“All that terrible stuff. Then me. In a bikini.” Her words are a whisper right against my ear.
“More torture.” I pick her up by the waist and my fingers pluck at the knot holding her bikini top on. “But I’m a glutton for punishment.”
She presses her body to mine, and I’m enveloped by everything that’s her, ready to free fall into whatever we’re about to do, however we’re about to do it, excited about a freedom I never imagined.
Until the noose that’s always around my neck gets tugged.
My phone rings.
Evan startles and pulls back, her face relieved. “It’s okay, right? It isn’t ‘House of the Rising Sun.’”
I pull the phone out of my pocket and stare, willing the call to go the fuck away even when I know it won’t. Evan’s fingers suddenly half-cover the screen. When I look up, her brow is furrowed.
“Winch? It’s okay, right? You can ignore it? We can go to the beach?”
“It’s not ‘House of the Rising Sun,’” I agree, but I tug the phone away from her hand. “It’s my…it’s someone I used to know.”
The call goes to voicemail, and I make the decision to finally put it all on the backburner when a text beeps through.
I open it and stifle a groan. Yr brother and 2 Murrays on 4th and Little. Jimlo is taking bets.
I have a serious urge to hurl this fucking phone onto the street and run it over a few dozen times.
I told her I wouldn’t break her heart, and I won’t. But I have to break our date and leave her, and that feels like the first step on the long road that will eventually lead to Evan’s broken heart.
Evan 9
This morning has been like every other tangled, crazy, hot time Winch and I collide. It’s strange how it’s possible for me to go from thinking he’s the only guy I’ll ever want to be with, to considering slicing him out of my life completely and possibly punching him in the nuts as a sendoff.
But there’s something about him that keeps me right in the eye of the storm, no matter how nasty it gets.
And it’s just gotten rip-off-the-roof, flood-that-will-float-your-car-away nasty.
I snuggle in his arms, enjoying the clover and spice tang of his skin, my tiny bikini burning to have his eyes all over it (and his hands all under it) when his damn phone plays “She’s Like the Wind.”
My first thought is, Who the hell would he use that ringtone for?
My second thought, tripping right on the heels of my first thought, is, It’s not “House of the Rising Sun”!
My second thought is so overwhelmingly ecstatic, it blots out my first entirely, and I don’t even have the urge to vomit over that cheese-tastic ringtone or grill him about who would have inspired it.
Until his mouth opens and he starts to say words I’m not ready to hear.
“It’s Remy, Evan. I’m so sorry—”
“No, no, no, no, no,” I interrupt, pressing my fingers against his mouth urgently “No! I’ve got a bikini on. A scandalous bikini! I picked it up in Paris. No one in America has a bikini this sexy.” I push close to him, the phone locked in his hand between our bodies. “Winch, you promised me, ten minutes ago, you promised me things would be different. You promised—”
Winch closes his eyes and groans. “Oh, baby. Please. Hear me out.”
It’s the first time he’s called me ‘baby.’ A pleasant tingle thrills through me, up my arms and down my spine, in direct contrast with the molten anger that’s volcanoing through my blood
“Explain, then,” I demand.
His eyes fly open, and I take two big steps back before I cross my arms in the international girl-sign that unequivocally communicates ‘watch what you’re going to say very closely.’
He clears his throat, runs a hand over his hair, double checks the message on his phone, moves toward me, groans when I move back, and finally opens his mouth to talk.
“Remy’s about to fight.”
He stops. I glare.
“Really? Behind the baseball dugout at three sharp? What is he, in middle school? If your brother wants to fight, let him fight.”
Winch grips the roof of the car and grimaces.
“Okay, listen. You’re gonna hate this, but listen. My family…where I come from, a fight is more than a fight, okay? When the families fight, there’s a lot at stake, and Remy just picked a really, really powerful family to throw down with. Pissing them off isn’t a good idea, and it will mean a lot of bad for all of us if he loses. Basically he can’t lose. So I gotta go. It will take half an hour, an hour tops, then I come back, get you, and you let me see that sexy-ass bathing suit that’s already making me crazy.”
