Blackout: A Romance Anthology

by Stephanie St. Klaire

  “Looks like a ghost to me.”

  I spun around at the sound of the familiar rasp. “Marco?” I asked in disbelief. It was the same Marco I’d known since I was a kid, but the baggy jeans and jerseys were gone. He stood in front of me dressed from head to toe in money. Even his shoes shined like jewelry.

  “Been a long time, Nix. Good to see you home,” he said, reaching out to clasp my hand. He pulled me in and lowered his voice so only I could hear him. “Watch your back, kid. Friends turn to enemies real quick ‘round here nowadays.”

  I nodded as we stepped back, not sure how I was supposed to take his warning. “Looks like you’ve done well for yourself,” I offered.

  He grinned, flashing a gold incisor. “Just took the opportunities that presented themselves,” he said with a shrug. We both knew it was an understatement, but it wasn’t the time or place to get into Marco’s rise in status. “You in town for good?”

  “Don’t know yet. Depends on how things play out,” I said, choosing my words carefully.

  The smile slid off Marco’s face, but he didn’t seem angry. His eyes scanned the crowd as he nodded. “Was wondering what was takin’ you so long,” he muttered.

  Before I could respond, he turned to Sawyer and clapped him on the shoulder. “One week. Don’t make me come find you.”

  “C’mon, Marco. You know I’m good for it, no worries,” Sawyer said, not looking nervous at all. The bouncer had been right, my brother had balls of steel.

  Ignoring Sawyer, Marco cut his gaze back to me. “Make sure his shit gets settled before you do whatever the fuck you plan on doin’, Nix. I ain’t tryin’ to get screwed while you’re playin’ hero.”

  I felt a grin tug at my lips. “Ain’t never wanted to screw you before, prison didn’t change that, Coco.”

  “If you wanna keep breathing you better not call me that again,” he deadpanned.

  I laughed, actually laughed for the first time in forever. “Admit it, you missed me.”

  “Not even a little,” he mumbled, shaking his head.

  “Ouch!” I said, covering my heart with my hand.

  “Whatever,” Marco said as he took a step back. “Just don’t get yourself killed out there, we got business. Sawyer has my number, call me tomorrow and we’ll talk.”

  Lifting my chin in agreement, I watched him turn and push his way back into the crowd. I wasn’t sure how Marco factored into the whole Ellis situation, but I hoped to hell his allegiance fell on my side.

  “Yo, Ghost!” Flaco hollered. I looked around, trying to find who he was talking to, only to get an elbow in the ribs.

  “He’s talking to you,” Sawyer said, rolling his eyes.

  “Ghost, really?” I asked, not a fan of the new nickname.

  Flaco shrugged. “Bitches are gonna eat it up. If you win, you’ll be rollin’ in pussy by the end of the night.”

  I didn’t want bitches, I wanted Ellis. “Whatever,” I said, ready for a subject change. My bed hadn’t exactly been cold since I got out, but now that I was back, it felt wrong to think about anyone but Ellis somehow.

  “Sawyer will take you back and get your hands wrapped. You’re up for the fourth fight, could be an hour or fifteen minutes, you never really know. Just be ready,” Flaco said, taking his clipboard and disappearing into the crowd like Marco had.

  I trailed behind Sawyer once again as he led me out of the main room and down a dimly lit hallway. “Thought you said it was bare knuckles?”

  “No gloves, but you’re allowed to wrap. Don’t want your hand shattering with the first head shot,” he chuckled, pushing open the door to a makeshift locker room.

  We attracted several sets of eyes as he led me to an empty bench. Pulling off my hoodie, I sat down and held out my arm so Sawyer could start wrapping.

  “Anything else I need to know?” I asked, eyeing a huge Samoan guy in the corner.

  “The rules are pretty straightforward. No weapons, everything else goes. Some of these guys think they’re MMA fighters so don’t let anyone get you on the ground, you’re gonna have to knock ‘em out the old-fashioned way,” he said with a wink.

  “Like Jiu Jitsu and shit?” I was confident in my ability to knock someone out, but I had zero experience with any of that fancy shit.

