I repeated that mantra in my head every time I sunk my fist into the bag, over and over and over again until one of its seams burst and it spilled its contents all over the floor.
I took a step back and regarded my handiwork, breathing hard, the cold air stinging the back of my throat. The pain and destruction felt good, felt right to me. They soothed my soul in a way that nothing else could.
You’re a weapon, Kellan Jarvis. That’s all you’ll ever be. This is where you belong. And fuck Parker for trying to make you think any differently.
Maybe that was true, but when it came down to it, false hope was the worst kind of weapon of all.
~ FOURTEEN ~
Parker
“Jesus, Parker. You look like hell.”
Not exactly the first thing a girl wants to hear in the morning, but since it was coming from Thom’s mouth, I understood it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse.
And he wasn’t exactly wrong, either. I had deep, dark circles under my eyes the color of fresh bruises that no amount of concealer could get rid of, and my throat was thick and scratchy from too much wine. That’s what I’d done as soon as I got home last night: drank myself into a stupor where I imagined that what had happened between Kellan and I didn’t matter to me at all.
Now, in the harsh light of day, I saw how much of a lie that was. I’d woken up hoping it was all a dream, just some horrible nightmare, but the truth was that I’d fucked up with Kellan big-time, and I was paying for it in spades.
It was stupid of me to have gotten so attached to him in such a short amount of time. I’d let him get into my head and my heart, and what did I have to show for it? Some decent memories of some decent sex, that was what.
Okay, so those memories were actually fantastic, just like the sex had been. But they were bittersweet, too, because at this point, I was pretty sure that I was never going to see Kellan again. At least, not in the way I wanted to.
“Vic ratted us out,” I said at last to Thom. I rubbed my eyes, heedless of my mascara. “Kellan thinks we’re trying to ruin him now. We had a fight. I don’t think we can count on him being on our side anymore.”
Thom frowned. “What did he say? I mean, did he understand we were trying to help?”
“No, he was too angry to understand much of anything. I mean, I know that, and you know that,” I said, wiping the black smears I’d accrued on my finger with a napkin from my desk drawer. “But Kellan’s not so sure. And how could he be? I’ve lied to him before, after all.”
“You didn’t lie,” Thom assured me. “You just omitted the truth.” I shot him a glare and he sighed. “Okay, so it’s basically the same thing. But you didn’t do it to hurt him. Surely he’ll see reason, given some time.”
“I don’t think so,” I sighed. “Kellan doesn’t exactly wear his heart on his sleeve, and he doesn’t let people in unless he thinks they’re worth it. I was something special to him, and I fucked up. I was trying too hard to be Melanie Cartwright instead of Parker Jones.”
“Well, at least you’ve realized it now,” Thom said, rubbing my shoulders. Anywhere else, it would’ve been workplace harassment, regardless of what I said to the contrary, but here, everyone knew Thom and his intentions were good. “So the next thing to do is stop dwelling in the past and see if you two can have a future. And I think I know just the way.”
“Seriously?” I asked, slumping in my chair. Thom’s fingers were magic. It really was a shame he was gay, though I was sure Andy wouldn’t have shared my opinion on the matter. “You have a plan for this?”
“I do,” he answered, popping one of the knots in my neck. “Remember how I said the real winners in all of this are the managers, because they keep so much of the money that their fighters can never retire?”
I nodded, tilting my head back to look up at him. “Yeah. I just never got to tell Kellan that because he was so pissed.”
“Well, what if someone else told him? Someone who wasn’t fucking him?”
I smirked. “I take it that’s you? Unless I’ve really misread the situation…”
Thom grinned. “Yes, I mean me. Give me his address and I’ll swing by and let him know what’s going on. I’m a man. He’ll listen to me.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great, so sexism is alive and well, I see.”
“He’s angry with you, Parker. And when straight men get angry at one woman, they get angry at all women. You could tell him the God’s honest truth right now about anything, and he wouldn’t believe you. Hell, he’d argue with you that the sky isn’t blue. That’s just how they are.”
