The Fight In Us: A Brother's Best Friend College Romance (The Four Book 4)

by Becca Steele

  I gave him a brief nod. We melted into the crowd, outwardly casual, but I knew both of us were on high alert. Cass indicated to a free space close to the fence, and we made our way through the press of bodies.

  The whistle sounded to mark the beginning of the fight. Instead of focusing on the two dogs, I scanned the faces of the people across from me. Almost all were men, some in suits despite our shady wasteland location, and others dressed more casually, as I was, in jeans and hoodies. Tugging my hood further over my head, I stared, unseeing, down into the pit, perfecting the look I used to give my English teacher when he started quoting Shakespeare at the class. Seeing, but unseeing, my head a million miles away.

  “This is kind of sickening.” Cassius’ voice was so quiet that I would’ve missed it, if he hadn’t pressed his mouth right up to my ear, all wet and warm.

  “You know what’s sickening?” I returned the favour, turning my head to him. “You practically kissing my ear.”

  “You fucking wish.” And just because he was Cassius, he stuck his tongue out and licked my earlobe.

  “Mate! What the fuck?” I spun around to stare at him. “Seriously?”

  His shoulders shook as he tried to suppress his laughter. “You should see your face right now.”

  “Cass,” I warned, my voice low, and he glanced up, realising we’d attracted the attention of at least two other guys in our immediate vicinity.

  His gaze snapped to the dogs, his humour immediately dying away. “Bite the bastard,” he muttered, loud enough for the guy next to him to hear and voice his approval for that statement. I breathed out in relief—his questionable sense of humour wouldn’t go unnoticed here. We watched in silence for a while, or gave the impression of watching, at least. The fight was over quickly, though, so we had a reprieve.

  “Who the fuck is that?” We both turned to stare at the man who’d climbed on top of a podium to address the crowd.

  Not really a podium, but a large metal crate. Whatever, it put him on a level above the rest of us. Dressed in a black-on-black suit, with a long black hooded coat that almost looked like a cloak, he appeared intimidating and almost inhuman. The hood obscured most of his face, but when he turned slightly, I caught a glimpse of grey swept-back hair underneath.

  Martin Smith.

  Yes.

  Digging my phone from my pocket, I shielded it between my palms and hit the camera button, pointing it directly at him. Would this be enough evidence for my dad? Probably not, but I continued to take photos before I switched to the video function.

  I nudged Cassius to draw his attention to where Martin Smith was standing, and he gave a subtle indication of his head to let me know he’d seen him, too.

  Another hooded guy across the pit caught my eye, weaving in and out of the crowds with practised ease, and I watched money exchanging hands from the people crowding around the pit barrier.

  From his position on the podium, Smith tilted his head in the direction of the guy and received a subtle nod in response.

  Who were they to each other?

  Was this the Thom that had been mentioned in the message from Martin Smith’s phone?

  I had no answers, and for now, all I could do was bide my time and hope that we stumbled across something useful.

  “West!” Cassius spoke urgently in my ear, and now there was no humour in his voice. My eyes flew to his, and he mouthed the words, We need to leave, now.

  Nodding, I stepped backwards, glad that the spectators behind me were more interested in getting a good view than why I was moving in the opposite direction to the fight. Cassius followed in my wake, affecting his casual, confident persona, and I attempted to do the same even though my heart was in my fucking throat. I didn’t even know what he’d seen, all I knew was the urgency in his tone that meant we had to get out of there right now.

  We broke out of the crowd, and I paused for a second to get my bearings. Cassius didn’t let me stop, gripping my elbow and moving in the direction of the exit.

  The security guy barely spared us a glance, too busy looking at his phone. To be fair, he was probably more interested in who was coming in than who was going out.

  When we were a safe distance away, Cassius flopped against the red brick wall of the building next to us. “Fuck me, that was close.”

  “Why did we suddenly need to leave?” I didn’t get it.

  “I saw Z’s dad,” he explained. “There was no way… We could have lied our way through most situations, but he would’ve seen straight through us.”

  “I didn’t even see him.”

  He grinned, patting my shoulder. “That’s what you have me for. We’re a team. I watched out for shit like that, while you kept an eye on Martin Smith, right?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded slowly. When he put it that way, it didn’t seem so bad. Maybe my video would help us. Whatever, we already knew he was involved, and now we had solid video evidence.

  We made our way back to Cass’ SUV and waited for the others inside, reclining our seats and talking about nothing and everything. I was relieved that my best mate wasn’t someone to hold a grudge, and he was acting like he normally would with me.

  The time stretched.

  “Where are the others?” My heart rate picked up. Surely they should’ve been back by now.

  He glanced at the clock on his dashboard. “Good question. We should probably…” His words trailed off as his eyes went to something in front of us, and I followed his gaze to see the others running in our direction.

  “Go! Go!” Winter collapsed breathlessly into the back seat, closely followed by Lena, and Cassius wasted no time in starting up the engine. As he spun the car away from the kerb, I saw Zayde’s bike shoot past us, Caiden on the back.

  “What happened?” Twisting in my seat, I stared at the girls.

