CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
but you'l never be the death of me

CONTENDING WITH RIO was never a good idea, not because it was a fight you wouldn't win, but because Rio had nothing to lose and he made an intemperate living of making your life difficult so much so the cost outweighed the pyrrhic victory. So maybe it wasn't that none of them were trying to reach out to him. That wasn't the case at all. In fact, Rio's absence should've been a relief to Marcus, but in turn it'd achieved the opposite effect. The one time Marcus saw Rio was by complete accident and coincidence, when he was rushing out of the Potions dungeons to get to the library so Quinn could help him with his essay, but as he'd rounded a corner, he'd literally run right into his ex-boyfriend who looked worse for wear and glared at him like he was nothing more than the dirt under his expensive shoes.

"They argued," Sawyer said, flopping onto her back as Oliver drained his water bottle. "But I think in order to argue, they'd have to say more than ten words to each other."

All Rio had said to Marcus yesterday was, "my brother? Really?"

And Marcus didn't have anything to counter with, since he'd been the one to approve the lineup. Callum Alvarez wasn't his first pick, but it was the smartest. He was better than Rio, more committed, and he didn't flake out on practices. Even if he was an entitled brat with no regard for anything or anyone, his contribution to the team couldn't go ignored. Still, Marcus felt the sting of betrayal in Rio's tone like a slap to the face. The Alvarez brothers were a twisted pair, an orchestrated war that saw no end. They weren't like Wyatt and Sawyer, who had someone standing between them that needed to be excised like a tumour in order to repair everything that was broken. Though it began with the father they shared, the damage wasn't a poison in their blood, but a poison coded in their DNA. There was no going back from that.

Oliver hummed, stretching his legs out in front of him, sweat glistening on his face. In the morning, the world came to Sawyer with a jarring clarity that she clung to no matter how much it grazed her nerves with the sandpaper-abrasiveness of a friction burn until it was time for the first dosage of Valium to push her head under the medication-induced haze and numb her to the world. In the morning, her boyfriend was a vision against the dawn sky, gilded by the sun like a personally appointed vessel. Sometimes she wanted to touch him because he might burn her. Today, Oliver didn't kiss her. He'd asked, yes or no, but Sawyer felt his touch burn and couldn't bear a moment longer. She'd told him no, for the first time. And he'd listened, and kept his hands to himself. Today was another one of those days where she felt like a raw, exposed nerve and the world couldn't stop touching her and everything hurt. She'd worn one of her older sweatshirts even though there were holes in the hood and the sleeves were worn thin, the material was softer.

"Can I ask why he's not hanging around you guys anymore?"

Sawyer staked her fingers into the grass. "It's not my place to say, and it's not my business anymore."

Oliver's brows furrowed. After all Sawyer and Rio had been through together, this, coming out of her mouth, didn't sound right. Even Oliver knew it.

"It sounds like he needs help," Oliver said.

"He doesn't want it." Trying to help someone who didn't want help in the first place was a recipe for disaster. No matter how much you tried, they'd still resist. Sometimes they'd resist until they were forced towards the edge of the cliffs of their sanity, and sometimes they'd use that resistance to push themselves off.

Oliver's lips twitched into a frown, but it was gone when Sawyer blinked.

Tired of talking about Rio, Sawyer rolled onto her stomach and peered up at him. "You said you were going to tell me about your dream."

"Yeah," Oliver said, grimacing, as he toyed with the lid of his water bottle. "I may have forgotten some of it, but it had something to do with the match next week." His voice was thin but low, as if cut by static.

Now that the season was over for Sawyer, she didn't have the outlet of Quidditch anymore, and she did feel a little listless without it. Before, it was all she had to fight against, and now, she missed being in the air, wearing down her opponents. Oliver could tell, and night after night, where they could afford it, and where their schoolwork allowed them a little reprieve, they snuck onto the pitch at night with the forged keys she'd pressed into his hand on his birthday, and played until their bodies grew heavy.