  Sawyer leaned forward, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “Yeah, but most matches never get there. The serious MMA guys wouldn’t risk their careers for a few bucks at an underground fight. Mostly it’s just tough guys who took a few classes and have something to prove. I’ve seen you fight, you’ll do fine.”

  When he finished wrapping my hands and wrists, I took some time at the heavy bag set up in the corner to warm up. I’d done what I could to prepare with only a day’s notice, going for a run that morning and staying away from the trash Sawyer had in the fridge. I never expected to find myself in a situation where I’d have to fight on demand, but I was thankful I’d kept up my workout regimen after prison all the same. Inside, there was nothing to do but work out, it was both a distraction and a necessity. No one wanted to fuck with the guy who spent his free time doing one armed pushups in his cell.

  Before I knew it, Flaco was poking his head inside the door. “Ghost and Mighty Joe Youngblood, you’re on deck, let’s go!”

  The Samoan guy from earlier stood up and I cut my eyes to Sawyer who was already shaking his head, a smile pulling at the edges of his mouth. “Don’t even ask, I have no idea how he got the name. But don’t worry, he’s slow as fuck. Focus on head shots and he’ll go down like goliath.”

  Sawyer elbowed me in the ribs. “She’s here,” he whispered as we made our way into the main room of the warehouse.

  Following his gaze to the opposite side of the chain link enclosure, I found her immediately. She’d changed her hair and clothes, but other than that, she looked exactly the same as she had eight years ago.

  The crowd erupted, drawing my attention to the cage where one fighter was taking a victory lap while the other laid in a bloody unconscious heap on the cement floor. Several men rushed in to drag the loser out and the MC took his place once again to announce the winner.

  “They don’t waste time, do they?” I asked, eyeing the efficient way they cleared the floor.

  “It’s crowd control, gotta keep it moving otherwise they’ll get restless.”

  “Next up, we’ve got a treat for you!” the MC’s voice boomed from four portable speakers set up outside each corner of the makeshift boxing ring. “Straight out of High Desert State Prison, please welcome a newcomer to the ranks of the underground, Ghost!”

  I rolled my eyes at the theatrics and peeled off my shirt, tossing it to Sawyer before stepping into the cage. Without my permission, my eyes found Ellis again, only this time she was staring right back at me. I wasn’t prepared for the way my heart started pounding and my palms slicked with sweat. We were so close, maybe fifteen, twenty feet apart. After all this time, she was there, but still just as out of reach as before.

  The smug suit next to her, Tony I guessed, must’ve noticed our connection because he snatched a fistful of her hair and leaned in close, whispering something in her ear. Something inside me clicked on and the urge to climb the sides of the cage and cave his skull in consumed my every thought.

  I paced, watching the scene play out and knowing I couldn’t do anything about it, not yet. Marco appeared at Tony’s side and bent down to tell him something, it must’ve been important because he released Ellis and followed Marco into the swell of spectators. With Ellis safe for the time being, I let instinct take over as my opponent entered the cage to a thunderous roar from the crowd.

  We circled each other, getting a feel for the other’s style before the real action started. He had at least six inches and a good sixty pounds on me, but his footwork was clumsy and I could tell by his stance that he was used to taking down his opponents with brute strength rather than any sort of finesse.

  Ready to get this thing over with, I feigned with my left and t
hrew a right hook, the punch landing squarely on his jaw. The connection sent a painful shock reverberating up my arm, but I shook it off. A single punch wasn’t going to take the giant down, but it sure as hell made him mad. All pretenses gone, he lowered his head and charged toward me.

  Sawyer was right, the fucker was slow.

  I sidestepped him at the last minute, his momentum propelling him into the fencing as I bounced on my toes a few feet away. He came at me again and again, but each time, I managed to slip out of the way at the last second, landing a few carefully placed blows in between.

  He showed more stamina than I’d originally anticipated, but I was in far better shape and had more than a few street fights under my belt. He got in a few solid punches and one vicious elbow to the face, but for every one shot he managed to land, I got in another five. A brutal blow to the temple sent him staggering to the side, his feet tangled beneath him, sending his large frame to the ground like a felled tree.

