Knockout: Tapped Out Book 4

by Quinn, Cari

  Still, I didn’t know if I wanted to put everything on something that could be over in a flash. And that was even assuming I’d be able to keep winning.

  Only one thing was a certainty in the ring—there was always going to be a winner, and there was always going to be a loser. Which one you’d be on any given day was a combination of hard work, talent, and luck.

  Pure fucking luck.

  “It’s going to take a lot of my time.” I walked with them back to our huge circular booths.

  The music had shifted to something that apparently, they didn’t want to dance to anymore. Or else my predicament was more interesting than grinding up on each other.

  “So what? This is an awesome opportunity. You gotta go for it.” Lily pushed me into the booth and sat down beside me, nearly crawling into my lap. “I’m so proud of you, making all your dreams come true.”

  I touched her hair, marveling as always at its texture. She was soft everywhere I was hard, gentle everywhere I was rough. She’d been my biggest dream for so long, and right now, it felt like I was having to make a choice. It didn’t make sense. Chasing success in the octagon wouldn’t drive me away from Lily—and JC—but I couldn’t deny the feeling that by picking one, I’d be not picking the other.

  “I have a lot of dreams.” I caressed her cheek.

  This woman was everything I’d ever wanted. She was okay with JC and I, for God’s sake. Not just okay with it, she seemed to get off on it. For as sheltered as I’d always assumed she was—as sheltered as I’d tried to make her be—she’d just accepted without a blink a status I’d never fully come to terms with myself.

  I was bisexual. And I’d found a woman and a man who fit me so perfectly, I couldn’t imagine the next day—never mind the next week—without them. JC, with his occasionally obnoxious, cocky attitude, had worn me down to the point I actually seriously cared about the guy. And Lily…

  God, she was my forever. Maybe they both were.

  “Yeah, but this one is the one that matters. This is the one that will tell everyone you’re a star.” JC grinned and reached around Lil to slap me on the back before he summoned a passing waitress. “A bottle of Dom for the table, please.”

  The others arrived, laughing and flushed from their exertions on the dance floor.

  He glanced at Carly and pointed. “And a giant pitcher of OJ for the pregnacious one, please. Thank you.”

  “Pregnacious?” Carly cupped her round belly and laughed. “Yeah, I guess that fits.”

  “Dom?” Jenna slid into the other side of the booth, followed by Daniel. Giovanni slid in next, allowing Carly to stay on the end, probably for ease of bathroom trips.

  I’d heard more than I’d ever wanted to about a pregnant woman’s bladder since we’d arrived tonight, that was for certain.

  “Yes, we’re celebrating.” JC lifted his brows at me. “You gonna tell them or should I?”

  Years of scrutiny by the kids in the neighborhood had caused me to turn away from too much attention. In the ring was different. That was the one place I was supposed to stand out. But everywhere else, I blended in with the shadows by choice.

  At least I’d been telling myself that all these years.

  “There’s not really anything to tell yet.”

  “Oh, really? I beg to differ. You’ve got an amazing opportunity, and you’re downplaying it?” JC shook his head and spread his hands wide as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “He’s got a chance to go to the big leagues. You know, be the guy who makes millions on fucking pay-per-view.”

  Giovanni cocked his head, and I immediately felt like ducking mine. To say I looked up to the guy didn’t begin to tell half of it. He was practically my idol. Not only just because of his incredible ground game, and the way he kept upping his ability every time he came into the ring. He also managed to have a family, and he seemed committed as hell to his wife despite the girls who were constantly swarming him.

  That was having it all. Not just moving up in the ranks and sleeping alone. One without the other just seemed hollow.

  And if thinking that way made me sound like a chump, then so be it.

  “I saw you talking to Einrich the other night.” Gio paused as the waitress returned with our champagne. “Did he make you an offer?”

  I waited until the waitress left before answering. “No, not exactly. He wanted me to work out for him, and to go over some stuff. You know how the spiel goes, man,” I added more than a little desperately.

  Surely I couldn’t be the only one clinging to realism in this bunch. Getting your hopes up too high just meant you’d end up flattened beneath them if things didn’t work out.

  “Yeah, but even getting the spiel is big. I’m not surprised. You’ve been killing it out there.”

  I tried not to swallow my tongue. Gio was only a little older than me, but I really looked up to him. His words of praise were worth almost as much as Einrich possibly being interested in me. “Thank you. Coming from you that means everything.”

  “And what, coming from us it means nothing?” JC grabbed the bottle of champagne and popped the top.

  The girls squealed and laughed, but I just glared at JC. Why did he always have to start shit? I wasn’t trying to diminish his opinion. Gio simply had no reason to offer me empty compliments.

  “He didn’t say that, Jase.”

  JC glanced at Lily and poured the first glass. He knew as well as I did that when Lily hauled out the full-name stuff, he should can it.

  Not that he’d ever been wise enough to do that.

  “No? Sure sounded like it to me. No offense, man,” he said to Gio, sliding the glass of champagne toward Lily. “But I’m just thinking that we should mean more to him than that.”

