Brazen Mistakes (Brazen Boys #3)

17. Clara

Chapter 17

Clara

J ansen falls slack beneath me, passed out, sweat slick on both of us. Resting my cheek against his chest, I listen to the drum of his heart as I catch my breath, my body still alight from the flood of emotions just thrown at me.

Fear, anger, desire, control, and one hell of an orgasm, it all should leave me spent, passed out, just like Jansen.

But my mind won’t stop spinning. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to relive my fear. The dreams are bad enough. There’s no way I’m letting that into my conscious mind, too. It would be too much.

The weight of everything has me already teetering on the edge of sanity. I have no intention of letting the nasty black ooze in my mind infect every good thing in my life.

That pretty picture now entrenched in my imagination, I get up and find a towel, cleaning both of us. Untying his wrists, I press a kiss to each, worried that it was too much. That I was too much.

That maybe I’m breaking him, just like I’ve been breaking myself for years.

Curling up on his pillow beside him, I give his wrists a closer inspection. Neither looks injured, just a few faint red ridges visible from where the fabric pressed against his skin, no different in color and texture than the lines across my chest when I take off my sports bra.

Research. I’m going to have to do some research if I want to do something like this again safely.

I won’t break him. I need him too much.

Nestled against his chest, I hold my breath, waiting for my mind to calm down, for some semblance of peace to find me after my nightmare, after literally attacking Jansen. Pleasurably, I hope.

Walker’s nowhere to be seen, so maybe he went to get RJ. Or maybe I was too much of a bed hog and pushed him out. Considering he seemed perfectly content to have me sleeping on top of him last night, the first option seems most likely.

No calmer, no less ready to crumble, I flick off the light, pulling the blankets up over us.

Jansen’s eyes flicker open for a second, and he smiles down at me before diving back into his pillow. “Love you,” he says, soft snores following his words as I freeze next to him.

Fuck.

Was that real? On purpose?

Does Jansen love me ?

How the hell can I handle more confessions of love when I’m too broken to even exist by myself right now?

Thoughts, too fast to catch, flood me, my pounding heart drowning out reason. My barely tamped fears break free, and my breath turns to short bursts.

Panic has me slipping out from under the blankets, yanking on Jansen’s sweatshirt from the floor, and sprinting to the bathroom. The water from the tap shocks me, but it’s not enough, my tears mixing with the icy liquid as I splash it on my face. I struggle to take a deep breath, to remember what it feels like to pull in air and push it back out again, in that order.

It’s not working.

I strip off the sweatshirt and climb into the guys’ shower, darkness hovering on the edges of my vision. The cold water dashes against my skin, forcing air back into my lungs, leaving me to collapse on the floor of the stall, a stupid gasping sob escaping.

I don’t know how long I stay there.

Eventually, I’m able to focus on breathing, on pushing unwanted thoughts from my mind. When I can’t feel my fingers anymore, I switch off the shower. Because while numb feels good, frozen is bad.

Without a bath towel, I wring out my hair, wiping down as much as I can with the hand towel before yanking on Jansen’s sweatshirt over my damp skin.

In the hallway, Trips sits on the floor across from the door.

“Sorry, I didn’t realize you were waiting,” I say, wrapping my arms around myself, glad this sweatshirt is long enough that I’m covered .

“I wasn’t.”

“Oh.”

He pushes himself to his feet. “Walker and RJ will be back soonish.”

“Okay.”

“Come with me.”

I trail him to his room, and he shuts the door behind us. “Are things okay with Jansen?” he asks.

“Yeah. They’re great.”

“I figured. He’s snoring after that noisy fuck fest you just had. Meanwhile, you’re sobbing in the shower.”

Staring at the floor, I don’t know what to say to that truth.

“Give me your hands.”

“What? Why?”

“You said you were mad.”

“Trips, you’re going to have to give me more than that.”

He takes my hands in his, making mine seem delicate in comparison. Using tape, he dresses my knuckles, his calloused fingers gentle but exacting. “You said you wanted to learn to fight, and that you were furious about what Bryce is doing. But instead of getting mad, you’re falling apart in the shower when you should be passed out beside one of your boys. You need to learn how to get mad. And how to throw a punch.”