Presently, though, it was only a week between matches, but the anticipation amidst the student body hadn't died. This upcoming one was the final match of the season. One that Oliver had been working up to since the beginning of time. There was a certain tension wired in his features, an anxiety that never used to present itself, a frustrated aggression that she could taste when he kissed her like he was trying to lose himself in her, and when they went silent for endless stretches of time and he'd retreated into his own head. Sometimes Sawyer wanted to cut through the top of his cranium and peek under his skull, see what she could unspool from his brain, wondered if she'd slice her fingers on all the equations and strategies that were cut down to their sharpest points, pared down to perfection, polished like knives.

"Are you scared?"

"No," Oliver said, but the lie snagged like a writhing fish in the net of her gaze, trawling over his steel-hard expression.

Sawyer fixed him with an unimpressed stare. As if on cue, Oliver tilted his face to the cornflower-blue sky and let out an exasperated exhale like he could blow out all the light. For the first time in awhile, there were no clouds. Just endless stretches of sky that didn't seem to end anywhere. If she'd learned anything from their Astronomy classes, it was that the sky was everywhere. One of the only things left in a world of cycles and expiry dates and disintegration that remained constant and infinite.

"I think I fell," Oliver said, a muscle in his jaw ticking. "In my dream, we were playing against all the teams, but none of you had faces. And I fell."

"What happened after?"

"I woke up," Oliver said, shrugging nonchalantly. "But... I don't know. I keep thinking something bad's going to happen. I've worked so hard for this, and if something does go wrong—"

"It'll suck," Sawyer said, "but the world won't end. Your world will keep turning and you'll be playing for Puddlemere United after you graduate."

His expression pinched in irritation. "You're not helping."

"I know." Sawyer picked at the skin on the side of her nail. She'd been worrying at it for a good ten minutes, and there was blood crusted in the crevices between her nail and the flesh of her thumb. She kept it folded under her palm, so Oliver wouldn't see. "Do you want me to lie?"

Oliver flicked her a bemused look. And because she didn't make it a habit to be helpful, Sawyer regarded him with a nonchalant stare. It was the truth. He didn't need a shiny Quidditch Cup to tell him he was at the top of his game. Only a selected few were handpicked by scouts to play for professional teams, and so far, Oliver had accumulated a good number of teams vying for his talent. But she could sense his mounting frustration in the way he cut his eyes away from her and turned back to the sky, the way he always did whenever his patience ran short. A part of her knew that it was time to retreat. Do what anyone else who wanted to keep his affection would do: tell him what he wanted to hear. But that wasn't Sawyer. And if he didn't like that about her, then she would know. The door was wide open, a gaping, beckoning hand. Tell me to go would turn into I'm going would turn into I'm gone. And the bigger part of her wanted to keep pushing him, keep testing his fraying temper to see what he'd do. That part of her wanted her standing philosophy to be right, that he would leave because she wasn't who he thought she was.

"I still want the Quidditch Cup," Oliver said, shortly.

"Then have it," Sawyer mused, pressing down on her bloody thumb, ignoring the sting. "Steal it from the staff room, if that makes you happy. Marcus could get you the keys."

Oliver rolled his eyes. "Why're you being so mean today?"

Sawyer sent him a cheerless grin.

"Shame," Oliver drawled, reaching for his duffel bag and procuring two turquoise tickets. He held one out to her. The tickets shimmered slightly in the morning light slanting past the stands, spilling onto the pitch, where they lounged in the grass like they had all the time in the world between their hands. "I didn't know if you already got one of these, but all my friends are going and I'm not sixth wheeling them and their dates to that stupid ball if there won't be any alcohol."

Sawyer took the ticket, ran her thumb down its glossy front, where the time and location of the themed graduation ball had been embossed. "I didn't think you cared for that stupid ball." They hadn't exactly talked about it either. Sawyer thought it was insignificant to talk about it this early in the semester, even though ticket sales were still going, and Oliver might've just glossed over it entirely since he didn't seem like the type to bother with something this inconsequential and fatuous that had nothing to do with Quidditch.

Oliver shrugged. "I didn't think you did either."

"Quinn makes a very compelling case about all of us going. I don't think any of us got our tickets yet, though, and nobody's got a date, except Quinn and Jeremy. They're a thing now."

