No Longer A Pushover Novels & Stories

I no longer sort for her validation like it was my main goal in life. "There's a famous saying that people fear what they do not understand. I do not understand you anymore, and that makes me uncomfortable." She continued. "You do not have to worry then, your majesty. I will be done with my work here very soon, and I will return to my home." I replied, fixing my gaze on my boys once more. "Not if Asher can help it." My jaw hardened. "There's nothing he will be able to do." "Please, Sophia. Don't take me to be a fool. I see the way he looks at you." She blurted out.

Not now. Not ever.

“You’re impossible.” “And yet,” I said calmly, “I’m still standing. Unlike most of your enemies.” Finn snorted. “He’s got a point.” I looked at the boy, not a boy anymore, really. There was steel in him now. Not brute force. Something sharper. “You did good tonight,” I told him. He blinked. “That’s it? No insult?” “Don’t push your luck.” Fia stepped closer, studying my face like she always did. “You feel… off.”

I down the rest of my whiskey and pour another, the idea of sex weirdly making my skin crawl. "Your loss, Greek god." She shrugs and moves on to Blake's teammate. I walk outside to my bike. tonight, I got benched by Skylar McKee. But as I kick my bike to life, the engine roaring beneath me, one thing is clear. I don't know how to give up.

And the man I trusted stands in front of me, no longer shadow. No longer unknown. But no longer fully in control either. The next move will not be strategic probing. It will be survival. And we are standing in the center of it.

He believed he never had to change, and I would stay by his side no matter what. Looking at him at the moment, apologizing so earnestly, I was briefly moved. But as the memories of the past rushed back, that fleeting softness in my heart was crushed completely. "I don't need it anymore." I walked away with Zach, disappearing from Liam's sight. After we left the hall, Zach looked at me proudly—clearly waiting for praise. I sighed and gently patted his head. "Thank you for standing by me so firmly." Hearing my words, Zach's face instantly turned red.

But not defeated. And not done.

His reddened facial complexion and bloody mouth were expressing pleas. “Your death wouldn't mean anything to me because you aren't any better than your dead partners.. So if you don't know, you'd already court death when you dare lay your filthy hands on my woman…” Lan thundered. Wasn't he boasting a while ago when he asked him a question? Was he ready to compromise his words now, after letting himself be taught a lesson? Scorpion suddenly paused as his mind went blank briefly before returning to its pain filled moments again. Two things got his body covered with goosebumps.

he said, with the air of a man making a completely unrelated observation, "that the concept of the pushover actually has no etymological basis in the English language prior to the nineteen-thirties? Linguistically speaking, it's quite a young insult." A silence. "Mr. Newton," Fletcher said. "Sir." "Drive." "I am driving, sir. Linguistically and literally." I turned my face to the window. Outside, the city moved past in the last of the afternoon light and I sat with my recovered winter coat across my lap and the word pushover sitting somewhere between my ribs and tried very hard not to think about the fact that the most invisible two years of my life had apparently not been invisible at all.