Chapter 9

Prism

Discombobulated.

The word sounded exactly the way I was feeling. Out of sorts. Going in several directions at once. Confused.

What the hell just happened?

I wanted to process it so badly but was unable to because shock held most thought at bay. Instead, I was held hostage by a buzzing nervous sensation, swirling thoughts, and that endless ringing deep in my ears.

It was so bad that not even my favorite ASMR was distracting me. And that realization sent another jolt of panic through me.

What if it stops working? What if my brain built up some sort of tolerance to the sound that always massaged out the worst of the anxiety and kept me from a meltdown?

My feet scuffed on the sidewalk as I stepped out of the precinct, hesitating as I fought the urge to turn and look back for Arsen. What if one night of his whispering was enough to make all the others second best?

I couldn’t allow it. There would be no fixating. No relying. Nothing at all with Arsen.

Baby. That whispered word echoed through my head, drowning out everything else. Prickles of awareness tingled over my scalp, the sensation so pleasant I exhaled.

Princess. Matthew. Baby.How many different names could he call me? How did every single one make my heart bleed?

I told you, didn’t I? Kryptonite. He was my fucking kryptonite.

A body pressed against mine, arms squeezing my waist as the scent of familiar shampoo teased my nose. Reaching up, I caught the dark strands blowing around and smacking me in the face to smooth them back down where they belonged.

“Jess,” I murmured, returning the hug she was fiercely giving.

“Are you okay?” she asked, voice muffled against my chest.

“Could use a shower,” I answered.

“How about a trauma latte?”

I glanced over my sister’s shoulder where Wes stood holding a large paper cup with a black lid. His curly hair was wild with the blowing wind, and the tip of his nose was rosy as though he’d been out here in the early morning air for a while.

Someone shifted behind him, and I realized they were all here. All twelve of my Elite bros and their significant others. With Coach, they made thirteen.

“You’re all here,” I said, drawing back from Jess to take in the large group.

“It has caramel,” Wes said, coming to stand at my side. “I sent Max to get you a fresh one because the first one went cold while we waited.”

I felt my eyes round. “How long have you been here?”

“Before the sun came up,” Wes replied with a shrug.

“Damn swimmer hours,” Max, his boyfriend, complained.

“You’ve been waiting all this time to give me a trauma latte?” I asked, surprised.

“It’s what we do,” Rory said, making Ryan beam as he tucked her into his side and kissed the top of her carroty head.

Lifting his face, he agreed. “We’re Elite.”

Rush groaned. “I guess it was only a matter of time before she started sounding just like you, Walsh.” He shook his head and looked at Rory. “He’s corrupted you, shrimp.”

Ryan smirked. “You’re here. That mean I corrupted you too?”

Rush made a rude sound. “Don’t flatter yourself. I came around because a little siren lured me in,” he said, tugging Landry, his girlfriend, into his arms to nuzzle her neck.

The sound of a shrill whistle blasted through the early morning. The AirPods did little to block that piercing sound, and I cringed, feeling like my eardrums were being stabbed. Too much. It’s all just too much.

“Did you forget I’m standing here, Rush?”

Rush lifted his face from Landry’s neck. Landry, who was Coach’s daughter. “Oops.”

Coach’s expression darkened, and he lifted the whistle to his lips again. Kruger smacked it from his fingertips, the metal bouncing against Coach’s chest. “Don’t make me regret calling you.”

Coach’s eyes fired to me, and he frowned. “You okay, son?”

Embarrassed, I nodded once, trying my hardest to avoid the stares of thirteen different people. That was a lot of eyes. A lot of attention.

Wes held out the latte, and I accepted, grateful for the distraction. The warmth nearly stung my chilled palms when I wrapped my hands around it. Already feeling raw and exposed, I couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with Max, instead just shifting a little in his direction. “Thank you for getting me a hot one.”

Max grunted, which was basically his version of you’re welcome.

I took a tentative sip, afraid to scald my tongue and then have that weird burnt feeling in my mouth the rest of the day. I didn’t need the agitation. I already had enough. Thankfully, the coffee was not too hot or too cold but just right, and I took a bigger sip, letting the sweet caramel coat my tongue.

“Get over here, bro!” Jamie waved me over, flipping the lid on a box of donuts. “You must be hangry. I got you.”

My stomach growled, and I joined the group, snagging a glazed donut from the center of the box and stuffing half of it in my mouth in one bite.

Jamie nodded sagely. “Prison food sucks, doesn’t it?”

Madison fisted her hands on her hips, tossing back her long dark hair. “And just how would you know that, Jamie?”

“Rush told me,” he deadpanned.

Everyone laughed as Rush gave Jamie the finger.

“Too soon to joke, bro?” Jamie chortled.

Rush shook his head and looked at me. “You ever wanna swap prison stories, let me know.”

