It was another two days before Natalie was finally feeling well enough to go back to school. Which meant she had a total of three days' worth of schoolwork to catch up on.
She hadn't seen Leon again since the day he crawled through her bedroom window. She wished she could say that she was getting over her attachment issues with him and didn't excruciatingly miss him after a whopping 48 hours of distance, but then she'd be lying.
She did miss him. She hated how pathetic she felt (really, 48 hours?), but she did.
Every black-haired male that passed her, she would whip her head around so quick in the fear of missing him, only to realise it was decidedly not Leon Hughes but rather one of the other 85% of people on this planet with black hair.
Could she get anymore whipped?
"Okay, no," Nyra said from beside her, pointing at the sentence Natalie was in the middle of writing. "That's not it. It's not aerobic, it's anaerobic."
Natalie sighed, crossing the word out and fixing her sentence. The pair had a free period together and they'd decided to spend it studying outside on one of the metal picnic tables around the school. Really, Nyra was the one studying for her exam, while Natalie was copying all of Nyra's notes that she'd missed out on.
"You're distracted," Nyra pointed out. "Why are you distracted?"
"I'm not distracted," Natalie said.
"Yes, you are, and I think I can take a guess as to why. Should I guess?"
"Please don't guess."
"Is it something to do with a certain someone taking care of you while you were sick?"
"Nyra!" Natalie chided, furtively glancing around them to make sure no one had heard her. "I told you, that's a secret!"
"Oh, come on, no one's around," she said. "So, how is Mr Boxer?"
Natalie pursed her lips. She hadn't told Nyra about him boxing—it wasn't her secret to tell—but that was the most popular rumour at the moment.
"I don't know. I haven't seen him since," Natalie said.
"But you've been thinking about him." Nyra giggled, poking her in the ribs, and Natalie squirmed out of her reach.
"Yes, okay! I have! I can't help it. He's just—I can't make sense of anything. Like, why does he come visit me when I'm not around? Why does he do anything?"
"Oh, come on, girl. It's so obvious."
"What?"
"It's because he likes you!"
"What?" Natalie repeated, her face lighting on fire. She looked away, placing her cold fingers on her hot cheeks. "No, he doesn't. I mean. Does he? Do you think?"
"Why else would he be all Natalie, I love your name. Natalie, I think you're cute. Natalie, I love you."
Natalie batted a hand towards her friend, but she dodged out of the way, snickering. "He never said that!"
"He might as well have!" Nyra sighed, retaking her seat next to Natalie. "Look, I may not know much about guys, but I've seen him around you, and if those aren't love-heart eyes, I don't know what is."
"I just don't want to get my hopes up," Natalie admitted.
She liked to think that she knew Leon, but did she really? She didn't know anything about his love life; had he had a girlfriend before? Was he just a massive flirt? How was she supposed to know?
"Nat, it's our last year of school. This time next year, you're going to be living it up at uni. Hell, this time in two months, you'll be taking your UCAT. Get your hopes up while you still can."
Natalie frowned. She hadn't thought about her medical degree entry exam in a while. She definitely hadn't thought about after high school in a while.
What would happen when Natalie went to university? The main thing that had been holding her and Leon together was school—meeting outside of school, walking to his school together, hanging out in the nurse's office.
When they graduated, would she even see him again?
"Just... think about it," Nyra said gently, as if sensing Natalie's change in attitude.
Natalie nodded, turning back to her notebook. She would think about it. Now that she'd started, she'd probably never stop.
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After being reminded about the fast-approaching UCAT, Natalie found herself after dinner sat at her desk, all of her practice papers laid out in front of her.
The thing with the UCAT was that no one was really supposed to study for them. It was an aptitude test; aptitude meaning the natural ability to do something. But people studied for it anyway. Really, how could Natalie just be expected not to study for a test that would decide her entire future?
Except, her studying had just shown her how little aptitude she really had. All those practice papers, and she was still scoring lower than she wanted—needed.
She released a long breath, letting her eyes flutter shut. She needed to relax. She was overthinking. She was freaking out when the timer started and second-guessing herself and running out of time.
She was smart. If anyone could do it, she could.
She opened her eyes, looking down at her stack of papers. She could. She knew she could. But did she want to?
Her heart lurched because she knew the answer.
If she really wanted to, she probably would have passed all these practice papers a long time ago.
Natalie had always been a go-getter. That was what her primary school teachers called her, and that was what her high school teachers called her.
