by Emilia Finn
Ian snorts and goes back to work.
“You think she’s got your kid?” Bry growls. “Seriously? Because that’s kind of a massive fucking deal. If she has a Kincaid with her somewhere on the other side of the country, we’re not sitting here and allowing her to make you a deadbeat.”
“No. I have no clue,” I admit on a murmur. “It was only one time without protection. The timing was all wrong. The chances are super slim. I’m just thinking deep, I guess. Not about her in particular. Just…” I shrug again. “Thinking.”
“Philosophical as fuck,” he rumbles. “Um… okay. Philosophically, hypothetically, I guess you’re not wrong. We just have to be there for the fun. After that, it’s in a girl’s hands. She could ditch and never tell us. I’d lay good money that there are millions of women who’ve bolted from their man without a word, and raised a baby on their own.”
“I have a baby,” Zelda helpfully adds. “His daddy knows, but that guy is a loser. He doesn’t deserve to know my baby.” Her eyes come up to meet mine. “I wish I’d never told him. And if I could go back, I’d ditch town with Sloan in my belly and never look back.”
“You don’t think a father deserves to know about his child?” I frown. “Hypothetically speaking.”
She smirks and goes back to working on Bry. “I think that it needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis. In my case, Blaze…” She firms her lips. “Yup, that’s seriously his name. He’s a piece of shit. He likes to shoot up, he likes to buy women, and when he gets his monthly visit with Sloan, he almost always brings a chick who is just like him – cooked, loose, and stupid. So now our son has to work through his confusion about where he comes from, why Daddy’s a fuckin’ loser, and why we don’t have a regular family with the mommy and the daddy living in the same home.”
“But if you ran, he’d still have those questions,” Bry counters. “Your logic is flawed.”
“Yeah. I know it’s flawed.” She pulls her pierced bottom lip between her teeth. “But I’d rather the emotional trauma of him having no dad than the one he has. If he has no dad, then the slate is clean, and I could make up some story about how Daddy went to war and died a hero or some shit. Or maybe Daddy is a scientific genius, so he’s off in a lab somewhere, curing something horrible. Instead, he gets ‘Daddy is a meth-head loser’. When Sloan is an adult, standing at a crossroads and wondering what he’ll do with his life, he could have considered being a hero just like Daddy, you know? Instead—”
“He’ll wonder if frying his brain is a good choice,” Bry finishes with a nod. “I get it.”
“Right.” Zelda shrugs and leans closer to her work. “The whole situation is fucked, but I guess there are just better levels of fucked. But we don’t get a choice in this. Blaze is who we get, and that’s on me, because I went to bed with an idiot.”
“But… I’m not an idiot.” I lay back and stare at the ceiling. “Like, if this hypothetical is about me, I’m a decent guy. I work, I take responsibility, I look after those I love.” I turn and meet Zelda’s eyes. “If she took my baby and never told me, that’s on her, right? For not being honest.”
Zelda shrugs. She has no damn clue who I’m talking about.
“You know she ran for a reason, right?” Bry draws my eyes. “Maybe we don’t agree with it, and maybe we don’t like it, but in Cam’s world, her brother is a wanted felon. She couldn’t stick around.”
Anger spikes through my blood. “He’s the felon, Bry. Will is. He’s the one who couldn’t stick around.”
“So you wanted her to choose you over her brother? You? A dude she knew for a week, over the guy who was literally her only family, her guardian? That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Yes! She should have chosen me. Because if roles were reversed, and I had to choose between her and Bean—”
“Oh good.” Bry lays his head back and laughs. “We’re moving past philosophy, and diving straight into lies now, huh? This should be fun.” He smiles at the ceiling, and ignores the huff of impatience Zelda exhales. “Do you honestly believe that girl you knew left and took your baby? Search deep inside your heart, Jamie. Remember back to that girl, and think about it. Would she do that?”
“I don’t… No… I…” I lay back with a sigh. “I miss her,” I admit on a rasped groan. “Four years, and I can’t let it go.”
