My fingers cramped and stung from their spot on the rock wall.

"Gonna fall?  I won't blame you.  But you know what happens when I win," Dorian gloated a few feet ahead of me.

A single bead of sweat dripped down my forehead and pooled in the hollow of my throat where it had dripped with a splat onto my fevered skin.

Phoebe, Lan and Zeke were all cheering down below as I gripped a yellow handhold above my head, keeping my body glued to the almost completely upside down wall.

We had been working the advanced side of the climbing gym, and Dorian was a few handholds ahead of me.

"You're definitely not winning," I choked out as my limbs began trembling.

My foot swung up and around, latching onto a red handhold and I grinned through the pain wheezing through me as Dorian's hand slipped on his next hold.

"I-deserve-that-kiss!"

"In your dreams, Dory."

"Wait, if you win, doesn't that mean he has to kiss you?"

I rolled my eyes at Phoebe's question.

Dorian had suggested a bet before we began climbing.  If he beat me to the top, I had to give him a kiss on the cheek.  I'd never stated what I wanted if I won, but he'd find that out later.

Two more handholds and suddenly I was dangling from my fingertips at the top of the wall.  My grip strength had weakened in the months that I hadn't ventured to the rock gym closest to us.

That heartbeat inside of me stilled, the utter calmness roaring through my veins when only hours before it had bleated to a staccato beat of anxious and nervous energy swelling into a fevered pitch.

I had needed to escape the eyes of Ben and his new girlfriend-my new roommate. 

Ben being in my personal space after what had transpired between the two of us just felt...wrong, unclean, and certainly unwanted, especially as the afterglow of my night before with Matthew still clung to my skin like a gilded sheen of escapism.

The calmness swirling around in my skin encircled me in a relief filled bubble, and as I swung my body the last few handholds to the end, fingers tingling and stomach in my throat at the height I'd scaled, I reveled in the adrenaline rushing through me like rapids in a river.

Swelling and swelling higher and higher, that adrenaline pushed my heart to beat faster, the zing in my blood to scour out all of the fear from my veins and the determination to reach the red buzzer before Dorian could.

I slammed my hand against the red light and the chorus of cheers rang out from my friends below while Dorian uttered a curse out of his mouth at losing.  Dorian didn't get a kiss as his prize.

***

"So...what did you want if you won?  You never said."

I gave Dorian my best sly smile.

"Oh, Dory, it's called a favor.  I'll call it in when you least expect it."

The fatal wink I threw his way hopefully made him more scared than turned on, but with the look he threw me afterwards, a strange mixture of fear and lust, I could only roll my eyes with a slight smirk still on my lips as I examined the friends gathered around us.

Zeke was pushing Phoebe's buttons, literally, stealing her phone and typing random things into it while she batted at him exasperatedly trying to get it back from him, while Lan just stared at Dorian when he thought he wasn't looking, that unrequited look on his face not unlike the one that had been plastered all across mine my entire childhood for Matthew, whose number suddenly appeared on my phone.

I didn't think the conversation would be giving too much away if I answered it amongst friends at the restaurant we were currently dining in, but the tone of his voice when I answered told me something was very, very wrong.

"Where are you?"

"Out at a restaurant with my friends a few miles from my school.  Why, what's going on?"

Sudden fear flashed inside of me at the thought that something could have happened to V or Evie, Eli or even Matthew as I clammed up and my palms turned sweaty, the skin of my face no doubt turning a deathly pallor.

"Don't go back to your dorm, at least, not yet.  Eli called the dean and filled them in on what's going on with your father and the restraining order, but there's nothing we can do since it lapsed.  After eighteen months, the restraining order expired and that was over two and a half years ago, no one told Eli, his lawyers definitely slipped."

"So...you're telling me there's nothing legal standing in the way of him approaching me?"

My brother and V had filed motion after motion to get me out of his hands.  A year, an entire freaking year and finally I was theirs and there was a restraining order, but...

Phoebe flashed me a concerned look as the conversation at the table hushed.

"He approached Eli again today, outside the gym.  His dad was with him then, too, as were most of the players on the team so he didn't get violent at all, but-"

"But the threat was there."

