“I know, sugar. Fuck, I know.” He turned and started walking, his tread jerky, as though he wanted to hurry and was holding himself back, sending shock waves down my arm with each step. I cradled it in my good arm, begging for the pain to resign, reaching for the dull ache laying behind it. It wasn’t as bad as it had been, but it was fresh and I was, bizarrely, missing the familiarity of the old pain. It had stolen my breath away and turned me into a teary mess, but I was supposed to feel it. This new pain was cruel because I should have felt relief. Not this.
Luke slid me into the backseat of his haphazardly parked truck and mercifully climbed in next to me. I scooted as close to him as possible in the cramped space back there, laying my head on his shoulder and breathing in deep, inhaling the smell of him, committing it to memory to drown out the memory of this. Theo climbed into the driver’s seat a second later and reached down into the passenger side floorboard for something. After a second of searching, he pulled out a pill bottle and passed it back.
“Morphine,” he explained to Luke as he put the truck in gear. “Give her half now. You guys don’t want to know what I did to get this.”
“Did it involve a fat chick?” I rasped out.
Next to me, Luke gave a startled laugh as he pulled out a water bottle from a duffel bag in the floor near our feet.
“Hefty, darlin’, but yes. Her size wasn’t the problem. She was a clinger. Had some daddy issues.”
“All the best ones do,” I replied weakly, taking the half pill and water from Luke and swallowing them both quickly, desperate for the relief they would bring.
It was silent for a moment, everybody lost in their own thoughts. Next to me, Luke was shaking slightly.
“How do you know it was Johnson?” I finally asked, already feeling the effects of the morphine that fast. Nice little pill.
“He wanted me to throw the fight,” Luke replied darkly and I glanced up at his face to see a storm brewing there. “But he’s too much of a chickenshit to come out himself. He sent someone to do it for him. Wonder where he learned that from?” He shook his head, rage rolling off him in waves. “He’s a dirty motherfucking bastard and I’m going to kill him.”
“You know you can’t do that,” Theo said quietly from the front seat. “The only thing you can do is give him hell when you get in the ring with him.”
“Why not?” I demanded. “Why can’t he kill him? I want to kill him.” Mmm. Good pill.
“Because, darlin’, we don’t have a lot of rules, but murder is looked down on. Even in our world.”
“It’s a stupid world then.” I let my eyes slide closed, my head feeling like it was slowly being stuffed with cotton. Sweet pill with its sweet cotton-stuffing relief. “What good is being criminals if you can’t even kill a man?”
“No wonder you like her,” Theo said to Luke. “She’s a brutal little thing.”
Luke rumbled his agreement, his arms coming up around me, minding my still-throbbing shoulder, pulling me into him and squeezing tight, but my mind wasn’t on him for the first time in weeks. It was on Johnson, whom I didn’t know and who didn’t know me, but still sent someone out to pass a physical message to Luke. While we hadn’t been introduced, he had just ensured he’d get to know me. Real fast.
Chapter Thirteen
The call came a week later.
I could tell the moment Luke got the news, just by his “Uh-huhs” and “Yeps.” He kept shooting looks at me, as if he was waiting for me to make the connection and have an outburst, my hate for his profession having skyrocketed again, but the dread coiling up in my stomach like a heavy weight rendered me speechless. I had gone to one other fight with him since that first one and had watched him train endlessly, but seeing him in the ring, him getting hit, that was different. That was something I couldn’t swallow.
When he finally hung up, he watched me with wary eyes as I struggled to process my warring emotions. On one hand, I wanted this. I wanted him to go, I wanted him to kick Johnson’s ass, and I wanted to see my revenge handed out as I looked on in approval. On the other hand, this was Luke. It would be Luke between those cracked posts, Luke circling the canvas. Luke dodging hits and taking them. And it would be me there watching, waiting, praying, like my ma before me. I wasn’t supposed to be her, and yet there I was, standing next to my man as he got the call that would put us in some undisclosed location, surrounded by others who were praying for mine to lose.
