Never or Ever

Riven

“Where did you get this?”

May’s expression shifted immediately, her smile faltering as she read my face. “What’s wrong? You don’t like it?”

I exhaled slowly, turning the box over in my hands. “The necklace.” I looked up at her. “It looks exactly like your brother’s.”

“Oh!” The worry dissolved into an easy, unbothered laugh. “I noticed a lot of guys go for that style, so when I went to the store, I just asked for that specific one.” She shrugged. “I thought it was nice.”

I nodded once. Then held the box back out to her.

“I’m sorry. I can’t take this.”

Her face fell. “What? Why?”

“Do I need a reason?”

“Riven—”

“I just don’t like it.” The words came out flatter than I intended. The truth was messier than that, and I had absolutely no intention of explaining it to her. “I’m sorry.”

“What if I got a different one?” she asked, her voice small but determined. “A completely different style? You could pick it yourself, even—”

“May.” I heard the edge creeping into my voice and couldn’t stop it. “I don’t want anything. Nothing. Okay?” It came out half a yell, and I watched her flinch, watched her eyes go wide and glassy, tears gathering at the corners faster than she could blink them away.

The guilt hit me immediately. 

“I’m sorry,” I said, quieter. “I just — I can’t. It has nothing to do with you.” I glanced up at the sky. The snow was coming down thicker now, settling on her hair and shoulders. “Go home before the weather gets worse.”

I didn’t wait for her response.

I unlocked my bicycle from the rack, pulled my bag across my shoulders, and rode without looking back. The cold hit me full in the face the moment I left the shelter of the arena entrance sharply. By the time I turned onto my street, my fingers were numb against the handlebars, and I was conducting a quiet argument with myself about life choices.

The apartment was a bit dark when I got in. I dropped my bag, kicked off my shoes, and went straight for the heater, cranking it up before I’d even taken my jacket off.

“I could actually die,” I said to no one, shivering hard. “One drop of water and that’s it. Gone.”

I stood in front of the heater for a full minute, just existing. Then the guilt resurfaced: May’s face, the flinch, and the tears she’d been trying to hold back, and I pulled out my phone.

“Made it home?”

I stared at the message for a second, then sent it. She’d be fine. She always was. But still…

I turned the kettle on for tea. I pulled a cardigan from the back of the chair, wrapped a scarf around my shoulders on top of it, and waited. When the tea was ready, I carried it to the sofa, pulled the blanket off the armrest, and dropped into the cushions.

The TV came on to something I immediately stopped paying attention to.

I sat there in the warmth with my tea going cold in my hands and stared at the TV without seeing it. I thought about absolutely nothing for as long as I could manage.

I closed my eyes.

I don’t know when I fell asleep. One moment the TV was on and my tea was lukewarm and I was staring at the ceiling, and the next—

BANG. BANG. BANG.

I was upright before I was fully awake, the blanket sliding off my lap, my heart already going. The banging came again, hard and continuous.

I stared at the door.

I was off the sofa before the second bang.

“Who is it?” My voice came out steady. The rest of me was not.

The banging didn’t stop. It got worse and harder, more willful, the kind of knocking that had graduated into something closer to assault. I grabbed my hockey stick from beside the door, both hands around the grip, and positioned myself.

Then I heard his voice.

“Open the fucking door, Riven.”

I stood very still.

Kael???

I didn’t move for a full three seconds. I just stood there in my cardigan and scarf, holding a hockey stick like that was going to do anything, trying to understand what Kael Dravin was doing outside my apartment at this hour. 

The same apartment I’d moved into less than a week ago, which I hadn’t announced to anyone outside my immediate circle, and which my own mother still called “that place you abandoned us for.”

And somehow Kael had found me here.

The banging continued.

I lowered the stick, unlatched the lock, and opened the door.

He came through it like a force of nature.

The first blow caught my left cheek before I’d even fully registered he was moving. The second landed before I hit the floor. I went down hard, the stick skittering out of my hand, and then his weight was on top of me, his knees either side of my hips, one fist pulled back, his face twisted with something that sat right on the edge between fury and something else I didn’t have a name for yet.

The door swung shut behind him.

I looked up at him from the floor. My cheek was already throbbing. 

“What are you waiting for?” I said. My voice came out surprisingly even. “Hit me. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

His fist stayed where it was, hovering, not falling.

Instead, his hand dropped to my chest and grabbed a fistful of my cardigan. His knuckles were white.

“What did you do to make my sister cry?”

I laughed briefly and genuinely. “I asked her to leave me alone. That’s it.”

“You made her cry—”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” I yelled, the evenness finally cracking. “You spent more than twelve minutes with your hand around my throat telling me to stay away from her. I stayed away. Now you’re here because she cried about it?”

His jaw tightened.

Then his fist connected with my face again.

I let my head drop back against the floor and breathed through it slowly. In and out. I could feel my lip had split. The pain was clean at least, honest in a way the rest of this wasn’t. I ran my tongue along my lower lip and tasted blood.

The room went quiet.

I heard Kael exhale above me. I also felt some of the tension shift in the weight pressing down on my hips.

“Wipe that off,” he said. His voice had dropped. 

“What?” I asked.

“The blood. Wipe it off.”

I looked up at him.

And then I felt something against my stomach. Something that hadn’t been there a moment ago, or maybe it had and I hadn’t noticed or let myself notice. I looked down slowly.

Kael’s joggers were sitting forward in a way that left absolutely nothing to interpretation.

The silence shattered.

“What in the fuckery is that?!”

I shoved him off with both hands and scrambled backward across the floor until my back hit the sofa. Kael went with the momentum, sliding off me and ending up against the opposite wall, his back to the door, one knee bent, completely unbothered in a way that was frankly criminal given the circumstances.

My heart was going so fast I could feel it in my split lip.

“What the fuck,” I said again, quieter this time. More to myself than to him.

Kael looked at me. Then down at himself. Then back up.

“What?” He tilted his head, something dangerous and almost amused moving across his face. “Never seen a phallus or what?”

“And why should I even want to see that in the first place?” I scoffed.

He scoffed back at me, and I watched his hand drop slowly to his lap. My eyes widened as he palmed himself through the fabric like I wasn’t sitting four feet away watching it happen.

I quickly looked away so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash.

“Get out,” I said. My voice came out too high and too fast. “Get the hell out of my apartment. Right now before I call security.”