“Lucky for me, I have an awesome gay friend who would never be so irrational,” I said, sitting up as Thom took his magic hands away. I stretched my shoulders. They really did feel much better now, and I was starting to feel better about this whole thing, too.
“In all seriousness, Thom, it would mean the world to me if you’d talk to Kellan. If he knows what’s going on, maybe he can get Victor Dallas to pay him what he’s owed, and then he’ll get the hell out of that life for good.”
After all, that had been Kellan’s chief complaint last night, other than the fact that I was a lying shrew, apparently. He needed money, and he needed it now. He needed to be able to sustain himself while the bill I was harassing Senator MacFarlane about was signed into law. Hell, if Kellan could get some of the other fighters on his side, we could make the organization implode from the inside out before we even brought the cops raining down on them.
Thom said, “Send me that address, kitten, and I’ll see to it that it gets done. Who knows? Maybe he’ll have his shirt off when I get there. That’d be worth the gas money, for sure.”
“I’ll e-mail it to you,” I replied. “And thanks again, Thom. Really, this is above and beyond.”
Thom smiled. “What are friends for?” he said, turning and heading back to his desk before Melanie could yell at him for dawdling. “I won’t get off until late tonight, but I promise, Parker, I’ll take care of it. You just focus on the senator. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
That was true. As much as Kellan was dominating my thoughts, I still had important work to do. And if I was going to win him back, I was going to have to start keeping my promises and following through. I had to stop taking “no” for an answer.
I called the senator again from my desk. As usual, I was routed to his voicemail, but that wasn’t a problem. I would call every hour on the hour until either his mailbox was full, or he listened to me. And then I’d do it again the next day, and the next, for however long I needed to until I got some results.
I was going to salvage this thing between Kellan and me. I had to. Because going my whole life without ever feeling his touch again, without ever looking deep into his gorgeous hazel eyes, was just too depressing a thought to bear.
Kellan was in my blood now, in my heart and in my mind, and I wouldn’t let him slip away again.
~ FIFTEEN ~
Kellan
Punching that bag until all my feelings about Parker went away didn’t exactly work out the way I’d hoped it would. Even after an hour in the training room, I was still feeling like shit. No amount of berating myself about it would make me stop thinking about her and what we’d almost had, and so I’d taken a different approach: I was going to drink her away.
Yeah, it was about as stupid an idea as it sounds, especially given my history.
I hit The Sly Fox, the goddamn place where we’d met, around seven o’clock that evening. There was a game on, one I wasn’t particularly interested in, but at least it drew a crowd. Normally I didn’t like being surrounded by so many people, especially in close quarters, but right now I didn’t want to be alone. And at least having warm bodies all around me solved that problem.
Or it would have, if the alcohol had actually made Parker’s face disappear from my mind. Every time I thought of her, it was like everything else in the whole world disappeared. There was just me and her, except she was gone. I’d pushed her away
. And now I was alone all over again.
No, fuck her. She lied to me. She was the one who’d pushed me away.
But I’d never even let her explain. Not really. Hadn’t I owed her that? Couldn’t I have shut the fuck up for just one second and listened? Shit, I was starting to remind myself of my stepdad—jumping to conclusions and insisting they were real, despite any and all evidence to the contrary. It was easy not to change your mind when you just flat-out refused to see it any other way. Bonus points if you wouldn’t let the other party get a word in edgewise.
That was what had torn our family apart for years. And now, I was letting it tear me and Parker apart, too. Fuck. Was I really this big of an idiot? Hadn’t I learned anything from what Iris and Slade went through? Apparently fucking not.
Maybe I should call her. Send a text. Something. Just not while I was drinking. Alcohol and cell phones were a bad combination, and I wasn’t about to make a bad situation worse by saying something stupid when I was halfway drunk.
I was just about to settle up my bill when the door opened and a few familiar voices lilted my way. I looked over my shoulder at Jason “Mad Dog” Kane, Brian “Bloodbath” Mills, and Tyrell “Shaka” Washington, a damn odd bunch if I’d ever saw one. Not that they weren’t good fighters, but I’d never seen them hang out before. They’d never given me any kind of trouble, and we’d talked a few times, but we’d never kept company, either. Not really. Whatever the special occasion was, though, they seemed pretty jazzed about it.