  I was on him in seconds, raining blow after blow down on his face. Only, it wasn’t the big Samoan guy beneath me anymore, it was Tony. It was his blood painting my hands, his garbled moans that filled my ears, his bones crunching beneath my fists.

  Hands gripped my biceps, dragging me off the man’s limp body. It took me a second to realize what was going on and stop fighting back. The red haze of rage dissipated and the sound of a thousand screaming voices registered as I got to my feet. I found Ellis’s eyes as the MC lifted my arm in the air, announcing my victory to the already ravenous crowd.

  Ellis had never been squeamish, but I expected a trace of fear or at least some uncertainty in her gaze after watching me beat a man half to death—hell, I’d scared myself there for a minute—but there was no hesitation in the way she looked at me. The anxiety I’d had about seeing her again melted away, and I knew in that moment without a doubt, that she was still mine just as much as I was still hers.

  CHAPTER 4

  Ellis

  House music pumped through the sound system as we lounged in the VIP section of Tony’s favorite new club. There was always a hot new club to check out in Vegas. Promoters tried to play up the unique experience of each club, but when it came down to it, they were all the same. They all had the same thumping electro-dance music, the same laser lights and fog machines, the same tired cocktail waitresses and the same douchey mixologists.

  Despite having been one of those tired cocktail waitresses when Tony wormed his way into my world, clubbing wasn’t really my style. There were too many people, just a sea of sweaty bodies gyrating up against each other while migraine inducing techno blasted at a deafening decibel. I was definitely more comfortable in jeans at a house party than I’d ever be all dressed up at the most talked about club on the strip.

  Of course, since Tony had dropped all pretenses of being a decent human, I didn’t get a vote anymore. I wore what he picked out for me, went where he took me, did what he told me to, and spoke only when instructed. I was a puppet in his demented game.

  “The bottle service at this place sucks, why do we keep coming here?” Callie complained loudly, lounging beside me on a wide velvet couch.

  “You could always go home,” Tony said smoothly, lifting a glass of ridiculously expensive champagne to his lips.

  Callie pretended like she was thinking about it, tapping her pursed lips with one perfectly manicured French tip. “I could, but then I wouldn’t get to hang with my bestie. You’ve been keeping her all to yourself lately, I miss my girl!” she said, wrapping her arms around me in an awkward hug for emphasis.

  Tony didn’t have a snide retort at the ready and instead turned his attention to his phone, giving me a brief reprieve from his watchful eye.

  I smiled at my best friend, the only lifeline I still had to the outside world. In spite of his best efforts, Tony hadn’t managed to scrape Callie off yet. I had a distinct feeling there were two reasons he’d failed at this task, the first being the fact that she was Marco’s cousin and the second being that there was zero chance in hell she’d go quietly. If Callie was an expert at anything, it was causing a scene.

  “Ugh, I have to pee again. Come with me?” Callie asked, standing up and taking my hand.

  “No,” Tony said, his fingers wrapping around my other wrist.

  Callie shot a confused look at him, even though I knew she saw what was happening clear as day. “Chill, Tone Tone. We’re girls, we go to the bathroom together, it’s like a thing,” she said with a sickly-sweet smile.

  I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Tony hated that nickname, which is exactly why Callie insisted on using it. I wasn’t sure why she was pushing the issue, but if I had to guess I would say it had something to do with Nix being back. I was still reeling from seeing him in the pit earlier and I needed to talk it out with my girl, and find out what she knew about it.

  Tony lifted his chin at one of his guards, Drake. “Go with them.”

  He nodded, stepping back and allowing us to lead the way through the packed club. Drake stayed close as Callie and I weaved our way through the scantily clad bodies dry humping on the dance floor.

  “These lines take forever. Like, we get it, big bathrooms with a ton of stalls are tacky AF, but how the fuck are you going to put six single bathrooms in a place that’s supposed to hold like hundreds of people. Just tons of people double-fisting drinks and six goddamn bathrooms. It doesn’t make any sense,” Callie blathered on as we came to the mouth of the hallway that led to the bathrooms.

