Fix You: Bash and Olivia, Book 2 of 3 (McDaniels Brothers)

by Bell, Christine

"You try and enjoy the rest of your night, sweetie."

  Shorty walked out like he had nowhere special to be, and Pete the Giant trudged behind him, crunching his way directly over the broken glass that littered the floor.

  When Bash walked in shouting my name ten minutes later, I’d already graduated from rocking in the corner to sweeping up the glass. Apparently, all the strife of late was toughening me up, because I hadn’t even cried. Yet.

  “Liv? Jesus, are you okay?” He dropped the bag of food on the floor and barreled toward me, cheeks going chalk white as he took my face in his warm hands. “What the fuck happened?”

  I recited the events like I was reading a research paper on the topography of Pakistan. It was so strange, because I felt nothing. Like it had all been a bad dream, or had happened to someone else.

  “Come sit,” Bash demanded, pulling me over to the desk chair, sitting himself, and then pulling me into his lap. “I think you’re in shock, Liv. I think we should go to the hospital and get you checked out.”

  “No,” I whispered, burying my face in his neck, breathing in his scent. I tensed my muscles, trying to quell the tremors, but then realized it was Bash who was shaking. I pulled back and pressed a hand to his cheek. “No hospitals. No doctors. I’m fine, just a little dazed.”

  In fact, I was already feeling a little more in touch as his body heat warmed me and his obvious distress made me drill down and dig deep. He’d just found out his brother was in serious trouble and he needed me to be strong right now.

  “We can’t be getting a whole bunch of people involved, Bash.”

  Which was exactly why, once Shorty and Pete the Goon had left, I hadn’t call the cops. This wasn’t a police matter. Matty had clearly gotten himself hooked up with the wrong people. The kind of people who rolled into gyms in the early evening with a bat and had no fear that anyone would try to stop them.

  “He did this because of me,” Bash muttered, rubbing his temples with his thumb and forefinger. “This is about the money he got to bail me out and to get a new lawyer. I’ve got to call him. He’s got to come home so we can figure out what to do.”

  I looped my arms around his neck and squeezed. “You do that while I clean up here, okay? And don’t worry, we’ll figure this out. I still have my car. I don’t know how much I can get for it but—”

  His eyes went flat and he clenched his jaw. “Enough is enough, Liv. I’m not letting anyone else get hurt trying to clean up my mess. Jesus, if something had happened to you, I don’t—”

  I cut him short, pressing a hard kiss to his lips. “It didn’t. I’m fine.”

  “Right, and I’m going to keep it that way.” He was so solemn, it was more like a vow than a statement, and my heart gave a little stutter. “After I call Matty, I’m taking you home. I don’t think they’ll be back tonight, but I’m not willing to risk it. My brothers and I will deal with this from here on out. And for Christ’s sake, do not sell your car. From what I understood, Matty just borrowed the money the other day. Seems awful quick to come due so fast. This could all be a huge misunderstanding that can be worked out with a simple conversation.”

  I nodded, but only because I didn’t want to upset him more by arguing. Clearly this was much more than a misunderstanding, but until he talked to Matty and got to the bottom of it, I knew there was no point in discussing it further.

  “Will you come and stay at my place, at least?”

  “I can’t. I have to get to the hardware store on the way out and pick up some boards, get the windows covered so no one can get in at night. I’ll be all right, though. Once I call Matty, it’ll only take him a few hours to make the drive back, so I won’t be alone.”

  I didn’t like it, but his jaw was set and I knew it was a losing battle. It helped some that I agreed with him. These guys just wanted to get paid. They’d gotten their point across, and the odds of them coming back tonight were nil.

  I stood, unable to sit still anymore. “I’m going to keep cleaning up while you talk to your brother.”

  “I’m sorry, Liv.” He squeezed my hip and blew out a sigh. “I’m so sorry you had to get caught up in this.”

  I was too, but not for the same reasons. He’d finally seemed to accept that I wanted to be with him, and consider the idea of our finding a way to fit as a couple, and now this. It would be so easy for him to pull away again out of some skewed sense of responsibility…to shield me from the uglier part of life.

