by Emilia Finn
Bry only nods, and ignores the way my heart races uncontrollably. “That’s about the size of it. Oh, and I thought she was dating that dumbfuck, Price.”
Finally, he crosses those lines – assuming the sleeping with me, announcing we fucked, checking me out in my underwear, carrying me around, and pulling me into his lap are all on the appropriate side of that line – and presses his lips to my shoulder. He nibbles like it’s totally cool for a couple of strangers to bite each other, and when I try to step away, he only holds on tighter and bites a little harder, until I’m forced to press my lips closed or risk moaning in front of all of these people.
“She’s not?” Ben asks. “I thought she was too.”
“Nuh uh.” His lips curve up against my skin and send bolts of electricity straight to my groin. “She said she isn’t. She said I assumed.”
“And you know what they say about assumptions.”
He snickers. “Exactly. So I was being chivalrous as shit, letting her keep her clothes and dignity all night. She was taken, and though I don’t give a fuck about Price, I care about her.”
My eyes widen and lock onto Evie’s when she only smirks and watches us.
“But turns out I made an ass of myself with those assumptions. She was single as fuck.”
“Was?” Mac grins. “Past tense?”
“Mmm. We’re in a committed relationship now, guys. Welcome her to the family.”
“Bryan!” I try to step away, only to sling straight back under his steely grip. “Stop saying weird shit like that. Fuck.” Then I look to Evie, wide-eyed. “You made me say ‘fuck’ in front of business associates.”
He only shrugs. “I already said fuck in front of you. You’re good.”
“We are not in a relationship. You’re delusional. And rude. Abrasive. Arrogant.”
He grins. “Sexy. Tenacious. Determined. At least seven percent in love.”
And there it goes. My heart dies and flutters in one.
“I’m going to convince you,” he swears, “and someday, when we’re old, you’ll be thankful that I was like a dog at a bone over this.”
“So…” Bean hedges on a soft laugh. “Alrighty. Welcome to the family, Maddi. You’ll find most of them are loud and rude, so if you need a minute of quiet, come find me or Brooke. We’ll hook you up with something a little less obnoxious.”
“You want berries in your pancakes?” Evie looks into my eyes. Not cruel. Not mean. Not taunting. “We have blueberries, or…” She steps to the fridge and opens it wide. “Strawberries. Or you can just be like us and drown it in syrup and cream.”
Damn them all. Damn everyone on this planet.
“Turdsky?” Bry whispers in my ear and sends goosebumps right down to my toes. “You want the syrup, don’t you?”
I nod.
Like my agreement is a blanket yes for everything he wants, he presses a kiss to my cheek and looks to Evie. “She wants the syrup.”
Bryan
No Take-Backs
“So…” Mac stares at me and Maddi. “Anyone gonna ask Bry who popped him on the jaw?”
“Yeah.” Evie plates Maddi’s pancakes and slides them across the counter. “Who got you? Is he dead?”
“Jackson Price got me. And no, he lives. But I think Uncle Alex is gonna drop by today to arrest me.”
Evie only snickers. “Uncle Alex is a pussycat, you’re fine. Why’d Jackson hit you?”
“I think I hit him first.” I reach around Maddi and begin cutting our communal breakfast. Fuck it. She’s diving straight into this. Because when a Kincaid knows, he knows. “He hurt Maddi.”
Four sets of eyes turn dangerous and snap to the woman in my lap.
“He thought he’d show off his balls by jumping line in front of me, but while doing it, he almost clipped her with his car.”
“Fuckin’ asshole,” Evie hisses. “He deserved more than a pop in the mouth.”
I grab a small square of pancake, slide it through the pooling syrup, then offer it to Maddi like it’s totally cool for me to feed her.
Her eyes whip to mine, fiery hot, with a tinge of embarrassment. “I can eat on my own.”
“This is much more fun.” I bring the fork closer, and grin when she grudgingly accepts it. “Attagirl.”
Then I look to my family. “Not only did he do that, but then she was talking to him through the window of his car. Like, she was outside, and he was inside. He grabbed her arm, yanked her forward. Next thing I know, I’m outta my car with his blood on my knuckles.”