He holds his fists out in front of his body hopefully and gives me his best, charming, begging smile.
“You know that saying, ‘A picture’s worth a thousand words’?” I ask. Winch nods with slow uncertainty. “Well, a live fight is probably worth twenty-thousand questions. So I’m in.”
I pull on the passenger door handle and attempt to swing the door open, but Winch already has his hand on the frame and is shutting it before I can slide in.
“Out of the question.” He takes me by the shoulders and moves me two steps over, back toward my grandparents’ house. “A fight is no place for you. It’s dangerous. I’ll be out there in the mix. I won’t be able to help you if anyone messes with you, and—” He pulls back and lets this long, low whistle escape his mouth. “You’re gonna get messed with. Look at you.” He shakes his head. “Anything else you want, you got it. Anything. Just not this.”
Every internal alarm bell is sounding off like crazy, and I decide to give Winch a final trial by fire.
“What if I asked to be invited to dinner at your family’s place? And to go to mass with you? Next week?”
The color leaks out of his face and leaves it looking drawn and ashen. His mouth pulls tight and his eyes blink fast. Then he looks at me levelly and nods.
“Okay. Done.”
“Really? You’d do that for me?” My heart does this little slide, shuffle, slide before it leaps up and kicks its heels together.
He delivers the sweetest half-smile, all sexy curve of the lip and gorgeously half-lidded eyes.
“Of course. You’re my girl. You gotta meet them all sometime anyway. Might as well be sooner than later. I’m gonna warn you, though; they are crazy as hell.”
The fear and worry on his face is so bald it’s almost dizzyingly hilarious. I slide my hands down his arms and pull on his elbows.
“I don’t want that until you’re positive you’re ready.” The color springs back to his skin, and he sags with visible relief. “But I do want to come with you to this fight. Now. No more arguing. And I can take care of myself.”
He tenses back up.
“No way. Dinner every night with my family for the rest of the month if you want. By the way, I’m positive you’re gonna regret asking for that. My family is not the party you think they are.” I purse my lips and he rushes to add, “Dates. Weekly dates. Phone call checkins, love letters, that sonnet I promised you. Anything, Evan, but not this.” He comes towards me and takes my hands in his. “I’m begging you, not this.”
It’s romance. Every word out of his mouth is like the first time I wrapped my arms around a boy’s gangly neck and slow-danced in eighth grade; thrilling, exquisite, exciting romance. But I’ve let him direct enough of this relationship, and I know I have the leverage to make this happen.
“I. Want. To. Go.”
I set my feet apart in a determined stance and radiate a pure refusal to back down. Winch’s guilt, lust, and lack of time conspire and work a miracle for me. I watch it play out in slow motion; fierce pissed-off refusal, agitated uncertainty, desperate resignation, and complete shock that sets those sexy blue eyes wide.
“I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this, but c’mon.” He opens my door, his mouth flattened in an angry line. “But I don’t like this.”
My door slams shut, and I watch him
stalk in front of the car, his mouth moving a hundred miles an hour, like he’s having a heated argument with himself. When he opens the driver’s side, I get the gist.
“…stupid, insane ideas. This isn’t some little boxing match in a ring with refs and rules. This is nasty stuff, and no one there is gonna be watchin’ his manners or behaving. How the hell am I gonna take down two Murrays when I’m worried about making sure no one puts a hand on you? How am I supposed to manage this?”
At first, the whole complicated argument is only with himself, but he suddenly turns his scowls and howls on me.
I look him dead in the eye and ask, “Who is ‘She’s Like the Wind’?”
His mouth suctions shut and silence fills the interior. I’m just glad he stopped raving like a lunatic, and I don’t honestly expect a response, but he surprises me.
One of the things I love best about Winch is that he always manages to surprise me, just when I’ve written him off as total bad news.
“That song isn’t a song that means anything to me,” he says, his voice even and low. “It means something to a girl I dated. The last girl I dated. She programmed it in my phone, and I just never erased her from my contacts.”
“No?”