I guess it wasn’t too soon for him, but it was for me. That was if my churning stomach was any indication. Because I wasn’t really sure what to say, I didn’t say anything at all, instead turning back to Jamie.

“They didn’t feed me.”

His mouth fell open. “They didn’t feed you? Like at all? Brooo,” he swore, hooking two more donuts on his finger and holding them out. “I thought they’d at least give you bread and water.”

There was water, I thought, remembering the constant dripping.

Jamie turned to Rory. “You better call up the ‘rents, camera girl. This for sure calls for legal action.”

Rory rolled her eyes but turned to me with a sincere expression. “I called them. They’re on standby if you need them.”

I paused in chewing, not knowing what to say. She called her lawyer parents for me… all the way in Chicago?

I nodded and, to save myself from doing more, shoved another bite of donut into my mouth. I was overwhelmed. I didn’t expect them all to be here.

Elite always shows up for each other. But am I really one of them?

“I tried to get you out last night, P,” Kruger said. “I came with bail and everything.”

I paused midchew. “D-did you call Gram?”

Kruger shook his head immediately. “Hell no! I knew you wouldn’t want that. She’ll only know about this if you decide to tell her.”

I relaxed a little. Knowing Gram wasn’t home worrying about me was a relief. “Thanks, Ben.”

He didn’t acknowledge the use of his first name, again, but he did bump his shoulder against mine. “You’re my ride-or-die, P.”

The donut turned lumpy in my throat, the uneaten chunk in my fingers suddenly so unappealing. Not even wanting to look at it, I held it out to Jamie.

“For me, bro?”

“Sharing is caring,” I said, trying to sound normal around the torrential downpour of emotion inside me.

Jamie ate it right out of my hand, in one bite, smiling as he chomped. He was a good bro, but the sound of him chewing made my skin crawl. I started for the phone in my pocket to turn up the volume on the ASMR still playing in my ears but was side-tracked by Win’s animated heckling.

“Bro, we were pretty surprised when Kruger told us you earned yourself an overnight by letting loose on the boys in blue.” He smiled so wide his dimple flashed. Leaning in, he pulled his aviators down to glance at me over the top. “Honestly, I’d have voted you least likely to throw a punch.” He slung his arm across Lars’s shoulders, dimple flashing again. “Maybe we should call you million-dollar baby from now on.”

Lars’s pale blue eyes rolled, and he shot off something I couldn’t understand but was clearly snarky as hell in his boyfriend’s direction. His first language was Swedish, and honestly, I liked when he slipped into it. It sounded kinda nice.

“It was one punch,” I muttered, lifting the coffee to my lips.

But it would have been more if Arsen hadn’t been there.

Now that I wasn’t in the moment and completely controlled by the insatiable rage that sometimes stole all rationale, I could think back with more clarity. The caffeine and sugar lining my belly helped with that too.

Arsen pretty much jumped into the middle of me going off, challenged an officer, and then pulled me into his arms. If he hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t whispered in my ear, it could have been so much worse.

I realized then that I owed Arsen for a lot more than just help from his lawyer.

Almost as if my thoughts conjured him up, the double doors to the precinct opened. I knew it was him without even looking. I sensed him on a cellular level as if one night squished on a janky cot together had been enough to condition my energy to recognize his. It freaked me out so much that I jolted, the coffee sloshing out of the opening in the lid and splattering the black plastic with dark brew.

I stared at it, bothered so much by the mess but without a napkin to clean it up. I thought passively about licking it clean. It was what anyone else would do.

I wasn’t anyone else. And the idea of dragging my tongue over a lid that had once been stacked among a hundred like it, probably touched by several hands before it made it to mine, and with a barely there texture to what was supposed to be a smooth surface?

Trauma lattes didn’t taste so good when they tossed themselves back up your throat, bro. Gone was the caramel, and left in its place was a burning acerbic flavor.

And yes, I realized I had to put my lips on the lid to drink it. But that was different.

Swallowing thickly, I fixated hard on those wayward blobs of coffee taunting me on the lid and tried to will them away.

“Arsen,” Jess called, and I looked up as she took a cup that looked identical to mine from Max and went to where he stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “Trauma lattes are a tradition,” she told him, holding out the coffee.

“For Elite,” Kruger snarked under his breath. “He ain’t Elite.”

I gave him a questioning look.

He made a face. “Look, forget everything I suggested about you two. I forbid it.”

Instead of worrying about the implication behind his words, I worried about who heard them, quickly gazing around to all our friends. A few—okay, the girls—were actively pretending not to have heard. A few of the guys looked thoughtful, and Max? He was staring.

My left eyelid started to twitch.

Fingers tightening around the cup, I closed my eyes briefly and exhaled. When they reopened, it twitched again. It felt like an irregular heartbeat that made the thin skin of my eyelid jump. It happened again, and I started to count.

One. Two… But it wasn’t synchronized. There was no pattern to settle into, so the comfort I’d been seeking was nowhere to be found.