  This time, though, he’d have a fight on his hands.

  Chapter Six

  Bash

  "What the fuck did you do?"

  Matty stepped out of his car and glared at me. I’d come out to catch him in the parking lot when I heard him pull up, because as pissed off as I was, I hadn't wanted him to see the gym until we talked. It was everything to him, as crappy as it was, and had been the one place we'd gone with our dad that wasn't riddled with bad memories.

  After six years of being shifted around to various foster homes, sometimes together, a lot of the times not, when the gym had gone up for sale, Matty had come and begged the owner and family friend, George, to let him buy it from him. He didn't have any money, but then again, Georgie couldn't seem to give the shithole away and was ready to get rid of the tax liability. He and Matty had settled on a creative monthly payment plan that sometimes involved a little cash, but mostly involved car washing, chauffeur services to take his daughter to and from ballet classes, and a bunch of other shit he didn't want to do.

  That was four years ago, and Georgie had signed over the deed officially last year. The gym still wasn't profitable to speak of, but some day, it could be, and we'd all had big dreams of turning into a community center for kids to train when one of us hit the big time.

  If any of us hit the big time.

  I shoved thoughts of the Spada fight to the back of my mind. I had to work off the belief that it was still a go, and even if it wasn’t, there was nothing to do about it now. It was on the bottom rung of the crisis ladder that seemed to be getting taller and taller every time I turned around.

  Matty came at me until we were toe-to-toe in the dimly lit parking lot.

  "What’s wrong with you?" His scowl was menacing and he was posturing like he wanted to fight me, but there was a look in his eyes I hadn't seen in years…since Dad had died and Mom had checked out. Fear. He could try to play it off if he wanted, but he'd known why I'd called. "And who contacts someone, tells them to come home, it's an emergency, and then doesn't tell them what it's about?"

  Someone who was so furious, they were afraid they'd say something they regretted if they didn't hang up the phone. But I didn't say that. Instead, I gave him a clipped nod. "That was a dick move. To be fair though, I said no one was dead. And don't play dumb with me, man. You know why I called. Whatever mad dogs you decided to bring into our house have come back to bite."

  He rocked back on his feet, wincing. "What did they say? Did they touch you?" All the anger drained out of him and suddenly he looked way smaller than his six-plus feet and way older than his twenty-two years.

  "No. But Olivia was here alone and they could've hurt her.” A fact I still wasn’t over, five hours later. “Jesus, Matty, you should've told me something so I knew. I wouldn't have brought her here."

  "Don't lay that on me. You shouldn't have brought her here in the first place." He shouldered his way past me toward the front door and slowed as he finally had a clear view of the side of the building. "Fuck."

  "They came in when I ran out to pick up food.” I came up behind him and continued. “They threatened you. Threatened her. And they wanted her to give you a message. They said the deal was twenty for thirty, and that's what they expect to get back. What happened?"

  He waved me toward the gym door, his long, angry strides making short work of the parking lot. I followed behind, not at all comforted by his lack of response. The slim remaining odds of this being a misunderstanding were disappearing like David Blain at a magic convention.


  Matty blew through the gym, barely sparing a glance at the damage, and jogged up the stairs. When we were both inside the apartment, he closed the door and locked it behind us.

  He wheeled around to face me, and the look on his face wrecked me. "I messed up, Bash."

  "Okay. Talk to me." I let the last of my own anger go. This was my brother. My family. One of the only people in the world who I knew had my back no matter what. And whatever he'd involved himself in had been in a misguided attempt to help me.

  "I went to Mickey Flynn's boys and asked for a loan."

  Mick Flynn was our neighborhood’s version of a goodfella. He wasn't big-time, but he wasn't small potatoes either. He had a reputation for running numbers and trafficking hookers, as well as loan sharking and some other businesses. I'd never heard of anyone getting killed for not paying him back, but I did know a guy we called “Two-Fingered Lou” who used to just go by “Lou” before he'd borrowed money from Mickey.