I’d deleted pictures, updated my FB status, burned collected couples memorabilia, smudged out all contact information, and drank myself into a blank, subdued state the very night Rabin and I split up. I thought that was common behavior.
“No. The end, with me and my ex, it was a long time coming. And I stopped hating her a long time before things self-destructed. I just started feeling bad for her. Lost a lot of respect for her, and that translated into not really giving a shit. So I didn’t delete her out of my phone or change that stupid ringtone, but it doesn’t mean anything.” He reaches over and takes my hand, locking his fingers with mine. “Unless it means something to you. Cause then I’ll delete it so fast, it’ll be unreal. Plus that, I hate that damn song anyway.”
I pull his hand, linked with mine, up to my mouth and kiss his knuckles. “Doesn’t matter to me.”
A strange, sweet heat bubbles up inside me and makes my head feel light on my neck, like I’m floating on a million bubbles in a just-opened champagne bottle.
We go the rest of the way with a gentle quiet, the first really sweet, fuzzy, trusting quiet in our entire relationship. And it just happens to fall right before we drive up to a nasty, jeering mob, trigger-ready for a massive fight.
When Winch looks over at me, his blue eyes are hot and serious.
“Do not leave this car. Sit on the hood, the roof, inside, but don’t you dare leave this car. Understood?”
I glance through the crowd, undulating as groups of people jab back and forth, throwing themselves into the fray, and backing up away from the heat just as quickly. Winch’s hands grip mine, and I jump, meeting his intense gaze.
“I get it,” I promise him.
He leans over and cups my face with his hand, runs his thumb over my cheekbone, brushes his lips over mine, eyes shut tight, brow furrowed.
“You gotta forgive me for this, ahead of time, okay? It’s what I have to do, like it or not. Forgive me, Evan?”
His voice is so desperate, there’s nothing else to say. “Of course. Be safe. Promise me, Winch?”
“As safe as I can be.”
His lips are hot and hard on mine, and I want more, want him, all of him, with me, all alone.
The crowd rushes the car when they recognize it’s his, and I lose him in a throng of cheering, drunk guys who pull at him and draw him toward some cleared center, where the lineup is denser and, I’m sure, more vicious.
I grab the keys Winch left on the seat, slide out the door, depress the locks, and try to make it out of the space between the car and the opened door as I elbow against the wave of people crushing in on all sides. I get pushed back into the interior twice by the lines and groups of people coming from nowhere and everywhere to see what, I don’t know yet.
Their enthusiasm is unsettling. This is Roman Colosseum excitement, and I stand on my tiptoes to catch Winch’s back, the muscles of his shoulders strained through the thin fabric of his shirt. Worry needles at the edge of my throat, but I try to tell myself it will be okay. Winch is strong and smart. He’s used to this kind of violence. This is his world, and he knows how to navigate it.
But I don’t believe my own comforting words. I scramble onto the gunmetal grey hood, careful not to make a dent, but I still can’t see, so I pull up onto the roof. It’s not much better. Not only is there a thick congregation of stark, raving lunatics screaming in the middle of all this, there are more bodies heaving and shoving every second.
I see a huge guy, big as a black bear on its hind legs, with thick ropes of dread-locked hair and a scruffy, coarse beard, batting people away with the flats of his enormous hands.
“Move outta the way, fuckups! Anyone touches these girls, you have me to answer to!”
People repel away from him, giving him a clean, clear circle amid the chaos.
Five or six made-up, dressed-up, phone-addicted teenage girls cluster and disperse a few feet from him, always in his orbit, but never too close to their hulk of a bodyguard. Seeing my chance, I slide off the car and fall into the guy’s shadow, melding in with the group of girls quietly. I don’t stand close enough that I’d be considered one of them, but I don’t stray so far away that anyone would bother me.
The air is hot and sticky, and there’s the bitter/sour smell of beer everywhere. At this point the only kind of violence going on is screaming, one red-faced, sweaty guy with his shirt half off yelling at another growling, teeth-bared idiot with his fists up, small groups of divided alliances hurling insults at other small groups, most involving mothers and fucking. It’s vocally cacophonous, but bearable, because there’s no real bloodshed.
