Lightning Strike (Billionaire Boys Club #3) | ongoing

Chapter 32

Madden:

Damn, the old man had more in him than I thought.

He didn't go that far, just enough to leave some good fucking bruises on my ribs. No more hits to the face though. Can't have his work on show.

I'm lying in bed the next morning, not going to school because of the soft marks on both sides of my jaw. I don't really give a fuck about people seeing me with bruises. They assume I've been in a fight and more often than not, the ones on display are actually from my own brawls. But today, I simply just can't be fucking bothered.

My door opens, my sister walking in... without her uniform on.

"You're not going to school?" I ask.

"Are you?" She counters, walking over to the bed and sliding beneath the covers on the other side, sitting up against the headboard. I rise from my laid down position, imitating hers.

"No."

She doesn't say anything. Just stares at me. At the parts of my lower face that only take a little away from my flawlessness.

"Mad-"

"Forget about it." I interrupt her before she can start what she was about to say.

"But he can't just-"

"It's fine. I'm fine."

"No, you're not." She argues. "Why don't you just fight him back? I've seen you kick the asses of men bigger and stronger than him. Why let him hurt you?"

I roll my head against the headboard so that I'm looking out of the window. Not at anything in particular, just so that I don't have to face her.

"He can't hurt me." I say, grateful at how strong my voice is.

"Yeah? Tell that to your face." She quips. "And your stomach."

"Abs." I correct absentmindedly.

Her response is hitting me in the side of the head with an ice pack.

Oh, scratch that. An abnormally large ice cream sandwich.

I pick it up from where it fell to my lap and angle my gaze back to her, quirking a brow.

"Don't look at me like that. It's not my fault you threw it out of the window insisting that you didn't need it."

Usually, she keeps an ice pack in the mini fridge I got for her and secretly hid in her bedroom so that our mom doesn't find her tubs of ice cream and unhealthy drinks that she's not allowed to have. But as she said, I did in fact toss it out of the window. But only because she called me a baby for using it. Even when she was the one who came and brought it to me.

I know she hates this, me asking her to keep it between us and not say anything to anyone but I want it to be this way. Need it to. And we trust each other, so she does as I say.

I roll my eyes and manoeuvre it beneath the hoodie I pulled over my head around fifteen minutes ago when I got up to inspect the damage.

"Wait, how did you know he got me there?"

"You winced while you sat up."

"Hm." I inhale a deep breath, letting it out.

"I'm being serious though." She continues.

"We've talked about this. I don't give a shit what he does to me. Physical blows are nothing."

"And the emotional ones that come with the physical ones?"