The Worst Kind of Promise (Riverside Reapers Book 2)

KIT

I’m pissed. And it’s a hundred degrees right now. But I’m not pissed because I’m stuck in Satan’s hot-as-balls ass crack—I’m pissed because I can’t stop thinking about Faye. We haven’t talked since the party, and if my calculations are correct, then it’s been approximately five thousand seven hundred sixty minutes since we last exchanged any words. I try to give her space, only entering my room if she’s somewhere else in the house, but every time I see that weird face roller thing she has in the bathroom or the questionable romance book she has on the nightstand, leaden guilt balls in my stomach.

I fucked up. Simple as that. I said things I can’t take back. I said things that made her cry. I said things that I didn’t mean. All because I was convinced it was the right thing to do…for her sake. Which is stupid, I know. I can’t dictate what’s right or wrong for anybody. And now I’m paying for my cruelty, my heart minutes—maybe even seconds—away from bursting.

My grip on the rubber bars in front of me is slipping, slick with an accumulation of sweat from my hour workout. I came in with high hopes that I’d be able to clear my mind, but I have an even more stress-muddled brain. Perspiration rolls down the bare hills of my pectorals and through the rivulets in my abs. My shorts are suctioned to my nether regions, and moisture down there is…a recipe for disaster.

As I elongate my arms out to the side, the burning sensation that’s been building in my chest and triceps distracts me momentarily from the mental anguish, but it only lasts for so long. I push through a few more reps before succumbing to exhaustion, the metal of the chest press machine clanging back into place.

I’m sorry. I never meant to lead you on, Faye.

This was never going to work.

You were just so blinded by something you could never have.

My words razor through my brain, slashing through the fleshy matter, an irrepressible reminder of one of the worst days of my life. A lot of people talk about how difficult it is to be on the receiving end of a broken heart. What I don’t hear is how difficult it is to be the one doing the heart breaking, secretly knowing it’s the last person you’d ever want to hurt. Knowing that you have to end things because they deserve better, or because they were simply the right person at the wrong time.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m a douchebag. No matter how shitty I feel, I know Faye is feeling it ten times worse. And I’ll never forgive myself for the way I treated her.

Leaning forward, I reach for my neatly folded towel, wiping the excess sweat off my face. The sound of jovial laughter hits my ears before I see anyone turn the corner into our own private gym room, and then Fulton’s and Gage’s figures slink into frame, followed by Bristol with a towel draped over his shoulder and a drink in his hand.

The guys know I’ve been…off. But they’ve been smart enough to give me space. And, well, Hayes has been giving me the silent treatment ever since we got into the fight over Faye. It wasn’t my place to step in and help, but I had to try and avert some of the blame. She got a harsh beatdown. Hayes was furious. I think he still is.

Bristol leans up against the machine, the last of his green smoothie clutched between his fingers. “You finally ready to talk?”

“Nope,” I say, staring ahead into space just so I don’t have to meet his concern-ridden gaze. I’d rather drop a dumbbell on my foot than have this conversation. I’m familiar with how scolding works. Yell, cower, yell again, promise to be better. It’s a cycle that’ll probably follow my troublesome ass for the rest of my life.

Bristol ignores me. “Why did you do it, Kit?” he asks.

A simple question. A simple question with a simple answer. But none of it really is simple, is it?

I pause, trying to gather my thoughts and spew out something believable, but all my heart keeps screaming is “Because I love her!”

Oh, fuck. The L-word? Am I serious? I mean, I’ve known her for four years. Whenever I think about her, I see my future. It’s all there—in the heart line of her palms, the crinkles below her eyes, the curve of her contagious smile, the soft spots on her body that I’ve tenderized with bruising touches. I can’t imagine my life without her in it.

But I don’t say any of that.

“Because KJ was being a stupid twat.”

Bristol chuckles, his lips cocked into an amused smile. “Because you care about her,” he corrects.

I freeze in my disgusting pool of sweat. I freeze as an avalanche of panic heads straight for me, snowballing down a steep incline, set off by the jarring possibility that Bristol may have just dissembled my entire world.