“Hey, it’s Killer Kellan!” Bloodbath said, immediately taking a seat on the stool next to mine. “Holy shit, man. We got a regular family reunion up in here!”
“What’s up, Killer?” Shaka said, clapping me on the back as he sat on the opposite side of me. “Fancy seein’ you here.”
“Yeah, I’m not really a regular,” I mumbled as Mad Dog sat down on the other side of Bloodbath. “Usually do all my drinking at home.”
“AA might call that a problem,” Shaka said as he ordered a round. “But I bet it’s cheaper that way.”
“Exactly,” I told him, surprised that he’d thought to get me a drink, too. I finished the last of my old beer and started in on the new one. “Well, shit. What are we celebrating?”
Mad Dog grinned. “Just a fun night on the town. That’s all.”
Bloodbath laughed. “Yeah, Killer. A real fun night. Even got into a brawl. Not like the usual stuff, though.”
I raised a brow. “You were street fighting?”
“Hell no!” Shaka said. “That shit’ll get you busted by the cops, for sure. Nah, meeting with this dude went south, ended up busting his head open. Dude deserved it, though.”
Mad Dog snickered. I looked from him back to Shaka. “What happened?”
“You know that guy who’s been nosin’ around the place with that blonde chick?” Bloodbath asked, leaning closer to me over the bar. I nodded, my stomach already tying itself in knots. Bloodbath lowered his voice and continued. “Well, he wanted to talk to us this afternoon about some bullshit. Said Vic was trying to rip us off. Just an excuse to shut the whole place down, y’know? Vic warned us about his ass a few days ago.”
“Are you talking about Thom?” I asked. “The sports reporter?”
“That’s the one,” Mad Dog said. “That fucker should’ve kept his nose out of our business. He was fuckin’ around where he didn’t belong.”
“He was gonna ruin our fuckin’ lives, is what he was gonna do,” Shaka added, taking a long pull from his beer. “You should’ve been there, Killer. Damn. Sometimes I forget not everybody knows how to fight like we do. Dude went down like a sack of potatoes.”
“Head split open like a fuckin’ watermelon,” Bloodbath laughed. “Don’t worry, though. We called in an anonymous tip to 911. He’ll make it. Won’t be talkin’ no more shit about Vic or the rest of the operation, though.”
“He told you Vic was ripping us off?” I asked. That wasn’t the first time I’d heard that claim. Parker had tried to say something about it the other night, and even I had questioned Vic when he’d brought me half of what I was promised. “Did he say why? Or how?”
“Does it matter?” Shaka replied. “Guy’s a liar. Look, we all know Vic, what kind of guy he is. He took us all in off the streets, or else saved us just before we got thrown to the wolves out there. He pays us well and he takes good goddamn care of us, which is more than I can say for a lot of other managers out there. Dude was spreadin’ rumors that would’ve gotten Vic’s ass landed in the slammer. No way any of us could let that happen after what the boss has done for us, am I right?”
“Right,” I said, though I didn’t mean it. I had to get out of there. I put on a smile. “Thanks for the drink, guys, but I gotta head out. Got some stuff I need to take care of back at home.”
“Still fuckin’ that blonde bitch?” Mad Dog said. It took everything in me not to reach over Bloodbath and punch Mad Dog right in his stupid face.
“It isn’t that,” I said. “But you don’t have to worry about her. After what you guys did to her friend tonight, I think it’s safe to say the situation is under control.”
I hated hearing those words come out of my mouth. What I wanted to do was tell them what jackasses they all were. You couldn’t just go around beating up civilians—not when you had the kind of training and power that we did. They could have killed Thom, easily. I wondered if they’d still be laughing about it then. A chill raced down my spine as I realized I didn’t know.
“No problem,” Bloodbath said. “See you around, Killer.”
“Yeah,” I said, throwing down some cash and heading out the door. “See you around.”