  I sank to the long pleather couch and ran a hand through my hair. "Okay, right, for twenty thousand. And what? He wants it back already? You just borrowed it a few days ago, right?"

  I'd assumed this whole time it had been a loan he'd just taken to bail me out and try to get me a better lawyer. Maybe he was in some kind of trouble of his own too?

  Matty sat across from me on the beat-up recliner and nodded slowly. "Yeah. The day before you got sprung."

  "So you owe him thirty thousand?"

  "No. Ten."

  Some of the tension faded and I let out a long breath. "But he still wants the vig. Even though you paid it back already?"

  "I didn't pay him back. I never even took it."

  "What does that mean?" I stared at him, now totally confused.

  "I agreed to the terms of the loan. He got me the cash, and before I went to pick it up, Olivia had bailed you out. I told him I wanted to hold off.” He shrugged and tossed his hand up. “Not take the loan until I talked to you about your lawyer situation again. I was already realizing it was a bad idea contacting him. I just wanted out. I figured once I got you home, we could strategize, see if we came up with a better way."

  "So you never even had the money? And he still wants the vig?"

  Matty slumped back and buried his head in his hands. "He still wants the motherfucking vig," he confirmed.

  Thirty thousand dollars. Ten grand in interest. For money he'd never even touched. That was some cold shit.

  "Did you ask him if he could at least take some off, considering?"

  Matty let out a snort. "Of course. At first I thought he was kidding. But once I realized he was dead serious, I asked if he would take half if I got it to him by the weekend."

  Reid's fight tomorrow would pay close to that much, if he won.

  "He said no and that now, he wanted the whole ten by next week because he clearly couldn't trust me anymore now that I'd backed out of our deal. He was afraid I’d skip town.”

  My brain whirred wildly as I tried to take it all in, running through the things I could possibly do to make that kind of fast money. That was the thing about fast money, though. None of the ways to get it were legal, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to let my girl sell her car on top of everything else she’d already done. I didn’t want her within a mile of any of this again, if I could help it.

  We were in some serious shit here.

  My brother and I spent the next hour cooking up various schemes to make some quick cash that both of us knew would never work. By one in the morning, right about the time Matty pitched the idea of whoring himself out to cougars, I’d called it quits and went to bed. We had a week to figure it out, and we were clearly on the wrong path.

  When I woke up the next morning from a fitful sleep, though, everything had shifted, falling into place like a row of dominoes.

  I had figured a way out of this mess with Mickey Flynn, but nobody was going to like it.

  Too bad. Nobody had consulted me when they went off on their own doing who knows what to get money together for my case. At least, that was what I told myself when the guilt started to really get to me.

  Matty and I spent all of Saturday morning in mostly companionable silence, patching walls and trying to get the place back into good enough shape to open. The windows were too expensive to fix for the time being, but guys who frequented our fine establishment weren't exactly fussy about stuff like that.

  That morning over coffee, Matty and I had decided together that it was better not to tell Reid what was going on until after his match that night. When he'd called asking why Matty had to rush home, we'd told him a pipe had burst in the bathroom at the gym. He'd believed it…at least enough not to make a stink. We'd tell him the truth when he caught the train home tomorrow, but there was no point in having him distracted when he needed to focus.

  Matty was super quiet, probably spinning his wheels, trying to figure out a way to get the money together before next week. I let him. The more preoccupied he was, the less I had to talk to him and the fewer lies I'd have to tell him later on.

  "I think we're good, you?" Matty stood over me, wiping some Spackle from his hands onto his worn jeans.

  I took a quick look around and nodded. "Yeah, not too bad. What do you want to say if the guys ask?"

  Our members were all street-savvy and would no doubt recognize that this was the work of vandals, so there was no way to pass off a pipe's bursting type of excuse with them.

  Apparently, my brother agreed because he said, "The truth. That someone came and vandalized the place last night. No need for details."

