by Emilia Finn
But then the bathroom door slams at the end of the hall, Mac stomps along the wooden floors, and when he stops at the doorway to the studio, the way my body reacts to his confirms I’m absolutely not a kid anymore. I have needs that I never used to. Urges. Hungers that I suppose any guy could sate.
But I don’t want just any guy. I want the one guy that refuses to take me.
Mac’s eyes meet mine for a moment, his green eyes, darker than usual, slide along my legs and back up again. “Can we raincheck the ice cream?” He takes his keys and phone from his pocket. “I have work I forgot about.”
Frustrated, I turn back to Soph and try to hide the way his dismissal stings.
“I’m done for today. I’m going home.” I walk away from the happy couple that want nothing more than for me to be happy, and as I approach the doorway, blow past Mac the moment he steps aside.
“Need a ride home?” He falls into step behind me. “I can drop you off on my way to work. I don’t want you to have to walk.”
“Nope.” I slam through the dance studio’s front doors, past the sign for Ellie Solomon, and shake my head as soon I step into the sun and my brain catches up to the heat. The burning pressure beating down on my dark hair makes me groan.
Fuck being brunette in the summer.
Fuck being proud, too, since I’m complaining.
And fuck Mac Blair for being a clueless prude.
Mac
Assignment
Each morning when I wake in my shitty apartment, in my shitty bed, with my blown lightbulb that I continue to forget to replace, and my holey shorts – because I’m too frugal to buy another pair until these literally fall away into a pile of dust – I limp my way to the bathroom and study myself in the mirror while I take a piss.
That day that I fell from a crane and busted my head open, I also ended up with a leg in traction. It’s healed now, but I was young, and the months of disuse stunted my growth and created a permanent limp. It takes my body a few minutes and a gallon of coffee before the limp subsides, and then when I’m done with that, I stand at my kitchen counter and count them.
My pills.
Twenty-seven pills a day, or I die. Twenty-seven that cost me a fucking fortune, despite the health coverage I receive because of my sort-of employment with Checkmate Security.
Sexy, huh?
Standing in holey shorts, with a scar that runs the length of my torso, while I limp like an eighty-year-old and take more pills than most geriatrics will ever need. It’s embarrassing. It’s a fucking disgrace, and doesn’t get better as I shower in my shitty bathroom, and dress in stained clothes, only to go to work and stain my hands with engine grease. And to get there, I drive a shitty car that tries to tear my jeans every time I move on the torn seats.
Being around Lucy Kincaid is… It’s like being in an expensive jewelry store, and you’ve got a kid with sticky hands poking around. Every time that kid tries to touch, he’s scolded. Every time he gets too close to the glass, he’s told to back the fuck up before he leaves marks.
I’m the kid with sticky hands, and Lucy is the twenty-carat diamond that poor kids like me will never afford. It’s easier for me to stick to the outside of the store, so to speak, to keep my hands in my pockets, and not touch, for fear of ruining something so perfect and pretty.
My days while she’s away at college pass much the same as they always have – sleep, limp, pills, work, gym, bed, only to start again the next day. Lucy is in town a few days a week, and though I see her at the gym, and even though she’s taken a special interest in my recovery since the day I was allowed to leave the hospital, time passes, and with it, a less urgent need of her training.
Perhaps my bad attitude has something to do with her declining interest in training me.
Years ago, Lucy would never miss a session with me. She would put off her own training, schoolwork, birthday parties, sleepovers, and pizza dates with her dad, all because she was on a mission to make me better. Now, the last six months especially, I’m more like a second or third – or tenth – thought on her to-do list. She’s in the gym less nowadays than ever before, and when I ask, the general consensus is that she’s dancing with Soph.
With her male dance partner?
The thought of this strange dude’s hands on her ass the way mine were gives me reflux. It makes it almost impossible to stand at this fucking counter and swallow my pills, but I choke them down and make sure I count right, and all the while, I think of her. Her body. Her eyes. Her silky hair, and that smart mouth that she keeps on lockdown in front of most people.