Victoria
The News Always Breaks a Damn Heart
I walk in our front door after work at the club on a Thursday night, and drop my bag on a small, semi-circular table pushed up against the wall. The table has three legs, and is rickety even at the best of times, but having me drop my bag on it each day tests its strength to breaking point.
“Will?”
I swipe a hand over my brow, sweaty from the humidity in the air, and make my way into the kitchen to find him sitting at the counter with a manila folder and its contents spread out around him.
“Will…?”
“Bubbles.” He looks up and smiles for just a moment, then goes back to studying his paperwork. “How was work? The kids play nice today?”
“Ha.” I move past him and swing the fridge open to find a jug of suuuuuper weak sweetened tea on the shelf. It’s not weak because we like it that way. It’s weak because, around here, we dilute everything with water to make it last longer. “They were great. This one kid, Charlotte, she’s gonna be the next Cher, I’m certain of it.”
“Mm? A high school dropout with five last names?”
“No, doofus. A star who likes to dance and sing. She’s five, so the high school thing is still up for debate, but she’s got the work ethic of a farm horse, the drive of Cher, and there are even rumors about her being dyslexic, so there’s that.”
“You know a concerning number of things about Cher.” Finally, he takes his attention away from the files and really smiles for me. “Fan?”
I scoff. “Who isn’t? Even putting aside the fact she’s a living legend, she also got to sing with Christina Aguilera… and hell, for that alone, I’d do her.”
“You’d do Cher?”
“Yeah. Well, I’d do Christina.” I grab two glasses from the cupboard and start pouring. “But if Christina said that Cher had to be involved, I wouldn’t cry about it.”
“You’re weird. But also…” He flicks to another page and laughs. “Same.
“Gross.” I set his glass down by his elbow, toss the pitcher back into the fridge, then I stop by my brother with my own drink, and read over his shoulder. “Whatcha looking at?”
“Nate Hardy. Fighter. Handyman. Dockworker. Petty criminal. Twenty-three years old at time of death.”
“Disappearance,” I correct him. “Twenty-three at the time of his disappearance. There’s a difference, and you need to remember that. It’ll be important in court if the cops get close again.”
“He’s a dockworker I met once on the job,” Will continues. “And I met him once on a fight circuit. We fought, I won, and so when the cops strap me to a lie detector and ask if I’ve ever hurt this dude, I can’t say no.”
“First of all, do they do those lie detector tests anymore?” I reach into our bowl of fruit and select a mandarin. Peeling it open, I continue to scan the documents over Will’s shoulder. “Like, Ben Stiller and Robert DeNiro-style interrogations, or do they do it some other way?”
“Bubbles?” Will turns to me with an odd expression. “How the fuck should I know? I make it a point not to step inside cop shops.”
“True, I guess. Anywho, should you ever get caught and they ask you, you just explain the truth. Yes, you met the guy once. You fought – competitively – you won, you went your separate ways. You didn’t see him again until he showed up at the docks for work, you shook hands, declared a truce, and that’s the end of it. He went missing a whole three months after that point, and it had nothing to do with you.”
“Hey, Bubbles?” He lifts a brow and studies my face. “You remember that time they took me in for questioning, and I said all those thing
s already?”
“Yeah.” I roll my eyes and turn away from the counter. “You wanna know what I think?”
“Probably not.”
“I think that there’s a cop involved in all this. There has to be, like…” I hesitate on the lingo. “A rat or something. An inside guy. There’s a reason they wanna pin this on you. Real cops can’t arrest a guy just because they feel like it, they need proof. They need evidence.”
“They have a witness.”
“They have a liar!” I burst out. “Dammit, Will. He’s obviously lying, because I was on the damn phone with you during the period in which Nate died.”
“Disappeared.”
“Whatever!” I throw my hands up and accidentally splash Will’s files with mandarin juice. “They have zero proof, they have no witnesses, they have a liar whose identity they won’t share with the public, they have a missing body, and let’s not forget the warrant is out for ‘Jake Williams’. That ain’t even your name!”
