by Emilia Finn
“Heh.” I pull her in for one last hug – a distraction, a change of subject. “I’ve got it under control. I’ve also got a couple leads on apartments, so you don’t have to worry about that. I’m gonna crash with you for a night or two, get my fill, eat a couple meals with you, then I’ll go.”
“Six months.”
“Six months for what?”
“Stay with us for six months,” she clarifies and steps back. “Then you have my permission to leave and get an apartment.”
“Or…” I snort. “I could head on over to the whore hotel tonight, all for the sake of nostalgia.”
“Three months,” she instantly counters. “Three months isn’t unreasonable.”
“Whore hotel.”
“The fact you call it the whore hotel and yet you let me stay there on two separate occasions is telling of your shitty parenting choices. One month.”
It feels good to be smiling again. The kind of smile that speaks of freedom and the knowledge that my sister is safe. But wanting my sister to be safe and happy doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy tormenting her.
“I wonder,” I muse, “if there are any women over at the hotel willing to spend a little time with a lonely man?”
Olivia moves in my peripherals. A subtle folding of her arms. A furrowing of her brows. And beside her, her sissy boyfriend tries to make himself look bigger.
My sister scowls. “One week.”
“Fine.” I step forward and pull her under my arm so we can go home. “One week. Show me the way home, Bubbles.”
“You were planning on a week the whole time, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I laugh. “Yes, I was.”
I clap Jamie on the back as we move away, but my eyes stop on Olivia for a moment. A stare, deep and promising as she stands beside her boyfriend and pretends she doesn’t give a shit about what’s being said.
“Although,” I add with a cruel smile, “the idea of heading over to the whore hotel for a second is appealing. I’ve been lonely as fuck.”
Olivia scowls, just as I knew she would, but unaware that I’m not talking to her, Quinn slaps my stomach until I fold forward and grunt.
“Disgusting,” she snaps. “Dammit, Will.”
“Good lord.” Evie Kincaid steps into our huddle and shakes her head. “I see you, William Quinn. I see what you’re doing. And if you keep that shit up, things are gonna get messy around here.” She steps out of our way again, and effectively shields her husband’s innocent little sister from my scandalous stares. “Come by the gym tomorrow,” she tells me. “I have some stuff I want to teach you.”
Yeah, stuff like an ass-whooping, for daring to imagine Olivia Conner in various levels of undress.
I hold my sister close and step away from the crowd, and in the part of my mind that isn’t obsessed with the raven-haired Olivia, I plan a night that revolves around a beer, bad television, and catching the hell up with one of the two people on this planet I’d live and die for.
But the idea of sparring in a world-famous gym sounds good too, so I turn back and grin. “Sure thing, Miss Kincaid. I’ll be there. What time?”
“Mrs. Conner,” she grins. “You weren’t around for the wedding, but it was epic as hell. Seven good for you?”
I whistle, low and obnoxious. “Small town folk rise early, huh?”
“Too many people to beat up, too little time to do it.”
“Sure is a conundrum.” I nod for her and try my best not to look at Olivia anymore, now that Ben has arrived and pulls one woman under each arm.
I’m talking to one, and looking at the other, which means that motherfucker doesn’t like me one bit.
“I’ll see you tomorrow, and if you deem me worthy, maybe we’ll work on a training regime that’ll lead me to Stacked Deck this year.” I look down to my sister. “Let’s go, Bubbles. I’ll follow you guys home, then you can tell me about how you managed to make a pirouette look like a spinning heel kick.”
Will
Whole New World
Last night was good for my soul. Seeing my sister, drinking with her and her fiancé, reminiscing about that time he kidnapped her and she kicked him in the face a good ten or twenty times in a row – fun memories – and finding out what’s happening in her life now, it’s all the kind of sunshine I’ve been robbed of for the last twelve months.
It’s been a perpetual winter to live without her, even in the summer. It was the loneliest Christmas I’ve ever experienced in my life. And that’s pretty big for the kid whose mom he discovered lying in her own vomit on Christmas morning, pregnant with his sister, and not allowed to call an ambulance, or risk getting beat to hell and back for snitching.