“What?” I sputter.

“We all care about her.” He places his hand on my shoulder supportively, and my muscles slacken just a little.

Right. Of course that’s where he was going with it.

I finally get up to stretch, blanketing the back of my neck with my towel as my hands grasp the ends. I’m gonna be sore as hell tomorrow.

“Uh, yeah,” I offer lamely.

“I mean, did he deserve it? Yeah. Could you have confronted him in a nonviolent way? Probably.”

“He’s lucky all I broke was his nose,” I growl, anger streamlining through my bloodstream, all the way to the hub of my body, where my heart beats out a staccato rhythm.

Bristol holds his hands up in surrender. “Hey, I’m not blaming you. If I wasn’t a pacifist, I probably would’ve thrown a few punches myself.”

I’m not going to hold some grudge against KJ. We’re teammates, after all. He learned his lesson, and if he has any intelligence in that pea-sized brain of his, he’ll never make that mistake again. My self-control usually isn’t this volatile. I keep my fights strictly on the ice. But when people mess with those I care about, I’ll stop at nothing until they fucking pay for it.

My teeth cage my lower lip. “Faye’s not talking to me, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Because you gave KJ a taste of his own medicine?”

“Because I said some shit to her that I shouldn’t have.”

Admitting that out loud pains me in a way I never thought was imaginable. Instead of the truth bouncing off me like a bullet ricocheting off a bulletproof vest, it fully punctures my chest, exploding my ribs open in a slow-motion, car-crash-dummy kind of way.

I told her it was all a mistake. That she was a mistake. Why did I have to be so harsh? I know why. I know why, and I don’t have the right to be asking that question. Because if I didn’t make sure things between us were completely finished, it would’ve made it that much easier for me to crawl back to her.

Bristol tosses back the rest of his drink and swallows. “Did you mean any of it?”

“No, of course not. I was just so worked up with everything going on.”

“Then she’ll forgive you. Probably with time, but she will.”

“I don’t know, Cap,” I sigh, combing my fingers through the front of my wet hair.

I can feel Bristol’s stare burn a hole through the towel on my neck, and I reach down to swoop up my water bottle, squirting a decent stream into my mouth.

“You need to prove it to her,” Bristol tells me.

My cheeks grow impossibly warm, flushed with a feverish haze. It doesn’t help that the sun is somehow defying all laws of gravity and only aiming for my retinas—no other spot in the gym. “You want me to prove what to her, exactly?”

He sets his glass and towel on the ground, focusing his attention on the rack of dumbbells beside him. He squats down to pick up a twenty-pound weight for his warmup, readying himself with a breath. “You have to prove that you didn’t mean any of it,” he advises, curling his lower arm. “Whatever it was.”

Prove to her how much I still care about her. Prove to her that I’m done playing this game. Prove to her that I want the real thing with her for as long as she’ll have me. I pick Faye in every universe. In the ones where we’re best friends, in the ones where we’re sworn enemies, in the ones where we’re strangers who live on opposite ends of the world. I pick her.

When she looked at me while I was leaving the bathroom, when she had to ask if I’d come back because she didn’t think I would, it crushed my heart. I’d created this narrative that abandoning her was always my plan from the start, and that was never the case. I can’t have her believing that for the rest of the summer. I know what I’m putting at risk here—my relationship with Hayes. I know I’m choosing her over him. I know I should think harder about all of this. But if she spends another second not knowing that I’m so completely infatuated with her, I don’t know if I’ll survive.

Do you know what it feels like when it hurts to breathe? When you keep sucking oxygen into your lungs in an effort to breathe easier, but nothing seems to be working?

And then you see them standing there, waiting for you, waiting for all the possible adventures you two are about to have and the memories you’ll treasure from them, and the breath comes easy. Crisp and fresh and like nothing you’ve ever tasted before because you’ve been so used to breathing tainted air.

Is that what love feels like? And if so, am I destined to live a life smothered in a smog-infused atmosphere?