“You called out your safe word.”
He frowns. “And that means I care about you?”
I nod. “You would have only said your safe word to get them to stop hurting me.”
“Explain.”
I laugh. “My challenge was to last until someone said their safe word to try and get it to stop. You were that person. You stopped my suffering Langston, which means you must have been suffering a lot watching me.”
It was the same rules last time, but last time I was here, there was no one here that personally knew me. It took much longer for someone to say their safe word to try and stop my pain.
“Does that mean I’m out of the game?” Langston asks.
“No, you didn’t say it as part of your challenge. You’re still in. But if you want out, just say it at the beginning of the next round.”
He nods.
I go back to happily scarfing down my pizza.
“I care.”
His words make my heart skip a beat.
“I care about you. But I still hate you,” he says.
I bite my bottom lip to hide my pleasure at hearing those words.
“Same,” I say.
His eyes light up at my voice.
We both finish eating all the food on the tray.
“Get in the tub. You must be aching,” Langston says.
I nod.
He turns the hot water on to warm up the tub and then holds out his hand to me. I take it, and he pulls me up into a standing position.
I let my towel fall to the floor, but this time, Langston doesn’t take in my body.
“It’s okay, you can look at me,” I say.
He shakes his head. “If I do, I won’t be able to stop. I’ll run my eyes over every inch of your body, looking for all the ways you were hurt. And you don’t need to be violated again, even by me.”
What happened in there broke him more than it broke me. Maybe because I’m already in a million pieces.
I step into the water and sink down, expecting Langston to join me, to wash me, something.
He doesn’t.
He can barely even look at me.
“What happens next?” Langston asks with a heavy voice.
“The final round.”
“And that round is worse than this one?”
I shrug. “It can be.”
“When it starts, I want you to say your safe word immediately. Say it and end this. I’ll give you all the money I stole back. I’ll give you more than that if you want. I’ll make our fight fair again, just end this.”
I close my eyes. I wish it were that simple.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.” Langston grabs my hands, and I open my eyes to look at him. “You entered this for the money. I’ll deposit the money back in your account, plus a couple of extra million. Just say your safe word.”
I touch Langston’s face. For a moment, he looks like the boy I used to know. Bright, warm, and a little bit mischievous, with a haunting brokenness behind his eyes.
There is a knock at the door, saving me from more conversation. A man enters holding our clothes.
“Be ready in fifteen minutes for the final round,” he says, placing our clothes on the back of a chair.
We both nod at him.
“We need to get dressed,” I say, getting out of the tub and drying off. I don’t care if Langston is watching me or not. We both get dressed, and I find the note with my safe word attached to the inside of my dress.
I pull it out and read it.
Unicorn.
Langston studies me. “You didn’t even read your safe word until this moment, did you?”
I shake my head.
“I should have called you my wild thing instead of huntress,” he says, impressed.
I smile. I like hearing him call me his anything.
“Promise me you’ll use your safe word if things go too far,” Langston says.
“I promise,” but it’s just another lie. There is only one thing that will stop me, and he’s standing in front of me in a tux.
20
Langston
I want to kill Liesel for what she did. But I’d also die to protect her.
It’s confusing, but it’s how I feel.
Liesel is once again in her swanky black dress. I’m in my tux. We only have minutes left until the final round begins. I don’t know how many competitors we face, or if we are the only two left. We’ll find out soon enough.
“How do you feel?” she asks, while she traces her hands up my forearms to my biceps, sending chills up my body.
“Better when you do that.”
She smiles. “I’m serious. Did you get enough to eat? Did you soak long enough? Did—”
I lean down and kiss her. She tastes like marinara sauce mixed with lavender, which makes me grin into the kiss. Her lips are soft and warm; they respond immediately to my touch. I’m the only man who gets to kiss her. That may be how it should be, but it’s not reality. I hate that this can’t be our reality.
My tongue pushes into her mouth, and she jerks back. But as my tongue massages her bottom lip, she lets me into her mouth. The attack of her tongue against mine proves that this is what our mouths were always meant to be doing—kissing each other.
I can feel the minutes and seconds ticking by; we don’t have forever. Our time together is precious. Soon, there will be a knock on the door, and this kiss will be nothing but a memory.
But I hope it’s a memory I’ll be able to take with me long after. In the middle of the challenges we are about to face, I hope this brings us peace.
“Thank you,” she says as my lips leave hers.
“Don’t ever thank me for kissing you. Kissing you is a gift to me as much as it is for you.”
I tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “No wig tonight?”
She shakes her head. “Beckett pulled it off in the last round; everyone knows I have blonde