Unlike her cousin, Lucy’s sass comes out only when she’s backed into a corner and has no other choice but to cut a guy down to get free. She doesn’t want to hurt people, so when she does, you know you deserved it and more.
The sticky July heat rolls into August – sleep, limp, pills, train, try to catch her attention whenever we cross paths – and August makes way for an even stickier September.
December seems to have become the official month of Stacked Deck’s annual tournament, which means we’re three months out.
Despite Lucy’s general coolness toward me inside her family’s gym, here, in Ben and Evie’s home, she acts like her normal self. We sit in the spare room, the makeshift office that stretches off the not-long-ago renovated kitchen, and we talk fighting. It’s what we do, it’s what we’ve always done, and since Evie made her official announcement just last week, the forms are coming in thick and fast.
“Late December,” Evie confirms. She stands, brushes back long strands of blonde hair to clear her vision, and when she gets frustrated with the unruly curls, she snatches Ben’s black hat straight off his head and plops it on hers so she can tuck them back.
Grabbing a red marker, she writes on the whiteboard that is a new addition for planning the second year of Stacked Deck. “We learn from our past mistakes; last year, we started fights too late in the day, so instead of kicking off at dinnertime, we start around noon. We’ll probably still have a late night, but getting to bed at eleven is way better than getting home at four in the morning when you have to show up and fight again the second day.”
“Five hundred and twelve applications so far.” Lucy flicks through the tall pile of forms. “Way more than last year. This shit is growing fast.”
“We started with something like three hundred and seventy or so applications last year,” Evie says. “But only two hundred or so could get their shit together and submit the forms properly with medical and buy-in. Of those five hundred in your hand, only three hundred will pay, and a bunch more won’t prove their health.”
Evie’s eyes flicker to mine for the shortest beat – because I’m the reason Stacked Deck even exists. I’m the idiot that needed a new heart, and because of that, the mainstream circuit denied my applications to fight. Evie, being Evie, said fuck that, and on what seemed like an impulse decision, she cooked up her own tournament and made it so I could fight.
Which I then repaid by losing.
Like a fucking loser.
She knows how I feel about, well, everything, so her eyes leave mine fairly quickly, and go to Lucy instead. “We’ll have more fighters, but we know how to handle it this year. We’ll start earlier, and as the forms come in, we’ll consider adding a day.”
“Wait.” Lucy flicks through the pile with a frown. “What days are you locking in for this?”
“December twenty-second and twenty-third.” Evie turns and writes the numbers on the board in giant, red, block letters. And because she’s turned, she misses the way Lucy’s eyes widen, the way her cheeks turn pale. “If we need an extra day, we’ll pick up that Friday, which is the twenty-first. We’ll process the forms today, start putting the draw together, and by dinnertime tonight, we’ll have a decent idea of whether we need the third day.”
“Does it have to be the twenty-second?” Lucy asks with a little rush to her voice. “Can we bring the whole thing forward a week?”
Evie f
inally stops writing, and turns to her cousin with confusion pulling her brows close. “No, we’re pretty much locked in. We can add or subtract a day, but we can’t pick the whole thing up and move it. You got something else you’d rather do that week?”
Lucy’s eyes – sad, reserved – flick to mine for a second, then they shoot away again, and her shoulders come up. “Nope. I’ll figure it out.”
“Good.” Evie turns back to the wall. “I had a look through the applications this morning; the Bakers have already sent in their forms.”
Reid Baker; her ex-boyfriend, and Kyle, his older brother. Their names bring a sneer and curled lip to everyone in this room, all because Ben and Evie found a rough patch in an otherwise picture-perfect relationship, she started dating another guy, and bam! Baker becomes public enemy number one.
“Reid said he was gonna enter,” she continues, “so it’s not like this is a surprise.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Ben waves it away with a dismissive flick of his wrist. “He’s a non-issue for us. I won, so…”
He flashes a wicked grin that brings Evie around with a smile. “Are you talking about the fight, or…?”
