Raw Deal

by Cherrie Lynn

  “I don’t know, talking? Don’t you think we would have a lot to talk about?”

  “Like what? Did you find out why he would keep going after Tommy after the ref called the fight? I’d really like to know.”

  “No, I didn’t, because I know he didn’t mean to hurt him. I believe it down to my soul.”

  “What he meant doesn’t matter.” Rowan’s eyes brimmed with tears. “It still happened. I don’t know how you can look at him. Forgive him if you absolutely have to, for whatever reason, and let it fucking go!”

  Savannah’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment. “Ro, I asked you—”

  “No. You asked about dinner. Dinner. And then we would go home today and nothing would ever come of it, like you said. I could’ve accepted that. But this . . .” She put both hands to her head as if such insanity was beyond her comprehension. “Savannah! Your poor parents!”

  “Okay, I love you, and you’ve come close a few times but you’re now crossing the line to hysterical, and that is not good for the baby. This is nothing my parents need to know about, and there’s no reason to think what I said won’t still happen. We’re going home. All right? Nothing has changed.” A deception, again. She nearly cringed when it fell from her lips, starting the cycle all over. Everything had changed.

  Mike had brought her back to the hotel around three, and even then, they’d clung to each other for a good half hour in his truck, and she’d had to make him vow not to show up today at the airport to see her off. It wouldn’t surprise her if he came anyway, or if she was picking him up in New Orleans next weekend after a flight of his own.

  Which would be just fine with her, because she already missed him. The last look they had shared before she closed the door and watched him drive away had torn her to pieces.

  “You can have any man you want, Savannah,” Rowan said sadly after a moment of painful silence while she tried to get a grip on her emotions. She swept an arm down in Savannah’s general direction. “I mean, look at you. Anyone you want. Why him? Why the one who took Tommy away from us?”

  In her emotionally raw state, Savannah couldn’t resist the tears that sprang to her own eyes at the raw pain in Rowan’s voice, in her face. “I didn’t plan on any of this.”

  “Then you can stop it. Okay? Just stop it. You have to.”

  Maybe Mike’s idea of running away had been a good one. It would be the only way either of them would find any peace together.

  Savannah didn’t know what to say. She wouldn’t cheapen what she and Mike had shared all weekend by vowing to end it when she knew she wouldn’t—couldn’t. He didn’t deserve that. But neither could she bring herself to lie to Rowan anymore, either.

  “You won’t, though, will you?” Rowan asked. “I see it all over your face.”

  “Please let us give it a chance,” she said, finding it ridiculous, as a grown woman, to beg someone else to let her have the relationship she wanted. “Just a chance. Maybe it won’t work. Maybe it will. If it does, we’ll do everything we can to make it right. I know he wants to.”

  “The only way he can make this right is to stay out of our lives. If you were thinking straight, you would know that.”

  “He made this weekend possible for you. Meeting Zane and—”

  “And I wouldn’t have accepted if I’d known that you’d fuck him for it.”

  Pain ripped through Savannah’s chest with a force that made her stagger backward a step, momentarily unable to speak around it. “You’d better stop, Rowan, before you say something you regret.”

  “Too late. I already regret everything.” She turned and stalked toward the door as Savannah fought with raging anger and hurt, but Rowan turned for one final word before slamming her way out. “Don’t you dare ever try to tell me you love me again if you do this. Never.”

  The closing door echoed through the room, leaving Savannah standing alone, staring at it long after her sister-in-law was gone. And then the phone was in her hand and Michael’s voice in her ear almost before she knew she’d moved.

  “What’s the matter?” he demanded the second he heard her voice, the sobs ripping from her throat.

  “Rowan and I just had a huge fight,” she managed to tell him. Something about his voice, strong and authoritative while her brain felt like a mass of confusion, gave her strength. “I don’t know what to do. We were about to leave for the airport.”

  “Fuck. I’ll come get you.”

  “No,” she bit out before she thought about it. It was what she wanted more than anything right then, to see him, feel his arms around her, but . . . “That’ll make things worse.”