As soon as I got outside, I bent over, hands on my knees, and just breathed for a minute. My world was spinning yet again, all because of the thousand and one fucking lies I’d been told over the past few days. Everything was spiraling out of control. First with Parker, then with Vic, and now we had fighters going out and beating up reporters—reporters who very well could’ve been Parker. What would they have done if Vic had sicced them on her, instead? Would they have beaten her to a bloody pulp?
Raped her?
The truth was I didn’t know. I didn’t know anything anymore. I stumbled over to the nearest bench and sat down for a minute, closing my eyes to think, to process everything I’d just learned.
So, Parker and Thom thought Vic was skimming a little too much off the top. And they were willing to take down the entire organization to bust Vic for taking advantage of us. Not all of us were vets, but we all came from bad situations. No matter what way you sliced if, if they were right, Vic was conning us.
Meanwhile, Vic’s handing me half of what I’m owed claiming some bullshit “fight fees” took up the largest chunk, and at the same time, he’s practically endorsing a dogpile on a reporter he damn well knows could get killed if one guy hits him just a little too hard.
What the fuck is he thinking? Intimidation, I get, but this? This is just plain stupid. Which meant Vic had to be scared. That was what desperate people did, right? Incredibly stupid stuff? Shit, I knew that better than anyone.
Which raised another question: why would Vic be scared, unless he was guilty? Sure, even if he wasn’t scamming us, Vic would have to shut down his operation if Thom ran with the story. But to risk basically ordering a hit on a reporter just for that? It didn’t make any damn sense. Not unless everything Thom and Parker believed was true.
Shit. They were right. They had to be. I’d been taken for a fucking fool, and not by Parker or Thom, but by the guy I was supposed to be able to trust—the guy who’d had my back more times than I could count.
Or had he? Had this all been one big, giant scam designed to earn him a fat paycheck every week at my expense? Did he have us all brainwashed to believe that we’d never amount to anything more than this, that he was our rock, that we needed him to survive? Parker had tried to show me another way, and Vic had been poisoning me against her since day one. Come to
think of it, he’d never approved of any of my relationships outside the ring. Whenever I’d wanted to take time off to see Iris and Slade, Vic bitched about how much money we were going to lose. We, as if we were in this shit together. As if he got hit in the fucking face every night. As if he ever had to deal with broken noses and ribs and bloody fucking knuckles.
He might be dealing with a few of those things now, I thought darkly, fishing my cell phone from my jacket pocket. Drunk dialing be damned, I was going to get Vic on the phone, and I was going to do it now.
He picked up after the second ring. “Hey, Killer. What’s—”
“That could’ve been Parker,” I snarled, squeezing my phone so hard I was sure the screen would crack. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I dunno what you mean,” Vic began again. I just shook my head and laughed.
“Christ, Vic. You think I’m stupid, huh? You think we’re all real fucking stupid?”
“Is this about money, Killer? Look, I told you, the fight fees—”
“Are bullshit!” I snapped. “It’s all bullshit, Vic. It’s all been bullshit for a very long time. You’ve got yourself a nice little scam set up here, but you know who the stupid one is, Vic? It’s you. You’re the one who’s stupid enough to think manipulating a bunch of desperate, hand-to-hand combat specialists is a pretty good fucking idea. You’re the one who thinks stealing money from people whose fists might as well be registered as lethal weapons is a smart move. And I guess that was a risk you were willing to take, ‘cause you thought none of us would ever find out. But I found out, Vic. Me. Killer fucking Kellan. I want you to think about that name for a minute, Vic, because I didn’t get it just for shits and giggles. That’s what my squad mates called me back in Afghanistan. And they had a good fucking reason, too.”
“C’mon, kid,” Vic said. His voice was thinning, growing shriller. He was nervous. I bet his fat, bald head was sweating. “Whatever you think you know, you’ve got it all wrong. You know how these reporter types are. Always trying to stir up shit, you know? And for what? Their own gain, that’s what. That’s how they make their money. It’s all based on stirrin’ shit up, even if it ain’t true.”
Kellan Page 10