Of course I could ask Quinn anything I wanted while on the phone this past year, but there’s something entirely different about hearing news for the first time, face to face, in person, where I could lean against her, and know without a single shred of doubt that she’s completely and utterly safe.
I learned that Quinn and Jamie plan to marry, but that they refused to make plans until I was home.
I learned that Mac and Lucy did marry, but Quinn didn’t want to tell me on the phone, for fear I’d feel left out.
I learned that Kyle Baker is still a pussy, but that he no longer plans to attend Stacked Deck tournaments, and I learned that the unlikeliest friendship has formed between Ben Conner and Reid Baker; they’re not best friends, they’re not even good friends, but they’re friendly enough now to be in the same room at the same time, and neither of them will spontaneously beat on the other.
I heard, after a few beers and a little twisting of my words, that in addition to the yoga classes Olivia Conner teaches at the gym – a blind man can see that she works with her body – she also teaches some of the women’s self-defense classes that her mom started more than a decade ago.
She kicks ass in the most painful way. She’s not about fighting fair and trading jabs; she’s more of a ‘disable that motherfucker and tear his balls out through his throat’ kinda chick. And it bothers me that, somehow, that knowledge turns me on.
I suspect I may have a mental imbalance when it comes to Olivia Conner.
I learned that Jamie is still in his gym every single day, but that he teaches more than he trains. He said it that first year we met; he’s more interested in preparing a fighter for competition than he is in being that fighter.
I guess this past year of me being gone was the year of dreams coming true for more than just my sister.
At the end of the night – somewhere around two o’clock this morning – I dragged myself upstairs, and plugged in a set of headphones so I wouldn’t have to listen to my sister and her man do whatever it is they do in bed.
Once was enough for this guy to learn his lesson.
Now the sun is coming up, a fresh, new day begins. My ears ache from the solid plastic I shoved in them four hours ago, and my stomach turns at the stench that infiltrates my senses. I lay on my stomach with just a sheet covering my back. My eyes remain shut, my mouth open, and my pillow catches the drool that I can’t wake enough to stop yet.
But the longer I lay here, the more my stomach turns from whatever that smell is.
Turning my face away, I grumble in my sleep and smack my lips to moisten them.
My body is shriveling from dehydration. I drove for hours and hours yesterday, then I drank alcohol for hours. My organs are struggling to stay alive, but at least the stench is gone.
Lace curtains make the sunlight outside flicker over my face, and I start the day already sweating. But I’m sleepy, comfortable, and not ready to get up and piss yet.
I lay in my half-asleep daze for a little while, knowing that I have to get up and make my way to the gym, but I let my thoughts drift.
Long, winding roads, melting sun, air-conditioning, Olivia Conner. My lips curve up, and the sunlight burning the side of my face makes me think of the lake across town. Summer means bikinis, right? Summer means women laying outside in th
eir underwear, and a pair of sunglasses means I can look as much as I want, and nobody will know about it.
I wonder what kind of bikini Olivia will wear?
She’s too proper for anything excessively revealing. So a one-piece, perhaps. The tankini kind, to cover her stomach. I bet she’d wear a wide-brimmed hat – three feet wide, to keep everyone away – and massive sunglasses to deprive the world the chance to see her beautiful blues. She’d probably wear high-waisted bikini bottoms, because god forbid anyone but her future husband see her hips. And there’s no way whatever top she wears would have a push-up shelf built in. No. She would save that for her future husband too.
Lucky son of a goat fucker.
Pots and pans slam in the kitchen downstairs, and the stench is back. It followed me. I turned away, and yet, it followed me.
I crack one single eye open with a groan, then I groan a second time when I’m met with a pair of black eyes and a pink tongue.
