Oh, now he’d fucking done it.
“Jax is not a punk, you piece of shit. He shouldn’t have said a damn thing to you but don’t you dare say one fucking negative thing about him. Got it, bitch?”
I figured the bitch would push him over the edge, and I was waiting excitedly at the bottom to pounce, but if anything, he eased a little, slipping back and staring down at me.
“You’re infuriating,” he said quietly. “I don’t know why I do this with you. You drive me fucking nuts.”
“Likewise.”
Without another word, he grabbed me by my shoulders and hauled me up against him. He still hadn’t put on a shirt, and though he’d wiped off most of the oil, traces were still there and I could feel it against my skin, caressing my cleavage and palms as I slid them up to wrap around his neck. His shorts were silk against my bare legs, and I shivered as he framed my face, teasing the hair at the nape of my neck with his fingertips. The look he gave me was scorching in its intensity, through my clothes, past my skin, down to my bones, warming them.
“I love you,” he burned against my lips as he brought his mouth down to mine, and I froze with the words. I could tell he felt it by the way his grip tightened on my cheeks. “I fucking love you, Bri. I don’t even give a shit if you don’t love me back. But I love you and hearing what your boy said you went through made me crazy angry.”
I nodded against him, and before he could say another word, I tipped forward and smashed my mouth against his, using my lips to proclaim what I felt for him. It wasn’t love, not quite, but it was almost there and it was desperate and I didn’t know how to put it into words. It was the back and forth of him, the hot and cold, it made me crazy, made me feel crazy, and sanity never felt more pointless than when I was with him. He was poison and a cure and I wanted him all the time and hated him occasionally and sometimes it was all at once, which just made me want him more.
I never did tell him it back in the time between then and now, through two rounds of sex—once on the couch and another tripping down the hallway back to his room—and true to his word, he hadn’t brought it up, hadn’t pressed me to say it. I was glad, relieved. On top of everything else that had happened, that was one thing I really didn’t want to address, had no desire to talk about. I wasn’t sure if I even believed in love, not really. Not like that. Yet I felt something for Luke. Something strong, possessively strong. Something hot and desperate that left me aching when he wasn’t near.
“Brandon hates me,” I announced after a long stretch of silence, silence during which I caught him slipping from the present and stepping into the recent past, replaying the half-finished fight, catching us both off guard. I wasn’t sure where it had come from, wasn’t sure how I jumped from thinking about love to Brandon’s hatred.
Luke didn’t try to reassure me.
“Brandon hates everyone. Most of the time I think he hates himself. Probably because he’s so fucking ugly.”
“I heard him when we were leaving. How he thinks you should stay away from me.” I’d been walking only feet ahead of them with Theo, despite how much I ached to be next to Luke as we trekked through the tree line to the side street where our vehicles were parked. I didn’t tell Luke how it made anxiety spike through me, how badly I wanted to whirl around and protest, but the need to eavesdrop was stronger, how just the thought of Luke not being around was enough to throw me into a panic attack, something I had no prior knowledge of. I didn’t tell him these things because I was ashamed of them, no matter how true they were.
Luke glanced over at me, his face blank as if he could read my thoughts.
“Then you heard what I said,” he replied lowly, his eyes roaming over my face. I wondered if he could see the lingering panic I could still feel etched there. I nodded. He’d told him to fuck off, something that washed me in relief.
“I meant it,” he promised. “Brandon. Jax, they can all kiss my ass. We don’t have to listen to them. Any of them fuckers.” His eyes darted back to the wall over my shoulder and I knew he was running through the fight from earlier, examining it from different angles, preparing for next time.
“They’ll try to make us break it off,” I pressed, rising up on an elbow and leaning toward him. Maybe I just wanted to hear those words again even if I was reluctant to say them myself.
His eyes flitted to mine and held them, and I was struck again by that desperate need for this boy. He smiled, slowly, all teeth, and I shuddered.