When she knew what she wanted, there was no stopping her. Once, in Year 6, Natalie developed the sudden urge to be on the school basketball team. This was despite the fact that Natalie was half the size of the rest of her grade and had never touched a basketball in her life.
But she wanted it. She wanted it bad. And by the end of the month, she was captain of the team. It lasted one whole season before she realised, she wasn't a big fan of sports.
And when Natalie decided she wanted to be a doctor, she had worked every bone in her body to achieve that dream. She raised her grades from B's and C's to never-ending A's. She had networked with every doctor in a twenty-kilometre radius. If she had done the UCAT a year ago, she had a feeling it would have been a breeze.
What changed?
Where along the way had that passion fizzled out?
And where was Natalie supposed to go now?
She glanced towards her window, remembering that night in the Golden Ring with Leon. She felt like this back then too, and he'd been there for her, to listen to her thoughts.
She wanted to be more like Leon; certain about her future, not scared to chase after what she wanted, no matter what. No matter who she might disappoint.
Before she knew it, she was pulling on a jumper and a jacket, and lifting the windowpane as silently as possible.
She looked down at the jump from her window to the grass. Had it seemed this far last time?
Mustering up her courage, she slipped out into the frosty evening air. She pulled her jumper a bit tighter around herself and glanced down one more time.
She could do this.
She shut her window, leaving just enough of a gap to reopen it later, and took a leap of faith.
Like last time, she landed on the grass with a quiet thud.
Unlike last time, her ankle twisted in the landing, and she fell onto her side, rolling across the pavement.
Natalie threw out her hands to stop herself before sucking in a silent breath and gripping her leg tightly.
"Shit," Natalie cursed quietly, squeezing her eyes shut. She waited for the pain to subside a little before rolling upright. The lights in her house were still off.
Breathing a sigh of relief, she stood, testing her weight on her ankle.
"Double shit," Natalie whispered. It was too painful. Her ankle throbbed and she knew, even in the darkness, that it was swelling. Her hands stung too, and she squinted through the dim streetlight to find her palms scraped and bleeding.
What was she thinking?
There was no way she'd be able to climb back up like this, and there was no way she could get back in from the front door without explaining how she got outside in the first place.
She tried to think of an excuse she could feed her parents, but none came to mind except somehow falling out the window. She thought for a moment, shaping the lie in her mind—I was enjoying the night air when I slipped—before deciding there was no way they'd believe it.
She glanced over her shoulder, down the road. She had no choice.
It took her double the amount of time to get to the Golden Ring with her limp.
Under the main road's streetlights, she could see the extent of her damage more clearly. Not only were her palms scraped up, but her knees were too, and blood flowed freely down her leg.
She wanted to vomit.
She felt lightheaded but pushed on anyways, making a pointed effort not to look down anymore.
By the time she reached the Golden Ring, the pain in her ankle had doubled.
She pushed her way into the bar. The second the bartender—Lance, Natalie remembered—saw her, he sprinted around from the bar and to her side.
"Natalie?" He placed an arm under her shoulder, and she sighed in relief, placing half her weight onto him. "What are you doing here? What happened to you?"
"I fell," Natalie said, "from my roof."
"Your—What?" He paused, his eyes darting from one corner of the room to the other, as if calculating something. "Okay. Let's get you downstairs. We're going to need more first aid than we've got up here, and the boxers downstairs always have the best supplies."
Natalie nodded and the two worked together to get her to the staircase. The same security guard—Jeff—stood at the entrance. He looked up, registering Natalie's awkward limp, and his eyes blew wide.
He sprinted up the staircase, meeting them halfway.
"Natalie? What happened?"
"Fell," Natalie gritted out through clenched teeth.
"From what, a rooftop?" he asked, incredulously.
"Yes, exactly that," Natalie replied.
"I can take it from here, Lance," Jeff said, waving him off. Lance wished Natalie well and in one swoop, she found herself in Jeff's massive arms.
He carried her down to the bottom of the staircase, muttering the whole time.
"You need to take better care of yourself," he murmured. "Teenagers these days." When they reached the entrance to the ring, he said to Natalie, "Look, there's your boy."
Natalie blushed at the insinuation but looked up anyway.
As always, Leon was a sight to see when he was fighting. The way he bounced on his toes, threw out jabs, ducked swiftly under his opponent's fist—she could stay here all night just watching him.
Except blood was dripping from her leg and her palms stung, not to mention the fact that she was lying in Jeff's arms.