How did I end up here?
It took me a few minutes, but finally I nodded.
“I’m calling Jax,” I told him in a strained voice. “See if he can leave work and go.”
Luke nodded but didn’t look pleased with my announcement. Ever since the night of the Halloween party, Jax and he had been strained at best. Luke was having an increasingly difficult time believing everything was strictly platonic between Jax and me. Jax, from the few things he’d said when I actually saw him, was having an increasingly difficult time with Luke period. Because of this, Jax had been spending a lot of time away from the apartment—where, I didn’t know, since Luke was always there. I had wondered on more than one occasion if it would be kinder, better, of me to stay at Luke’s place so Jax could come home and not have to deal with Luke’s snide comments and outright hostility, but the apartment was mine, despite Luke’s being nicer. I couldn’t bring myself to give it up.
None of that mattered tonight though. Not the strained friendship or the confrontations or backbiting. If I was gonna do this, if I was going to sit in the seat my ma once sat in and watch as Luke played the role of my da, I wanted Jax there for it.
After he agreed to be there, no hesitation on his part at all, I hung up and wandered back to my bedroom to get ready. Luke made his way in and sat on my bed, watching me slip into a slinky red dress that felt more like a funeral shroud.
“It’s gonna be fine.” His dark hair fell forward into his eyes as he bent his head and lit his cigarette, then he leaned back, blowing the smoke toward my ceiling. “Johnson hasn’t beat me yet.”
“Yeah?” I heard myself snap and I wanted to cringe but not really. Not with so many feelings assaulting me at once. More than anything, I wanted a target. “Then why train like he has?”
“Because he’s been training to beat me.”
While I saw the logic of it, understood that not training wasn’t an option, it still chafed.
“What happens if you don’t show?” I asked after a few silent, tense seconds, and Luke sighed, lying down completely and scrubbing at his face with the hand not holding his cigarette.
“I forfeit. Theo possibly loses the gym. Brandon and Cam are out of jobs. Lot of people lose a lot of money. Including me. We all have jobs, Bri. And there’s consequences if we don’t do them.”
I scowled. I knew where money fell in the scheme of things. At the top of the list. It always did. Not just with Luke, but with everyone. Everyone but me and Jax, it seemed.
“I piss off a lot of people who could make life difficult,” he continued. “It’s a nonissue though. I show up. That’s what I do. I show up and I win and everyone goes home happy.”
“Except for Johnson,” I pointed out, then cringed, because if I didn’t know any better, I could almost hear an undercurrent of anxiety in my voice.
“Except for him,” Luke agreed. “And that’s the goal. For him and the ones who bet on him to go home pissed off.”
If that was what happened, I could get on board with it. I wanted Johnson pissed too. Pissed and bleeding, preferably in a white, sterile room with machines beeping in the background.
Just before seven—the fight was scheduled to start at eight—we left the apartment for the warehouse in Old Town where it would take place. I spent the ride strumming my fingers against the window, the dash, the console, anywhere my hand came to rest until, finally, Luke reached over and caught my
hand in his. He didn’t give me pretty words or empty reassurances, but he gave himself, and in that moment that was all I needed. Near the warehouse, Luke pointed things out to me. Places I had seen before, but never thought of as potential places to hide should the police or DEA make an unwanted appearance.
“Does that happen a lot?” I asked after the fourth or fifth potential bug out route.
“Enough. We got people inside though. They usually tip us off in time.”
I frowned, thinking back to a time when my knees were still knobby and my little girl legs swung from a chair, toes barely skimming the floor. It had happened back then too, of course—it kinda went with the territory—but it hadn’t happened often.
“Who’s the mole?” I asked and Luke gave me a suspicious look that grew more pointed, as if to say, “Think about it.” I did. Hard. And I had nothi—
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “Chase?”