“It’s the name I was using when Nate died.”
“Disappeared!”
He snorts.
It’s not funny. Really, truly it’s not. But there comes a point after years and years of running and staring at the same file filled with the same sheets of paper that, if you don’t laugh, you’re gonna cry.
“I’ve been watching the Kincaids on TV, Bubbles.” Will flips the file closed and crosses his ankles. He folds his arms, and studies me with shrewd eyes beneath a heavy brow. “He tore that tournament up last year.”
“I don’t wanna talk about him.”
“He got new ink too. Did you see?”
“Nope.” I leave the kitchen and make my way to the living room. “And I’m gonna reiterate that thing about not wanting to talk about him.”
“He tattooed you onto his fucking body, Bubbles! Every single year, the cameras zoom in on him while he’s whaling on a guy in the cage, and what do we see when they lift his arm in victory?”
“No clue.” I drop down into Will’s recliner and flick the footrest up. “And I feel like a broken record with the ‘I-don’t-wanna-talk-about-it’ thing.”
“He’s looking for you, Bubbles! He hasn’t forgotten you. And I don’t know if you know, but you are not a wanted felon. You could go to him, let him keep you safe. And then, when I know you’re not getting your ass into trouble back here, I could be taking care of my shit.”
“For the record, since I ran with you, and I know a wanted felon’s whereabouts, I’m pretty sure that makes me a criminal too. Also, I’m not going anywhere without you, Will. So you’re gonna have to get the hell over it.”
“My name isn’t even Will! You’re holding onto this make-believe thing, Bubbles.”
“My name isn’t Bubbles, and yet you call me that three thousand times a day!”
“Bubbles is a nickname,” he snarls. “Will is a fabricated name. Will is a felon.”
“Will has been your name for a long friggin’ time. So sue me for getting attached to it! Would you prefer the name our deadbeat dad gave you?”
“No, I—”
“That’s what I thought. Now shush. I said I don’t wanna talk about the Kincaids, and I’d really like you to respect my wishes on that.”
“He hasn’t forgotten you.” Will drops down onto the couch beside my chair. “If you wanted to go back there for a bit, know a life of normalcy, I would be okay with it.”
“Since when, huh? Last I remember, you hit him.”
“He had sex with you! It’s my right as your brother to hit him. Doesn’t mean I hate the guy. It literally means he did something bad, so I slammed him for it.”
“But now you’d be okay with marrying me off to him?” I turn and meet his blue eyes. “Marriage means sex. I’d have filthy, nasty, slurping-sounds sex with him at least once a week. Lord knows he ain’t ugly, so I probably wouldn’t be able to help myself once he smiled for the first time.”
“You disgust me.” He pushes back to his feet and leaves the room to head back to the kitchen. “Slurping sounds,” he grumbles. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Sex deprivation, maybe. I bet if you sold me to Jamie Kincaid, he’d fix that right up.”
“Filth!” He glides back into the room on slippery socks, and glares. “Filth. When did you become so fucking disgusting?”
“I was raised by you,” I glower. “So my education in baboonery and weird shit began when I was young.”
“I’m fairly certain baboonery isn’t a word,” he retorts.
“I’m fairly certain you’re wrong. But even if you’re not, too bad. You know damn well what I’m saying. Now go away, I wanna watch a movie. I’m tired, I’m ready to chill the hell out, and you’re annoying me.”
I snatch up the remote from the arm of the chair, flick the TV on, and instantly, I’m met with the motherlode of irony.
“Oh, come on!”
Evie Kincaid – or, well, Evie Conner now, I guess – stands in her family’s kitchen much like she did the first time we saw her on TV. Ben stands behind her, but instead of his hand resting on her hip right beside an enviable six-pack that sparkles from the camera lights, this time her belly is swollen, round, and lined with a few stretch marks.