"I need to stay here and watch the door," Jeff explained, "but let me call some of my guys here to take care of you."
Holding Natalie with one enormous arm, he used the other to grab his walkie talkie and bark orders into it. Seconds later, Natalie watched as the crowd parted for a tall woman with half a shaved head and a stubbier man with a thick beard. The way they commanded attention had half the room looking away from the fight towards them.
Towards Natalie.
Natalie warmed under the eyes of the strangers. She probably looked like a child in Jeff's arms, with her skidded knee and angry red ankle.
The change in the crowd didn't go unnoticed.
Natalie watched ashamedly as Leon's eyes drifted over his opponent's shoulder for one split second, landing on Natalie. His eyes widened. It only lasted a split second until the other boxer threw a fist at Leon's head.
He couldn't catch Leon off guard.
Leon ducked easily under his fist, crossing the ring, and throwing his hands up.
"Stop the fight!" he shouted. "I forfeit!"
A murmur broke out among spectators. Leon ripped the gloves off his hands and pulled his mouth guard out, discarding them on a table by the ring. He ducked under the ropes in one smooth motion, ignoring everyone around him as he made a beeline for Natalie.
"Great, more attention," she muttered.
He reached her in just a few long steps, his eyes darting from her ankle to her knees, to her hands, to her face.
He must have seen her nervous smile because he bit back whatever he had planned to say, his jaw tensing and brow furrowing.
"I'll take her," he said shortly, dismissing the two security guards and taking Natalie into his arms instead.
She barely had time to thank Jeff before Leon was hauling her off to the same office from her last visit here. She felt his arms tense beneath her and tried to focus on that instead of his glistening bare chest just centimetres from her face.
He pushed the door to the office open, holding her with only one arm, and kicked it shut behind them. Gently, he placed her on a cushioned seat and knelt down to meet her eyes.
"Hi," she squeaked, heat climbing up her neck.
He shook his head, taking her hands into his and turning them over to examine her bloody palms.
"What happened to you?" he asked. His fingers trailed down to her knees, and she shivered at his gentle touch.
"I fell," she replied.
"Fell?"
"Out of my window."
He exhaled a sharp breath. "Natalie."
"I didn't mean to! It was so easy last time. And then I messed up my ankle and couldn't get back up—I didn't know what to do."
He hummed standing and turning to his duffel bag. First, he pulled a loose shirt over his head; Natalie released a sigh of relief at that, though she could still see his biceps peeking out from beneath his sleeves.
There was something about Leon after a fight. The way sweat covered his skin and his hair stuck to his forehead. And his arms—they seemed to double in size when he fought. Natalie watched him, trying to commit this image to memory.
Leon pulled open some file cabinet in the corner, returning to her with a hefty first aid kit in hand.
"Give me your hands," he said.
"I can clean them myself," Natalie said.
Leon opened his hand. "Natalie, give me your hands."
She scowled but complied, letting him take her hands and rest them on her lap, palms facing up.
Slowly, as if he might hurt her, he rolled up her sleeves and examined the damage.
Tutting, he knelt before her, pulling out disinfectant wipes and began gently cleaning her cuts. She looked away quickly, feeling that squeamish sensation rise in her stomach again at the sight of the blood.
"Where were you going?" Leon asked, his eyes on her face.
Natalie blinked, his words distracting her from the pain stinging her hands. "I was coming here."
"Here?" He quirked a brow that seemed to match his smirk. "What for?"
"I was bored studying for the UCAT. And..." she trailed off. Her breath hitched in her throat. She watched as he moved onto her next palm, cleaning the scrapes there, and thought of what Nyra had told her just this morning. Oh, screw it all. "I wanted to see you."
His hands stilled. He looked up, meeting her gaze. Her face felt hot, but she refused to break eye contact. She'd meant what she said.
"You could have called me, you know," Leon said finally. He returned to cleaning her cuts, a smile playing on his lips.
She felt relieved. He hadn't pulled away in disgust at least, but... that was it? Did he not get it? She wanted to see him. She wanted to see him all the time.
"I didn't want to call you," she quipped.
Leon was silent for a moment, his fingers so gentle on her skidded palm that she barely felt them there. She thought for a moment that he hadn't heard her until he finally added, "I wanted to see you too."
Natalie felt her heart leap into her throat. He finished cleaning her cuts and began bandaging them, wrapping them securely to keep the scrapes clean.
"But you didn't have to fling yourself out of your bedroom window, Natalie."