"That's new," Oliver said, blinking like he hadn't witnessed Jeremy the day Quinn was in the infirmary, and the way he said it so genuinely confirmed that he truly didn't notice or chose to discard it as valueless information. Then, his eyes flicked to hers. "Well, now you have a date. Don't go with someone else."

Sawyer pocketed the ticket and felt the tiny flutter in her pulse. "I'll bring the firewhiskey."

Oliver smiled.

And the way he looked at her now—it hit her in the guts like a thousand-tonne truck. Sometimes the world looked so huge, a quivering vessel encompassing her in all its vast menace. Other times it was miniaturised and automated. There were times she didn't know if reality was a solid plane or if it shifted constantly, stealing time from her, stealing memories and forcing fragments back into her mouth in all the wrong orders. Sometimes nothing felt real, and sometimes everything felt so real they staked their fingers into the flesh of her face and pried her eyes wide open, screaming in her ear, do you see? Do you? and there was no way to know what was and what wasn't, no way to distinguish whether the burning in her gut now would feel the same later, or if there were no constants.

Which was the reality she was meant to see the world in: the polarising mania and sudden bouts of emotional flatness, or the drug-induced haze that levelled the dials in her brain that set her to its awful extremes? The former gave her world a certain jarring clarity, and she felt all of its edges that passed over her incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until she found the opening that couldn't have existed before. On the other hand, although the latter made her a voyeur of her own life, drifting in a liquid state of out-of-body experiences that fed her memories in fragments like a body caught in a crossfire or pulled apart by force, it considered her clinically normal.

That was the scary part. The not knowing.

Then there were the days she didn't feel. Dr Josten said that those days could be the hardest, but Sawyer always thought they were the better parts. Neither of them were right, but that didn't mean they were wrong either.

And now, there was Oliver, looking at her like she was something to hold onto, something worth more than scoring a place on his dream Quidditch team, and the weight of the responsibility crushed all the air inside her lungs. Because, what if this was a mistake? What if one day he woke up and realised there was too much crazy inside her and decided that this wasn't what he wanted anymore? What if reality was as seasonal as Quidditch matches when everyone rode out the adrenaline high that the game days brought until that excitement died out when school resumed its monotony and the world had to reshape itself once more, that she'd wake up one day and realise all of this was transient and transpirational and none of it real?

"You're spacing out on me," Oliver said.

Turning over once more onto her back, Sawyer recovered quickly. "I still don't have a dress."

Oliver scoffed. "We've got time."

And truly, they did. Or at least, it felt like it. Like they had all the time in the world right here, with the morning frozen in the dew-damp grass and the sunlight slanting against Oliver's jaw, dusting his hair in a halo and the way he lounged like he had nowhere to be except beside her. But the question of whether this was real or not—it wouldn't stop haunting her now.

"Do you regret anything?" Sawyer asked, throwing an arm over her face to keep the sunlight from burning her eyes.

In the stunned silence ensuing her abrupt question, she heard Oliver shift a little. "I do regret small things—which, I think is normal for everyone—but I like where I am right now, so, no. I don't wish things were different."

"Are you happy?"

It was a loaded question, but she had to know.

And for a moment, Oliver was so quiet she thought he might've up and left had she not felt his body heat near her—not touching, but not so far she couldn't sense his presence, the shadow lapsing over her body.

"I think so," Oliver said, picking his words gingerly. "I have friends I actually like, and I'm doing okay in school, and this Quidditch season isn't terrible, even though we could've done better." He paused for a moment, and Sawyer felt him pinch her sleeve and lift her arm off her face, and she opened her eyes to find that he'd moved so the sun wasn't in her face anymore. "And I have you. So. Yeah, some stuff still sucks and that can't be helped, but I think, overall, I'm happy. What about you? Do you regret anything?"

Sawyer chewed lightly on the side of her tongue. "No," she told him, and was surprised to hear the sincerity sitting like a pillar holding up her tone. There were a lot of things she regretted, but none of them couldn't be absolved. If he'd asked her this years ago, she might've come up with a vastly different answer, but, then again, years ago, they were barely on speaking terms and she'd been majorly suicidal. In retrospect, she wasn't sure how she'd gotten through that time.

"Are you happy?"

Silence lapsed between them.

