"Oh, ah, my cousin dragged me," I said, pointing my drink in Hope's general direction where she was arguing with Billie who seemed like she wanted to go finish her conversation with the drug dealer, despite knowing his profession. "This is not usually my sort of thing."
"Me either. I got dragged here too," he said, shrugging. "What would you rather be doing?"
"Oh, taking my dog for a walk. Looking for a job. I just moved back to town," I explained.
"What kind of work?" he asked, seemingly genuinely interested, not just making polite chit-chat because he wanted to soften me up to his ulterior motivators.
"I'm a vet. Well, I have the degree. I'm not sure I have the chops for it, though, now that I finished all the schooling."
"You'll find your way. Everyone is in a rush to have all their shit figured out by the time they're twenty-five these days. Take it easy, angel. Life is too short to micro-manage every minute of it."
"You're right," I agreed, taking a deep breath.
In general, I had never been a micro-manager. I had always gone with the flow. But something about failing so quickly at my first "grown up" job was really eating away at my confidence, making me feel like I was behind the curve. But that was silly. There was no clock to beat. I could take my time.
"Thank you. I needed that," I added, shooting him a grateful smile that fell dead away on my lips when my gaze went over his shoulder, and a set of eyes met mine.
Those eyes.
Ones that used to be familiar, so full.
But now, all I saw was a void.
Niro's jaw seemed tight as he stood there, staring at me, then Toll for a long moment before turning and walking away.
"Boyfriend?" Toll asked, following my gaze. "I should have asked."
"No. No boyfriend," I said, then winced, remembering my uncles lecturing me that I should never admit that to strangers.
"So if I asked you for your number," Toll started, giving me what I could only call a bashful smile, "you might give it to me?"
"I, ah, I might be able to be persuaded," I said, trying for light, for casual, even though flirting had never been a strong suit of mine. Looking back, I wasn't even sure how the heck my relationships had happened. You know, all three of them.
"Great then..." he started, getting cut off by the loudspeaker.
"And next to the ring. Who you have all been waiting for..." it started.
"I'm afraid that is me," Toll told me, giving me an apologetic look. "Can I come find you after?"
"I, ah, sure," I agreed, wondering if I could sneak out before then. Sure, he seemed nice and all. But I wasn't going on a date with someone who hit people for fun. No way.
"Looking forward to it," he said, giving me a smile before moving off to the ring.
It wasn't until I saw him move inside that I realized I had missed the names on the announcement.
Toll, sure.
But someone else as well.
Niro.
"Oh, fuck," Hope said, coming to stand back with me again.
"I know! I can't believe he is fighting!" I said, mouth agape.
"What? Niro? He's a fucking lunatic. He does this for shits and giggles. No. I mean that," she said, waving a hand out toward the door. Where a new group was entering.
A group of men.
With a woman at their lead.
I didn't see them for long, but I knew them immediately.
The bikers from the night before.
The rival bikers.
"Should we be finding Fallon?" I asked, stomach tightening.
But then the woman biker's gaze slid to the cage, slid to Niro, and there was a tightening in her jaw.
"What the fuck is going on?" Hope asked, keen gaze moving around. At the new bikers, then over at the Henchmen guys. There was anger for the former group and uncertainty from the latter.
But we didn't need to ask any other questions.
Because, suddenly, a man moved to the side of the cage, sliding a padlock on the door, then moving to stand in front of the cage.
"Who is that?" I asked.
"Jax. That's Jax Ward."
The son of the owner. Or the co-owner. However it worked out.
"Alright, ladies and gentlemen. It is the fight you all didn't know you were waiting for," he started, smirk wicked.
"I don't like that smile," Hope decided, tone cold.
And if Hope didn't like it, I knew it couldn't be good.
"Niro, from the Henchmen MC. And his new contender. Toll from the East Coast Vultures MC." Jax paused for dramatic effect. Then went ahead and proved Hope right by finishing his thought. "May the best MC win."
"Oh, holy shit," Hope hissed.
I wouldn't pretend to understand what was going on, but one look at each of the biker clubs told me that Hope was not exaggerating.
Whatever Jax had just done had pissed everyone off.
Chapter Seven
Niro
I was so busy grinding my teeth over seeing Andi flirting with some random guy that I somehow missed it all until it was too late, until it was getting announced to everyone, until I finally understood why Jax was keeping it all under wraps who I was fighting.
Because he was stoking a potential street war, whether he truly understood that or not.
He was forcing us to go at each other.
To prove one was better than the other.
And whoever lost, and their club, was not going to take it lightly.
Fuck.
Fuck.
One glance over made me realize Jax had multiple tricks up his sleeve. Because he'd locked us in. They never locked us in.
And judging by the added club security moving in, I was pretty sure they weren't going to let our people step in to put an end to this before it began.
His father would lose his shit when he heard about this.
Ross had always prided himself on having a relatively tame club environment. Everyone behaved when they came, or they got ejected, and never invited back. People toed the line so they could continue to come and enjoy themselves, maybe even make a little money too.