Luke’s silence was confirmation enough. My head spun, remembering that very first night. Remembering his words not long after.
He arranges for me to pay Callahan a visit.
Holy. Shit.
My jaw dropped as a piece to the puzzle I hadn’t even known existed clicked into place. That would mean that Chase—Chase, whom I’d known for years as a simple piano player, whom I saw almost nightly—worked for the suits, either local or federal. It had been a cover. His piano playing, his singing that had always left much to be desired, it all had been a cover. And if Luke was sent to “pay him a visit” and Joshua King had been the one to send him—
“Then that means that Joshua—” I started and Luke squeezed my hand hard.
“It means nothing,” he said quickly, firmly, in a voice dripping with authority. “Forget that, Bri. For fuck’s sake, you forget that right now. You cannot act like you know that.” The streetlights we passed underneath threw half his face in a warm glow while keeping the other half in shadow.
My mind was whirling, spinning in roughly eight different directions. All this time the two things I’d been desperate to avoid—cops and boxing—I’d been smack-dab in the middle of, surrounded.
Unbelievable.
I could practically hear my da chuckling that low, sadistic laugh of his as though he had personally been pulling the strings all this time, a deranged puppet master controlling a show.
Luckily, I didn’t have much time to dwell on any of it, though I was sure I would later. Luke pointed out our destination, then drove a block farther on, where he parked. I called Jax and discovered he was already in the warehouse, waiting for us, the background loud with the voices of others waiting with him.
When I hung up and started to open my door, Luke stopped me with a hand on my wrist.
“Listen,” he said, and I was struck by the dark undercurrent I could just make out lurking in his voice. It reminded me of those first few encounters, the thing that had attracted me in the first place. “When this is going on, I want you to stick close to Jax. Just do that for me, okay? And if anything does happen, run. I’ll catch up to you.”
I stared hard at him for a minute, searching those whiskey eyes for answers and the questions that went with them. They weren’t there, or if they were, they were so deeply hidden I couldn’t find them.
“What the hell are you worried about?” I asked him quietly.
“I got a feeling, sugar.”
“A bad one?” My nose wrinkled with distaste.
He shrugged. “A feeling is all it is. I’d keep you ringside with Theo if it didn’t draw attention. Since it will, stick close to your boy.” He scowled deeply. “Just tell him to keep his damn hands to himself.”
I didn’t even bother trying to correct him.
We walked the block to the gym in relative silence and Luke deposited me with Jax before going off to get ready with his team. I watched him until his back disappeared from view, then turned to Jax.
“Thanks for doing this,” I told him, meaning it.
His troubled eyes found mine and he gave me a cheap imitation of his usual smile.
“You asked me,” he said simply. “Of course I was going to come.” He grinned a little wider. A little closer to the real thing. “Plus there’s the remote possibility Luke might get his ass kicked, and though I bet on him, I wouldn’t mind losing money that way.”
I felt myself cringe, and an apologetic look flashed across his face, but he didn’t take it back. Because we never took things back. We never apologized to each other. We never had to before now. Even if he was going to apologize, if he was going to pop our cherry and do it, he didn’t get the chance. Luke’s name was being called out by a guy straddling the ring’s ropes. The crowd, a rougher bunch by far than the ones I’d been in lately, erupted in cheers.
“And the challenger, Tim Johnson!”
Half the crowd cheered, the other half booed and jeered. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I threw my voice in with the latter half.
I could feel Jax’s curious eyes on me and I shrugged.
“Like riding a bike,” I informed him once everyone had quieted.
He nodded once, a strange looking stealing over his face before he turned his attention back to the ring.
I turned mine to Luke.
Even after watching him train as often as I had, I wasn’t prepared for this Luke. This oiled-up, fierce guy who was having his hands taped and listening closely to whatever Cam was saying to him. And while I’d seen him naked often enough to map his body from memory, the sight of him bare-chested, his abs slick and glistening in the makeshift spotlights, was a new level of intimacy. One I was sharing with roughly 150 others. The feral, untamed side of me was snarling “mine,” and the rest of me agreed with it. He was mine. Every rippling, sinful inch of him.