  “We’ll tell you when we get home” was all Winter said, and I had to be satisfied with that. Turning up the music on the radio because it was clear that no one felt like talking, I settled back in my seat and stared out at the road with unseeing eyes.

  We were all together and accounted for. We had video footage. I just hoped that we could work this shit out and put it all behind us.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The house was quiet, sombre almost. We’d assembled in the kitchen, seated around the dining table. Weston was next to me, his hand finding mine under the table.

  He’d dragged me aside the second we’d got home.

  “Are you okay?” He gripped my chin in his hands, staring down at me with a look of concern.

  I blew out a shaky breath. “Yeah, I’m okay. I promise.”

  He studied me intently, his other hand sliding around my back and pulling me closer to him. I felt the heat of his body against mine, and I reached up to thread my arms around his neck.

  “I’m fine,” I repeated. “How are you?”

  His eyes widened.

  “What, you didn’t think I wouldn’t worry about you?” I whispered the words against his lips.

  He shook his head slowly. “I thought…I guess I thought you’d be focused on your own thing.”

  “Never.” With effort, I untangled myself from him. “This isn’t us keeping our distance, is it? We’re doomed.”

  A small smile crossed his face. “It’s just two friends showing concern for each other.”

  “Yeah, buddy.” I punched his arm playfully.

  “Do me a favour? Never call me ‘buddy’ again.”

  “You don’t like it?” I teased, grinning at him.

  He didn’t reply but instead leaned back against the wall, keeping his distance this time. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah, I really am.”

  “Good.”

  Now, he squeezed my hand before letting me go, his fingers releasing me one by one, as if he didn’t want to relinquish his grip on me.

  “Okay. Who wants to go first?” Caiden spoke up, looking around at us all.

  “I will.” Cassius detailed his
and West’s experience, including the fact that the figure on the podium was Martin Smith, something we hadn’t been able to tell from our position. As he spoke, he kept glancing over at Zayde.

  “What is it?” Zayde eventually asked.

  “Uh…I saw your dad there. Sorry, mate.”

  Zayde looked down at the table, saying nothing, and Cassius rushed to fill the sudden silence. “I panicked, had to get us out of there before he saw us. There was no way we would have been able to stay under the radar with him there.”

  “I think we got what we came for anyway. Plenty of video footage.” Weston tapped his phone. “I haven’t had time to go through it yet, but I’m sure it’ll throw up some interesting shit.”

  “So there was another guy going around collecting bets? Any ideas who that was?” I asked the table in general.

  “No fucking clue,” Caiden said. “I didn’t get a good look at him, either.” He glanced over at Zayde, who shrugged.

  “I was too busy fending off Lena’s attack.”

  That made me laugh. “Sorry, but if someone comes up behind me and slams their hand over my mouth, what am I supposed to do? Just sit there and let it happen? You could’ve been anyone.”

  “No. You did good. You’ve got decent moves.”

  From my side, Weston gave a low growl at Zayde’s words of praise, and my eyes flew to his in time to catch his frown. Guess this new possessive streak was as much a surprise to him as it was to me.

  I noticed Cassius watching us both from across the table, so I shuffled a bit further away from Weston. Just to make it clear that we were taking the whole just being friends thing seriously. He raised a brow, then smirked at me. I hate you, I mouthed, and a laugh burst from his lips.

  “Something funny?”

  Cassius turned to Caiden. “Nope.”

  “Okay, if you’re finished, I’ll go through what I discovered with Zayde.” Caiden detailed how he and Zayde had circled the wider area around the waste ground, documenting car number plates as they searched for the vehicle that had transported the dogs. “We hit the jackpot. There was a lorry parked under the motorway bridge. Totally nondescript, just a usual haulier’s truck, but the fact that there were no distinctive markings made me stop. Then I noticed the Romanian plates, and I remembered that you said the latest batch of dogs had been transported from Romania.”

  “The lock was laughably easy to open.” Zayde took over, his disdainful look showing just what he thought of the truck’s security. “Inside…”

  Caiden held up his phone, turning it so we could all see. “I’ll get these up on the TV screen later, but you can see behind all these boxes are the cages, and those sacks in the corner are dog food. The whole of the inside fucking stank of dogs.” He continued by telling us how he and Zayde had left the truck and circled back around to the waste ground. It had been pure luck that they’d come in at the side we were on. The security guy had spotted us—or so the boys had deduced by the way he’d started in our direction, so they’d incapacitated him, then got us out of there as quickly as they could.

  Winter went through our experience, and I forwarded my video footage to West, before uploading it to our secure storage. Then I wiped every trace of it from my phone.

  You could never be too careful. Promethium had recently told us the story of one of his agents who had incriminating video evidence on his phone. The agent had been investigating a gang in East London who were rumoured to have been involved in sex trafficking. He hadn’t been caught at the time of obtaining the video footage, but around a week later, one of the gang members caught up with him. They’d had their suspicions about him, and when the gang member had taken his phone, the video footage that was still stored on there was enough to incriminate him.

  They’d recovered his body from the river a few days later.

  Of course, it could have been a cautionary tale made up by Promethium to make sure that we stayed safe, but either way, it was a risk to keep that kind of stuff on our phones.