“Mostly I’m talking about the ring you’re wearing on that lockdown finger,” he smarts. “In fact, when Baker gets to town, go up and say hey. I insist,” he presses with a smirk. “Shake his hand, let him see what you’re wearing.”
“Real mature,” she huffs, and yet, she swings around to plop into his lap and wraps her arms around his neck.
Uncaring that Lucy and I are in the room, she puckers her lips and lets her man do dirty things for a beat while I stare at my hands. I don’t dare look up, just in case Lucy is too. I don’t dare peek to see if she’s watching them. Or worse yet, me. Because there are only so many times a man can be expected to deny the one and only thing he wants more than oxygen.
I have a finite supply of willpower, a limited number of times I can walk away before nature takes over and sends me walking in her direction instead.
So I study my hands, and work hard to transfer the black stains from my skin to my jeans.
“Iowa sign up again?” I ask when the lovebirds separate. “Dude with the little girl; did he sign up?”
“Not yet.” Evie turns in Ben’s lap and studies the stack of forms in front of her. “I went searching especially for him. Nothing. He didn’t leave a number for us to call him at, and though I could find him on the internet again, I dunno if that’s really appropriate.”
“If he wants to come,” Ben reasons, “he’ll come. We’re not scouting him out.”
“If he doesn’t come, then the title is Mac’s,” Evie says without thinking.
Her mouth always runs faster than her brain, so it takes her a second, then her cheeks pale.
“Shit, Mac.” She spins in Ben’s lap. “I didn’t mean you can’t win if he does come. I didn’t mean it like—”
“I’m so glad you believe in me.” I purse my lips and challenge her with a glare. “If there’s no Iowa, then I stand a chance. But if he comes, I may as well sit my ass down, because it ain’t happening?”
“That’s not what I said,” she presses. “You know that’s not what I—”
“It is what you said,” Lucy cuts in dangerously. She rarely uses that tone, especially not with her best friend, but when someone has been wronged, she’s always the first in line to fix the injustice. “And it was rude.”
“I’m sorry.” Evie reaches out and takes my hand. “I swear that’s not how I—” She shakes her head. “I didn’t mean it like that at all. What I meant and what was said are two different things.” She squeezes my hand. “Truly, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” I release her and sit back. “It doesn’t matter. December twenty-second and twenty-third. Sounds good. I’ll be there.”
“We have fifty-four people signing up for the Pay-It-Forward program,” she says. She clears her throat, and tries for normalcy, despite the tension in the air.
A few minutes ago, I was reminding myself of the trivial reasons why I can’t touch Lucy with my filthy hands. Now I remember. It’s so fucking obvious, I wonder how I could have questioned it even for a second.
I suck, I lose, and I’m not worthy.
It’s really that fucking simple, and a good reminder for me to take my ass back to the gym this afternoon. With or without my beautiful training partner, I need to work out, I need to get stronger, and I need to not suck so fucking bad.
“Fifty-four is more than last year,” Ben says. “Are folks getting lazy and expecting to be carried, or are they really just poor and need a little help?”
“Little bit of both, I suppose.” Evie tosses a pen onto the pile and sits back. “Word is spreading of what we’re achieving. Some people want in, but not so bad that they’re willing to put the money up for it. The same way some folks happily pay the five hundred bucks, but don’t take this opportunity as seriously as they should. They turn up without training, lose in the first round, and go home with a bad attitude about how the fight was rigged.”
“How do we sort through the needy and the liars?” I swallow down the bitterness – my constant companion – and forgive Evie for her lack of filter between her brain and her lips. “We never announced how many we’d sponsor each year, so how do we choose?”
“I’ll do a little online stalking,” Lucy declares quietly. “Just a surface level search at first, to check out their lives. People are stupid, they post every damn thing to their social media. If a dude is asking for help with his buy-in, but he’s out partying every weekend, then I’m tossing him out. If they’re driving an Audi and wearing brand name clothes in every picture, then I’m dumping their form.”
“There are holes in your plan,” Ben says. “And a slight twang of discrimination.”