“It doesn’t matter what they want,” he said, his voice was low, rough, and it slid over my skin, making me shiver. “They can say whatever. We don’t have to listen.”
I nodded. I wouldn’t. Not when it came to Luke. The others had no idea. They couldn’t begin to understand.
“Will you, though?” I forced myself to ask, because I needed to know.
“What?”
“Listen. Eventually.”
He gave me a scorching look before reaching up and cupping the back of my neck, dragging me down to him.
“Not to them,” he said against my lips. Then his mouth slanted under mine and he was stealing the breath from my lungs like the sweetest kind of thief.
* * *
We were woken up a few hours later by a phone ringing, and I went from being mostly asleep to painfully alert. Luke’s voice was groggy as he answered, and I listened close, my stomach clenching when I heard Theo’s voice on the other end. I knew. I knew I knew I knew. This was it. There would be a rematch. There would have to be. Too many people had shown up to not be satisfied. Too many people had lost too much money. They had to have their chance to make it back from the blood my boy shed.
When Luke hung up, he reached for me and I reached back, closing the little bit of space left between us. I didn’t ask. I didn’t have to. He just nodded grimly, probably knowing what my reaction was going to be.
“Sometime in the next two weeks,” he told me, watching me close. “Theo wants me to train double. He thinks Johnson is going to be using the time to up his game.” He gave me a look. “He wants me to avoid any distractions.”
“Don’t tell me,” I muttered. “I’m the distraction.” It stung a little, thinking about it. I liked Theo. Theo seemed to like me. Out of anyone, I thought maybe Theo was on our side. He hadn’t given me a reason to not believe that.
“Understatement,” Luke replied, grinning a little, and even though his words weren’t what I wanted to hear, I felt my chest get warm and achy seeing it on his face.
“Do you think I am?” I pressed, searching his eyes closely, looking for any lies that might be lurking there. His answer wouldn’t matter, not in the scheme of things. I wouldn’t stay away from Luke, even for Luke’s sake.
“Sugar, you distract my entire life. It’s what you do.”
I scowled and leaned away from him. My ma was once a distraction, as well. As were Christian and I. I had heard that too many times growing up to not know what it meant for Luke and me later on down the road.
“But you don’t distract me in the ring. Been doing it too long now. It’s like breathing.”
I sighed, relieved, and allowed myself to be pulled back in his arms. I would never have walked away, sure, but knowing that he, at least, didn’t view me as his downfall changed things. Because his opinion was what mattered. Not enough to give him up, give up this electricity that hummed under my skin whenever he was near, but enough that I didn’t want him thinking it. I could live with being his life distraction—he was mine—but I couldn’t live with knowing that in the ring I was a liability to him. I couldn’t live knowing that one day he would come to resent me for it, might not want me around or hate me when I was.
If history was going to repeat itself, I wanted it to leave out that part so he would never leave me.
Chapter Sixteen
We were back to waiting with heavy
anxiety, though in differing incarnations. It colored our days, painted them in the reds and golds of Luke’s anticipation and the black and grays of my dread. It followed us everywhere, stained our daily lives, wrapped itself around our lungs, making it hard to breathe.
Luke spent even more time at the gym, physically and mentally preparing himself to step back into that ring and finish what had been started. I continued to split my time between there and Duke’s, trying and failing to avoid a puppy-dog-eyed Jax, whose relentless apologies came in the form of extra shots on my tray that I didn’t order. I accepted them, even though we never stopped long enough to really hash it out. I knew he wanted to, I could tell by the way he hovered when I loaded my tray, his expression both expectant and mournful, but I was coiled too tight, too full of worry and dread to devote the energy necessary to make things right between us.
I wondered at times—moments between customers and watching Luke train, where everything fell away, leaving me in silence, times when there weren’t enough distractions between me and the crushing anxiety—if my ma had felt the same. Did she know the bitter worry that coated my tongue, making it stiff and swollen in my mouth? The acidic fear that sat like a brick in the pit of my stomach? Or had she waited with Da in a state of enthusiasm and impatience until the night of, when she would magically transform into the quivering, fearful woman who ignored the small children seated next to her while she prayed her sinner’s prayers knee-deep in violence?
