I crashed back to the earth in a blaze of defeat.

Until she ruined me.

She watched me enter the pool with wide eyes, instinctively backed to the far wall
again. “N-n-no,” she stammered. Visibly pulling herself together as she went on, “I
mean, we are close. My family is very close. But I meant, because I don’t have any
other friends. Other than them.”

“Is it your school? You said it was competitive,” I reminded her.

She cringed, wrinkling her adorable nose. I took three more steps toward her. If she
was going to do things like that, she couldn’t blame me.

Our Magic met under the water, like fingers reaching out to intertwine with each other.
The pool had recessed lighting along the edges and if I didn’t know better I could
swear we’d started some kind of lightshow at the bottom. Pastel shadows of color danced
beneath our feet, as if our Magics were already so fiercely connected they became
tangible fields of light.

Olivia didn’t notice, so I didn’t bring it up. I didn’t want to freak her out.

Besides, I had my own agenda.

“What if it’s me?” she asked in a whisper.

“It’s not you.” And I meant that. I’d never met someone I wanted to get to know as
badly as Olivia. And for weeks, there had been no one I’d rather spend time with than
this human girl. She was the single most interesting person I’d ever met. There was
no way people wouldn’t be as pulled in by her as me. It wasn’t possible.

Not even Eden had commanded so many thoughts in my head.
 

She stuck her tongue out at me when I was only two feet away and that solidified it,
I was closing this distance between us.

“It
is
me,” she said. “I haven’t had friends since… high school. Not even the end of high
school, but like the beginning. I was a loser.”

“Math club?” I teased.

“No, I wish,” she sighed. She put her back to the wall and her hands gripped the patio
edge above her head. She let her feet kick out and for just the briefest moment her
flat, exposed stomach broke through the surface and my blood, my body, everything
that was me reacted immediately.

Holy shit, it was like she was created specifically to seduce me.

I kept it under control though; obviously she was opening up. I wasn’t the most complicated
creature on the planet, and with all Olivia’s exposed skin and the fissions of electricity
shooting through me from our united Magic I simplified very quickly. But this was
important. I needed to listen.

And most shocking of all… I wanted to listen.

“Math club had each other. Jericho, you don’t understand, I had
no one
. Not until O got to high school with me. And even then, I didn’t let her hang out
with me much. I didn’t want to taint her. I was poison back then.” She looked over
the stone wall again, somewhere beyond the rain forest, beyond our present. “I still
might be.”

“What happened?” I sensed something off with this story. I needed more details because
this girl was in no way poison, not even a little bit. She hesitated and so I turned
to her and gave her the full force of my smoldering stare. She could try to resist,
but, come on, I had a good smolder.

She let out a frustrated little groan but then said, “Stupid high school politics.”

“Explain it to me,” I coaxed. “My high school politics revolved around literal politics.
We competed for the best seat at royal events and who could date the girl with the
highest title.” I smiled so she knew I was joking… mostly. “I have no experience with
what you went through. You’re going to have to spell it out for me.”

She rolled her eyes but finally turned her body to face me, resting her arm along
the hot cement of the patio to keep her body anchored. “Fine. Freshman year I started
dating this guy.” I already hated where this was going. “He was a year older than
me, a sophomore. We had Foods together. I, well, it’s obvious why I was taking the
class. He was taking it for the easy A. Anyway, he was like this cool kid. Everybody
liked him, even the upper classmen because he was
really
good at football.”

“The quarterback?” I grunted, surprised by my own jealousy. This had happened years
ago. “Really, Liv?”

She let out an amused laugh and shook her head. “No, not the quarterback. The
running
back. Anyway, he was funny, and… cool, and a terrible cook.”

“That probably should have tipped you off right, then.”

“Probably,” but she didn’t find any humor in my joke. “He got invited to all these
upper classmen parties. And I thought that was so cool. I mean, I was just trying
to fit in, you know? My family had just moved to the area and I didn’t have a lot
of friends. I just… anyway, stupid teenager stuff. But my parents let me go to a party
with him one time. They are really overprotective, and so it was a while into our
relationship before they agreed that I could go on an actual date with him. I mean,
I was only fifteen at the time. They were nervous. But they trusted him after a while
and his dad drove us to the party, so they figured it must be safe or whatever. The
thing was… it was not safe. I knew the minute we got out of his dad’s car that I made
a mistake. But what could I do? I was already there, and I was too embarrassed to
call my parents to come get me after all the begging I’d done to get there. I was
too young and immature to realize what my pride was going to cost me. That night did
not end well.”