But it feels like real violence is simmering right under the lid of this pot of boiling emotions, ready to explode at any second. That would make sense. Violence in books and movies is always like a powder keg and a spark, and this jostling, yelling, inarticulate, drunk crowd is crawling a clear path to open-season chaos.
I keep one eye on my bear-like protector and move closer to the main ring. I guess I was waiting for this to work like a boxing match, with a referee making the fighters knock gloves and a little bell to ding before things get too awful, but I suddenly realize the brawl already started and it’s anything but a civil, fair fight.
The people in the tightest inner ring seem to be taking bets and keeping score, but I don’t know how it all works.
Remy, thin and wiry, dark hair falling into his blue eyes, slight beer gut giving him an older, sloppy look, hops in the middle, bobbing and weaving back and forth, fists up, blood already leaking in small strands from his nose and mouth. He takes a bare knuckle hit to his eye, and the ferocious smack of skin and bone on skin and bone makes my stomach churn.
Remy shakes his head back and forth a few times, snorts, and runs at the guy who hit him, a brawny blond with a ruddy face. He knocks headfirst into the guy’s stomach, throwing him to the ground with such intensity, he knocks the wind right out of his opponent.
Half the crowd erupts into shattering cheers, half hisses and snarls with jeers and threats.
“One more, Youngblood! Take that Murray fucker down!” Remy’s fans roar.
There are tons of them, and they all gasp in horror when the blond guy catches his breath and comes up swinging, packing a blow on each side of Remy’s head. Remy falls back into the arms of a guy who calls out some numbers, drags him back, and pushes Winch into the middle.
The entire crowd suddenly loses its volume and focus and my vision blurs at the edges and stretches back and forth with a swooning dip and hurl.
He’s stripped off the white shirt, and he’s all flat-packed muscles and smooth tanned skin, with more tattoos then I had a chance to see in the dark of my bedroom the night before.
‘Youngblood’ is scrawled in swirling letter
s in an arc across his abs. There’s a huge cross between his shoulder blades, a rifle on his ribs, and two diving swallows on his pecs.
There are more than a few girls in the crowd, and every one of them gets hushed and whispers with pleasure when he comes to the center.
I don’t want him to know I broke his only rule about leaving the car, but I’d like him to see me, know I’m here for him. And, much as I despise that whole piss-on-your-territory vibe some girls give off, I’m feeling a bit like a dog by a hydrant when I see all the shiny hair flips and mascara-laden eyelash bats Winch is getting from every single direction.
But Winch doesn’t see me or anyone else. His expression is grim and determined. He shakes off well wishers who pat him on the back as he takes his place, feet apart in a relaxed stance, fists up and loosely ready.
My heart is punching in my chest, holding onto the bars of my ribs and banging itself against them. My mouth is parched, my palms are slick with sweat, and my entire body gives little uncertain jerks and jumps based on the swirling mix of worry and anticipation that rocks through me.
The ruddy guy who fought Remy is pulled back, and an identical-looking replacement falls into the center of the ring, already snarling and lunging. Winch holds back, taking a graze on the side of the head and another weak jab on the ribs.
Seeing him get hit in any capacity make me crazed with worry, but I trust him to know how to manipulate this whole situation. This is how he’s gauging the fight, how he’s going to calculate his moves for an ultimate win. I have to trust that he can handle himself.
He takes a harder hit to his shoulder, ducks down and weaves back. The crowd around him starts to hiss and boo, thirsty for more blood from this show.
I don’t know if I’ve ever hated a crowd of people more than I hate these people right now. I honestly wish the earth would open under them and suck them into the bowels of hell. How could they want the blood and pain that’s going to come? I choke back a gag when the first facial punch lands.
A fountain of blood erupts from Winch’s nose, crimson red and so horrifyingly alive and gruesome, pinpricks of silver spot in front of my eyes and I feel like I’m looking down a long, black tunnel. I stagger a little and bump into a guy who gives me a callous shoulder push back. I swallow hard, but my saliva tastes acrid in my mouth. I take a few deep breaths and steady myself back on my feet, ready to see this to the finish.
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