Giselle. A black and white Great Dane with floppy ears and breath like she ate actual shit for breakfast. “Fuck.” I bury my face in my pillow and swallow down the barf that wants to rebel at my alcohol abuse and lack of water from yesterday. “Did you eat your own feces, dog? Damn.”
Unperturbed by my question, Giselle lifts one foot to my bed, then the second. She’s so tall, she doesn’t have to jump up. She merely walks up. She places her front paws on my back, then walks her hindquarters up until she’s sitting on my ass and rests her front paws and chin on my shoulders.
“You’re two hundred fucking pounds.” I grunt and turn to the side so she slides off, then I sit on the edge of the bed and press the heels of my palms against my eyes.
They burn, and my head swims. Maybe, just maybe, I can admit I got drunk last night while chatting with my sister and her boyfriend.
For the first time in… ever, I was able to chill the fuck out. I’m between jobs, no longer responsible for feeding my sister, no longer on the run from the law, and my sister was riding her high after a successful show. I’m not the sucker who pays rent on a rat-infested apartment anymore, nor am I using fake names and lying to everyone I know.
Well, the fake name thing; William isn’t the name I was born with, but Sophia Solomon made it so I now have documents that say it’s real. And the lying thing; well, that’s for a good cause. And it’s highly unlikely I’ll die because of it.
Please don’t let those be my famous last words.
“Will?” Quinn’s shout echoes up the stairs and drills into my brain. “You want eggs?”
“No,” I shout back. “Fuck you and your mother. I have a headache.”
Giggles waft on the breeze just as surely as the scent of coffee and something sweet.
Giselle makes herself comfortable on my bed, and only a moment later, she lays her head on my pillows and begins snoring. Footsteps thud up the stairs, then my bedroom door opens, and I have to check my bottom half to make sure my sheet is situated properly.
“Will?”
“Headache,” I groan.
“Go and have a shower,” Quinn snickers. “Get some water, the ibuprofen’s under the sink, then come down for eggs. You have forty minutes to clean up, eat, then get to the gym, otherwise Evie’ll hunt you down and smack you around for standing her up.”
“I’m not scared of her.”
“Oh please,” she scoffs. “Sure you are. Everyone is. Get up and don’t wake Giselle. She likes her beauty rest.”
“She’s allowed to sleep on the beds?” I turn and scowl at my sister. “Seriously?”
“Only the guest bed.”
Quinn leans against the doorframe in shorts and a tank with glitters on it. Her hair is down, her mascara applied like she thinks she needs to make her eyes that much prettier. She folds her arms, and though the fold is a little clunky after the surgery she needed to fix a damaged shoulder earlier this year, she doesn’t hiss or groan in pain, which is an improvement on how she felt when she was in my care.
And that is something Kincaid could give her that I never could.
“Guest bed is never used,” she explains, “except by you. So technically, you’re the intruder here.”
My brain throbs, and my eyes feel like they’re scraping against sandpaper, but still I manage to summon a little appreciation for this fancy as hell house and the home my sister will never again have to share with vermin. Well… except for the dog.
“She woke me up, Bubbles. She smells like she rolled in shit and then ate it, and now she kicked me out of bed just so she could lay down.”
“Like I said,” she taunts. “Beauty sleep. Giselle has a routine she likes to keep. You’re actually blocking her sun, so if you could just scoot a little to your left.” She flicks her hand just to annoy me. “Plus, let’s be real; uglier women have smelled worse and kicked you out of bed before, so…”
“Fuck you.” I stand and drag the top sheet with me, which elicits a growl from the spoiled dog. “I’m going to shower.”
“Ibuprofen is under the sink,” Quinn repeats. “Glass is on the counter. Drink lots. By the time you come down, breakfast will be ready.”
“Where’s Fuckface?”
“You mean Jamie?” she questions with a smile on her lips. “He’s at the gym. Bry knocked an hour ago and said he had to run before the sun turned blistering.”
My pout turns to a scowl at that ridiculous request. “And he went? Bubbles, it’s Saturday. It’s the day of the lord… or some shit…”
Pathetic, I know.