“Thanks for the coffee, Jess,” I heard Arsen say, but I didn’t look around. I was too overloaded.

A few other voices joined in, but the conversation was out of reach. The pulsing in my eye too annoying, the mess on the lid of my latte bothersome.

I couldn’t drink the coffee because the second I tilted the cup, it would slip and drip more. Maybe I’d just use the sleeve of my hoodie to mop it up. But then my shirt would be dirty…

I worried over the lid so much that the splashes started to meld into one blob as I stared. The only time they separated was when my eye twitched.

Suddenly, the object of my obsession was gone, replaced with something that looked just like it. Except the replacement wasn’t messy. The spill was gone, the black lid completely clean and dry as if there had never been a mess at all.

I did a double take, thinking perhaps my riddled mind was playing tricks, but it was still the same.

“You can drink it now.” A low voice assured me, and I whipped my head up, coming face to face with Arsen.

My eyelid twitched, but I remained focused on his face. A hint of stubble shadowed his jaw, and I wondered what it would feel like to rub the pads of my fingers against it. If I would like it or recoil.

You’d never recoil from Arsen.

His espresso eyes bounced between mine, the way he measured me not at all uncomfortable as it had been when it was everyone else. “Let me see you take a drink, Matthew.”

Ripping my eyes from his, I looked down at the cup I held between us, then at the one he also held. There was coffee spilled on his lid.

“Did you give me yours?” I asked.

He hummed an agreement.

“Why?” I asked, searching his face for the answer.

“Take a drink,” he repeated.

I listened, tipping it against my lips and swallowing the warm, sweet concoction, and doing it all without once looking away from his enigmatic gaze.

The second I lowered it from my mouth, he leaned in to whisper into my ear. “Good boy.”

My lips folded in on themselves as the coffee slid into my stomach, his praise wrapping around my heart.

“You keep that one, okay? I’ll take this one.”

I nodded, suddenly wondering if he’d drunk from it before trading with me. The thought had me looking at his mouth, looking for a hint of a sheen. Unable to tell, I gazed down at the cup in my hand as if the lid would somehow bear the imprint of his lips.

Amusement lit his eyes, and the corner of his mouth tipped up.

“Come on. We should go,” Kruger said from over my shoulder as he impatiently tugged the hood lying against my back.

Beep! Beep! The sudden horn blasted through whatever spell Arsen always seemed to wrap me in, and I stumbled back.

His hand shot out to cup my elbow at the same time Kruger braced a hand against my back.

The grip on my elbow was firm but not rough and a complete contrast to the irritation that contorted his features as he looked over his shoulder at the large black SUV idling close by.

“Your ride’s here,” Kruger told him.

Arsen ignored my bro and glanced at the coffee in my hand. Following his lead, I looked down too. Disappointment ripped out of me in the form of a small gasp when I saw this lid was now marred with spilled coffee as well.

Releasing my elbow, he slipped the cup from my grasp and lifted it to his lips. My Adam’s apple bobbed when his tongue darted out, skimming the side of his lip ring before licking up the mess.

I forgot to think about the weird half-textured, half-smooth finish on the lid. I forgot to be grossed out.

All I thought about was how he kissed me last night and how good it felt. After the lid was clean, he settled his lips completely over the opening and took a long swallow of the latte.

When he was done, the sheen I’d been searching his lips for just moments ago was there, and his tongue dashed out to swipe it away.

“There you go, princess,” he murmured, holding the cup back out to me.

I really, really liked his voice.

All I managed was to blink. The rest of me felt heavy like I was standing in concrete, and I just stood there and marveled at the way I’d just submitted to him.

“P. We’re going. Let’s go.”

Kruger’s words were so far away as I divided my look between Arsen’s mouth and the cup.

He arched his brow, silently asking me if I’d take it now that I knew his lips had been where mine would go. I looked back at my original mug, the one still splattered with coffee.

“It’s me or the mess,” he said, reminding me of last night when it had been him or the closet.

I’d chosen him then.

I would choose him now.

Our fingers brushed when I took the offered latte, then tucked it into my chest. His eyes warmed as he watched me, and I felt the words without him having to say them.

Good boy.

“Make sure you drink all of that,” he instructed.

I nodded.

I thought he would walk away, but he pushed his hand into the pocket of the hoodie, knuckles dragging along my abs as he pulled out my phone. I stared uninhibited as his long, thick fingers tapped the volume button.

The whispering in my ear got louder, and a familiar tingle raced across my scalp.

“There you go,” he said, slipping the phone back into the pocket.

His stare lingered a few seconds more, making me feel, if maybe we weren’t standing here in a crowd, he’d do something else.

But then Kruger’s hand curled around my bicep, tugging me away, and Arsen retreated into the waiting SUV.

My attention shifted to the coffee, not because there was a spill to fixate on but because it was a piece of Arsen left behind.