“You’re teaching me to fight? Now? It’s the middle of the night.”

“RJ will teach you self-defense, to fight. There’s a reason there are weight classes in boxing—you can be the biggest badass ever, but my reach will always be longer than yours, and I’ve got probably a hundred pounds on you. The skills RJ can train you in will even out the odds. But sometimes, you just need to throw a punch. If only for sanity’s sake.”

“Trips, I don’t want to seem insensitive, but I don’t get angry like you.”

“Maybe you should.”

My wrapped hands fall to my sides as I look up at him. “Should I?”

“How are breakdowns in the shower treating you?”

“Like shit.”

“Able to fuck those nightmares away yet?”

“Fuck you, Archibald.”

His laugh is mirthless. “Not an option, Crash. It’s time to try something different. And despite everyone’s offer to listen, you don’t seem inclined to talk. So on to the next best thing. Fighting.”

“If I do this, will you let me go to bed?”

“If you push yourself, you’ll sleep like a fucking baby, at least for a while.”

I roll my eyes, then glance at the punching bag in the room’s corner. “Fine. Teach me how to get mad, Trips. We both know you’re the master here.”

He ignores my volley, pushing me away from the bag and setting me up in front of his desk, his laptop open and idling. He nudges my feet into position with his slippered toes, careful not to touch me more than necessary. Grabbing some pads from behind his punching bag, he sets them next to us on the bed. Finally, he looks me over, hair soaking through Jansen’s sweatshirt, wearing nothing else but the tape he put on my hands.

“You should probably tie your hair back. ”

Snatching a pen from his desk, I weave it into a hasty but tight bun, and hope that it’ll hold for whatever Trips is going to make me do.

“Okay, tonight the goal is to gain a basic understanding of how to throw hands. Then you’re going to try to land a punch on me.”

“You sound infuriatingly confident that I won’t be able to touch you.”

“I am.”

As much as I hate it, having seen him in Chicago, he’s earned that confidence.

He walks me through my stance, the proper way to fold my fists, how to set my feet, how to use my intention to initiate my punch, and how to use my mass to add force. Every third punch he reminds me I’ll only hit what I’m looking at, and as I’m looking at nothing, only punching empty air in front of me, I don’t quite get why that’s the important bit right now.

Once he’s decided my form is “adequate for a beginner,” he scoops up the pads and we do the whole thing again, only this time with something to aim at.

After ten punches that land with solid popping noises, Trips passes me a glass of water from his nightstand. “It’s fresh,” he says, like the thought of our lips sharing the rim of a glass is offensive.

How is he becoming both friendlier and less intimate with me at the same time? The man has had his tongue down my throat, his broad fingers pressed deep inside me. Why can’t he touch me? Or share a glass of water ?

I down the whole glass, thirstier than I’d realized, handing it back to him, our fingers brushing with a sizzle we both ignore as he takes it back.

“Now what?” I ask.

“Now you show me just how furious you can get.”

The laugh that escapes me is caustic at best. “I’m not sure I know how to do that.”

“One good slap would tell me otherwise.”

Heat coats my cheeks. “I lost my temper.”

“Good. Do it again.”

“It doesn’t work like that, Trips.”

“Doesn’t it? Are you telling me there isn’t something inside you waiting for a chance to snap, to hurt Bryce the way he’s hurting you?”

“I wouldn’t do this to him.”

“No, you wouldn’t. But that doesn’t mean the urge to hurt him isn’t there. You’re just really good at chaining up the beast inside you, Clara. That doesn’t mean the beast isn’t there. It just means you’ll need a lot of work cutting through the links to set it free. Let her out. I wanna see her claws.”

I grimace at him, hating that his analogy is so close to the feeling I have of something vicious living inside of me. And it scares me more than anything else. Fear of not just being out of control, but of being violently out of control.

It’s not the Clara I know. That I used to know.

Lining up my feet the way he taught me, tightening my fists, I start with solid punches at his pads, but he steps back after a few hits. “Not enough, Crash. Give me violence. Give me rage, give me a fucking volcano or some shit.”

