"No punching, not elbowing, no flipping, no chokeholds," Macey rattled off. "No wrestling, no Wendowskis, and absolutely no shoulders of any sort."
"I've got it," Collins said.
But Macey just plowed through as if he hadn't said a word. "No throwing, no backhanding, and if you even think about—"
"Listen," he said, cutting her off. Macey didn't look like she appreciated this. Not one bit. But she must've been feeling generous, because she spared his life. "You're responsible for her. I get it."
"I'm not sure you do, Mr. Collins," she hissed, taking that extra step closer. She was shorter than him, but not by much, and whenever she stared someone down like that, it didn't matter how tall she was. The person on the receiving end would always feel small. "For every one mark you leave on her, you get five from me, is that clear?"
"Due respect," he said, leaning in close. "Only one person in this room holds any real threat to Morgan Goode, and it's not either of us."
The tape was rough against my skin as I wrapped it around my knuckles. I felt their eyes fall on my back and I knew that this was another one of those conversations that I wasn't supposed to hear—more of those voices that people lowered for my sake. But Collins was an idiot, and Macey was a newbie. Between the two of them, they didn't stand a chance at going unheard.
Macey considered his words, nodded, and found a spot on the wall, pulling out her stolen copy of Vogue and starting where she left off. Great. Good to know that even the newbie agreed that I was falling apart. There wasn't anything quite like having the whole world root against you.
But Collins had always been rooting against me, which was probably why it was so easy to let him. Why I didn't hesitate before I stepped up to the fight.
"I've been told we can only hit the bag," he said, stepping up to the opposite side of the blood-stained target. It was already swinging which meant that he had already warmed up. Good. He'd need it. "Which is a shame, because I was really hoping for that rematch."
I huffed, sounding more and more like my father each day. "Which one?" I asked. The words came easy with him, fueled entirely by the flame he lit in my chest. "The one from that time I kicked your ass in the training room, or the one you owe me from Red Rover? Or wait, maybe you mean that time I beat you at your senior final. Or maybe—"
"You know," he said. "If you could hit half as hard as you talk trash, you might actually do some real damage."
"I think we both know that my hits do plenty of damage, as is."
"Your hits are below satisfactory—at best."
"Your nose seemed to think that my right hook was pretty satisfactory."
"Shut up and hit the bag, Goode."
Point one: Morgan.
A shot rang out as fist hit mesh, sparking a buzz in my hand and along my arm. That was the best thing about hitting the bag—about hitting anything, really. It hurt. It hurt in the best way possible.
So I did it again. And again.
I lost track of how many times I hit that bag. I lost track of myself. I couldn't tell you how loud I got or how long my shoulder burned for. In that moment, all I knew for certain was that I was finally hitting that bag—one strike after another, over and over, reminding me that I was supposed to feel pain. That I was human. That I was alive.
I. was. alive.
Why hadn't it been me?
Something popped in my shoulder and my entire back clamped down on itself. For a moment, I was frozen, left with no other option but to stand there, recalling all of the doctor's warnings. I had no movement. No control.
Finally, my shoulder relinquished its grasp. "Got that out of your system?" Collins asked, steadying the bag. He should have been freaking out—should have been fussing over me like everyone else always did, but he didn't. Instead, he just sounded bored.
I tried to pop my neck, which proved to be a mistake. "Take a few steps closer. Maybe we'll find out."
It was meant to be an empty threat. Another snide remark to remind him that he wasn't my friend and that he didn't want to be. But if there was one thing that I should have learned about Collins by then, it was that he'd always take those extra steps. Especially if they would make me want to punch him. "You want to hit me? Fine. Hit me."
"Collins," Macey warned.
"You said that I couldn't hit her," he argued, looking over his shoulder. When he turned back to me, he took his favorite stance—defense. Always on the defense. He swiped the back of his hand across his lip and pinned his eyes on me. "You never said anything about her hitting me, so c'mon, Goode. Give it your best shot. I dare you."
My hands curled into fists, the tape strangling my knuckles until my fingers started to feel purple. The heat rose—that same heat that he so often brought forward—as he pulled out that half-smile of his and waited.
I think he knew. I think he knew that some part of me still couldn't move. Still couldn't throw a punch.
But it wasn't my shoulder holding me back. It was my head. It was always my head.
Because even when standing against Collins, the facts remained the facts. Taking a swing opened up my defense. Taking a swing exposed me. To take a swing was to take a risk and I, Morgan Goode, was absolutely petrified by the idea of risk-taking. Powerless. I was powerless.