Mac only laughs. “Bet you don’t remember a single bit of what happened between.”
“He shoved me,” Maddi adds. “Hence, skinned elbows.”
“Fuckin’ prick,” Evie growls. “Hurting chicks is not okay. I’m glad you decked him, Bry.”
Maddi laughs. “Er, no. Bry knocked me down. Not Jackson.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen. “Oh! Well, I’m sure there was a good reason for it.”
“Blind acceptance,” Maddi shakes her head, but at least she’s still smiling. “You assume Jackson shoved me, and you’re ready to kill him. Turns out Bry shoved me, and suddenly it’s okay.”
Evie drops a stack of pancakes on another plate and slides it to Ben. “That’s because Bryan is a gentleman. He’s rude and crude and lots of other rhyming words, but he’s good.” She presses a hand to her chest, and stares right into Maddi’s eyes. “He’s good in here. So if he shoved you, it was to save you from something worse.”
“Elbow to the face,” Maddi admits on a whisper.
Evie points. “There you go. Skinned elbows are better than getting knocked the fuck out. Trust me.”
“Does it hurt getting punched in the face?”
Our group turns kind of quiet for a moment, contemplative, since all of us have taken fists to the face.
Finally, Evie shrugs. “It doesn’t really hurt at the time, because usually you’re riding the adrenaline. But it hurts later. Especially when you wake up the next day.” She slides the next plate to Mac and begins on her own. “Your elbows kinda sore today?”
Maddi twists her arm and peeks at the dried blood. “Little bit.”
“So it’s like that. But tomorrow, it’ll be better.” She grabs her plate and comes around to sit in Ben’s lap, since we’ve run out of stools.
“We made the announcements for Stacked Deck.” She fills her mouth with pancake, talks around her food. “December twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. We announced the bigger purses, the new sponsors.” She looks to Maddi and grins. “Thanks, Monaco. We got your brand up on the website and shit, and the forms are coming in for fighters.”
“They’re getting better,” Bean adds. “We’re not holding as many hands this year, and Soph made it so they could pay on the website, and submit their medical there, too. It’s streamlining a bunch of shit, rather than us getting hundreds of hand-mailed letters to sort through.”
“That’s good.” I push pancake into my mouth, since I should have eaten already. Hours ago, really. My body knows the routine it knows, but along comes Maddi, and suddenly I’m sleeping in on a Sunday. “What are the numbers so far?”
“A little more than five hundred forms came through in the first twenty-four hours,” Bean says, since Evie has her arm wrapped around Ben’s neck, and ignores the rest of us while they eat each other’s food. “They’re getting better with the medical and shit. They knew the announcement was coming, so most had already been to their doctors and had the form ready. They just have to go again a week out from the tournament, get a last-minute check, submit that form like they did the first, and we’re set.”
“Are…” Maddi swallows her pancake, and looks between me and my family. “Are you all fighting?”
Bean nods. “Uh huh. Of course.”
“But…” She looks to me. “What division?”
“Heavyweight.”
She looks to Mac, so he answers, “Middleweight.”
“Ben’s heavyweight,” Bean a
dds. “Smalls is middle, I’m light.”
“Iowa next door is middle too,” Mac adds.
“But…” It’s fun watching her try to do the math in her head. “That means Bry and Ben will fight each other?” Then she looks to Mac. “And you and the other middleweight?”
He nods and works through his next pancake. “It’s just the way it is. There can only be one winner, and we all know that, so we do our best, we fight hard, and when it’s over, we eat at the same dining table, and leave the competition at the door.”
“Just like that?”
He nods. “Just like that. Except often, we’ll remind the loser that they lost. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.”
“Jackson Price’s form came through.” Bean tosses pancake into her mouth, and misses the way Maddi completely tenses in my lap. “Heavyweight.”
“Jackson Price is a shitty fuckin’ fighter.” I scowl. “I doubt either Ben or I will even see him in competition. He’ll be knocked out in the first round, because even our shittiest fighters are better than that shit he was putting out last night.”