"I don't know," she said, finally, after an endless moment of prolonged contemplation, because happiness was so unfamiliar to her, she didn't know what it felt like. And there was that secondary fear creeping into her veins, the fear that if she admitted that she was, it could be snatched from her hands in the next moment. In that moment she fears that Oliver would say, like how her mother used to say, happy is a decision, and then she would have one reason to hate him, one reason to cast him off, because her happy was as hollow as a pinpricked egg, a cracked hourglass with sand spilling out of her ribs, and what if this—this feeling so easily mistaken for contentment—was a mania-induced illusion like a mirage shimmering in the desert? 

But his next words surprised a laugh from her.

"That's okay," Oliver said, peering down at her. "We'll get there."

And though he wasn't smiling, though he wasn't as amused as she was, though he didn't really understand what she found so funny she couldn't stop laughing like there was a reservoir of hysterics bubbling in her lungs and she couldn't staunch the flow, he brushed a hand over the damp end of her ponytail the way he liked to stroke her jaw. Stay, stay, stay.

* * *

DEAR SAWYER,

I read this book recently about space and time and the way science and civilisation co-exists in a working relationship to develop each other, and I thought you'd like it. It's called Cosmos, by Carl Sagan. I grew up idolising this guy as a little boy. He's one of the smartest men, and I wanted to be just like him, and so I did.

Anyway, I know you hate reading, and, like you yelled at me once, that you're allergic to books, I just thought you'd find some of this stuff pretty funky, so I recorded it, and you can put the tape in your Walkman and listen whenever you like.

Miss you!

Dad.

P.S. I think your owl's getting fat. It couldn't fit through the doggy door last night.

Before he'd flown off with the rest of the owls during breakfast, Hamlet had dropped off two packages for Sawyer, and pecked spitefully at her fingers when she didn't procure any payment. One of them was stuffed thick with a letter and a cassette tape in a white envelope from her father, and the other, she almost didn't believe was hers until she read the text on the back addressing the letter to a Miss Sawyer Lee. It was a pale blue envelope, and when Sawyer noticed the arrow on the silver seal, her heart stopped. All around her, the noise of the Great Hall faded away for a second as she broke the seal and pulled out the letter.

Dear Sawyer,

Congratulations on your outstanding Quidditch career. Your accomplishments and talent at Hogwarts have made you one of the highest-rated players in this year's NQL draft. As a result, the Appleby Arrows would like to offer you a provisional spot on the reserve team.

She didn't need to read the rest of the letter to know what had just landed in her hands. She glanced up at her friends. Jeremy was still flicking through the pages of his copy of the Daily Prophet. Quinn was falling asleep in her cornflakes from staying up late to finish a book last night. And Marcus was scrambling to finish an essay he apparently needed to turn in during first period. None of them seemed to notice what she was holding. Silently, she pocketed the letter from the National Quidditch League commissioner. Deep down, an irrational thought occurred to her that if she spoke it into existence, it'd be taken from her. So she resolved to keeping quiet about it.

Even during and after Transfiguration, when Oliver and Sawyer were walking out of the classroom to get to the library, she said nothing. Not even when they swung round the corner, only to run into a blockade of students gathered in the courtyard. A bad feeling stirred in Sawyer's gut, and without warning, she shoved her way through the students without ceremony, earning herself dirty glares and then more fearful looks. Not missing a beat, Oliver was on her heels in an instant. When she finally broke through to the front of the crowd, Rio's fist was sailing towards Percy Weasley's face.

Percy went down without grace like a sack of bricks, but before Rio could sic himself upon him and do more damage, Percy was on his feet again, lips curled into a snarl, his eyes twin scythes of rage. He swung fast, and his fist connected with Rio's jaw.

"Woah," Oliver breathed, and then he laughed in disbelief, raking a hand through his tussled hair. "Never knew the guy had it in him."

But Rio and his bad attitude and poisoned temper could activate the fight or flight instinct in even the most placid pacifists, and Percy Weasley had been an easy target.

"I heard he has brothers," Sawyer said, but her eyes never left Rio, whose knee found Percy's gut.

Doubling over, Percy let out a humiliating choking sound, and Rio's eyes flashed electric. He spat blood and swiped the back of his hand against his shiny red mouth.

