CHAPTER 11: TRAPPED
912 Words
Aurora’s POV
We had defense class after lunch, so I headed to the locker room to change.
Bianca came out as I went in. She smiled at me. She held the door open and told me to have fun, and the sweetness in her voice landed wrong, like a slap dressed up as a kiss.
I walked past her anyway.
Three steps in, I stopped dead.
Someone had shredded my gym clothes. My shirt lay in strips across the bench. My shorts hung off the hook in ribbons. I picked up a piece and the fabric came apart between my fingers.
Bianca. That f*****g lizard. Something cracked open in my chest and my wolf came roaring up my spine.
The white flooded my eyes and I let it stay. I crushed the ruined cloth in my fist, turned on my heel, and slammed the door open hard enough to crack it against the wall.
Logan stood in the doorway.
My wolf stopped mid-snarl. The anger drained straight out of me and left me swaying, and I hated her for it. I hated how fast she folded the second he showed up.
“Move,” I said. “I have somewhere to be.”
He stepped inside instead. Reached back. Snapped the lock with two fingers like it was made of paper.
“You’re not going near Bianca with your eyes doing that.”
“Watch me.”
He crossed the room. I backed up on instinct. My shoulders hit the lockers and he kept coming until I ran out of room and had to tip my head back just to hold his stare.
His scent hit me then. Pine and rain and the thing underneath it I still didn’t have a name for. My wolf rolled over and went soft.
After a whole morning of snapping at everyone who breathed near me, she lay down for him like he’d called her to heel, and the shame of it burned hotter than the anger had.
He looked down at the fabric in my hand. A growl rolled out of his chest.
“She did this?”
“Why do you care?”
He didn’t answer. He braced one arm on the locker beside my head and leaned in until his mouth nearly touched my throat.
“I don’t trust you,” he said against my skin. “And I can’t stop thinking about you. Tell me which one of those is a lie, because I’ve been trying to work it out for two weeks and I can’t.”
My breath caught in my throat. I pressed both hands flat against his chest to shove him off.
I didn’t shove him off.
My hands just stayed there, spread over hard muscle and a heartbeat going as fast as mine, and I felt the exact moment he noticed I wasn’t pushing.
“Get away from me,” I said.
“You’re holding on to me.”
“I’m holding you off.”
“You’re not.” He said as his nose dragged up the line of my throat, slowly, and my knees nearly gave. “Your hands say something different than your mouth.”
I shoved him then, hard, and he let me move him back half a step. Just half. But it gave me enough air to think, and the second I could think I got angry again.
“You don’t get to do this.” My voice shook and I hated that too. “You look at me like garbage for two weeks. You text me to stay out of your way. And now you’ve got me pinned in a locker room breathing on my neck like I’m … like …”
“Like what.”
“Pick one.” I jabbed a finger at the space between us.
“This, or hating me. Because you can’t do both. One minute you can’t stand the sight of me, the next this . So choose, Logan. I’m done being whichever one you feel like that day.”
I don’t know if it was from anger or my wolf draining me out, but a warm line of blood slid from my nose and over my lip, and I touched my mouth and my fingers came back red.
He reached up slowly and pressed his thumb under my nose to catch the blood. He was gentle about it. After everything else, the gentleness was the worst part.
The white drained out of my eyes.
“What are you,” he said quietly. Rubbing my cheeks foundly.
Not the way he’d said it in the forest. Then it was a weapon. Now it came out low and almost afraid, and underneath the fear was something that scared me more. Something that sounded like wonder.
I didn’t answer. I was starting to think nobody could.
He dropped his hand. Stepped back
“Clean up,” he said. “I’ll send someone with clothes.”
He walked to the door and stopped with his hand on the broken frame. He didn’t turn around.
“Bianca won’t touch your things again. You have my word on that.”
Then he was gone.
I stood there with drying blood on my fingers and the broken lock hanging off the door he had snapped like it was nothing. The strips of my shirt lay at my feet.
I didn’t know what I felt for Logan, but I was going to crush it.
- Writer