  The line, already at least twenty people deep, inched forward and Callie moved on from her bathroom politics tirade. “Ugh, I’ve been so bloated lately. I swear to Christ it’s like the red sea between my legs right now. How can one person bleed so much and still live? And the blood clots—ohmigod—they’re HUGE!” She groaned and rubbed her stomach for emphasis.

  “Um, uh, I’m going to wait by the bar,” Drake said, backing away.

  “Whatever,” Callie said, absently waving a hand in his direction.

  I watched Drake get consumed by the mob of dancers on the way to the bar. When I was sure he wasn’t coming back, I turned to Callie to find out what the fuck was going on. I’d known her long enough to tell when she was trying to divert attention, something was up and I was sick of being in the dark.

  “What the—”

  She cut me off with a finger in my face as she stared down at her phone. “Hold please.”

  “Now,” she said, grabbing my arm and hauling me down the hall. A blonde in a shiny blue sequined tube dress leaned against the wall at the front of the line and Callie zeroed in on her. “Ohmigod, this is so embarrassing, but can you please, please, please help us out? My friend ate some bad sushi at a buffet and now she has like, super bad diarrhea. Like, for real. Bible, it’s gonna start running down her leg any minute. So, she needs to cut in front of you, you’re cool with that, right?” she asked, not stopping long enough to let the poor girl respond. “Thank you so, so much, you’re a lifesaver, really,” she said, blowing the other girl a kiss as she positioned us in front of the blonde.

  A second later the last bathroom at the end of the hall opened and a man wearing a hoodie stepped out.

  “Go, I’ll wait,” Callie said.

  “But—”

  She rolled her eyes and bent her head to mine. “I can buy you fifteen minutes, max. Make it count,” she whispered, giving me a firm shove.

  I stumbled a little just as the man in the hoodie was passing by, he reached out to steady me and I noticed the clock tattooed on the back of his hand. My head snapped up and I finally got a good look at his face beneath the hood.

  “Sawyer?” I hissed, my head spinning from all the curveballs I’d been thrown in the last twenty-four hours.

  Letting go of my arm, he gave me a half-grin and a wink before hurrying down the hall. Butterflies fluttered in my stomach and my feet moved on their own, propelling me to the door at the end of the hall. Heart racing, I reached out and gripped
the handle, praying I wasn’t wrong about what, or rather who, I’d find inside.

  Turning the handle, I pushed open the door and slipped inside. Leaning against the sink, arms crossed over his chest and apprehension in his eyes, was Nixon Davis. Neither of us moved at first, we simply stared, taking each other in for the first time in years. Unwilling to look away, I reached behind me and flipped the lock on the door.

  A thousand images from the past flashed behind my eyes and I struggled to pluck a single coherent thought out of the chaos in my mind. I’d imagined this moment so many times over the last eight years, what I’d say, what he’d say, and how we would make sense of everything that had happened. I’d broken it all down, painted the perfect picture of our reunion in my head, rehearsed every word, but when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t remember any of it.

  “How are you here right now? Why are you here?” I asked on a whisper. Taking a tentative step forward, I tried to make sense of it all. After so many years, why now?

  Pushing off the counter, he matched my small step. “Sawyer called me, Callie told him you were in trouble, needed a way out.”

  Three feet separated us but it might as well have been the Grand Canyon for as unattainable as he still seemed.

  “So you’re doing this because of Sawyer?” The question came out snarkier than I’d meant it to, but seeing as Nix had been out of prison for almost three years and hadn’t bothered to reach out, I figured he could deal with a little attitude. The familiar anger I’d been living with started to stir within me, but then something unexpected flashed across his face that doused the rage.

  Sorrow.

  “I’m here because you need me. Because I made you a promise and I’ve spent too many years not honoring it,” he said quietly. Swallowing hard, he ran a hand through his hair. “Look, I know I don’t deserve a second chance, that’s not why I’m here. I came back because I had to. I couldn’t stay away knowing you were in trouble.”

  He came back because of obligation?