“Blasphemy,” she laughs. “Pretty sure that’s Sunday. And yes, he and Bry run most days. They said you should come find them when Evie’s done with you. They wanna spar and see what you’ve lost since you last competed.”
“Ben gonna be there?” I step into the bathroom that joins my temporary room, and close the door most of the way. “Because I don’t much wanna spar with him today.”
“Probably should stop being weird around Liv, then, shouldn’t you? She has a boyfriend, ya know.”
“She has a purse,” I shoot back. “Named Brenten. And looking at a beautiful woman isn’t ‘weird’. It’s just…” I drop my sheet, and flip on the shower. “Looking. She’s beautiful, Bubbles. Gives me heartburn.”
“She has a boyfriend,” she shouts to be heard over the running water. “And seemingly no interest in a Neanderthal like you.”
I roll my eyes to the sky and shake my head. “There’s no need to call names. And she’s interested, all right.” I turn my face up and allow the water to spray my face. She’s interested. She warms when I look, and rubs her thighs together when I speak. She’s fucking interested. “She just doesn’t know what to do about that interest.”
“Well, you could just let her date her boyfriend,” Quinn continues to shout over the roar of the water. “That would be a sensible thing to do.”
“I could also go find her in the middle of the night and tempt her into an hour of sin. She’d have no damn clue what to do about it, but I’m sure as hell willing to coach her.”
“You are my brother! Dammit, Will. Don’t be so openly gross.”
I pump a little soap into my hand and shrug. “Don’t be a prude. Now go away. I’m showering.”
“Maybe you’re not running from the cops anymore, Will, but if you go anywhere near that nice girl, you’re gonna be running for your life again. She’s got a cop for a daddy, a fighter for a brother, and Evie Kincaid for a sister-in-law. That’s a thousand times worse than when the world thought you killed a guy and were trying to lock you up for it.”
And that ugly reminder brings me crashing back to Earth. Because at the end of the day, I still killed a guy, and Olivia always deserved better than that.
“Go away, Bubbles. Eggs are burning.”
I walk into the gym at three minutes past the hour and skid to a stop when I come face to face with the blonde fighting powerhouse.
Evelyn Kincaid is small but mighty. She’s witty, and mean to boot. She could kick my ass
, despite weighing less than half what I do, and I’m man enough to admit it. If she and I were to go toe-to-toe in the octagon, there’s a good chance I’d walk away without my balls.
“Miss Kincaid.”
“Will.” Instead of chewing me out for being late, she lifts her chin and gestures me into the hall. “You remember everything about this place, right?” We emerge into a room that boasts a boxing ring. “Training room. Bags over that way. Ropes on the walls.” She leads me back into a hall, and gives a short, sharp, highlights-only tour. “Octagon. Locker rooms. Boys and girls; don’t mix that up. Folks get mad if we catch them in their skivvies.”
“Noted.”
“And do not, under any circumstances get caught naked with someone else in the showers. The parents freak out.” She shrugs like she has no clue why that would be, and continues walking ahead of me.
Her wild curls are tied back. Her hands encased in pink wraps. She wears booty shorts and a sports bra. But where there was once a six-pack of defined abdominal muscles, now rest stretchmarks and a slight paunch. She’s not retaining fat from her pregnancy, but her skin is taking a minute to come back to where it once was. And fuck, but it’s kinda awesome that she still trains and dresses the way she always used to. Fuck the haters.
“Weights room.” She gestures into a room occupied by Lucy and Mac Blair, then pulls away and heads back along the hall. “If you wanna dump your bag into a locker, go for it. Otherwise, you can just leave your bag on the mats somewhere in the main room. No one will touch it. Yoga.” She stops by a doorway and smiles at the class with their asses in the air, then makes a move to walk away.
I remain locked in place and watch the smooth movements of the woman at the front of the class.
Black leggings that go from her navel to her ankles. A black sports bra. Silky, black hair dangling over her downturned shoulders. And in direct contrast, lily white skin.