  “Is the car there yet?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t left the room.”

  “If it’s about us, Savannah, tell her what she wants to hear.”

  “That I won’t see you anymore? I can’t. It’s a lie. That lie will keep going on and on and I can’t live like that.”

  “Can you live like this?” he asked grimly, then his voice gentled as he said, “Go get on the plane, darlin’. Everything will be all right.”

  “God.” She dropped her forehead to her free hand, rubbing at the headache blooming there. “If we’re both acting like this on the plane, they’ll kick us off.”

  “Dry your eyes and take a breath. You got this.”

  “I miss you.”

  “Miss you too.”

  Chuckling, she raised her head and stared toward the window with bleary, unfocused eyes. “Yeah, you’re probably ready to get off this merry-go-round. Get us crazy girls back to Louisiana.”

  “Never think it, baby.”

  Of course he would say that. She took a moment to get her emotions under control, and it helped to conjure him up in her head, that devastating smile and rock-hard body she’d spent a good portion of the weekend exploring. Sitting on his kitchen floor eating ice cream in the dead of night, standing on the beach in the darkness with him while the rest of the world was sleeping. “What were you doing when I called?”

  “Cardio,” he said, a little sheepishly.

  “What we got last night wasn’t enough for you?” she teased, those images in her head now sweaty and hot, a tangle of sheets and limbs and hands and orgasms.

  “No, actually. I could go for a few more rounds of that.”

  “Me too.” She drew a fortifying breath, needing every ounce of strength she possessed for the next hours ahead. “But I guess I’d better go.”

  “You’re okay?”

  “Yeah. I am now.”

  “Call me when you’re home. Let me know you made it safe.”

  “I will.”

  “I’ll count the minutes, then.” The smile was obvious in his voice, and damn him, she might have fallen a little further in those seconds.

  Knocking on Rowan’s door a few minutes later, she began to wonder if she had gone ahead down to the lobby, but suddenly the door snatched open. Rowan’s eyes were dry now, but glassy and red rimmed. She didn’t look Savannah in the face as she said, “Come here.”

  The room was frigid and dim as Savannah wordlessly slipped in; Rowan had pulled the drapes closed. Most of the light came from a lone lamp in the corner and Rowan’s laptop open on the desk, the screen glowing with an easily recognizable YouTube page.

  Savannah froze when she saw it. “What’s this?”

  “Sit.”

  “No. Damnit, Rowan, I told you—”

  “I had to see it,” Rowan said savagely, “and that means you have to see it too. Sit down.”

  All the tears Savannah had managed to repress sprang back into her eyes, and she backpedaled from the computer as if it were a venomous snake poised to strike her, a hand to her mouth. “I said no. This isn’t happening.”

  “What are you afraid of? Afraid you’ll see what he really is? Maybe you should. I saw it.”

  “You’re trying to make me watch my brother die all over again and—”

  “He didn’t die here, he died at the hospital.”

>   “I know where the fuck he died, Rowan, I was there.”

  “Then it’s interesting you put it like that, because yeah, you’re right, he died at the hospital but Mike Larson killed him here.”

  “He didn’t mean to!”

  “How do you know? You’ve never seen it.”

  “I know what he told me.”

  “Just watch it, Savannah. Then you can try to justify to me, or to your parents, why you want to be with him. Trust me, that’s a conversation you don’t want to go into without knowing all the details.”

  “I hate you for this.” The words tore her heart, shredded it, as they ripped from her throat. At the moment, she meant them completely.

  “Then we’re even. I hate you for this too.”

  But nothing had ever hurt her as much as that, even if she deserved it.

  “I don’t want to,” Rowan said quickly, her voice losing its maniacal edge and turning softer, pleading, “Savannah, please, just watch it. I’ll leave you alone while you do, if you want. But I want to . . . I need to know that you’re going into this understanding how I feel. To understand it, you have to see.”

  “We have a plane to catch in less than two hours,” Savannah said desperately. “Please, let’s go. I’ll watch it when I get home, okay? Can I at least do that?”

