Page 59 of Vying Girls

‘I will literally put you over this cliff if you don’t get him the fuck out of there.’

Blakely grins. ‘First, I would love,love,to see you try. And second, I don’t know what the fuck you’re on about, so you better speak quick before it’s you going over the cliff.’

‘Damien hurt Nic. When they were kids. It’s like—it’s huge. Trauma fucking central. I can’t even explain how bad.’ I cast aworried look into the tunnel. ‘Nothing bad happens down there, right?’

I nearly jump out my skin when Blakely’s hand clamps hard on my arm. ‘Hurt her how?’

I freeze at the ice in her voice, those pale eyes eviscerating me with their intensity. ‘In the worst way,’ I whisper.

She drops my arm, jaw grinding as she regards the tunnel. She points to the ground. ‘Stay the fuck here.’ Then she disappears into the dark.

Feeling ill, I step into the tunnel and slide down the wall. I hug my bare legs to my chest, heart thudding painfully as I prepare to wait.

Nic

I push off the wall, coming to face him. He’s taken off his mask, that stubbled, shadowy face so sickeningly familiar it twists my guts.

It was something Aunt Kathleen used to comment on, how he looked so much like them. How he was meant to be part of their family. Until he got worse, until she grew ashamed. Scared of him too, looking back. Never commented the same again.

Steeling myself, I let that numb, life-preserving mask fall over me.

‘You cut your hair.’ Still catching his breath, he looks me up and down, clearly disliking what he sees. ‘Heard you bat for the other side now. Come on now, I wasn’t that bad.’

‘What the fuck are you doing here, Damien?’

My voice is thready, embarrassingly weak.

‘I was invited.’

‘Convenient. Doing some outreach in your old age?’

‘Killing two bones with one stone.’ He pauses, regarding me closer this time. He purses his lips, some semblance of a smirk on them. ‘Missed you, Nicole.’

This fear. This dread. I used to dream about meeting him again, a shield of preparedness. I’d have so much to say. My turn for revenge. How many times have I killed him in my mind? Each death more cathartic than the last. And yet, now it’s happened, I’m nothing but terrified.

He glances the way we came. ‘Enjoying The Order? Right on the back of my success. Bet you never even needed to do the initiation. You’re welcome, by the way. Only one in our family to make president. How about that? Probably would have been you on that throne if not for that nepo and her pup.’

‘Fina’s welcome to it. It’s not all that.’

‘No? Weren’t even wearing your mask. Damn disrespectful that, if not convenient for me.’

He takes a step closer. There’s nowhere for me to run apart from deeper into the tunnels. I hold my ground, body like stone.

‘Do you know what happens when there’s no closure?’ His voice has taken on that tone now, the one it used to whenever I said no, whenever I wasn’t as into it as him. By the end, that was all the time. He puts two fingers to his temple like a gun. ‘It festers. Becomes more than it was. Gets to the point you’re thinking of them more than back when you were together.’

‘We were never together, fucker.’

He scoffs, his breath on my face. ‘Funny. I remember us being pretty fused actually.Every night.’He steps closer again, backing me into the wall. ‘Why did you run, Nicole? Why’d you leave us?’

Swallowing against the dryness in my mouth, I glance over his shoulder. ‘Why don’t we go outside to talk?’

‘I’m good down here.’ He looks around us. ‘Feels strangely familiar, don’t you think? You, me, the dark. Wonder if youscreamed, they’d hear it up there?’ He puts his palm to the tunnel wall, blocking me against it. ‘This stone looks like it’s keeping some secrets.’

‘I’ll ask you again, Damien. What do you want?’

He steps away, still careful to keep between me and the exit. ‘I mean what I said up there. Once family, always family.’

I flit over his speech in my mind. What did he say again? Hard to remember, the state I was in. ‘You want something? A favour?’