My ma had always been an enigma to me, a puzzle I couldn’t solve and wasn’t sure I wanted to. My da had been the easy one, all Irish whiskey and Irish temper, but Ma had never made much sense. But suddenly I wanted to understand her, figure out the woman who gave up everything for the black-haired grizzly of a man who gave her children she never protected from him. Who wouldn’t even marry her. If her path was my path, I wanted to know where exactly it was that she lost herself, if we were doomed to be the same. Was the fault in us or in our stars?
I was all over the place in those waiting days.
Theo suggested a night out, even with all his talk of avoiding distractions. He proposed it as a chance to blow off steam, to get together outside the gym and drink to celebrate an upcoming win and the money that would come from it. I jumped at it, not only to get my mind off everything, but to also help repair the rift with Jax, bring both halves of my life together and hope they found some common ground there. Maybe then I wouldn’t have to be in the position of constantly choosing between them. Maybe I could even go home for more than a few hours before the heavy, awkward atmosphere became too much to function in, and I left to search out Luke, with whom things were easier. Luke wasn’t happy with my decision to invite Jax, but he didn’t fight me on it either. He was quick with the under-the-breath comments, however. Comments I chose to ignore.
We decided, as a group, on the Tap Room because it was neutral ground. Duke’s was mine and Jax’s. The Tap Room was nobody’s. Though, considering what had happened the last time I’d been there, it would have been safe to call it mine and Luke’s. At least the stairwell.
Jax ended up bringing along Aaron, probably as backup, and to begin with, our massive group—Jax, Aaron, Theo, Brandon, Cam, Cam’s girlfriend, Luke and I—got along pretty well. We squeezed into one booth, practically sitting on each other to accomplish it, and informed Fury that we needed him to keep the drinks coming until we said stop. We dominated the jukebox, one of us jumping up after every song, hollering back to the group for requests that kept it playing an endless supply of past and present favorites we could barely hear over the steady stream of laughter and talking.
Cam kept us entertained with stories of Luke’s old fights and training mishaps, Jax and I piping up occasionally with our own stories about working at Duke’s, Aaron chiming in with little details here and there. It was fun and loud and a little messy at times, everyone talking over everyone, hands flying in wild gestures, and it felt like progress. Even if Luke never moved his arm from around my shoulders, where it sat possessively, and he and Jax never made eye contact.
Halfway through the night, Joshua showed up with Rosie on his arm and they made for a table in the corner, where the Tap Room’s owner, the mousy, beady-eyed Ted waited. Rosie barely had an opportunity to wave in our direction as she passed by our booth before Joshua was demanding her attention back to him in an impatient sort of way. I kept my eye on them off and on, watching their interactions when the conversation at our table didn’t demand my attention, because their relationship had always kinda fascinated me. Especially since every time I saw them together, Rosie looked two seconds from passing out from sheer boredom.
I made a comment along those lines to Jax, who was seated across from me, something like, “Man, Rosie always looks like she’s ready to fall asleep when she’s with Joshua, doesn’t she?” and before he could reply, Brandon glanced up from his drink and fixed me with a pointed stare.
“You mean you don’t know?” he asked, something akin to malice in his voice.
I gave him a deadpan look, ready for the bullshit to start. We had been coexisting in the same space so well too.
“Know what exactly?”
He laughed, a bitter, humorless sound that caught the attention of everyone else at the table.
“Your girl Rose used to be with someone else before King came along and snatched her up. She’s little more than ransom.” He glanced at Jax seated next to him out of the corner of his eye. “Know anything about that, Brother Bear?”