"Come on, boot-licker," Rio roared, throwing his arms out as Percy struggled to regain the breath. Like a lightning storm simmering with the promise of a forest fire, Rio advanced in two quick strides and shoved Percy over. Percy tripped backwards, but regained his footing, red-faced and livid. Rio grinned, and that's when Sawyer knew. He wasn't fighting because he'd been provoked. He'd picked this fight. "Show them all you're not just a narc!"

Sawyer didn't have to watch this. Didn't have to watch Percy loose a war cry that startled a flock of starlings from the trees as he lunged at Rio, who was anticipating the impact and slammed into Percy with a vengeance, a force vicious enough to let the crowd hear the audible crack of Rio's elbow against Percy's glass jaw. A collective wince swept through the spectators. Unimpressed, Oliver crossed his arms over his chest. The fight was dirty, and at one point, Percy went down, and Rio kicked, hard, at his face. Percy's tawny arms came up on instinct to protect himself. Rio attempted to rip them free, but Percy's hand lashed out like a viper, catching Rio by the collar and dragging him down. Shouts broke out down the hallway.

In truth, she couldn't care less the outcome of the brawl. Couldn't care less who started it, or whether Rio got hurt because she knew he wanted to get hurt. He knew he'd win, but, like her, sometimes, Rio liked to see how far he could push someone until they snapped. Another person's rage was enough fuel to get him fired up. This was the act of a boy who cared nothing for consequence. This was the act of a boy who bottled destruction and got drunk off it every night to come alive. Each hit cementing him into existence, like a bruise being coloured in. This was the act of a boy who wasn't looking for salvation or absolution, but for relief and pain tapped into the same broken vein. Trouble dogged at his heels, and Rio let it run loose alongside him. Sometimes he chased it. Sometimes it chased him.

"If you even so much as try to jump in I will drag you out of here myself," Oliver drawled, but the warning edge in his voice was evident as a knife to the throat.

Sawyer didn't answer. She didn't have to. A boy with ginger hair—one of Harry's friends, Sawyer recalled, and the resemblance between the two gingers was uncanny, though she didn't know which Weasley this one was—broke through the crowd and hauled a seething Percy away before Rio could throw his elbow into his face. On reflex, Sawyer started forward, but caught herself in time. She didn't have to bother anymore. He wasn't her responsibility.

"Fucking pussy," Rio spat, and Sawyer did a quick inventory of his injuries. So far all he had was the bruise blooming like a darkening blemish on his cheekbone and the split lip that was beginning to swell. In a fight with a more competent partner, Rio usually ended up a mosaic of pain, bruises scintillating his features like a cracked windshield. This time, the damage was minimal. It was nothing compared to what he'd been through before. Percy was a prefect. An uptight, stand-up kind of guy who would never be caught dead with an infraction, but Rio had unearthed something primal in him, and turned him out like a hat into giving into the raw rage that clawed at his pristine front. And Sawyer didn't respect much, but she could respect a good swing.

Like a feral dog, Percy burst forward again, but his brother clamped a hand around Percy's chest and propelled him five feet away. For a boy that size, Percy's brother was surprisingly strong.

Eyes sparking like gasoline just catching aflame, a venomous grin spread across Rio's lips butchering the comfort of the tension and it was the most horrible thing anyone has ever seen. His teeth shone like rubies in the light. But before anyone could call on the staff, or if anyone had, the staff wouldn't reach them in time, as Rio spun on his heels and stormed off, the crowd parting like the sea in an instant, wary of invoking a messianic temper that flared so quick and burned like an inferno.

"You go ahead," Sawyer said, casting Oliver a backwards glance. "I need to take care of something first."

Oliver frowned, but nodded. "You sure you don't want me to follow?"

Already following after Rio, Sawyer shook her head. "I'll see you later," she said, over her shoulder.

Before Rio could disappear into the crowd, more skeleton than boy now, all sharp edges and gaunt cheeks with the pallor of someone who never ate, Sawyer shoved her way through the crowd rushing to get to their next class, not caring about the way her elbows slammed without forgiveness into ribs and sides in her warpath. Snaking through the castle and its winding channels whilst trying not to lose someone you were tailing at a distance was difficult. Even though that person may not know you were shadowing them. Where Rio was headed was unclear.