  Without looking around the table, I could tell that glances were being exchanged. I knew it because if the situation had been reversed, I would’ve been looking too.

  “Jase,” Lily said again, quieter now. She gripped the hem of his jacket and he paused mid-pour, staring down at her. “Let this be Emerson’s night. His way.”

  His jaw clenched and released. “You know what? You’re right. If he wants to celebrate, fabulous. If he doesn’t, that’s cool too. But me, I’m gonna drink some fucking champagne, because I just told my girl I loved her tonight, and her dad gave me his blessing to date her.” He bumped knuckles with Gio and Dan, then slung his arm around Lily’s shoulders and tugged her against his side. “Drink up, baby. We’re partying tonight.”

  I fought down the buzz in my ears, not wanting to miss Lily’s denial. There was no way JC had asked Lance’s permission to date her. Was there? And he’d given it, no questions asked?

  But Lily’s denial never came. She slid me an apologetic look under her lashes then lifted her glass of champagne, spilling a little en route to her mouth. JC tipped her glass back and she shoved him away.

  Still not denying a damn thing.

  I had no reason to be jealous. I’d never said anything about wanting to take our…situation public. JC even alluding to it a moment ago had tightened my gut until I wasn’t sure I’d be able to swallow anything more substantial than water. But they’d also never asked me. Never mentioned wanting to be out there. Definitely never said, “Hey, if you’re not cool with it, we are, so too goddamn bad.”

  If somehow Lance was okay with Lily being with JC, then I had to accept it. Maybe they really didn’t want to be with me as more than a fuck buddy, anyway. For all I knew, tonight had been some kind of goodbye, though it sure hadn’t felt like it.

  But now it was.

  A couple of weeks ago, I would’ve thought this was the perfect arrangement. I’d never intended to take Lily for myself. How could I? I’d made a promise to her dad. But if JC acted as her boyfriend, and Lance was okay with that, then I could have Lily and still not risk damaging my relationship with her father.

  Now I couldn’t imagine having Lily without her being mine. In front of everyone. For good.

  I didn�
�t know where I stood with JC. Maybe just here. We’d fucked around with each other, and we were both in love with the same girl. Only difference was that he’d get to keep her.

  “Sounds like congratulations are in order.” I snatched Lily’s almost empty glass the second she set it down. JC was taking too damn long to pour. “So let’s party.”

  Twelve

  I lit into JC the minute we got into his car to go home after the club. “Did you really have to do that?” Jerkily, I snapped my belt into place.

  “Do what?”

  His mild tone made me snarl. “You know exactly what. You goaded Emerson. Why, I don’t know. We’d just had such an amazing time together, and you had to—”

  “You’re right. It was amazing. So what the fuck was up with him acting like Giovanni’s opinion meant so much and ours was worth shit?”

  I fell silent. That wasn’t what Em had been acting like. Had it?

  God knows I was still so starry-eyed from earlier that maybe I’d missed a few subtle clues. I’d been so overwhelmed, so awed, that the two men I loved so much could love each other too so openly and honestly. Their bravery in expressing themselves made me want to be stronger than I was, and to stand up to my father and admit what was really going on.

  Yes, I loved JC, but I loved Emerson too. And if I couldn’t have both of them, I wouldn’t have one. In this case, it was truly double or nothing.

  But before I’d even fully processed what had happened, JC had erupted like a volcano of stupid and I hadn’t even had a chance to jump back before he’d spewed molten-hot lava all over me too.

  If I hadn’t feared embarrassing Emerson by discussing the whole sordid situation in front of our friends, I would’ve ripped JC a new one right away for how he’d told everyone about us. The last thing I wanted was for Em to be hurt. I also didn’t want to violate his privacy by talking about things in public he didn’t want talked about.

  So I’d bided my time and waited until I could kick JC’s fine ass in private.

  Result? Emerson had shut down almost entirely for the rest of the night, and then he had gone home alone. I’d tried to convince him to come over to JC’s for a little while, just to try to reconnect—though I was pressing it with my father by staying out so late again—but he’d claimed he was sore and exhausted and really needed some sleep if he was going to make it to work the next morning.

  It was all BS. He’d completely dominated that fight, and he’d been in a great mood until JC had divebombed his battleship.

  For God’s sake, Emerson had practically gone mute after JC’s table revelations. He’d talked to Gio and Carly, and Jenna and Dan, but only if spoken to. He didn’t initiate anything. When we all got up to dance again, he consented to dance with me once then disappeared. He’d finally emerged at the end of the night, probably sensing I was about to send out a search party for him.

  I didn’t know what he’d been doing during the time he’d been MIA—or with who. He was a faithful guy, but maybe he didn’t have any reason to think he needed to be faithful to me.

  I slanted a look at JC, noting his rigid posture and iron grip on the wheel. Or us.

  “You shouldn’t have sprung the conversation with my dad on him like that.” I pushed my hair out of my eyes and tried to drag my ragged temper back in line. “It wasn’t fair.”

  I expected JC to lash out at me, to insist that Emerson had been the one who’d screwed up by discounting our opinions about his greatness and not immediately declaring to the world that we were…doing what people in a threesome did. Early and often.

