Lie to Me by Chloe Cox Page A

issue.
    And then I suddenly remember that I am on the other side of the issue, and both of these men are here messing up my neighborhood and my life. That Marcus is not my friend, and that whatever macho pissing contest is going on between Marcus and Brison has nothing to do with me.
    And I know this—I know this, even if I have to remind myself of it—because Marcus chose to go work for Alex Wolfe. He chose to leave me the way he did, and he did it like it was the easiest thing in the world.
    So I watch Marcus practically snarl at Brison, like Brison is invading his territory or something, and I kind of can’t believe it. I’m not Marcus’s territory.
    In fact, I can’t trust him at all.
    Right?
    “Jesus,” I mutter. Neither of them seem to notice.
    And I’m trying not to notice Marcus like he is now, his shoulders back, his arms tense, his back stretching his leather jacket to its limit. Getting all primitive and possessive, putting himself between another man and me, his moods mercurial and mystifying. I want to tell him he’s a jerk and then beg him to fuck me.
    What is wrong with me?
    “Ok, well,” Brison says, shaking his head, “this has been awkward, so Marcus, thank you for that. Harlow, I hope to see you around the neighborhood.”
    “You stay away from her,” Marcus growls, and I have to do a double take.
    I’m not even thinking about how ridiculous the whole thing is anymore. Or why Marcus feels the need to turn full caveman. I’m not thinking about anything but how much I want him, because it all just hit me in a frightening, dysfunctional rush. It washes over me like a tide, heat pooling between my legs, my skin prickling with electric awareness, my knees feeling weak from the pressure of it, and not for the first time I feel like I’m overcome by him. Only it’s not him, this time, not in the same way—I don’t feel close to him in the same way that I did back then. But I want all of him. I want this darkness that I see.
    It’s overwhelming.
    It’s more than that. It’s debilitating. I have to fight it.
    I stop and close my eyes, and the first thing that comes back to me is a memory I can’t handle right now—right after my parents died, Marcus comforting me, holding me while I dissolved in his arms. My mind quickly shies away, and the memory fades into the darkness like some rare and terrible fish, flashing away into the depths. What I’m left with, though, is something helpful. I’m left thinking about how Marcus’s training helped me through that.
    Marcus taught me how to push through the pain. How when you hit that wall you need to push into the pain, let it become you, until you break through to the next level and get your much-needed reward of endorphins. And so that was how we approached the grief, too. It was weird—I don’t know if it’s like this for everyone, but for me grief was almost like getting a stomach bug. You’d think you were ok—or what passed for ok—and then it would hit you in this sudden wave of sickness and despair, and you’d be in utter hell until the wave would pass. I pushed through that pain the same way I pushed through the body pain at the end of a round, letting it wash over and through me, and the wave would eventually subside, leaving me exhausted but relatively free.
    Fighting it like that makes it less terrifying. It makes you feel like you’re in control of what happens to you, of the choices you make. I asked Marcus about it once, after one horrible workout, when I was just flattened, lying on the concrete floor of Pops’s gym.
    “Why do we do this to ourselves?” I panted. “It’s not normal.”
    I remember the sound of his laugh, echoing in the empty gym. “We’re not normal,” he said. “I need it. Need to find that space, when you’re just about to give up…”
    “But you keep going,” I finished for him.
    “You decide who you’re going to be,” he’d said.
    It was clearly something he’d thought about before.
    I