  I left him to open the gym and went upstairs to shower and get ready for my evening with Olivia. She'd called me about a dozen times the night before until she must have fallen asleep at around 3:00 a.m. She was definitely worried about me, and the possibility of those guys returning for an encore. When she called in the morning, we'd made plans to get together that evening to spend some time together. I was looking forward to it, but dreading it too.

  Guilt pricked me hard and I ducked my head under the spray to let the steaming hot water do its job, hoping it would ease some of the tension that had been building inside me with every passing hour.

  I needed to see her. There was no getting around that. But the idea of lying, right to her face, made me sick to my stomach. I needed to get over that, fast. I had no other option…not that I was willing to take, at any rate.

  When got out of the shower, I took my time getting ready, but it was a stalling tactic. By the time I left the apartment to pick her up, thought, I was feeling solid about my decisions. Soon enough, it would all be over, and she and my brothers could be mad at me if they wanted to be. At least we could go back to normal.

  Or whatever normal had been before this extra serving of shit had gotten heaped onto our already overflowing plates.

  She was waiting by the curb when I got there, looking a little tired around the eyes, but beaming. She slid into my car and immediately leaned it for a kiss.

  "I'm so happy to see you. How'd it go with Matty?"

  I'd filled her in on the details during one of our many calls the night before, but she knew we'd spent the morning together and that there were still some decisions that needed to be made.

  "It went fine. We got a lot done and the gym looks a lot better."

  I turned on the radio while she put on her seat belt, hoping to find a song she really loved so maybe she'd cut the grilling short and sing along.

  It was no go.

  "I checked online with Kelley Blue Book, and I can get sixteen thousand for my car."

  "Excellent," I said, popping my old Chevy into drive. "I'll sell my car too, and then we can get around town on our bicycles. It will be great."

  She whipped her head in my direction and I could see her eyes narrow in my periphery. "You think you're pretty cute, don't you?"

  I shrugged and gripped the wheel as I pulled into traffic. "I'm not trying to be cute. I'm trying to be realistic. You can't sell your
car because you need it. Just like I need mine." She started to argue but I held up a hand to halt her. "Can we just enjoy our evening? I made some calls"—that much was true at least—"and it might take a couple of days"—one—"but I'm going to get the money, okay? Now please. More than anything, I need a break from all this. I want to spend some time with you and not think about the money or Mickey Flynn or the assault case. I just want to think about us."

  She melted into me, laying her head on my shoulder.

  "Okay. But tomorrow—"

  If Olivia was one thing, it was stubborn. "Tomorrow you can go back to harassing me until I do your bidding."

  Her chuckle chipped away at some of the ice in my guts. If I could get through tonight, tomorrow would be at least 50 percent better. It had to be.

  "Fine. If I think of things to harass you about, I'll jot them down though, so I don't forget."

  I heaved a sigh of relief at the reprieve. At least I wouldn't have to keep lying to her over and over.

  One thing I’d said was true, though, now more than ever. I needed this. To be with her. Spend some time and soak it in, the energy and strength she gave me.

  Because at midnight tonight? I was going to need every bit of strength I could muster, and then some.

  Chapter Seven

  Olivia

  “I could’ve beaten you that last game, you know.”

  “Ha!” I rolled my eyes at him, snorting for good measure. “Easy to say once we’ve left and can’t have a rematch.”

  Bash and I had gone to a local bar for a budget date of pool and wings—naked for him, slathered in buttery hot sauce and blue cheese dressing for me. We might have called a moratorium on talking about Mickey Flynn and his boys for the night, but both of us were very aware that every penny we spent was one more we’d have to figure out how to scrape up so we could pay back the money for Matty.

  Bash had seemed all right most of the evening, if a little on edge, and even I was less panic-stricken about the whole thing than I expected to be, but only because I’d already made up my mind. The McDaniels boys had until Thursday to come up with the money on their own before I ignored Bash’s command from on high and got rid of the Fiat. I could sell it and use a little of the money to buy a junker for around town. There was no way I was going to let Matty wind up taking a baseball bat to the knees on my watch.