I stride over to the door, locking it, then reach for the hem of my t-shirt, pull it off, and chuck it on the floor. Flexing my neck, I roll my head from side-to-side trying to ease some of the tension in my shoulders, in my whole motherfucking body just because of her presence. She fucking drives me insane, and I’m done with her fucking with me, with my boys.
Glaring at her, I see how her eyes rove over my body and my skin burns under her gaze. I hate how she affects me. I don’t want her to affect me. It has to end. Now.
This is the only way to protect my brothers from the heartache.
Because she will break them again if I don’t do something.
Gritting my jaw, I curl my hands into fists. There’s fear in her gaze, but I also see bravado. She’s jerking her chin, straightening her spine, just like she used to do as a kid. I know her too well. She’s strong. A force to be reckoned with. Damn her. I just have to be stronger.
“What’s this? Some kind of pissing contest, Xeno. Are you jealous and needing to make a point? I thought you had no interest in me, but here you are getting naked?” She reels off, a sneer on her face despite the fire and longing in her eyes. She can try and hide it all she motherfucking likes, I’m turning her on and she hates it. 
“I find I can dance better unencumbered,” I reply obnoxiously. When she pulls a face, I can’t help but bite. “It means not having any burden.”
“I know what it means, Xeno. Out of the five of us, it was me who actually bothered going to school the most. What’re you gonna do next, grab a dictionary and start lambasting me with words? I’m a street kid, and whilst sticks and stones may break my bones, names sure as fuck won’t hurt me.”
“No, that’s not what’s gonna happen tonight,” I reply with disdain.
Stepping towards her, I keep my gaze fixed firmly on hers whilst circling her as she squirms in the chair. She’s trying her best to hide her attraction and her fear, but I know Pen. I know she’s as uncomfortable as she is turned on, and despite all the anger I hold inside, her response to me fuck’s with my head more than it should. Gritting my jaw I face her once again. Her eyes narrow, and I wait for the sucker punch.
“You know if you wanted to fuck me, perhaps you should’ve taken your chance at Grim’s club. Oh, wait, Jeb didn’t give you permission to rape me like he did Zayn…”
I flinch. Fuck. She really knows how to fucking hit the mark. That night was fucked up even for my standards, but what can I say? If you play with fire, you’re gonna get burned. She dumped us for Jeb, what the fuck did she expect? He’s a cunt. Then again, so am I, just in a different way. Before I can censor myself all that rage I still feel at her for leaving us, for choosing him, it bursts out of my mouth.
“And yet two days later, you let Zayn fuck you with his fingers because of a few sweet words and smooth moves in the studio.”
For the briefest of moments I see the disappointment and pain in her eyes, and a tiny part of me regrets those words, but I force that regret down. No. She doesn’t get to make me feel sorry for her. She doesn’t get to crawl under my skin. This is me telling her how the fuck it is. Not the other way around. I asked her here for a reason, and she’s going to fucking listen to what I have to say.
“Number one, fuck you, and number two, how the fuck do you know what happened?” she asks, enraged as she moves to stand.
If she thinks she’s walking out on me, she’s got another thing coming. Rushing forward, I place my hands on the backrest, and lower my gaze to meet hers. In such close proximity to her, this feral kind of feeling writhes in my chest.
It’s fucking dangerous.
Right now, I’m dangerous.
This could go either one of two ways, neither would be good for Pen. I think she knows that, because she sucks in a breath and leans back in her seat, turning her head away and refusing to look at me.  
“Number one,” I retort, mimicking her, “I’m the one who holds the Breakers together so I make it my business to know what’s going on and number two, you should lock the fucking door to the studio if you want some privacy!”
“You piece of shit,” she snaps back, her cheeks flaming at the thought.
Inside I smile, knowing I’ve pushed her buttons. “I gotta give him credit. He’s smooth, real fucking smooth.”
She flinches. “Fuck you!” Then her gaze zeros in on the necklace dangling around my neck and her eyes widen. “That’s my necklace.”
She reaches for it, but I grab her wrist, sucking in a breath through my teeth at how my bastard cock twitches at the contact. Fury takes over. Maybe it’s my physical reaction to her, maybe it’s all the pent up emotions I’ve had to keep under wraps around her, but I concentrate on this fucking anger inside, the betrayal, and I can’t let it go. I won’t.
“No, it’s not. This is mine. The Breakers are my brothers, Pen, and I will do anything to protect them.”
“I’m not a threat,” she replies, and the way she says it has my stomach twisting up in knots. It’s a lie, she knows it as well as I do.
“That’s where you’re wrong. You threaten everything and I’ll be damned if I watch them fall for you again only for you to break their fucking hearts. You need to stay the fuck away from them.” I step back, pushing off the chair. She’s so slight that it scrapes over the floor with the movement. Pen has the courage of a lion, but she’s so easily breakable. I could break her. Knowing that doesn’t make me feel as good as I thought it would. In fact it makes me feel sick. Focusing my thoughts, and ignoring my reaction to her, I say, “Play track twenty-two.”
You Broke Me First by Tate McRae begins to play and for the whole first verse I stand before Pen and stare at her. The words of this song express exactly how I feel and as I let them sink in, I fight this need to go to her, to take her right the fuck now.
