by Ella James
Another smirk. “Yep. Right downstairs.”
The guys exchange a look at my expense, and I start breathing fast.
Fate is something I’ve spent a lot of time considering. Why was it me and not Laura? Why me and not Lana? Why was it anyone? There were years I spent feeling like I’d find Hansel again. Like it was fated to happen. Those years have been followed by a few I’ve spent telling myself that’s ridiculous. I wanted him, and so I lied to myself. Fate? Fate is nothing more than the occasional favor of probability.
Isn’t it?
“How much does it cost?” I hear myself rasp. One of the bouncers is holding a money bag, and I don’t have cash.
The taller one winks. “It’s free for you, Gretel.”
My head goes cold as the blood drains from my cheeks. I nod once and hurry down the stairs.
CHAPTER THREE
Lucas
This is. For Leah. This fucking. Drunk. Shit. Fighting. For. Leah. I’m. Fucking. Drunk. And. I forgot. No pain. Drunk. Means. No. Pain.
Fuck.
I continue slamming Hank McGillin’s face until I’m bathed in blood. Until my fist feels broken. Until he’s moaning on the floor. Until they haul him off.
I can’t feel the pain the way I want, and so I agree to take the next one, too. Double the winnings.
“Michaellllll Howwwarrrrrdddddddddd!”
I grin.
Fuck me hard—just how I like.
Cause this guy is a motherfuckin’ pro.
*
Leah
He’s holding his own—barely.
The girl beside me screams like she’s being stabbed every time the other guy—Howard—gets a hit. My head throbs. My heart throbs. It feels like this has been going on for hours, although I know it’s probably only ten or fifteen minutes.
Hansel makes contact on the other guy’s side.
Howard strikes out, popping Hansel in his raised forearm.
There’s a brief break in the brawling. Hansel and Howard circle one another. Hansel’s fists are dripping blood. His left eye is swollen almost shut.
Howard backs away, then jumps close for a rib-shot.
Hansel stumbles a little, then straightens up and grins. The crowd cheers, and deep down in my shredded heart, I hate that grin. It’s one I’ve never seen before, and there is nothing good or glad about it. It’s just…pure suffering.
“Does he come here much?” I yell to the bouncing girl beside me.
‘Edgar’ seems to have a lot of fans.
“What?” She glances at me. I see her mouth the words to my question, and I see the understanding on her face as she gets it.
“No.” She shakes her red head. “Never,” she mouths. I can’t hear the word at all, because they’re going again.
Hansel gets him in the belly.
Howard doubles over.
It’s a fake-out. Howard bounces up and smashes his bare fist into Hansel’s temple.
I shriek as Hansel flies back, his shoulders and elbows catching on the rope that lines the ring. He staggers up, and Howard is on him: throwing punches at his chest and sides.
The girl beside me wails.
I can’t even speak as I watch his neck snap back once, twice, three times.
Then he spits out blood and goes for Howard’s throat.
Hansel wrestles the pro fighter to the floor, not via his superior technique, but because he’s fighting dirty. Going for the throat, the eyes, the mouth.
He gets his hands around Howard’s throat and despite Howard hammering away at his chest and sides, Hansel won’t let go.
Howard’s fists get slower, and I start to feel a rush of panic.
A second later, the dinger starts to ding ding ding ding ding ding ding!
“ANNNNNNND THE WINNER IS…EDGAR FROM THE ENCHANTED FOREST PLEASURE CLUB, fighting for The Dave Thomas Foundation!”
I watch in awe and horror as two big men in black pants and gray jackets grab Hansel by his arms and drag him off Howard. He grins a bloody grin and lifts his fist up. Someone puts a giant, gold mug in his other hand, and he wobbles just a little as he climbs out of the ring.
He’s wearing only a pair of black swim-trunk looking shorts. My eyes cling to his broad, blood-streaked back as he’s led around the ring, past a crowd of mostly women congregating in the middle of the fighting arena.