Finally, Maddi turns in my lap, and brings up a thumb to gently probe my cheekbone. “That shit he was putting out last night still damaged your face, Bryan. He wasn’t knocked out by your first punch, which means he’s not as bad as you assume.”
I shake my head. “I have to hold my strikes when we’re not in the gym or octagon. I knock a guy out in competition, it’s cool, because that’s what we signed up for and we have medical proof that we’re healthy. I knock a guy out in the street, he drops and smacks his head on a lamppost, I’m going away for manslaughter. Nobody wants that on their conscience, so I go easy, I let him know who’s boss, but I don’t land my ass in prison to prove who’s the better fighter.”
“This is true.” Evie turns away from Ben with rosy red cheeks. “We fight for sport, not to hurt people. There’s a distinction there that many don’t see. But we see it, and we follow the rules, because a loudmouth poking at us isn’t worth losing everything over.”
From serious, to straight-up giddy, Evie’s face transforms. “I had a dress-fitting yesterday.”
Maddi’s shoulders tense. “You did?”
“It looks so beautiful. Makes my ass look amazing. We’re on the countdown to the wedding, and Biggie is having heart palpitations.”
“He still thinks she’s gonna dump me,” Ben chuckles. “He’s holding out hope she’ll ditch at the last second.”
“He’s a grump.” She leans into Ben’s chest and sighs. “I’m so happy, guys.” She looks to Maddi. “Speaking of Jackson Price. His sister is doing my dress.”
Maddi nods. It’s small, restrained, as she makes herself busy spinning our almost empty plate. “I know. She told me.” She looks up and fakes a smile. “She’s excited to be doing a Kincaid wedding.”
“She said that?” Evie’s eyes do the equivalent of an out-loud aww. “She’s talented. And fuck knows how she and Jackson came from the same womb, because she’s so sweet while we’re in there and she’s working. She basically sews around me some days, like,” she runs her hands over her ribs. “I wear the dress, and she makes adjustments while I stand in front of the mirrors. She even made it have pockets!”
“Not pockets!” Mac exclaims. “Holy shit, Smalls. Pockets?”
“Shut up.” She goes back to her breakfast. “Pockets in a dress is like…” She considers. “I don’t even know. But it’s super cool. Abby is doing our flowers,” she says of our friend’s wife. “She’s all set to deliver on the day of. And we taste-tested the cake this week too.”
“Chocolate?”
She grins. “Of course. And vanilla. It’s seven tiers of cakey goodness.” She licks her lips like an idiot. “I don’t know what I’m most excited about; the dress, or the cake.”
“Or, ya know,” Ben adds dryly. “Marrying the love of your life.”
“Eh.”
She turns to him when his face reddens with anger. Cups his jaw. And presses a long, noisy kiss to his lips. “I love you.”
He smiles. “Love you too.”
“Seven tiers is a lot,” I draw their attention back around. “Are you trying to be a brat?”
“It’s barely enough to cover our numbers.” She purses her lips. “Seriously. That’s not stockpiling cake and bringing a bunch home. That’s inviting the family, our friends, the gym. That’s keeping it small. We’re doing layers, so one is chocolate, the next is vanilla. Chocolate, vanilla. All the way to the topper.” She presses a hand to her heart and melts back into Ben’s arms. “I’m so in love with my wedding. It’s going to be so pretty.”
Maddi remains quiet through all of the wedding talk. She picks at our breakfast, stays on my lap, but she’s not melting the way Evie does. She’s tenser now than she was when my family first walked in.
Finally, after a bunch of pancakes, coffee, and teasing, my cousins let themselves out my front door with a promise to be back later to discuss getting Maddi into some promotional pictures.
We’re the faces of Stacked Deck, and Maddi is the face of Monaco. It just so happens to be an extra perk that she’s young and beautiful, and will only add value to our image.
Ben closes the door behind himself, throws his arm over Evie’s shoulders as they cross the street and head to her parents’ home. I turn back to find Maddi standing in the middle of my living room, wringing her hands and freaking out.