I wanted—no, needed—to be closer, close enough that I could reach out and touch him, but I knew, instinctively, I should stay back. A distraction, even a minor one, could be the difference between a miss and a knockout, and I wanted—needed—Johnson to be the one knocked out. For now. At least until I could extract my own punishment.
There were no refs tonight. Underground there was no need for them. Rules didn’t exist here, only suggestions, and even those weren’t followed most of the time. Instead the announcer would call the fight while running commentary.
I hated, despised, loathed his next words.
“To the center, boys!”
Once again the crowd erupted in cheers. This time I didn’t join them. My heart sped up and, without thinking, I reached for Jax with one hand and a cross that had never been around my neck with the other.
“Tap gloves!”
Tap his face.
“All right. Keep it classy, fellas. There’s ladies in the crowd.”
Luke’s eyes searched out mine and when he found them, he held them for a second.
Kill him.
He nodded, understanding, and once again faced Johnson, he of the buzz cut and smarmy smile.
A bell rang out somewhere and I forgot how to breathe for a minute, my breath catching painfully in my lungs. And then Luke was moving, and I remembered how to again.
Luke wasted no time. He was everywhere. Muhammad Ali had nothing on my man as he floated and stung, impossibly fast and wickedly accurate. He put Johnson on the defensive immediately and kept him there, his steps light and sure, his aim true every time. I could see, within the first couple of minutes, that Johnson was good, capable, but he was no match for Luke, who was better plus determined and vengeful. No mere jabs were thrown. Every hit was a power-packed punch, the wrath of an angry god behind them. Luke had a reason to win that Johnson didn’t, and she was currently up on her tiptoes screaming his name in a chant with the others.
Destroy him.
Johnson might have been a decent enough fighter, but my boy built coffins
.
The crowd was still yelling, screaming, feet pounding, yet I was able to tune them all out completely, hearing only the dull thuds of gloves striking flesh, bare feet coming down on the worn canvas, the grunts of the losing, the harsh breaths of the winning. The only things that existed were me and them. Everyone else wasn’t real. Couldn’t be real. Nothing was as real as this was. The rest were specters, there but not.
Luke reared back and I knew, I knew, the crowd was going to be pissed because this would be the knockout punch. Some would win and some would lose, but everyone would be upset over the short victory. Because this one, this hit, would do an already bloody and staggering Johnson in. Johnson knew it too. Before Luke could deliver, Johnson rushed forward on stumbling, unsteady feet and locked him up.
The crowd crept back in, flooding my senses with the smells of their cheap perfumes and knockoff colognes and the sound of their enraged shouts. I threw in with them, cursing the cowardly move that only the pathetic and desperate would even think of pulling.
I wanted to hurt him myself.
I started forward, brushing Jax’s startled hand off me, intent on doing something. I wanted to teach this coward a lesson. I wasn’t content to sit back and allow someone else to do it for me. Not only had he had me followed, had me attacked, but now he refused to accept his fate. Refused to go down like he should. I was my own avenging angel and I would see to it that he would fall.
Luke tried to shake him off, but Johnson, not a little guy himself, held tight. Luke was getting frustrated, rearing back, attempting to lash out with his feet where his hands weren’t able to, but Johnson evaded each kick. The crowd voiced their displeasure louder. I pushed through them harder, shouldering my way at times, until I was only two rows deep, close enough I could almost smell the baby oil on Luke’s skin. Now that I was there, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do, short of jumping in the ring and fighting myself. I hadn’t completely ruled it out.
I never got the opportunity.
Just as Luke was able to free one of his arms and was rearing back, a panicked voiced screamed out, just slightly above the din, “Fuzz!”
Wild Ones (The Lane) Page 13