I don’t want her, I fucking don’t, but my cock? It has other ideas.
Focusing all that pent up fucking energy, all the hate and anger, the disappointment and betrayal I feel, I keep staring. She squirms under my scrutiny and I see the signs before she even acts on them. She’s going to run. Grabbing her phone, Pen stands.
Hell, no! I rush at her until she drops back into her seat. She doesn’t get to leave until I’ve had my fucking say. “You will sit there, and you will watch me dance this time, Pen.”
She swallows hard. “When did you get so fucking cruel?”
Laughing bitterly, I step away from her. “I told you before. I’m no longer that boy you knew.” Then with all those emotions flooding my veins, I flip backwards, lifting high into the air before glaring at her. Every past hurt, every ounce of anger and pain, comes out in this one look. Her lip wobbles, her eyes mist over and for the tiniest of moments I hesitate, I feel something other than pain and that, that’s the worst feeling of all.
Empathy.
No!
She hurt me. Now I hurt her.
This dance is my response to hers. She flayed us all that night at Grim’s club and I’ve been fucking bleeding ever since. No more. Now she gets to be in my position. She gets to see what she did to us. Eye for an eye.
Love fucking hurts. So it’s just as well I don’t love her anymore.
Who the fuck does she think she is barging back into our lives? She doesn’t get to have us back. She doesn’t get to love us again. No. This ends now.
The familiar feeling of anger pulses through my body and I fucking use it.
Stamping my feet, jerking my body, flipping tricks across the dancefloor I jump, I leap. I fucking tear up the past and I rip open my motherfucking chest and let her see the damage she caused.
She ruined me. Us.
She fucking broke us.
And now she thinks she can worm her way back into our hearts?
No. No. NO!
I can’t let her hurt us again. I won’t. She needs to understand that.
There’s no softness to the way I dance. No sign of hope. Just rawness and pain. She used her dance like a weapon, and this is my corresponding war cry.
I lose myself in my feelings, they rip out of me and I see the affect I’m having on her. The tears she cries. A better man would stop. A better man would walk away. My mum would be so fucking disappointed in me right now.
“Xeno,” she’d say, “Live with kindness in your heart.”
Kindness? I almost laugh. My mum was a good woman. She was kind. Fuck, she’d be rolling in her grave seeing how I’ve turned out. The truth is, kindness makes you vulnerable, and I can’t be vulnerable. Not again. Never again. Pulling up sharply, I come to a standstill, dropping my head. Dragging in deep breaths and fisting my hands, I try so fucking hard to regain some control, to center myself. Then she whispers my name.
“Xeno…”
That voice. Fuck!
FUCK!
It’s as though she’s stabbed me in the heart with one of Zayn’s knives, and it hurts. It hurts so fucking much because all I hear is the girl I knew before everything went to shit. I fucking miss her. I miss Tiny.
No!
Snapping my head up, I narrow my eyes, then without thinking I sprint towards her and even as I’m moving I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do when I get to her. I just do. I just act. I just feel, and that is fucking dangerous.
At the last minute, I throw my legs out in front of me and slide across the floor. I see her expression change from one of sympathy to fear, and regret once again crawls up my spine. My feet meet the front chair legs, and I push her across the floor a few feet from the force.
For a moment neither of us breathe.
“Xeno, stop,” she whispers, swallowing hard.
I watch as she wipes at the tears on her face, the anger in her eyes blazing through the sympathy like fire through a dried out forest. Shaking my head and gritting my jaw, I push upwards onto my feet and continue to dance. I push the boundaries between us. Hell, I smash through them with every step until they’re nothing but fucking dust. I don’t stop until I’m done.
This is pain.
She forced hers upon us, now she gets to feel it in return. “Now you know how I feel,” I grind out, striding towards her, sweat sliding over my skin. “Get out of my studio, Pen.”
But she doesn’t move.
Goddamn her.
Instead, her gaze drops to the tattoo on my arm. I should tell her to fucking go. I should fucking leave, and yet I can’t seem to fucking move as her eyes fall and her expression softens as she takes in my tattoo, the one I had inked into my skin for her, because of her.
For long, painful, seconds she stares at our story and with every breath she blows out, I breathe in. I breathe her in. Her scent, her heat, her fucking beauty and allure.
It kills me, and yet I don’t back away. I let her look.
Her gaze roves over the three circular points surrounding the shattered heart, each one representing my brothers, then she takes in the heart and how the broken pieces fall into the coin below, large cracks running through its surface.
It’s a penny.
I stiffen as she gasps, reaching for it.  I know I should back the fuck off but as her fingers stroke over the shattered heart, my own heart stops beating at her touch, at the tremble of her fingers skirting over my skin. Even after everything that’s happened between us. Even after the brutality of this dance, how can her touch fucking affect me this much?
“Xeno?” she questions, looking up to meet my gaze. Her fingers are still pressed against the penny as they feather across her name scrawled underneath the Queen’s head. There are so many questions in her gaze, but that isn’t what cuts me up, it’s the tiny glimmer of hope she holds.
It has no place between us. There is no hope.
“You broke me first,” I say.