The threat was always there, glimmering under the surface, begging to be scratched.

"I don't like you there alone, where he can get to you.  I know you have campus security, but that doesn't mean anything...if I could get in as easily as I did last night, what's stopping him?"

I knew that Matthew wasn't talking the way he was to scare me, and it cut a hole in my pride that I wore around like armor to admit it, but it did.  It scared the everloving shit out of me.

If my father could get past the campus security, and Matthew had just admitted how easily it was to do so...

"What does he want?  Money?"

"It seems like it.  He asked Eli about you today, though, and from what I could tell from the conversation we had, it wasn't innocent, not in the slightest."

I was glad Matthew wasn't mincing words, trying to protect me from the truth like apparently my brother was considering he hadn't called me to tell me about it himself.

"What about Eli?  Why didn't he call to tell me right after it happened?"

I swore I could've heard the wince in his voice from the other end of the line, imagining the strain of his mouth as he spoke again.

"He wants to keep you out of it, focused on school and not on this, but I don't agree with him, not at all.  You deserve to know, to be ready, in case..."

In case he came looking for me and I wasn't prepared.  So, the taser would be worn on my keychain and my taser hidden in my pocket.  My body would return to the gym daily, whether it be rock climbing, self defense back in the city, or weight training at the school gym.

"I'll be ready."

My voice was steely fire and I could feel Matthew's approval of the words bleeding through the other end of the phone.

"I know you will."

"Text me later tonight," I asked of him half breathless and half filled with an emotion I couldn't quite pinpoint.  It was somewhere balanced precariously on the edge of both contempt for my brother and his overprotective antics and happiness at the fact that Matthew had pushed back and allowed me to have all the information at my disposal, for my safety, to be better prepared when the time came that I would see my father again.

And I would see him again, only it wouldn't be on unequal footing, where we had once been so long ago.  This time, it would be the lamb standing up to the lion who had been prey for far too long to the predator.

"I will."

The phone call ended with my friends staring at me, a question balancing on the tips of their tongues.

I finally opened my mouth and told them the truth, told them everything, even the things that Phoebe didn't know.

Lan had tears in his eyes by the time I was done, and there was a hard set to Dorian and Zeke's jaws, like they were ready to go out and find my father themselves and pummel him into oblivion.

Phoebe reached her hand out across the table to hold mine and I gratefully accepted, her skin warming mine as the boys around the table laid their hands on top of ours, the love for my friends welling up in my eyes and leaking down my eyes as a sheepish smile flitted onto my face.

"I'm not usually a crybaby," I said suddenly shyly, and they didn't make me feel bad for it one bit.

"Yeah, me either," Lan said mockingly towards himself while wiping his eyes on the backs of his palms.

We loosed out watery laughs and spent the rest of the night unleashing demons we'd kept inside for so long.

Zeke's dad was an alcoholic who was cheating on his mom, but wouldn't leave him.  Lan's parents had kicked him out of his too-religious household once they discovered his texts with the boy next door.  Dorian...Dorian had a sister that passed away at only five years old from cancer. 

And Phoebe was still running from ghosts that haunted the shadows, my sister-in-arms, still bearing scars from an abusive relationship that explained her unwilling ability to stay in a long-term relationship or let anyone else in, when the one person she had let in had hurt her so gravely.

At Phoebe's confession, Zeke's fists were close fisted and white on his chair but he remained silent.

At the end of the night, we'd lifted our drinks up to each other in a silent toast.

"To shared trauma, I guess," Dorian offered.

"To damaged people helping other damaged people," said Zeke.

"To not looking at ourselves as damaged people anymore."

They all turned to me as I said that last line.

"I like that one better.  We're not damaged, we're just cracked open enough to let the light in."

The tears that shone in my eyes for the rest of the night blurred my eyes but I didn't mind it so much.

***

A/N:

Sorry for this kind of emotional chapter, but I feel like it was needed to look into Elodie's state of mind before things start...blowing up.

What did you think of this chapter?

What do you think will happen with these characters next?

What do you want to happen next?

What has been your favorite part of Swish/Rebound so far?

How many chapters until the next *spicy* scene do you think there will be? ;)

Until next time my lovely readers,

Kristen :)