“What?” I move through the living room at an excruciatingly slow pace. To give her time to react. Time to prepare. “You were okay while I was carrying you. You were okay when I pulled you into my lap. I mean…” I bob my head. “You were putting on the act like it wasn’t okay. But deep in your gut, you wanted it. You were okay with eating with my family. And don’t tell me the warmth I felt pulsing through your jeans was a figment of my imagination.”
The closer I come, the more I speak, the more her face turns white.
“You were okay to share my food. And when I bit you, I felt you pulse for me. If my cousins weren’t here, we would have fucked on the kitchen counter.” I stop in front of her. “So tell me what went wrong. What happened?”
“I need to go home,” she rasps. “I need… I need to figure out a way to explain where I’ve been, then I need to go home and pretend last night never happened.”
“Are you a fifteen-year-old sneaking out of her daddy’s house, Madilyn? Or are you a grown woman who can do whatever the fuck she wants?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Are you ashamed that you want a trailer-trash-Kincaid? Because I can assure you, we feel the same amount of love for the Toskys. The difference is, my family knows you’re here, and no one treats you like shit because of where you come from.”
“You don’t…” She shakes her head. “You don’t understand how complicated this is. There is four-and-a-half million dollars riding on a contract. There’s family dynamics. There’s the fact that the cops had to break up a fight. And I don’t even know if Jackson got home last night!”
“You and Jackson are not a couple,” I bend lower and snarl. “I was playing nice, because I thought you were committed to him. And fuck him, but I care enough about you to not hurt you. But you’re not his girl. Therefore, it doesn’t matter one fucking bit whether he got home last night. It’s none of your concern.”
“You’re not with Evie, but you’d care that she gets home.”
“She’s my cousin,” I counter. “Your argument is invalid.”
“He’s my family too, Bryan. You might not approve of it, and we all know you don’t like him, but I was raised under his roof just as much as my own. We are family.”
I press a hand to my heart. “It hurts me right up in here that you’re related to such filth. Because for me to keep you, I have to be connected to them. And fuck, but that makes me sick.”
“Keep me?” She throws her hands up. “You’re insane. We are not a couple, Bryan! We are not together. We are nothing. But you see
m to think you just get to dictate and have your orders obeyed.”
“I expect you to see what I see.”
“What do you see?” she screeches. “What, Bry? What am I so blind to?”
“Me.”
I don’t shout. But I do rest my hands on her hips and hold her close.
“You’re so blinded by what your family brainwashed you with all your life, you don’t see me standing right here. If I had any other surname, this wouldn’t be an issue. But you think you get to flick me off because of who my grandfather was?”
“I can’t do this. I can’t…” She swallows and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, but no. This is impossible.”
“It’s only impossible in your mind. In mine, we’re already shacked up with two and a half kids and a dopey-eyed dog.”
“You can’t say things like that, Bryan!” She tries to bounce away from my hands. “You can’t declare something to be so, and expect me to fall into line. We don’t know each other, we’ve never dated, we’re not even friends. But you say crazy shit and somehow expect me to consider it to be rational and normal?”
“So come to dinner with me.” I lean in and stop only when our noses touch. “Madilyn Tosky, if I promise not to call you Turdsky for an entire evening, would you please do me the honor of coming out to dinner?” I grin. “I’ll pay.”
She’s trying to be mad, but I see the smile she keeps locked up tight.
“You’re trying to be cute,” she whimpers. “But how do you suggest I explain to my family that I like a Kincaid, huh? How do you think that will go over?”
“Come here.” I grab her hand when a new idea blooms in my mind. I drag her to the door, swing it wide, and pull her onto the porch. “Hey, Mom!”
“Bryan!” Maddi spasms beside me. “Stop it!”
“Ma!” I shout so loud that I hurt my throat and draw onlookers from every house that surrounds us. “Come outside for a sec!”
“What?” Her door swings wide, so the first love of my life steps out in jeans and long, cascading blonde hair. “What’s up, baby? Oh, hey, Maddi.”
Poor Maddi hides her face and gives a listless wave.