  Rowan stared at her for a moment, her expression unreadable, almost blank. “Promise me,” she said at last.

  Anything, anything to get out of that cold, dark room, away from that hellishly glowing screen. “I promise, okay? I promise.”

  Without another word, Rowan went to the computer and snapped it shut, then shoved it into her carry-on tote. Savannah took what felt like the first breath she’d been allowed since walking in the door, her pulse raging in her ears. I won’t, she thought to herself, I can’t, I won’t, I can’t . . .

  But after the longest seventy-minute flight she’d ever experienced, spent sitting next to Rowan’s icy silence, and the ride home that seemed it would never end, she trudged into her apartment, dumped her bag on the couch, and dropped into her desk chair to face her laptop.

  Drawing a breath, she turned it on. Waited a few seconds that felt like an additional eternity for it to fire up. Surfed to YouTube. Licked lips dry as parchment as she searched “Larson vs. Dugas” with hands that wouldn’t stop their frantic shaking.

  And she watched.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He’d punished himself today, driven himself to the point of exhaustion, and it felt fucking good. It had been a long time since he’d felt so hopeful, since he’d taken true joy in his training, and Jon had wanted to turn backflips from sheer happiness.

  “Whatever you have to thank for this, keep it up,” he’d told him as they finished for the day.

  Mike knew damn well who he had to thank for it. He only wondered what was taking her so long to call him. Her flight should have landed hours ago, but he tried not to worry. She probably had a lot of damage control to do, and he wouldn’t bother her in the middle of it.

  Zane even stopped by, Mr. Rock Star himself, and they had a couple of beers while Zane regaled him with wild stories from the road. Mike wasn’t ready to reveal much about his own weekend, remaining nonchalant when Zane asked how hanging out with Savannah had gone a couple nights ago. Right now the entire experience still felt like a secret he wasn’t supposed to tell. If she couldn’t tell it to the people in her life, then he wouldn’t tell it to his.

  They ended up at Damien’s nightclub, getting their asses handed to them in a lively Texas hold ’em game during which a shit ton of their money bled into their brother’s greedy pockets.

  “I don’t know why you even try,” Damien told them as he threw down a straight flush to beat the full house Zane had gone all in on. Zane collapsed across the table, banging his forehead against it as Mike erupted in laughter. “Are we done here? It’s like falling off a fucking log, playing you two. Give me a challenge, at least.”

  “The fuck you laughing at?” Zane snapped at Mike, lifting his head. “You went out half an hour ago.”

  “I told you to give it up then,” Mike reminded him, taking a swig of beer. Jon would probably slap it out of his hands if he could see him, but he so rarely got to hang out with both of his brothers at the same time. Tonight was a treat, because there weren’t too many places Zane could go anymore without getting mobbed. “It’s not my fault you didn’t listen.”

  “I believe your exact words were, ‘Just give him half your money and let him kick you in the nuts.’ No wonder he didn’t listen.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I heard him,” Zane grumbled.

  “For the record, I would have taken that deal,” Damien said, crooked grin in full force. His dark shark-eyed gaze caressed his copious stacks of chips as if appraising a priceless jewel. Yeah, sometimes Mike worried about that one. Not that Zane didn’t have his own vices to deal with, but if Damien’s ever came to light, it could possibly be the end of him.

  Something else Mike had their loving mother to thank for. The endless parade of men through her house had included one who had taken Damien with him to several of the illegal poker rooms around Houston, once the boy had shown an interest and a good head for the game. And a monster was created. That monster had built an empire Mike suspected was beyond the scope of his and Zane’s wildest imaginings, and that scared both of them. But asking Damien about it, or trying to warn him, only resulted in the blank wall of his famed poker face. Useless.

  And where the hell was Savannah? Mike tugged up his shirtsleeves and checked his phone, which he had kept at his elbow all night in case it lit up with a call or message from her. So far, it had remained dark except for various acquaintances—his manager checking on him, a couple of his training partners from the gym. But never the name he wanted most to see.