Along the way, Sawyer singled Marcus and Jeremy out from the throng of students milling about, an idle tide rushing to get to the next class, and without explanation, she snagged them by the sleeves, shushed them when they started to protest, and dragged them both with her. Eventually, she pointed to the familiar figure ahead, and although his back was to them, they recognised him instantly. All the colour draining from his face, Marcus made a sound like all the air had been knocked out of his lungs. Jeremy frowned.

Where Rio was headed seemed to become more and more apparent as the number of students thinned and finally grew non-existent as they turned into a vacant sector of the castle that the staff didn't use for classrooms and the students didn't like hanging around anymore, since this was there the ghosts had a predilection for congregating. They waited behind a pillar as Rio entered the abandoned boy's bathroom before following, and stopping just at the doorway, their backs pressed against the wall. Jeremy shot Sawyer a searching look, but she didn't come here with a plan. She thought she might've formulated one along the way, but hadn't. Marcus just looked like he was about to throw up. Guilt clung to his expression, and his shoulders seemed to slump in defeat.

"What are we doing here?" Marcus asked, his voice low enough so only Sawyer could hear, but she felt his words reverberate around the corridor, where the walls seemed to slouch with age and lack of effort.

Sawyer didn't have an answer for him, so she kept quiet. Leant against the wall lackadaisically, one leg kicked over the other, Sawyer wished fervently for her lighter. Quinn still hasn't given it up yet, and Sawyer wasn't about to ask for it back, even though she was really only attached now to its presence. The familiar weight in her pocket, the cold sting of its metal shell in her palm. Not that she wanted to use it on herself the way she used to hold the flame to her flesh until welts appeared and the pain got too unbearable. Back then, she would've drenched herself in gasoline like she used to drench cars before striking the match and hocking a molotov cocktail, and flicking the flame on. She hardly got that itch anymore. On the bad days it was still there, sitting in the corner of her mind, seconds away from self-destruction, but she'd learnt to ride out that wave. Sometimes she thought she could be happy. Happiness wasn't something she was accustomed to. An abstract concept that felt too foreign to let herself loose in. They say that you never really get over depression completely, and getting better was one long twisted route that went backwards more than forwards sometimes, but things weren't always so bad.

Right now, she just wanted something to fiddle with.

After about thirty minutes, give or take, and no sign of Rio emerging from the bathroom or whatever business he was up to, Marcus was starting to get restless. Sawyer hadn't come to the end of her patience yet, but Marcus had. And it was Marcus who kicked off the wall in frustration and strode into the bathroom like he was meant to be there, like he was primed for a fight. Sawyer and Jeremy followed, but they were too slow. A shout. A crash of a body against a stall. The first thing that Sawyer saw when she skidded to halt was Dominik shoved against the wall, Marcus' fists bunched up in the front of his shirt, an animalistic snarl ripped across Marcus' face like he might've grown canines and a lust for blood.

At Jeremy's violent swearing, Sawyer's eyes darted towards one of the stalls, and found Rio slumped against the wall, a bottle of APEX gleaming in his loose hand, knocked out cold.

Rage tore through her veins like an electric current snapping at her skin.

Once, when she was fourteen, she'd gotten into another ugly argument with her mother that neither of them won. That night she ran out the door, down the black summer streets, unmoored and lost her tether, every jumbled feeling inside her body tossed around in the waves of turmoil like flotsam until she felt nothing. Ran until the street lights blurred in periphery, a hundred golden teeth illuminating a road that had no destination. Ran until she forgot she was seventeen. Until her heartbeat was all she could hear of herself. And then she opened her maw and let loose every scream crowded under her skin in a furious roar that echoed down the suburban graveyard for miles like a seismic wave roaring to the night sky. 

Right now she felt it. That mounting static in her head. The signs that she was going to blow a fuse.

"What the fuck did you do to him?" Marcus growled, his voice hissing out of him like water thrown over a raging fire. In the silence of the bathroom, his voice echoed like a clap of thunder.