Collins straightened, nodding. "That's what I thought," he said, except, for once in his life, his ego didn't drown out his words. He almost sounded genuine. Almost. "You can't, can you?"
And I couldn't, so I just stared down the boy who could dissect the truth and I didn't say a word.
Point two: Collins.
"You know," he said, stepping closer. When I took a step back, he did too, the two of us repelling better than a pair of like poles. "If you would stop trying to hate me for five minutes, you might actually find that I'm a pretty good resource."
"Resource for what?"
He huffed towards the sky as if begging for his guardian angel to look down and agree that what he had told them was true—Morgan Goode really was the most stubborn girl alive. Then his eyes met mine again and it was like he remembered where he was. "I was Captain of the Gathering for four years, Goode," he said. "We have similar training, similar experiences—I know how to help you."
"I don't need your help."
"Oh?" he said. It was that distinct tone he took on when he caught someone in a lie and couldn't wait to out them. "Because, last time I checked, you'd take a swing at me every chance you got. Now all of a sudden you don't?"
Collins had a real gift for tearing apart lies. I didn't like the guy, but that much was undeniable. The kid had a gift, and sometimes it felt like he might have even seen my lies easier than he saw everyone else's, so that was why I didn't answer. If I had, I would have only given him more ammo—more material to work with. If I had, Collins and I would have been taken right back to that starry night on a Romanian bridge when he knew all of my tells and spotted all of my secrets.
He gave me that sly half-grin. "Oh," he said again, this time far more mischievous. "I see what's going on here—Romania, right? Let the record show that if you dance the tango with Morgan Goode, she gets all weak in the knees for you."
I probably should have blushed or something, but instead, I went pale with fear. Fear for my lies. Fear for my heart. Fear for just how transparent I had become. "The only thing weak about me is the willpower keeping me from hitting you again."
But he just kept talking on, a stingingly playful lilt to his voice, taking jabs with every chance he got. "What was it Goode? What was the thing that really did you in? Was it the dip? I bet it was the dip."
"Knock it off, Collins."
His grin stretched, filling up his whole face now. "So it was," he concluded. "I knew I saw a little something when you—"
It's hard to say what happened next. One minute, I was standing there, frozen, and in the next, Collins had my fist locked between his forearms, halfway between a throw and a landing. He held me there, looking straight at me and it only made me want to hit him harder. And pull away. Both. So I didn't do either.
There was no tease in his voice this time. "Look," he dared. "Look at where you are. What do you do if someone puts you in this position?"
It was a test. No different than a day in P&E or an op in CoveOps. He knew the answer, but he wanted me to ask the question. Stop. Think. Notice things. What was supposed to come next?
His hands were up, which left no defense on his gut, so I shot my knee upwards. He moved one arm to block, abandoning his lock on my fist and opening up my options. Options. I had so many options.
I automatically moved to block myself, but Collins stayed true to his word. He didn't throw a single hit in my direction. "You hold the control in this fight," he told me. "You can always gain control in any fight if you just use your head. You hold the control, Goode."
"Because you're handing it to me!"
"When did you stop trying to take it?"
Point three: Collins.
I threw a kick in his direction and, sure enough, he blocked it. My breath caught, either with anger or excitement. I couldn't tell which. I couldn't tell if I was angry with him or excited to be hitting something again. Something living. Breathing.
"You're not the only one who's ever felt out of control, Goode," he said as I struck him again. He grabbed the hit and spun with the movement. It was a strange sort of hostile harmony, humming between the two of us as I threw and he caught. "Everyone around you knows what it feels like to lose control. If you would just listen—"
"I am listening," I said with another hit. It was harder than all the others and it caught him off guard, but he didn't fall. "I'm always listening, Collins. No one has answers. I don't have answers. The problem isn't my lack of listening—the problem is that there's nothing to listen to."
"Then listen to this." He caught the timing of my next hit and snapped me in close. For the slightest of seconds, we were back in Romania with the little black dress and a tango. "You. are not. alone."
My eyes flicked up to meet his, but it was too hard to look people in the eye anymore and I was reminded of the last time I'd lost track of a boy's arms around me.
I shoved him away, not daring to stay too close for too long. It was exhausting. Draining. I was living in a constant state of fight or flight, but I didn't even know who I was supposed to fight anymore and I had no idea which way I could fly.
Maybe Collins knew that, because he didn't chase after me like all the rest of them did. "You're not the only one he betrayed on that dock, Goode," he said. "No one expected him to do what he did."