Every move he makes is like a needle poke to my already fragile heart. He rubs his forehead and mine aches. He rolls one shoulder up and leans his ear against it, like his neck is sore. I want to go ask if it is. He stiffens his big body while he poses for a picture with someone, and I watch as a woman in a bikini rushes up and fills his golden mug with liquor.
Hansel.
All I can see from my seat, twenty-something rows up, is his broad back and shoulders, hunched a little as he takes a drink. Another scantily clad woman puts her hand on his shoulder, saying something to him.
Someone turns the music up, and the next pair of fighters enter the ring to less fanfare than Hansel and his opponent. Everyone around the ring is still gathered around him. A third woman is there now, stroking his shoulder, leaning close to whisper in his ear.
So strange to me, seeing him here. Almost stranger than the club, because this place is almost ordinary. It’s hard for me to comprehend that he lives here, that he’s sailed on through time and space, growing, changing, and I should see him in a common place like this.
Every detail of him lights me up inside. The dampness of his hair. In the bright lights of the arena, I can see the subtle wave of it; he wears it short now. How short? My fingers want to feel each little hair. I’m intrigued by his nape: the strength of it. I can see the muscles flexing as he looks down at his drink, occasionally glancing up to say something to a female fan as he and the men in jackets move slowly toward a metal door to the right of the ring. The way he looks up as another woman hands him what looks like a shirt. The way he takes it from her, nodding slightly. His arms are art, the biceps bulging slightly as he pulls the t-shirt on. The elegance of the inside of his elbow; I can feel it deep down in my belly. That part is soft. I remember how soft. His forearms are flawless; where they were lean and lightly muscled when I knew him, now they’re taut and hard. His hands. What to say about the beauty of a man’s hands? And those are my man’s hands.
Another woman drapes an arm around him, and my body burns. It’s as if my lies—the lies I told myself tonight—are seeping out my pores.
That I don’t want him.
That I don’t need him.
That I could forget him.
This man is mine. No one else’s. Only mine.
I watch his eyes sweep the crowd, as if he hears my thoughts and wants to find me.
He wraps his arm around the woman’s waist, rocking his hips slightly against her. Then he moves her arm off him and walks toward the metal door.
I watch him hungrily, wanting him so much it hurts.
At that moment, he falls.
CHAPTER FOUR
Leah
The second he hits the floor, everything is pandemonium.
The crowd around him is shooed away, and those referee-looking people in the black pants and gray jackets swarm him while the crowd around me, in the built-in bleachers, goes insane.
I quickly notice that the guy, Howard, is still lying on the mat, surrounded by support staff and someone in a medic vest.
My eyes fly between Hansel’s body and the man in the vest, who ducks out of the ring and sprints toward Hansel.
I start to sweat. My heart races. I can’t gulp down enough air, so my head spins.
Why isn’t he moving? What the hell happened?
Everyone is hissing, whispering. Their chatter rises to a dull roar, and I want to scream.
My legs move on their own, carrying me to the stairs, where my feet fly. I’m pushing people out of the way to get down to him, and when my feet finally hit the smooth cement of the lowest level and I lock my eyes on him, someone grabs
my elbow.
“Hang on a second! Who the fuck are you?” a male voice asks. My eyes collide with angry brown ones half a second later. It’s one of those referee people in the jackets, looking at me like he thinks he’s going to have to Mace me.
“Let go!” I throw his hand off my arm. “I’m his sister! What’s going on with Edgar?” It pops out so easily, so naturally. As I try to push past the barrier of the man’s arms, he locks his eyes onto mine, assessing.
“Sister, what’s your name?”
“Leah,” I cry. “What’s wrong with him?”
He rolls his eyes, and then we’re striding side-by-side toward Hansel. He’s lying on the ground, turned on his side, and I can see a tiny pool of blood below him.
“Shit,” I cry as I sink to my knees behind the row of fight staff.
I reach between the bodies crowded around him so I can touch his arm. I flatten my palm against his skin and drag it gently down the inside of his forearm, the way I always used to when I wanted to comfort him from the other side of the wall. His eyelids flutter in response.