A dark laugh spilled out of Dominik's mouth as he tipped his head back. "What did he do to himself, you mean?" Dominik drawled, smirking like it wasn't his problem. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe Rio had come to him of his own volition. But Marcus' athletic build and broad shoulders dwarfed Dominik easily. Marcus could crush Dominik between his hands. Still, Dominik's grin was manic. "He asked for it. I supplied. It's more than you could ever give." When pure hatred slashed across Marcus' face, Dominik laughed again, his voice splashing against Marcus' skin like acid. "Oh, yeah, I know all about you. The boyfriend. No, the ex-boyfriend who dumped him because he wasn't clean and pretty enough for you."

Dominik planted both hands against Marcus' shoulders and shoved, hard. For someone who looked mostly like skin and bone and wasn't an athlete in any shape or form, he was surprisingly strong.

Marcus only stepped back, disgust twisting in his cold expression. "Get the fuck out of my face before I kill you."

Restraint was evident in the strain of Marcus' shoulders, just barely holding himself back from disaster. Jeremy was crouched beside Rio, two fingers frantic against his neck, checking for a pulse as he cradled Rio's lolling head in one hand. From the way his worried expression went slack with relief, Sawyer assumed Rio was still kicking.

A sneer sliced across Dominik's lips before he lunged and punched Marcus square int he face. Before Marcus could react, before Dominik could lunge again, Sawyer snapped into action. Planting herself in front of Marcus, she stared down Dominik, who stumbled and faltered in his step when he realised who he was about to contend with. Despite his jarring halt, he couldn't catch himself in time, and stopped too short. In a flash, Sawyer's arm lashed out and slammed Dominik against the wall so hard his head smacked against the brick and he let out a pained groan. Under her palm, he was all bones digging into her flesh. Blood stained the wall where his head cracked against it, a dark smudge shining in the flickering light of the torches mounted to the wall. Her fingers curled and dug deeper into his throat.

"Get him out of here," Sawyer said, not taking her steel-sharp gaze off Dominik's face, which was twisted in agony and panic. He knew what was coming. "Now. Both of you. Get lost."

Without complaint, her friends vacated the bathroom, Marcus cradling a limp and lifeless Rio to his chest. She'd find them in the infirmary later. For now, she fixed her wolflike stare on Dominik, who seemed to have regained some of his bearings.

"You thought you could lay your hands on what's mine without consequence?" Sawyer said, the sparks from something that's malfunctioning, dangerous, white hot, and raw with power. Protective-bordering-territorial-bordering-possessive instincts on top of mania on top of vicious indifference. "An overdose would've hurt less."

Dominik's lip curled. He had his hands on Sawyer's wrist, trying to wrest her off him, but only succeeding in raking angry red lines down her forearm that beaded with blood, but didn't hurt enough to quell the fury tearing through her like a hurricane. She swung Dominik round, reached up to grasp his hair so his eyes bugged out, and slammed his head against the edge of the sink. Dominik let out a livid growl. The first punch sent her reeling. The second landed, but Sawyer snapped back with thrice the ferocity, jamming her elbow into his solar plexus. Dominik didn't go down like she'd hoped, but she didn't have time to dwell on it. Bent double, there was no stopping the knee jack-knifing into his face, and the audible crack of bone snapping as his nose broke. Sawyer felt the rage coiling through him as he cried out.

Adrenaline surged through her veins, a white-hot flash cleaving like blades through her flesh. Her blood pulsed like gasoline moments before a car erupted into flames. Despite her drug-addled brain, the world crackled into a striking clarity as she struck again. It happened so fast she wouldn't be able to recall the brawl in chronological order. One moment Dominik had a hand in her hair and tugged so hard her head snapped back, the next Sawyer had cracked her fist against his mouth blood spurted from his lip and her knuckles stung, but the pain fuelled her. Later, when she would be sitting in the infirmary at Rio's bedside with her hands in bandages and bruises spiderwebbing tender blue and rage-black across her face, it'd come back to her in fragments.

When Rio fought, he went for the soft parts, trying to get them to hit back. When Sawyer fought, she went for the jugular. They didn't have to hit back. Targets that were marked for death didn't need to react.