"Don't talk about him," I snapped. I tried running my hands through my hair, but my ponytail held it all back. Everything was always so held back. "You don't get to talk about him like you knew him."
"That's my point," he said. "None of us did. Not your Dad, not Bex. None of us really knew him or—"
"I did," I said, not sure if I was whispering or if I was screaming. I wasn't sure of anything anymore except for this one, single fact. "I knew William Kidd. I knew him, and I know that something went wrong, and you don't get to come in here and tell me that I didn't."
"That's not what I'm saying."
"Then what are you saying, Luke?"
If the use of his first name stung like it was supposed to, then he didn't let it show. Instead, he just joined in on the argument, finally yelling at me like he always did. Like he was supposed to. I needed him to tell me I was wrong—to get angry with me. No one ever got angry with me anymore. "I'm saying that you have people in your life who know what it feels like. That if you stop being so stubborn for one minute, you'd know that there were people trying to help you—"
I cut him off with a dragging laugh. "There it is again. You want to help me—somebody needs to help poor little Morgan. Well you know what, Collins? I don't need help. I'm so sick of people trying to help me when all they can do is make things worse."
He barreled through the distance between us. "That's what they want you to think. The people who put that target on your back—the people who took him away from you. They want you to feel alone so that you will be alone. You're smarter than this. You know how much easier a target you are when you're alone—"
"Maybe that's the goal," I spat at him. "Maybe I want to be an easier target."
"Don't you get it?" he hollered at me, deciding that I was lying and that he didn't have the time to try and call me out on it. "People get hurt in this business, Goode! Girls get hurt when they stop relying on the people around them."
I don't know how my ears work. To tell you the truth, it's like a superpower that I haven't quite figured out yet, so I'm not exactly sure how I came to the conclusion that I did. There must've been some sort of hidden meaning to his words—some sort of secondary implication that only dogs and listeners like me could hear. Maybe it was the way he was begging me to understand, or maybe it was the shadow that crossed over his face, but somehow, I knew what he was saying. Even if he didn't. "It was your sister, right?" I said, too quiet. "Your sister was declared MIA."
Point four: Morgan.
His expression didn't change, but his fists did. They balled up at his sides, white as ice and ready to be thrown. "You don't know the first thing about my sister."
"You said she was the only one you had left," I recalled, thinking about the boy in the shadows of Baring Cross Station. He had seemed so much younger, then, but I could still see that same version of him in the P&E barn that night—could still hear him banging around and begging to get out. "Is that why you're feeding me all of these lines? Because you were alone and now you think I'm alone?"
I watched the boy who couldn't tell a lie and I knew that, right then, he didn't want to tell the truth.
"I know I'm not alone, Collins—I've got a round-the-clock protection detail," I barked at him, throwing my hand to Macey. She wasn't reading anymore. "All I want us to be alone or run away or do just about any one of the things I'm not supposed to do—and there are a lot of things I'm not supposed to do—and I don't need you to come in here with your pity and your unresolved family issues, reminding me of things that I already know."
"I was just trying to—"
"Help," I snapped. "Yeah. Get in line—actually, no. You know how you can help? By being the one person on this goddamn plant to leave me alone."
He huffed. One, single laugh that wasn't the result of humor. "Fine. You want me to leave you alone? I'll leave you alone."
He started to leave, but I felt something more boil up inside of me. Maybe I just had to get the last word in or maybe I just wasn't done fighting. Whatever it was, it made me call to him, trying to take the final point as Luke Collins stared to leave that barn. "And since when do you care if I need help anyways?"
But Collins had an answer. One that was far better than I had expected. He didn't stop his stride, not even bothering to face me as he grumbled, "Since I scraped what was left of you off a dock on the Potomac."
Point five: Collins. Shit.
I stood there, watching him leave even though he was already gone. I barely even registered the footsteps behind me. Didn't really notice when Macey let out a long, low whistle. "How long has that been going on for?"
I blinked, finally giving up on the idea—or possibly the hope—that Collins would walk back through those doors and start fighting me again. "How long has what been going on for?"
"You and Collins," she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "How long have you two been an item?"
I spun, and the look on my face must've said it all, because before I could protest, a knowing smile was already working its way across her perfectly plump lips. "Oh," she said, eyebrows raised. "So, you're not." She looked up at the empty doorway and then back to me, her smile even wider than before. "Not yet, anyways."
"Not ever," I corrected.
"Of course not," she agreed.