Promise

Chapter 10: Friend

Christian

I needed to punch something. Hard.

Unfortunately, my coffee table at home was the only thing I could find. I spent the night picking up shards of broken glass off the marble floor, cuts and bruises scraping my palms and arms. My housekeeper was on strict orders to report back to Damon and Francis if anything was broken by me in my apartment and I really didn't need them finding out why I was so agitated.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Friends. She wanted to be friends with me. Seventeen years I lived without her and now, she wanted to be fucking friends with me. It was like we were moving backwards. Weren't we always friends? When did we get to the point where that was the new baseline?

Anger filled my chest, seeping into everything I touched–or rather, destroyed–solely because it had the unfortunate fate of crossing my path.

The next morning, I showed up at Damon's for our usual Sunday morning boxing workouts, still pissed at myself and ready to work off some energy. I walked straight through the door using my personal security code, not bothering to knock.

"You." I pointed to Damon as he sat on his kitchen island, fawning over Ariadne. "Let's go."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're early."

"Damon." I closed my eyes. "Now."

His calm gray eyes examined me coolly and his gaze dropped to my arms, looking at the cuts and bruises that littered them from last night. He knew. Immediately, he rose to his feet.

I was the oldest one of us all with an obsessive need to protect everyone around me, but Damon was probably one of the only people took care of me a little too. He was always dropping off food at my apartment without even telling me he did so.

He'd even converted one of the rooms in his house to a boxing ring years ago when he found out I was taking my anger out in illegal underground fighting rings so I could fight him instead.

Damon pushed the door open and locked it behind us, tossing me a pair of gloves.

"Do you want to talk about it?" He asked simply, before putting on his mouth guard.

I shook my head. Damon Hale talking? What had Ariadne done to this man?

He didn't press further.

For the next hour, Damon let me pummel into him and fought me back with the same amount of ferocity I doled out. He knew all my moves and I knew his. He knew the best ways to make me move, punch, kick, and work out my anger.

Silence, as he was known, lived up to his name and didn't say a thing, just let me land hit after hit until I got too used to the rhythm and it didn't feel like I was burning any anger anymore.

For years, I'd worked to suppress thoughts of Robyn, resigned to the fact that she would never be mine. But it was becoming increasingly clear that it didn't work.

All I could think about was the way she used to be so curious but terrified of horses until I held her hand and let her pet them. The way she spent all of recess swinging on the monkey bars, never letting anyone else get a chance. The way she cried whenever there was a dog in any movie, even if it didn't die at the end. The way she didn't understand the sexual references her guy friends made to her and would always ask me about it later–which always prompted hysterical fits of laughter from me, of course.

Didn't she hate me? She had to hate me. After everything that happened all those years ago, there was nothing to do but hate me. But now she wanted to be friends. It was the last fucking thing I wanted to be, but if it meant I had her in my life, I'd swallow the bitter pill.