Lucy shrugs and begins flipping a pen between her fingers. “I’m in the kind of mood where I don’t really give a single fuck about their feelings. If they live humble lives, then we’ll spot them. But if they’re living comfortably and look like they don’t deserve it, then I’m gonna pass judgment. Maybe after this year, we can ask folks to submit a cover letter to explain their circumstances.”
“What’s up with your mood?” Evie asks. “Why are you being shitty?”
Lucy’s chilled eyes flick in my direction for the shortest second, so short that I question if it really happened, then they’re gone again. “Dunno. Woke up cranky. You say the Bakers are coming? Both of them?”
“Yes.” Evie groans. “Both of them. I don’t have a problem with Reid. Not really. But Kyle, his brother, I swear I wanna strangle him every time I look at him. There’s just…” She shakes her head. “I dunno. I just don’t like him.”
“Funny,” Ben says without humor. “I feel the same way. It’s like he has secrets. Like he’s always plotting or some shit. Fuck knows I won’t be sad if he gets hit by a bus and I never see him again.”
“I wish we could exclude them.” Lucy drops her pen, only to reach back and slide slender fingers through her long hair. She’s frustrated, and super fucking pissed off, but in my eyes, running her fingers through her hair, she’s just seductive. She’s a filthy sin that I’d happily risk an eternity in Hell for. “I wish we could have a reason to boot them and never let them come back.”
“Can’t.” Evie sighs. “That was the whole damn point; Stacked Deck is all about inclusiveness, no matter their names, and no matter our personal feelings.”
“They’re trouble.” Standing, Lucy pushes her chair back in and crosses the room. “You know they’re gonna cause trouble this year.”
“Still can’t boot them.” Resigned, Evie watches her cousin move across the room. “I feel you, Bean. I do. There’s nobody on this planet that wants to boot them more than me, but we lose a fuck ton of credibility with the fight world if we do. Kyle Baker’s gonna be like a cancer that comes back every year, and there ain’t a damn thing we can do about it.”
“Bullshit rule,” Lucy murmu
rs on her way out of the room.
Cass – Evie’s caramel-colored Cocker Spaniel – raises her brows when the sound of the opening fridge penetrates her ears, and a second after that, overgrown puppy paws, six sets, stampede across the house.
Cass had puppies just days before Christmas last year. Now she’s the proud mom to seven Great Danes with Spaniel ears. One of the black and white puppies favors Lucy – probably because she feeds him every time he bats his lashes at her. The only reason he hasn’t gone home with her yet, I suspect, is because she’s still finishing up in college.
Six of the puppies live right here while Ben and Evie figure out what the hell they’re going to do with them all, but the seventh and last, the only one that no longer lives with his mom and siblings, has a new home with Ben’s high school friend. The pup is her security, her companion when she struggles with human contact. He went to a loving home that encourages playdates between the whole litter a couple times a week, which made it easier for Evie to let him go and split the pack.
I stand when the fridge door closes again and Lucy makes no move to come back. Ben and Evie sit together and whisper, which makes me the awkward and unwanted third wheel anyway, so I head out of the room and slow when I find Lucy simply laying on the kitchen floor. Her hair covers her face, her long legs fold up so she’s almost in a ball. Her ass peeks out from beneath jean cutoffs that I’ve dreamt about a million times in the past.
Any other time, finding her balled up on the floor like this would do irreparable damage to my heart, but when the puppies scurry over and around her, one trying to sit on her head, another smacking her with his tail, her soft giggle escapes the long hair covering her face, so I simply stop by the large island counter, fold my arms and ankles, and settle in for the show.
You’re beautiful. You’re so fucking beautiful it hurts.
“Do you need rescuing from the wild dogs?”
Freezing for a second, then reaching up and curtaining her hair, deep brown orbs the color and consistency of melted milk chocolate in a vat mere seconds before being poured, study me with long, lingering swipes of my legs and chest. Her bow lips press together, and her hands, which batted the puppies aside a second ago, now tug one close.