“ Did he?” I choked the words out on a strangled cough. I couldn’t even bring myself
to say the words. I couldn’t bring myself to think another thought until she confirmed
yes or no. I wanted to kill this asshole with my bare hands, drain the life right
out of his goddamn face.

“No,” she answered quickly. “No, he didn’t. But he wanted to… tried to. We were on
this balcony. He’d talked me into going out there with him. We were just sitting on
these cute, pinstriped lawn chairs and then he put the moves on me. It was nice at
first, I mean, fine. I didn’t mind it. But he pushed and kept pushing and kept pushing.
Anyway, sorry about all the details, I kind of get lost…”

I waved her off, “No, I get it. When we’ve been through trauma, it’s amazing what
our memory retains.” I knew that for a fact. The night Amory died, I could remember
every insignificant detail so that those memories played like a horrific movie in
my head. The way the snow felt when I went down. The jeans I was wearing that day.
The taste of the shot of tequila Avalon fed me not an hour before- when he knew Eden
was with Kiran… when he knew she was saying “yes.” Olivia had fallen silent, but I
couldn’t let her stop her story there. “I need you to finish, Liv. I really need to
know what happens.”

“Oh, right,” she laughed. I did not. “Anyway, I stood up and shoved him off me. He
followed me and pressed me against the iron rail. He was not taking ‘no’ for an answer.
I kept fighting him and then somehow… I’m not even sure how it happened to this day,
but I shoved him at the same time he took a step back. It was just this thin railing
and he was this huge guy. My push combined with his momentum… he flipped right over
it.”

“Did you kill him,” I demanded- hoping she would say yes.

She gave me a confused double-take. “Thank God, no. Jericho, really? I’d have a whole
different set of issues if that was the case.” I thought he deserved to die. But whatever,
this was her story. “He broke his arm, in three places, and one of his ankles. I ruined
his football career.”

“He deserved worse than that, Olivia.” This was something she needed to understand.
Guys could not take whatever they wanted, especially not with her.

“
I
know that.” She rolled her eyes at me. “But the rest of the high school didn’t. I
couldn’t even file charges saying he tried to rape me. It had just been some aggressive
kissing that I didn’t feel comfortable with. And he had stepped away, so maybe he
realized he was wrong. I don’t know, but obviously he freaked me out. His falling
over the balcony was an accident. But the entire high school blamed me. They saw the
loss of this great football player. Freshman year was bad- lots of upper classmen
spreading nasty rumors about me. I hadn’t really had any close friends to stand up
for me.”

“So what? They lost one football player, who cares? They didn’t move on after the
season?”

“It became like this thing… They hated me because I was an easy target. And by default,
I hated them. I’ve never been the kind of girl that plays nice with others. They backed
me into a corner and I fought back.” She shrugged one shoulder out of the water and
I wanted to lick it, starting at the edge, across her collarbone, right to the hollow
of her throat. But we were bonding, so I kept my focus on her darkened eyes. “They
didn’t need a reason to hate me after that. They just did. And I let them because
I didn’t want any part of their world.”

“Was everyone like that? Everyone was mean to you?” I asked gently. Now that the rage
had subsided, my chest started to feel a little like it was cracking open for her.
My sometimes feisty, sometimes sweet, but always amazing Olivia had a miserable high
school life and hadn’t made friends since. I wanted to go back in time and beat up
every single douche bag that was cruel to her. I wanted to be there for her. Hang
out with her on the weekends. Ask her on dates. Take her to prom. I wanted to remake
every single bad memory she had and give her happiness.

“You make me sound like a victim.” She shoved my shoulder and shook her head. “I wasn’t.
Well, maybe at first. But, I could have made friends. I mean, there were people outside
of the popular crowd that could have cared less about some over-privileged football
player. But by the time I realized that, I was just over… people. I did my own thing.
I knew who I was and what I wanted out of life. I didn’t need friends.”