Jax shook his head and shot me a look, clearly as confused as I was. As bemused as I felt about what Brandon was saying, the moment Jax’s eyes had met mine made me feel a little lighter, the familiarity in it reaching down in me to loosen whatever it was that ached when I thought about the strain between us.
Rather than continuing, Brandon muttered a “Didn’t think so” and went back to staring at his drink, oblivious to the way everyone aside from Jax, Aaron and me suddenly relaxed, losing the stiff postures I only realized they’d taken while he’d been talking once they were gone.
From somewhere in the past, a ghostly whisper rose up in my head. It sounded a lot like my old English teacher, Mr. Elliott.
“Every man has secret sorrows in which the world knows not.”
Before I realized what I was doing, I was reaching across the table and touching the back of Brandon’s hand, only for him to jerk it away forcefully and glare at me.
“She was yours, wasn’t she?” I looked over at Jax for confirmation and he gave me a quick shoulder spasm that might have been a shrug.
Brandon merely continued to glare at me, but the longer I held it, the more I thought it looked a little sad as well, a little like defeat. Eventually, he looked away, and while he never did reply, I noticed how he took great pains to not look over my shoulder where Rosie sat with Joshua.
The night wore on, the drinks kept coming, and the more Brandon, who had stopped participating in the conversations around him, got in him, the more I saw him casting furtive glances in Rosie’s direction. Finally, tired of seeing them and with enough booze in me that made it seem like a good idea, I nudged Luke, telling him to move. Scooting out of the booth after him, I stood and grabbed my half-full beer before starting to heading toward Rosie’s table. Brandon half rose and, once he realized where I was going, sank back down into his seat, taking a long pull from his own beer. Over my shoulder I flashed him a confident smile, one that had him downing the rest of his drink with a hurried air.
I approached Rosie’s table with a falsely bright smile and no clear goal in my mind. Grabbing an extra chair from a nearby table, I pulled it over between Joshua and Rosie, setting my beer down with a dull slam.
“So, guys. How’s it going?” I asked cheerfully, glancing at each of them in turn. Rosie looked like she was about to birth a kitten, her eyes wide and a little panicky. Joshua simply looked amused. He alway
s did, whenever I saw him, like he was a genuinely happy person. I had always attributed it to how much money his bars brought in on a nightly basis. Now, I wasn’t so sure. It felt more like he was on the verge of laughing at some kind of private joke only he was aware of.
“Brianna,” he replied by way of greeting. He was the only one who ever called me by my full name. “How are you doing this evening?”
“Oh, you know. Same old, same old. Say, Rosie. You’ll never guess who I’m here with!”
If possible, Rosie looked even more alarmed.
“Come on, guess,” I pressed and Rosie’s face paled underneath her flawlessly applied makeup, her eyes darting frantically in every direction but the one I had came from.
“Rosemary, darling. Bri asked you a question,” Joshua gently prodded her, and while I smiled a little wider and nodded, I wanted nothing more than to stand up and slam my fist into his face, maybe even break his nose. Fuck this man who forced others to do his bidding like some mafia don. Fuck him for forcing my boy into the ring by dangling obscene amounts of money in front of his face.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she finally replied, the hands wrapped around her glass a little shaky, but her voice firm. “I guess you managed to drag Jackson out with you and your new boy toy? That’s good. He needs to expand his circle of friends.”
“Nope,” I said, popping the p. “Brandon. Do you remember Brandon? He says he remembers you. Pretty well, in fact.”
The entire bar, which wasn’t very full and mostly consisted of our two groups, fell silent.
“You should come over and say hi,” I told her. “I bet he’d love to catch up.”
I thought Rosie would pass out. Her face paled even more, her hands shook so hard, she could have had Parkinson’s.
“Ah, yes, well, that’s okay, I mean, uh, give him my best and all—”
“Nonsense!” Joshua interrupted and once again I felt my hands grip my bottle hard enough to shatter it. Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him. “You should say hello, Rosemary. It’s only polite.”
Wild Ones (The Lane) Page 15