Someone attacks you. You don't have to suffer another's hands on you, nor fools lightly. Make them hurt. That has always been the way. Make them feel your hurt thousandfold until the sea is no longer the most terrifying force on the planet.

Are you a fighter? That's the question. Are you? Do you pull your punches? Or do you dare to do the most, the worst, the ugliest? Not many people, even trained professionals, want to hurt someone else when a real fight starts. Maybe they know the body is a weapon, all the hard points are just as good as a knife in all the right places, but so do you. So do you. You don't have to be a killer, but you have to be capable. Whether coldly, or in rage, of seriously hurting someone, you have to be capable.

Are you a fighter?

In the dirty, grime-smudged mirror she saw the monster, its face ravaged by rage and resentment, eyes darkened by the vicious lust for violence. It was all hers. For the first time in a long while she recognised it. Owned it. She knew her face, what it looked like when she pulled her lips back in a smile to reveal the canines. And the blood on her teeth—it tasted like religion. If she didn't go to temples to pray like her grandfather did, then the metallic tang was as good as the burn of incense clinging to her mouth.

It would've been hours, days, just pummelling Dominik until he could barely breathe, until his every inhale was a sharp pain in his ribs, and his every exhale was through a gurgle of blood, but Sawyer had lost every concept of time as she rained blows and set the dogs of her timeless anger on him.

"Please," Dominik wheezed, all the fight gone from his body, limp under her as she cracked her fist against his jaw, his face a morbid picturesque of her rage. One of his eyes was swollen shut, and nasty bruises were stamped over his jaw, mouth, nose, cheekbones, and blood gushed from the broken skin on his temple where she'd cracked his head against the sink. She must've looked a state, too, but she didn't care. No matter how pitiful, no matter how much he begged, Dominik would never be absolved from her fury, and he would pay. It was his fault. All of this.

Sawyer's eyes flashed, a fresh wave of anger roiling through her, but before she could unleash it upon his crumpled form, a calloused hand clamped around her wrist and dragged her off him.

"You can't get expelled," Oliver said, his breath hot against her ear as he wrapped his arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides and held her against him like he was trying to restrain a wild animal as she thrashed and snarled, struggling to wrench herself free. But Oliver's grip was vice-like. "He deserves to die for what he did to Rio," Oliver growled, as Jeremy and Marcus reappeared at the doorway, "but you need to go before you end up roping yourself into this."

Sawyer went slack. As though unconvinced that she wouldn't cut and lunge at Dominik again, Oliver kept his arms around her as she turned to face him. His expression was fierce but firm as he met her thermonuclear stare, felt it melting through his bones, but didn't move. If he could feel the hatred wicking of her skin, darkness coiling around her so tight she felt it choking every good thing out of her, if he could sense how much she hated the world, how much she hated the boy with the drugs, Oliver didn't show it.

"Your friends told me everything. They found me, and they said you weren't listening anymore," Oliver said, his voice rumbling through his chest like thunder soothing the storming sky. He caught her face just as she craned her neck to glimpse Dominik, who lay groaning on the filthy floor of the bathroom. "And I know. I know he's a piece of shit, and what you're doing is justified. But he isn't worth it. You understand? He is not worth it." When she slung her hateful gaze back to Oliver's face, his expression softened. "Come on—" he steered Sawyer out of the bathroom, and shot a disdainful glower over his shoulder at Dominik's pathetic form on the ground as they passed— "we'll let the staff scrape this scum off the floor." Oliver's eyes flashed wolf-sharp, making Dominik flinch, and, in a voice made of teeth, he said, "If he knows what's good for him, he'll leave you out of the narrative."

AUTHOR'S NOTE.
2

we're getting there. this book is coming to an end soon and now idk what to do with my life lol like i got other books to finish too and new ones i should release into the wild but like....... i've had this one in me for so long and sitting down to write it feels so natural to me 🥺❤️ i swear even when i'm done with this book i'll keep opening the document out of sheer habit lol..... anyway according to the Pages document this book is approximately 420 pages and is approximately the size of HP:DH? maybe it isn't that much compared to what most of you could write but i'm genuinely Floored.

anyway what do we think of this chapter!