  Thankfully our Kryptos app was secure enough that it would take an expert hacker to crack. Not only that, it was disguised as an everyday phone app, so it would appear innocent unless you were already aware of it.

  “I’m gonna go through all this shit and see what I can come up with,” Weston announced, standing up and stretching. My gaze was drawn to the ridges of his abs as his T-shirt rode up, and heat flashed in his eyes as he looked down to catch me staring at him.

  Like I’d told him earlier, we were doomed.

  I’d had a taste of him, and I wanted more.

  One thing that had been drilled into me by every single one of my various martial arts instructors, though, was discipline.

  I had the discipline to resist Weston until we’d had time to process whatever this was between us. Until he was sure of what he wanted.

  But when his eyes met mine again, I wasn’t sure I wanted to resist anymore.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  After a night in the guest room, I was woken by a call from my mum.

  “Are we ever going to see you?” were her first words when I answered.

  “Sorry, Mum. I’m at Cassius’ place. I did text you to say.”

  She hummed noncommittally. “Is Weston there?”

  “Um. He’s not in the room with me. He’s somewhere in the house, I guess.”

  “I want you to invite him for Sunday lunch.” She adopted a stern tone, making me roll my eyes.

  “Why would I invite him? Cassius should do it, he’s his best friend.”

  “No. I want you to do it.” Her voice lowered. “It’s for Cassius’ birthday. We know he’ll be busy celebrating with his friends, but your dad and I wanted to do a family thing.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Am I inviting anyone else to this thing, or what?”

  “Invite whoever you see fit. I want to keep it small, a family feel, so maybe just invite the rest of the group and a few others?”

  “Okay.” I already knew that this was going to be the opposite of a “small” thing, but there was no point mentioning that to my mum. She loved to entertain. To be fair, Cass loved a party, even more so if he was the centre of attention, so I knew he’d be happy.

  We chatted for a few more minutes before she ended the call, and then I made my way downstairs to see who else was around. Cassius was in the kitchen, setting out breakfast supplies, while Winter was pouring boiling water from the kettle into a series of mugs grouped on the countertop.

  “Ugh, Cass. Do you have to parade around in just your boxers?”

  Winter turned to face me, kettle in hand. “You know he cooks naked sometimes?”

  “Gross. Please put some clothes on.” I grabbed an apron from the hook on the back of the door and threw it at him.

  “Ah. My favourite apron. Thanks, sis.” He smirked at me, pulling it over his head and adjusting it so the words “Warning: Concealed Sausage” were in full view.

  “I just can’t with you,” I muttered, turning away and crossing over to Winter. With a subtle combination of me typing out a message for her to read and several pointed looks, I’d invited her to the Sunday lunch. She said she’d take care of inviting Caiden and Zayde, so I guessed it was up to me to deal with West.

  Not that I minded.

  “How long will breakfast be?” I asked my brother.

  He replied with his head buried in the fridge, pulling out ingredients. “About twenty minutes. You want your eggs scrambled?”

  “Fried, please.” I backed away towards the door.

  “It’s scrambled or nothing,” he informed me.

  “I guess I’ll have them scrambled, then.” Before I left the kitchen, I added, “Thanks,” because regardless of his egg cooking preferences, it was nice of him to cook for me without me asking.

  The doorbell sounded, and since I was in the hallway, I padded over to the front door. Kinslee, Winter’s close friend, stood on the other side, and she gave me a bright smile when she saw me.

  “Morning
! I wasn’t expecting to see you here. Is Winter around?”

  “Kitchen.” I stepped aside to let her in. “Morning, by the way.” Because I knew she’d slept with Weston and I clearly had issues, I didn’t return her smile.

  Her brows pulled together, and she eyed me uncertainly.

  “Okay. Thanks,” she eventually said and disappeared off down the hallway. I suddenly had a need to find Weston and remind him that even though we were currently not together, there was no other girl for him. No one except me.

  The door to the computer room was ajar, and I could see the back of his head through the crack, his dark hair all tousled. Slipping unnoticed into the room because he was engrossed in his computer, I came up behind him and put a hand on the back of his chair. “Hi.” I spun his chair so he was facing me and straddled his thighs.

  “Hi.” The frown he’d been wearing just seconds ago melted away, replaced with a huge grin. “What’s all this for?”

  I wound my arms around his neck and placed a kiss to his cheek, feeling the scratchiness of his light stubble against my lips. “Just wanted to say good morning to my friend.”

  “Friends kiss each other, right?” His grin widened. “On the lips?”

  “Yeah. I’m sure that’s a thing.”

  He slid his hand up to my back and pressed a soft kiss on my mouth.

  “That kiss didn’t seem friendly enough to me.” I attempted a thoughtful face. “Should we try again?”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I think we need to perfect it.”

  He kissed me again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Until I was breathless, clinging onto him, melting against his body.

  “Mmmm. Good morning,” he murmured, his voice a sexy rasp as he finally drew back. “I think we perfected the friends kiss.”

  “Yep.” I tried to sound casual, but my voice was so breathy that there was no disguising the effect he had on me. In an effort to rein things in, I turned the subject to Cassius’ surprise lunch.