He meets my gaze head-on, the pulse at his neck a flurry of beats visible with the naked eye.
“Everyone,” Mag says. “My place. Now.”
“This ought to be fun,” Oscar deadpans, leaning against the wall as Mag unlocks his door and ushers us through it.
As soon as the door closes behind us, I approach Brawler. “What are you doing?”
I want to be mad. I want to scream and rage and scold him, but an overwhelming sadness attacks me first. It’s not the fury I thought I would start with. I try to say something more, but I choke. He sat in Dunnegan’s chair. Dunnegan’s. Fucking. Chair. The dead body slumped over the table next time could very well be him, and then where would we be?
I fist my fingers in my hands. Brawler reaches down, scooping them up, his enormous palms encompassing every square inch of my tight fists. He moves his fingers just slightly so he can kiss my skin as he brings them to his mouth. “I had to, Kyla. Are you okay?” He squeezes me, and instead of looking me over in a cursory inspection, he pierces me with his gaze as if he can find all the answers he needs inside me. “This is the third time you’ve been caught in a crossfire, and I’ve been stuck not knowing one fucking word on what’s happening. I can’t do it anymore. I had to do something.”
I close my eyes before reopening them. “But join the Crew? It’s the Crew, Brawler. They murdered your brother, they—”
He kisses the end of my pinkies again, his hands warm against my skin. “Which is why I can’t let anything happen to you. If I get in, I can help protect you. I can keep you safe. Out there, I can’t do shit. I just have to sit and wait. Hope you make it out okay not knowing where you are or what exactly happened. They tried to blow the fucking tower up, and I had no idea what happened to you. Talk about another Crew hit was all over the Heights, and I had no idea if that was you. Then, you’re whisked away for a couple of days—days—and I still don’t know if you’re hurt. Or what they did to you. Or if you even got away. It’s killing me. It fucking killed me, okay?”
I throw his hands away and scream out in frustration. “But this isn’t what was supposed to happen, Brawler. You had an out.”
He pulls me back to him with a growl. “I don’t want an out without you. If you think I’m going to just one day skip off into the sunset and leave you here, you know nothing about me.”
His words press into all the sensitive parts of me. “If you were smart, you’d do that now.”
His blue eyes spark like turquoise fire burning through dry brush. “Not happening.”
“As heart wrenching as this all is,” Oscar says, interjecting his lazy humor into our moment, “Now you have to fight each other, so I’m with Princess on this one. Dumb move.”
“You would’ve done the same thing,” Brawler scoffs back. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it was you who told me to man up and join the Crew a few weeks ago. I need to know what’s happening with Kyla.”
“I told you what I knew,” Oscar seethes. “She’s alive. She’s at the safe house.”
“But you wouldn’t tell me where it was!”
“Because I don’t fucking know where it is!” Oscar lifts his hat off and then pulls it back down over his head with a hard tug. “I told you everything I knew.”
“Careful,” Brawler teases with a humorless smirk. “People might think you actually care.”
“Fuck off. You don’t think I was worried?” He points to me. “This girl is my life. My mother might as well be dead. No one cares about me but her.”
“You don’t think it’s the same for me?” Brawler yells. His shoulders heave up and down.
“Alright,” Mag says with finality, walking into the center of our spat and eyeing each of us. “That’s enough. What’s done is done. Brawler can’t take back what’s already out there, which means he needs to complete the initiation tasks K sets forth.”
“Yeah, one of which is taking Kyla out.”
“I didn’t know he was going to set that,” Brawler answers through clenched teeth.
“He’s evil,” Oscar says. “He takes what you love most and exploits it against you, watches to see how you handle it because if