This?
This was like stoking a small fire until it burned down the entire town.
Was it maybe a good business move?
Fuck yeah.
The money was pouring out of people's wallets and purses as soon as the words were out of his mouth.
But he had to know there would be repercussions.
If nothing else, regardless of the outcome, Reign and Fallon would never let me fight here again. They would never let any of us fight here again.
Jax would lose someone who brought money in.
And he would rip an outlet from me that had been keeping me sane all these years.
What the hell was I going to do if I couldn't pound my fists into someone? If I didn't get the catharsis of the pain inflicted on me as well?
Those were problems for another time, though, as my gaze finally moved toward my opponent instead of Jax, instead of the crowd, and I saw who I was fighting clearly for the first time.
The guy who'd been chatting up Andi.
The guy who'd gotten one of those smiles she would never give me again.
I liked to fight. It was cathartic for me. Each time I felt a fist land, felt a bruise form, felt blood trickle, felt a bone crack, it pushed the old me deeper and deeper, further and further out of reach. Each time I inflicted pain, it reinforced the idea that I was too cold-hearted to feel any fucking thing anymore.
But I never got joy out of fighting.
That was a line I guess I never crossed.
The idea of knocking this fucker on his ass, though? Oh, yeah, that was bringing something akin to joy to my system right then.
Maybe my brotherhood should have been at the forefront of my mind.
But it wasn't my club I was thinking about when I was sizing up this bastard.
It was Andi.
In that white dress I'd never seen before that managed to b
e sweet and sexy all at once, that clung to the soft curves I knew I'd never get to touch, but his unworthy hands might.
My jaw was so tight that the bones felt brittle as I stood there, hands curling into fists.
Across from me, Toll seemed to sense the change, the shift, from something impersonal to something much more so.
The lightness that had been around him a moment ago fell away, revealing something underneath I hadn't anticipated. Something dark, something ugly. I recognized it. Because I often saw it in myself. And because of that familiarity, I knew how bad this was going to get. Because we both had something in on this fight. Me, and my demons. Toll, and his own. And we were going to take them out on each other.
We barely held off for the bell.
After that, it was a blur in the way all my fights were.
All that buried shit, it came up to the surface, demanded to get dealt with. And I did that with my fists, feet, knees, elbows.
Toll was an unknown opponent. I had no idea what to expect from him compared to the men I had been fighting for months or years.
He was heavier, bigger, but slower too.
So I used my speed advantage.
And I added my rage and jealousy and pain on top.
I don't know how long we went at each other. Time moved differently in a ring, somehow both fast and slow all at once. Pain was disorienting.
There was pain, too.
A lot of it.
Toll's wide fists landed just as many times as mine did. My left eye felt swollen already. My jaw was aching. There was a screaming at my side that said I would be nursing bruised—if not busted—ribs after the fight. Sweat and blood trickled down my face as my breathing got faster, shallow, as my muscles and knuckles started objecting to the efforts of a seemingly unending fight.
The world outside the ring was oddly muted out.
That was until the only voice I wanted to hear rang out.
Close to the ring.
Raised and borderline hysterical.
"They're going to kill each other!" Andi shrieked. She wasn't someone for raising her voice. I'd once watched one of her mom's rescues bite the shit out of her arm, holding on for dear life, blood flowing down her hand and onto the floor in big splashes, and she spoke in calm, soothing tones until her mom could get the animal off. She never got angry, never got involved in any sort of confrontation.
"Someone will get knocked out eventually," Jax's calm voice contrasted hers.
"Maybe permanently," Andi insisted, voice getting more desperate. "Unlock the cage at least," she pleaded.
"I'm afraid I can't do that," Jax said, a shrug in his voice.
"How can you—" she started, but was cut off by Fallon's angry voice joining the conversation, asking him what the fuck he thought he was doing.
I saw Andi move. If I hadn't glanced over, I would have missed it much like Jax missed it, like Fallon missed it.
Her hand slipped into Jax's jacket pocket, fishing something out.
A fist landed to the side of my head, dragging my attention back to the fight as white sparks flashed across my vision, threatening that unconsciousness Jax had mentioned.
I lost track of Andi, of the confrontation between Fallon and Jax. It wasn't like I could do anything if those two came to blows, if both clubs started a brawl, even, being locked up in this cage with this bastard who had just as much to prove as I did.
I had my back to the door, so I missed it, missed her, until she was rushing into the cage, into the center of the ring, putting her back to me, holding her arms up, palms out at Toll.
"Stop!" she screamed, the sound, and her sudden presence, seeming to cut through the demons we were both wrestling with, acting as an ice bath to our overheated systems.
Shock crossed Toll's face at the sight of the girl he'd been flirting with in the middle of the ring, begging him to stay back.
Shock had to have crossed mine as well.
Because she wasn't just trying to break up a fight.
No.
She was trying to protect me.
Me.
Who had been nothing but an asshole to her since I'd seen her again.
"Please stop," she demanded again, voice cracking.