"You could have told me that an hour ago," she teased.
He laughed, rolling his eyes, before pulling her leg forward, so gently. She shivered at the feeling of his fingers on either side of her bare leg, his fingertips resting on her lower thigh. She wanted them higher.
She swallowed hard, trying to keep those thoughts out of her mind.
"I feel like you're always helping me these days," Natalie remarked. He pressed a disinfectant wipe to her knee, and she hissed in pain.
"Sorry," Leon said quickly, but continued to wipe at the scrape anyway. "There's a lot of blood here."
"Don't tell me that," Natalie said, feeling her head spin. "I think I might faint."
"Please don't," he replied. "Tell me something else. How's your studying going?"
"Terribly." Why did he have to choose the one thing she didn't want to talk about? "It's like, I know I don't want to be a doctor anymore, but now what? Can you imagine if your kid Can you imagine if your kid wanted to be a doctor, and then suddenly changed their mind at the last minute? It's like winning the lottery, then realising one number was off."
"It's not exactly last minute. You would've had, what, six years of uni to go?"
"Something like that," she muttered. "I just don't know what to do anymore. I wish someone would just tell me what to do."
"Have you tried Googling it?"
A laugh burst through her lips before she realised that he wasn't joking. "What?"
"You said you wanted to be a doctor because of the doctors that took care of you when you were young, right?" he began. "Have you tried Googling something you can do that's similar to that? Like, what job lets you take care of people without being around blood and guts all day?"
"I haven't," she said. Another laugh came. She couldn't believe she'd never tried just Googling career options. Why did it sound so obvious now?
She knew there were online quizzes and YouTube videos that were supposed to help people pick a degree or a job path, but she'd never actually done them before. She'd always known her path.
"You said you had, like, physiotherapists, right? When you were a kid? Maybe something like that," he continued. "Or whatever. You could be a banker."
"I don't think I want to be a banker," Natalie laughed.
"Never know." He shrugged, smiling wide. "Point is, you're still a teenager, Natalie. You've got plenty of time to decide."
"I have, like, two months before graduation."
"Graduation isn't the end of everything," he said. "Do you remember how I said my dad was a bartender? He worked nights because he was studying law during the day. He was switching careers in his forties."
Natalie frowned. She'd never thought of it that way. All this time, it felt like graduation was the finish line. She wondered if it was more of a start line.
He'd bandaged both her knees by now and made his way down to her ankle.
"Do you mind?" he asked, his hands hovering over her shoe. She shook her head, and he slowly untied the shoelaces. He gently pried the shoe off her foot, whistling at the swelling beneath her sock.
"That's a bad sprain," he said. "You should get it checked out properly tomorrow. And put some ice on it, yeah?"
He pulled out a bandage and began winding it around her foot. She hissed in pain and Leon paused, meeting her eyes.
"Sorry," he murmured. His hands moved slower then, keeping her leg still as he worked to contain the swelling. "Nearly done."
Natalie watched him work in silence.
He knew what he was doing. Why hadn't he ever just patched himself up, instead of coming to Natalie? Watching him now, that was probably what he usually did before they'd met.
He tucked the end of the bandage away and patted her shin, as if to show he was done.
Before he stood, he leaned over and pressed a light kiss to the band-aid on her knee.
"All better," he said, smiling up at her.
Her stomach flipped. Everything flipped. She couldn't get any words out, much less send him a smile back. All she could think about was his breath, fanning over her bare leg, and that kiss on her knee. She wondered for a moment if he'd kiss her any higher, but then he was standing over her again.
"Wait here," he said, breaking her train of thought. "I'll take you home, okay?"
Natalie nodded, watching as he left the room. She wriggled to the edge of her seat, trying to peek out of the open door and follow Leon's retreating back with her eyes. She was able to see him until he reached the boxing ring, before he got swallowed up by the crowd.
Sighing, she sat back and waited.
Her mind was full of enough thoughts to keep her occupied for weeks. Months. The way Leon carefully cleaned her wounds, the way he kneeled in front of her, the feel of his lips against her knee—her stomach flipped and flipped and flipped.
Footsteps snapped her back to reality and she looked up, smiling.
"Leon—"
She cut herself short. This wasn't Leon. This was... what was his name?
"Tyler, actually," he corrected, stepping inside.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
Another long chapter anddd another cliff hanger lol I hope you liked this chapter! Let me know your predictions for the next chapter and, as always, thank you for reading!! <3