“Don’t know what’s going on,” the guy beside me says. “We’ve called an ambulance.”
“No.” I jump as Hansel we wrenches his upper body off the cement floor. “No—” I see blood drip from right behind his ear, where it runs down his nape. He coughs into his hand. “No hospital.” He pulls himself full up into a sitting position and looks woozily around. “I got…a car,” he rasps. “I’m…fine.”
He looks like a liar. His face is stark white, his hazel eyes appearing almost brown. The left one is ringed by various shades of purple and black, and swollen half-shut. His mouth is bleeding, and his cheek is bruised up by his temple.
“I can drive.” He slurs the last word.
“I don’t think so,” one of the guards says sternly. “I’m an EMT and I can see you’re either drunk or suffering the side-effects of a concussion, sir. You were hit repeatedly in the head and chest. You need to take it easy till the ambulance arrives.” The EMT raises his brows at me, and I nod quickly.
Hansel’s eyes roll back a little in his head, but he manages to shift his shoulders, and his gaze, my way. When he sees my face, his eyes bulge. “Leah?” I watch a shudder ripple through his arms and chest. His face loses a little more of its color, and for a moment, his lips tremble. “Leah?” He swallows one time; twice. “Leah?” he whispers. He looks around, at all the people crowded around him, then back at his lap before he lifts his eyes to me. “Leah—help.”
My whole body heats. I push through two of the men around him and look into his eyes, search for the echo of significance of what he just said—my name—but his eyes are wide and glossy, panicked.
“Leah.” He grabs onto me, and shocks me by getting on his hands and knees and standing slowly up. I rise with him, reaching for him as he wraps his long fingers around my arm. “No…hospital. Just need…to sleep it off,” he says, looking around him—but his words are slurred.
“You may have a concussion,” one of them reiterates.
He rasps out a laugh. “I’ve got…no concussion.” He squints a little as his hand squeezes my arm. “I’m just…fuckin’ drunk.”
He starts moving, dragging me behind him, as we head toward a pair of metal doors topped by an EXIT sigh. He doesn’t turn to look at me again as we move, his hand tugging my arm. I move in front of him to hold the door open, and when we step through it, into a hallway that runs underneath the bleachers, toward the building’s edge, he stops and looks down at me.
His eyes are wide and a little confused, as if he knows I’m someone significant, but isn’t sure who.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Leah?” he chokes.
“Yeah.” Tears fill my eyes. His face swims.
His arms lock around me, and he’s leaning on me heavily. “Leah.” He wraps his arms around me, cradling my head. “Where’d you come from, Leah?” His voice breaks a little at the end—because he’s drunk, emotional, or both?
“I’m here in Vegas for my sister’s wedding,” I hear myself say.
He inhales. Exhales. I can’t see his face because he’s got it buried in my hair. “You smell…like you,” he whispers.
I tuck one hand behind his head, stroking his damp hair as I inhale. My heart beats hard. “You smell like you,” I tell him back. He doesn’t move for a long time, and I don’t either. Tears drip down my face as I hold his warm, strong body. I’ve missed him since Monday. But Monday wasn’t like this. He wasn’t calling me by my name. I love to hear him say my name.
I wrap one arm a little tighter around his back, because he’s shaking.
“Hey?” His name is on my lips, but I don’t know what he wants to be called. Maybe being called ‘Hansel’ bothers him, so I avoid it. “Are you okay?” He’s leaning on me pretty heavily, and his breathing seems a little fast.
“Hey…” I tilt his head up and come face-to-face with wild eyes. “Hey.” I cup his cheek. He’s bloody; bruised and fierce. I forgot his eye was swollen, but now that I see it, I realize how banged up he really is.
“Do you feel okay?” I ask. My hand moves to clasp his.
The hand I’m holding is the one with the scar on it. I remember what he told me about how he got to Mother. How he slit his wrist, and when he was out of it, drugged up, his adoptive family gave him to her.
God, of course he hates the hospital.
