Page 67 of Kill for a Kiss

He swings wide, brutal and messy. But I duck, slamming my shoulder into his gut. He grabs at my shirt, dragging me with him. We hit the forest floor hard, a tangle of limbs and curses.

But I come out on top again, raining blows across his face, raw knuckles to bone. He still smiles through it all, laughing. My vision tunnels, rage-red and blinding.

“You had your chance,” I growl between punches. “You had herand you let Clo fucking ruin her! You knew! You fucking knew! You still let her suffer!”

He spits out blood. “You’re just pissed she moaned my name before she even knew yours.”

I lose it. A roar tears from my throat as I drive my fist into his mouth. He turns his head and spits blood into both of my eyes with scary accuracy. I jerk back instinctively, and he takes the opening. His palm slams into my chest, knocking me off balance.

We both scramble to our feet. Stanley barely twists out of the way in time, but I still clip his jaw. He grunts, breath hissing between his teeth. “Guess I should’ve expected that,” he mutters.

He doesn’t get another second to breathe. I close the distance, footwork clean, cutting into his space like I’m carving him out of the forest. I hammer him with fast strikes, forcing him to backpedal, making him defend, defend, defend.

He’s bigger than me, thick through the shoulders, heavy in the arms. The kind of bulk that intimidates most people on sight. But I’m not most people. And he’s too slow. I feint right. He bites into the air. I pivot low and fast, sweep his legs with a brutal snap of motion. I feel the moment his balance goes down with him. His back hits the ground hard. His head smacks the dirt, and his breath leaves him in a heavy gust.

I stay standing, chest heaving. “The bigger the idiot, the harder he falls,” I murmur with a frown.

But then helaughs. He’s fucking laughing. His mouth is bloody, one eye already swelling shut, but he grins up at me like I just did him a favor.

That’s when a crawling cold realization rips through my high. The smoke’s cleared. And so has the lie. Stanley never meant to win, never wanted to win. He never even tried to fight back, not really. He didn’t take a shot to kill me. Didn’t swing to connect. Didn’t takeme down when he’s stronger than me.

He came here for abeating. He came here tobleed. This wasn’t a challenge. It was a confession. A cry for judgment. A fucking punishment.

My pulse stutters as I look at him. It feels like I’m seeing him for the first time since forever. And ithasbeen forever, since I took a good look at the face that looks so much like mine. Even with that shit-eating grin, I can see the pain in his eyes. I know that feeling. I know what it is to want pain and punishment to override the guilt.

He groans and props himself up on one elbow, blood dripping to the edge of his jaw. His eye’s already darkening, purpling at the corner. But he’s still grinning like a lunatic.

“Cat got your tongue, Sterling?” he rasps, voice shot to hell. “Always were the slow one.”

I stare down at him, fists slack at my sides, every breath dragging harder than the last. I don’t have anything clever to say.

“You know,” he continues, coughing out red, “we might be dumb as shit, but Damon would’ve figured this all out in a week. Saved Elle without lifting a finger.”

He says it like a joke, but I hear the hollow scrape beneath it.

I clench my jaw, hard enough to crack a molar. Damon would’ve figured it out. That’s true. But he’s off the grid.

I look down at Stanley, all bloodied and bruised. I extend a hand. He stares at it, weighing the moment. Then he sighs and grabs it, and I haul him to his feet.

But of course, it doesn’t end there. Stanley tightens his grip and yanks me forward, pulling me into his space, nose to nose. “What’re you planning to do with Elle?” he asks, serious.

My throat tightens. Because I don’t have a clean answer. What am I going to do with her? Hold her until she forgets everyone else? Keep her close enough to memorize every breath she takes?Make sure she never wakes up to another morning without my hands somewhere—anywhere—on her?

I don’t answer. I can’t. Stanley studies me, searching, maybe, for something he’ll never find. Then he exhales. “I love her,” Stanley says with too much damn ease.

His words tear through me. My whole body stills. I don’t hear anything else in my head. Just that.I love her. The heat that rushes up is immediate, violent. I feel it in my chest, in my spine, in the way my jaw locks into place like I’m holding back something that wants to explode.

Stanley sees it and he smiles. That same crooked grin that’s pissed me off since we were boys fighting over stupid shit.

“Huh,” he goads, breathless but still smug. “Did I hit a nerve, Sterling?”

I rip my arm from his grip, shoving him off and glaring at him like I could snap his neck just to make the words stop echoing in my skull. He doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what I’d do for her. What I’ve already done. He doesn’t know how she’s changed me. He doesn’t deserve to say her name, let aloneloveher.

But I can’t deny it—his words hit. Because even though it tears me, there’s something real in his voice.

“You think I don’t know I missed my chance?” he asks, quieter now. “You think I don’t hate that she looks at you the way I dream about?”

That hits hard. But I don’t give him the satisfaction.