  Enough was enough. He sent her a text while Damien began taking Zane to task about limping in too often on his bets. Is everything okay? Short and sweet. He wanted her to know he was thinking about her without interfering too much with whatever she was dealing with back home.

  Thinking about her was an understatement. Even while spending time with the two people most important to him, Mike couldn’t get her out of his head for more than a minute at a time.

  “Booty call?” Damien inquired, lifting a brow. “You’ve been all over that phone tonight.”

  Mike gave him the finger.

  “I’m just saying, if it falls through, there’s more willing pussy downstairs than you could shake your dick at.”

  Zane laughed while Mike shook his head. “You’re a goddamn disgrace.”

  “No shit,” his little brother scoffed. But Mike hadn’t missed the fact that Damien’s usually hyper-focused eyes had been following a certain girl around the huge open room all night, and he wondered what might be going on there. In one way or another, whether it was sexual interest or suspicion of wrongdoing in his domain, it most likely spelled trouble for her.

  “I would go scope it out,” Zane said, near pouting, “but the last time I did, I caused a small riot and it was all over fucking TMZ the next day. You don’t need that kind of publicity and neither do I.”

  “No such thing as bad publicity. Do you know how long the line was the night after that happened? And you have the most dedicated bodyguard you could ask for right beside you,” Damien pointed out, gesturing at Mike with his beer. “Go be his wingman, Mike.”

  “He doesn’t need a wingman. And the last thing I feel like doing is shoving groupies off him all night until he makes his pick, or going to jail for beating the shit out of jealous boyfriends looking to do him in.”

  “Not in my place, you won’t,” Damien said icily. “But I could parade some flesh up here for you, Z, if you want.”

  “What the fuck are you now, a pimp?” Mike demanded.

  Damien turned impassive dark eyes on him. “No, dumbass. But I have certain acquaintances who would drop their panties in a nanosecond to meet him.”

  Of course
. Zane’s brows raised in interest and Mike pushed himself up from the table. “I’ve had about all of you two I can take.” So much for brotherly bonding—he sometimes forgot what a couple of cavemen they could be, and people thought he was the bad guy. Plus Savannah hadn’t answered him yet, and he was fully disturbed about that now. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  He escaped down the stairs, leaving behind the flutter of shuffled cards and clinking of chips, shouts of victory and frustration. All of it was punctuated with the boom boom boom of the bass in the club. Reaching a quiet spot in the back offices—if any place in here could be considered quiet—he hit Savannah’s name in his contacts and waited to hear her voice . . .

  . . . only to be greeted with her voicemail message. Shit.

  “Hey, darlin’. Just checking on you. Call me back when you can. I miss you.”

  On a whim, he pulled up a flight tracker app and looked up the day’s flights from Houston to New Orleans, wondering if she’d had a delay. No, hers had landed as scheduled. He hoped they hadn’t had trouble on the way home.

  Or that her fight with Rowan hadn’t continued to the point that she’d given in to her family’s wishes and decided to cut all ties with him.

  The thought was sharp, ugly, brutal, and it hit him in the chest harder than any opponent ever had in his life. For a moment, his lungs locked up along with most of the other life-supporting organs in his body—oh, fuck, it hurt. Oh, baby, no, don’t let them . . .

  He nearly leapt off the floor when his phone lit up with her number and sweet face—a picture he’d snapped of them before he’d left her at the hotel at three A.M. this morning. “Are you okay?” he barked in place of greeting.

  “No,” she said, her voice weak and tiny and raw, as if her throat had been shredded from screaming . . . or crying.

  Outrage and helplessness churned through his gut. Goddamn it, he should be there, she shouldn’t have to be facing this by herself when it was all because of him. Just as he was opening his mouth to speak, she said, “I don’t think I can talk right now. I’m sorry.”

  “Savannah, I can’t take knowing you’re hurting. I’ll be there by fucking sunrise if you don’t tell me something right now, I swear to Christ.”