“I get it,” I said with a wave of my hand. “We’re going to need to think of some way to get through things at work.”
“We’ll do whatever it takes, Riley. You know that. Do you want to head home? That might be wise, what with—”
“If we’ve got a few hours, let’s use them,” I replied with a shake of my head, turning to put my seatbelt on, but I had to be a lot more careful about doing that now. “What did you have planned?”
Chapter 27
“Axe throwing?” I asked with a yelp as we pulled up to the front of a building with the sign listing the place as Maniaxe hanging over the front door. It had bright red external walls, and as we got out of the car, a thumping industrial soundtrack greeted us.
“I figure you’d had a tough week, and throwing some sharp objects around might make you feel a little relaxed,” he said with a grin. “If you hate it—”
“Nah, I’ll give it a go,” I said as I walked in.
The place had a dark wood interior, long lanes screened off from each other by floor to ceiling walls of cyclone mesh and Perspex. At the end, the walls had been panelled with rough wooden pallets, with targets painted there, and big, tall men stepped up and threw axes that spun through the air. Those that landed in the middle of the targets received a shout of approval, and those that didn’t? In the universal way of dudes, they got howled down by their friends, much joking and shoving around happening until the next person stepped up.
But I didn’t pay too much attention to them. It was the bright silver of the axes that caught my eye, those sharp blades flashing and flashing, right up until they buried themselves into the wood. He was right—something about that, the brutal efficiency of the axe and the way it was thrown, it called to me. I started drifting closer to one of the lanes, when a massive man stepped in our way.
“I’m Bjorn,” he said, holding out a hand to Fen.
“Fen Vanguard and Riley Taylor,” Fen replied, shaking his hand.
“You’ve got a booking,” Bjorn confirmed with a nod of his head. “Though I gotta admit, when you said you were throwing with a Riley, I thought she was a he.” My eyes rolled his way, narrowing down at his words. “Hey, no harm, no foul.” He held his massive hands up. “I think it’s cool that chicks dig axe throwing too. So, did you want to have a go as—?”
“Yes,” I replied
“OK then. Well, you’re booked in for a couple of hours, so let’s get you started.”
We were given some forms and typical disclaimers to sign, making sure we were aware of the dangers, then as Bjorn was getting our axes together, Fen sat down next to me.
“Nervous?” he asked with a smile, grabbing a pen and starting to fill out the form, but it wasn’t the axe I was thinking about. I watched those long, strong fingers and the way they gripped the pen and was instantly taken back.
“No, just…memories,” I said, shaking my head before going to fill out my own forms.
“Oh, you can’t just leave me hanging like that,” he said, looking at me across the top of his clipboard.
I glanced up and then smiled ruefully back at him.
“I just used to watch you so damn closely when Miss Catherine put you at the front of the class ‘to be a role model.’”
“She just wanted to get me away from my damn brothers,” Fen said, “thinking that would be enough to get us to shut up, not realising I was the one to keep them quiet when I could.” He snorted at that, then reached over and grabbed my hand. “What brought that memory back?”
“Your hands,” I said, my eyes dropping to the form and moving to keep filling it out, but he placed one of those hands on top of it. “You always had such beautiful hands, and I found I couldn’t stop watching you writing. We were only kids, maybe thirteen or fourteen? I was crushing on you so bad, so I couldn’t keep my bloody eyes off you. It’s why I always sat towards the front, so I was forced not to stare, but then Miss Catherine sat you in front of me and—”
“Off to your right,” he finished for me, his smile faltering. “You were always nestled into the wall, hidden behind a pile of books.” His eyes studied mine. “I was crushing on you pretty bad myself.”
“Oh, teenage me would’ve been so pleased to hear that,” I said in a self-effacing tone.
“I wish I’d told her.” And just like that, he sucked all the humour out of that moment, something he seemed to realise as he stiffened, but once he’d taken that leap, he couldn’t seem to stop. “I wish she’d known how long I stared at her, at the way her ponytail fell against her shoulder blades. At the pull of her shirt across her shoulders. At her hand moving lightning fast, always the first one to get all the notes down. You put the rest of us to shame, but me, I was proud. We always knew you were smart, Riley, which just made me try harder to get your attention, to get in your face. God knows I wasn’t gonna be able to go toe-to-toe with you when it came to school smarts.”
He reached across and grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze.
“All I could do was tease her, follow her, be there for her, whether she wanted me or not, because that’s all I had to give her.”
I blinked then, mentally picking up Fen’s version of what had happened at school, turning it around and around, looking for the flaws in the arguments.
“It’s all I’ll ever be able to give you, Riley. I don’t understand science like you do. I’ve had betas try to explain it to me because I’m not a fucking idiot, but I just find myself zoning out. Maybe we’re wired differently. Perhaps you can find something in your studies to explain that. It’s like you guys can pick and pick at a thing until all you have are the parts, whereas all I’m interested in is keeping things whole. Keeping us whole.”
I smiled at that, then went back to filling in my form.