“I don’t have a volcano, Trips. ”

“Like fuck you don’t. Again.”

Five more punches and he steps back again. “Not enough. More. Fury. Fucking fire and brimstone.”

“I’m not a biblical demon, Trips.”

“Yes, you are. You’re just not trying.”

I take three more swings, my gaze locked on the pads, the hint of my hidden beast coloring my intensity, or as Trips would call it, my intention.

“More. Hurt me, Clara. Fucking hit me. It’s not like I don’t deserve it.”

My knuckles are tingling as I hit the pads with more force. “It’s fucking Bryce that deserves this, not you.”

“Then pretend I’m that asshat. I sold sex tapes of you on the black market, and I fucking got away with it. Barely a slap on the wrist. The cops don’t give a damn what that’s doing to you. And now I’m waiting outside your window, more pictures, more violation. I’m always there, always watching, and you’re never going to feel safe again.”

Fire burbles from deep inside, tears stalled in the corners of my eyes, as I shift my gaze from the pads to Trips’ gut, three sharp jabs at his torso, all blocked, followed by a wild swing at his face which he dodges, before a scream escapes me.

It’s like that beast I was afraid of needs to sing her rage, to announce to the whole house that she’s here. She exists.

And she doesn’t fit in her cage anymore, no matter what I wish.

I scream and shake, the sides of my fists pounding against his chest, and he lets me, a grin creasing his face.

This is what he wanted .

But fuck if I know what I’m going to do with my anger now that I’ve found it.

“That’s it, Crash. Feel it. Learn it. Fucking honor it.”

With a strangled growl I go to punch him again, and he catches my wrist, stepping behind me and locking my arm behind my back, his other arm pinning my free hand to my thigh. I thrash, the anger needing a target now that it’s free, and he’s taken control of me, locking me in right after he forced all my rage out.

“Breathe through it. You let it out, now you have to control it, not let it control you.” His grip doesn’t slacken, despite my best attempts to break from it. “Breathe, Clara. Focus. Keep the rage, but not in a cage. Keep it on a long leash you can let go of when you need to.”

The squeeze of his hand on my thigh distracts me as I squirm, a familiar place to focus my emotions, but the touch all wrong, lighting me up when it should cool me down.

But I breathe, doing as he instructs, until the fire lives in my chest, vibrating with the same intensity I feel when I jump one of the guys.

With another breath, he lets go, his fingertips trailing my thigh for a second longer than necessary before he returns to my front. “Good. Now punch.”

This time, when I slam my fist into the pad, the sound reverberates around us. Each punch burns inside, the rage simmering, but not dissipating.

Again and again, I slam my fists into his pads until my arms give out, and I stumble forward into him, resting my sweaty forehead against his t-shirt, hoping he’ll wrap me in his arms, soothe the roar that still hovers under my damn ribs.

Instead, he steps back, stumbling over the legs of his desk chair and careening backwards, me tumbling headfirst on top of him, too much of my weight shifted forward in expectation of comfort.

We go down in a flurry of limbs and bumped elbows, my shoulder slamming into his ribs, a breathless puff coming from him at contact.

“Fuck, Clara,” he groans, trying to twist out from under me at the exact moment I roll in the same direction to get off of him, and I end up pinned under him, one foot planted, and my knee held wide in anticipation of a continued, stalled, turn.

The urge to apologize bubbles up in me. Only, Trips’ silence stops me from my spiral.

He isn’t looking at me.

Or rather, he is, but not at my face. He blinks, staring between my legs. And instead of being embarrassed, I want to fucking preen, and I drop my knees a little wider, the move slight enough to be mistaken as an accident.

“Shit. You, fuck. All night? This—” His cheeks are bright red as his tongue darts out and wets his lips.

“Yeah. I kind of rushed out.” I say, heart fluttering high in my chest.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to get him to fuck me like we both want, but one thing is unmistakable. He wants me.

And even when he pushes to his feet, turning his back, leaving me with no choice but to toss his pen onto his desk and inch out of his room, his silence says more than any words ever could.