"Hey—" Toll started, hand reaching out.
"Don't fucking touch her," I snapped, drawing his attention again, seeing the knowledge and challenge crossing his face in a blink.
"I believe that's her choice," Toll said, cocking his head to the side, starting to move to the side a bit.
"You need to go," I demanded, following Toll as he moved away from Andi.
"I'm not going anywhere," Andi insisted, looking quickly between us. "Stop this."
"Andi, go," I told her, watching as her lower lip trembled, but trying to keep my gaze on Toll who now knew why this fight was so personal.
"Yeah, girl, you can't be in the ring with two psychopaths," Hope's voice joined, reaching out to grab Andi, trying to pull her out of the center of the ring.
"Let go. Someone needs to stop them."
"Yeah, probably. But not you. You know how much shit I will get from your father if I let you get pummeled in a cage fight?"
"Andi, fucking please," I hissed, looking over my shoulder at her. I hadn't heard desperation in my voice in so long it sounded unfamiliar even to my own ears, but it seemed to register with Andi, making those big blue eyes of hers go even wider.
But looking over at her, that had been a stupid move.
You never took your eye off a predator like that.
The blow landed to the side of my temple, catching me off guard, sending me flying backward, landing with a shooting pain up my back.
"No!" Andi cried, yanking away from Hope, landing down on the floor at my side, body half-covering mine as her hand went to my shoulder, pushing down to keep me in place.
"You need to go," I told her, watching Toll move in behind her.
"He's not going to hit me," she insisted, her other hand touching the spot to my temple where I'd been struck, wincing when I hissed.
"You don't know that."
"I—"
"What the fuck?" a different voice roared, drawing everyone's attention.
And there was Ross Ward, standing near the side of the cage, hand closing around the padlock for a second, registering what he was seeing, then looking at me, at Toll, at Andi, then the crowd, before zeroing in on his son.
"It's over," yet another voice said, making me look at the cage door again where my father was pulling Hope out, pushing her over toward one of the other OG guys who had shown up, likely tipped off by Fallon or Seth. "Get up," he demanded, looking down at me.
"I think he hurt his back," Andi insisted, shaking her head.
"Your legs still working?" he asked, gaze holding mine.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," I said, gritting my teeth against the pain that went down my spine and leg as I folded upward.
"Toll, let's go," Danny, Toll's boss—for lack of a better word—called from the side of the cage, anger flickering in her gaze, her jaw tight.
"Fuck," I hissed, taking a deep breath as I tried to push up, get off the ground.
"Here," Andi said, reaching for my hand, slipping under, curling around. The electric shock of that was enough to pull my attention away from my pain as she pulled me up onto my feet, stumbling back a little. "There we go," she said in that fake sing-song voice she used on hurt animals. "Okay. Let's get you out of here," she said, hand still in mine, pulling me along with her as she followed my father out of the ring.
Ward was standing there with his son, scolding him under his breath. Seeing me, Jax's gaze shifted for a second. I didn't see any regret or remorse. No. If anything, there was just a cocky smirk on his face.
"Watch your fucking back, Jax," I hissed at him, making one of his brows lift.
"Stop," Andi hissed, leading me toward the door where people were still shuffling out, angry they'd had their night-out cut short.
"Give me you
r keys," Hope demanded, catching up.
"No," I objected.
"You're in no shape to ride," she shot back, rolling her eyes.
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine," Andi told me, voice firm.
"Here," my father said, tossing keys at Hope. "I took the SUV from the clubhouse. Take them back there. I'll find my kid's keys and bring his bike back."
"Come on," Andi said, releasing my hand to wrap her arm around my lower back instead, her other hand pressing into my stomach gently. "Let's get you home. I need to look at that cut on your face," she added as we all got in the SUV. Hope moved up front, but Andi slid in beside me in the back.
I didn't want to appreciate her generous spirit. Even though I'd been a dick to her, she was going to take care of me, sit with me. And I was going to let her, despite the alarm bells going off in my head, telling me this was dangerous territory, that I should turn back now before it was too late.
But all I could focus on was the feel of her hand as it settled on my knee, the warmth of her body at my side, the smell of her rose-scented perfume she'd worn since as far back as I could remember.
I just let her sit with me, shuffle me into the clubhouse, and then lead me back to my room, a place I'd wanted to have her come with me more times than I could remember.
It was stupid.
Dangerous.
But I couldn't bring myself to care.
Chapter Eight
Andi
I was not, as a general rule, a brave woman.
I left that to my aunts, to my cousins, to my friends.
That was not how I operated.
I was not someone who picked someone's pocket. I had never even considered trying before.
I was certainly not someone who threw herself between two men engaged in a nasty fight.
Yet that was what I did.
And I knew why.
Because it didn't matter what he was like now, Niro always had been and would always be important to me.
My heart is a messy liar, all my truths shoved under the bed, spilling out of half-closed dresser drawers.
I would never be any good at saying I didn't love him.
Even if I wanted to say those words more than anything.
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