His eyes hold mine. He licks his lips. One side is puffy and bleeding. “I’m a-right. Just…drunk.”
And that he is. I wrap my arm around him, and we step out into one of the parking lots. An attendant comes up, asking for our receipt, but Hansel doesn’t have it. Somehow he produces his keys. He holds them out to me.
“You can drive,” he whispers.
I hold his hand, and his hand squeezes mine.
They go and get his car, and I can feel him swaying a little.
I stroke the top of his hand, and he groans. “Leah.”
A black Range Rover—Land Rover? I’m never sure the difference—rolls to a stop in front of us.
I lean my head against his arm. “Is this your car?”
He nods, then winces, as if the motion hurt.
I open his door for him and tip the valet, and he hoists himself in, moving as if he’s being careful. I wonder why he drank so much. Is it his habit, like my pills were?
I walk around to the driver’s side and take out my phone. I punch in The Enchanted Forest, and the address comes up.
He leans back against the seat, his hands in his lap, his eyes shut.
I note the classical music on the radio and turn it down a little. Nothing to make you feel dizzy and ultra drunk like shrill string instruments.
We’re caught in traffic on The Strip. He peeks his eyes open and looks up at me. He angles his big body toward me and blinks at me a few times. His eyes are practically rolling in his head.
“Are you…okay…Leah?” His hand grasps at my elbow. “You…okay?”
“Yeah. I’m okay. Are you okay?”
One arm goes over his stomach and his eyes leave mine, returning abruptly to the road. “I don’t know,” he says roughly.
“Did you drink too much?”
“Yeah. I don’t ever drink,” he says. He takes a deep, unsteady breath, then looks at me as if there’s something more he wants to tell me.
“If you feel sick, tell me, okay? I can pull over.”
He puts a hand to his head.
I reach over and twine my hand through his free one, stroking his fingers as I drive. His fingers stroke mine back.
“Leah,” he whispers, his eyes still closed. His fingers on mine still.
“Yeah?” I squeeze his hand, hoping to ground him.
His eyes flutter open. “They’re you,” he whispers to the silence.
My heart slows. “Who is me?”
He swallows as he draws one leg up to his chest, wrapping an arm around it as he lays his head against his knee.
/> “Too much vodka,” he moans. He releases my hand, and raises his to clutch his head.
I’m going to ask him if he feels sick when he looks up, again, at me. “You’re beautiful,” he tells me. “They’re all you.”
“Who’s me?”
“The subs.” His leg drops back to the floor, and his head sinks back to the headrest. “I’m sorry, Leah. I’m so fuckin’…drunk.”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about me. I’m here, and I’ve got you, and we’re going to your house.”
“Not my house…because echoes. Numb. An I don’…like it. Want to feel…it hurt. ’S the only way.”
“Hansel?” I whisper. I’m worried he really does have a concussion. What the hell does any of that mean?
His eyelids crack open. “Hansel…” He squints. “Not my name.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. “What’s your name?”
He doesn’t reply, just sits there very still, his shoulders almost wider than the seat, his thick arms in his lap, I wonder if I made a mistake taking him away from the ambulance. I feel better when, a half mile or so from the Forest, he looks over at me.
“You don’t have to take me, group home’s got some spaces. You’re too young, remember?”
My heart clenches. What is he talking about?
“You said you’re too young to be my mom?”
“I’m not your mom,” I whisper.
“I know.” He sighs, bringing a hand up to cup his face. “No one is.”
Holy shit. I can’t believe he’s saying this. He never talked about this when we shared the wall. As theories about his words fly through my mind, I grapple for a response.
“Everybody has a mother,” say gently, finally.
“I don’t.” He looks at my face, and when his gaze meets mine, his brows furrow. He shakes his head. He holds his stomach. “I feel…sick.”
“Do you need me to pull over? Can you make it another quarter of a mile?”
He doesn’t answer or even look at me, but he grabs onto my knee with his big hand, holding like he’s afraid I’ll leave. He leans against the side of his seat and holds onto me till we arrive at the club.