“Holy shit, Will.” Instead of turning the TV off, I stomp the footrest down and sit forward to get a closer look. “She’s either hella pregnant, or her lunch was huge.”
“Whoa.” Bad attitudes and fighting gone, Will sits on the edge of the ratty couch and clears his throat. “That’s… Well, Ben looks kinda proud of himself, doesn’t he?”
I burst out in snorting laughter. It’s like the Nate thing; if I don’t laugh, I might curl into a ball and sob my eyes out. Because right beside Ben and Evie, there he stands.
Jamie Kincaid. In all his handsome glory.
He looks harder now than he was when we met. Harder still than the fighter I secretly watched last December while Will was working.
Jamie looks angry, mean. He’s bigger than he was, wider. Stronger. And why the hell, when I think of strength, does my mind go to the time he picked me up at the tournament when we made love, and not of his strength when fighting? Why does my mind make me think of intimacy and the way he could hold me, and not of power and the weight behind his fists?
And why, in the name of all that’s holy, does he have my name tattooed on his chest?
Well, not my name… not the name I was born with. But the Q is there. The ballet slippers. The tree. The musical notes, and roman numerals that even my non-scholarly mind knows mark the date of our first kiss.
Jamie stands beside his cousin now, shirtless, showing off a defined chest and rippling abs. His brow is a little sweaty, as though he was training before coming onto live television. His hair is a little long, shaggy, so it hangs over his forehead and tickles his temples. He wears red wraps around his hands, just as Evie wears pink. He wears shorts that sit low on his hips – lowwwww – showing off a deep V, and drawing every single woman’s, and at least half of the male population’s, eyes straight down to his crotch.
The world knows Stacked Deck as Evie and Ben. When they want to expand their image, usually Bean and Mac enter the picture. The four of them are on the posters, on the website. We all know there are more Kincaid kids, but the tournament belongs to those original four.
So why the eff is Jamie Kincaid standing beside Evie on TV right now? Why must the universe hurt me like this?
“And, Jamie?” the interviewer – a woman – asks when Will snatches the remote and turns the TV up. “What have you been up to these past few months? You fought last year, you won eight fights, only to step down leading into finals night. Care to explain your reasoning for such a bold move?”
He only shrugs, the movement somehow sending bolts of electricity through my shoulder, and reminding me that I should be icing mine already. “Injuries got the better of me last year. So instead of fighting and making it worse, I stepped down.”
I swallow. Damn him f
or having a sexy voice! Damn him for growing into that man’s body over the last few years. And damn him again for wearing those shorts and making it impossible for me not to notice the V of his hips.
“What injuries?” the interviewer prompts. “Would you share with us?”
He smiles. It’s kind of sexy, kind of repressed, and at least partially sad. “It would be bad business for me to announce that to the country, Miss Harp. But rest assured, it’s being taken care of.”
“So you’ll fight this year?”
“I hope so,” his annoyingly sexy voice rumbles through his chest. “But I won’t kill myself over it. If I don’t fight this year, there’s always next year.”
“Well, if you don’t fight,” the interviewer prods, “what will you do with your time? Pro fighters tend to train all day long, no? So if you’re injured…”
“Training never stops,” he cuts in. “But I have a highly skilled team watching closely to make sure that what I do is beneficial and not harmful.”
“Plus, your sister is a nurse, right? I bet that helps, having in-house medical advice.”
He smiles for real this time. Genuine, loving… enough to almost reduce me to tears. “My sister is obsessively invested in my recovery. She watches me around the clock, and she long ago banned me from opening the tight jar lids.”
“Shoulder,” Will declares, scaring me out of my trance. I forgot I wasn’t in here alone. I forgot that anyone else in the world existed. “No jars means he busted his shoulder.”
I nod.
“See that left side?” my brother murmurs. “See how it’s just a little bit lower than the right?”
“I see it,” I whisper. I angle closer to the TV, closer, so barely an inch of my body touches the recliner at all. “It hurts him.”
“It’s cute that you guys have matching injuries.”