Vigilant

“It’s okay.” He shut the door. “How are you?”

“Me? I think the better question is how are you?”

His jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Managing. For the kids. The guys.”

Ari took a step forward, fumbling for words. “I just...” She held her hand out, wavering in its destination. She didn’t have to decide though. Davis grabbed it and pulled her to his chest.

“Can I?” he asked. His mouth right above hers. She saw the pain in his eyes and the pink of his lips.

“Yes.”

* * *

They only kissed. Slow and lingering filled with sorrow and pain. Davis led her to the couch and she sat in his lap. His hands didn’t wander, neither did his mouth. After some time, he buried his face into Ari’s sweater.

She raked her fingernails over his stubbly hair. He wanted to feel something other than the horror of Alvarez’s death. Ari understood this. They were the same. The same desperation and hollowness had led them to one another.

Feeling the need to connect, Ari reached for her sweater sleeve. She pulled it up to reveal the tiny star on the inside of her elbow. “I got this one when I graduated. Oliver and I drank too much tequila and we agreed to go get a tattoo. He chickened out, of course.”

Davis ran a thumb over the star, sending a chill up her spine.

“These three,” she inched up her skirt, revealing the tender flesh on her inner thigh. “Came after a particularly interesting night in Vegas. I should have tattooed it in glitter.” Ari dropped the skirt before he could touch her.

Davis looked at her with tired, wary eyes and she ran her hand down the side of his face, sliding her fingers down his sharp, tight jaw.

“The ones closest to me are these two.” She shifted and showed the two tiny dark stars on her collarbone. “I got these when my parents died.”

“So these represent events in your life?” His fingers ran down her arms, but his eyes stayed glued to the stars.

“Moments. Things I don’t want to forget. Feelings I want etched in my skin as a reminder.” An awkward silence passes between them. “You wanted to know what they were for. That’s what they mean. Scars of my life.”

They sat quietly together and Davis touched the tattoos that he could see. He took a deep breath and said, “My mother died when I was thirteen. That’s when my father opened the gym. He had been a fighter when he was younger. A boxer.” Davis pointed to the old cracked gloves hanging by the door. “To save me, he said. I had all this pent-up anger and energy and no mother to soothe it away. He wanted to teach me to use my power for good.”

“Sounds like a smart man.”

“He was.” Davis swallowed, gaining control over his voice. “When I was sixteen, he opened the residential program. He took in boys from all over Glory City, trying to make a better life for them. He had a gift for choosing the right kid for the program.”

“Kind of like you.”

He shrugged. “Every kid is a risk. There’s always a level of wildness about them. Can we really tame the streets out of them? He thought so.”

“Do you?”

He bit his bottom lip. “I’m not sure. I’ve made mistakes before. Like Antonio. My father made mistakes, too. The first boy we took in, he and I were like brothers. My father trained and educated us together. We fought and squabbled like family, too, vying for my father’s attention. Even after new boys came into the program, he and I were the big shots. That’s how we ended up doing the competitive fighting. Dad needed a way to contain our energy and aggressiveness toward one another. So he started these trials, pitting us against one another. Using the rules of the games kept us under control.”

“Again, he sounds like a smart man.”

Davis rubbed his face with his hands. “He didn’t anticipate our rivalry, though. Over the years, our anger only grew with one another. My brother and I fought over girls, school, work…anything. But the last fight. It was the worst. So dumb, but so bad.”

“What happened?”

He shook his head. “The fight doesn’t matter. It ended with my father dead.”

Ari recoiled. “You killed him?”

“No! No, of course not.” He brushed back the strands of hair that constantly fell in Ari’s face. “My brother and I were in the ring. Prepared to fight to the end, this time. To the death. Seriously. I wanted to kill him. He wanted to kill me.”

“That sounds crazy.”