  Okay, so I supposed I still had a few hang-ups too. I hadn’t quite wrapped my mind all the way around the reality of having two boyfriends. Two men to call mine who were totally into me and into each other. As awesome as it was, it was also all-encompassing.

  Just a few weeks ago, I’d been very single. Now I was practically anti-single. Or I had been before JC had stuck his giant Nike in it.

  Again.

  “It bothered me, all right? That he could be with us, be frigging naked with us, then just act like our opinion wasn’t as important as Giovanni Big Shot Costas’s. We were trying to build him up, to make him see what we see when we look at him, and he ignored it until Costas validated it.”

  Hurt laced JC’s voice, and since that was something I rarely heard from him—something he rarely allowed to show, even to me—I just reached for his hand and tangled our fingers together. Maybe calling him out wasn’t the right course. It hadn’t been earlier tonight when he’d tried the same tactic on Emerson, that was for sure.

  “What do you see when you look at Em?” I asked softly, rubbing his knuckles.

  He hissed out a breath as he flipped on his turn signal and made a sharp right. It had started raining while we were in the club and the streets were gleaming with puddles. Not that JC slowed down any. He drove like he did everything.

  Fast and recklessly.

  “I see a guy who’s too proud and stoic to admit what he wants. Maybe who doesn’t even know.”

  “And that pisses you off because…?”

  The corner of his mouth curled. “You sound like my psychiatrist.”

  I frowned. “You have a psychiatrist? How come I didn’t know this about you?”

  “Had. Not anymore.” He guided the car around a group of tourists gawking up at the glittery skyscrapers and hung another right. “When I was five, my parents nearly divorced. They sent me to a shrink to make sure I was handling things okay, because I was acting out.”

  “You, acting out?” I tightened my hold on his hand. “I’ll never believe it.”

  His lip twitch turned into a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, I know I can be a dick. But God, babe, after tonight, I guess I couldn’t believe he didn’t want to shout from the rooftops like I do that we’re together.”

  “Tonight was amazing.” I smoothed my fingers over the calluses on his hand. His hard work showed up all over his body, in the marks and scars he wore like armor. “But you tried to force his hand by telling him about what you said to my dad. He probably wasn’t ready to acknowledge we were together yet.”

  “Why?” The simplicity of his question broke my heart. Or at least chipped it.

  If only Emerson could see this side of JC. He wasn’t always the cocksure, overconfident man Emerson thought. There was a confused, attention-starved little boy inside JC, and every now and then, hints of him sneaked out.

  “I think there may be a couple reasons.” I bit my lip as he eased the car to the curb a block up from my apartment. I hadn’t shared all of my past with JC, but I needed to. He deserved to have all of that information.

  He let go of my hand long enough to turn off the ignition, then shifted toward me. “Like what?”

  It was easier to start with Emerson’s concerns, of course. Possible concerns, since it wasn’t as if he’d discussed his feelings with me. It had been years since I’d been Em’s confidant. God, I missed it. And worse, I didn’t know why it had changed. If it was just because of him, or if something in me had caused him to close off.

  “I think it’s harder with MMA guys.” I kept my hold tight on JC’s hand. “Some of them are the macho types that might have a problem with a bisexual guy. Or at least I’m guessing Emerson might perceive them that way.” I huffed out a sigh. “I can’t say if they would or not, or if he even truly thinks that or not. I’m just guessing too. But I know he’s always been super-conscious of public opinion because of what happened when he was a kid.”

  “What happened?”

  “He was beat up a lot. Kids picking on him for his size. And then his dad died, and my dad ended up bringing him home one day. They bonded right away, probably because Dad went through something similar.”

  We went through something similar, but I didn’t say that. Yet.

  “Wait a second, kids beat up on Emerson? The dude’s huge.”

  “He wasn’t always huge. He was a scrawny kid. Until my dad dragged him to the gym, he wasn’t
into sports at all.”

  JC frowned. “What happened to his dad?”

  I swallowed hard, hoping I wasn’t breaking a confidence. But JC had missed vital pieces of my puzzle and Emerson’s, which interlocked in more ways than we probably even realized. “He was shot to death. Drug deal gone bad.” When JC sucked in a breath, I forged ahead. Sheer cowardice had me hoping my confession would pile up with Em’s and become indistinguishable. “And my mom was killed during a mugging two years before Em’s dad. They tried to take her purse and she wouldn’t let go.”

  Why wouldn’t she let go? I’d wondered that so many damn times over the years. If only she’d let them take her money. If only she hadn’t fought them. If, if, if.

  In the end, I knew that my strong, stubborn mama had fought those two guys like she’d fought to have me, her only child. The doctors had told her she’d never give birth, yet she’d continued trying and one day, she’d discovered I was on the way.

  Because she’d never ever given up on what she wanted.

  “Oh, babe, I’m so sorry—” JC undid his belt and started sliding toward me, but I held up a hand to ward him off. I needed to say the rest.

  “They pushed her down and she hit her head on the sidewalk. She bled out right there.” My hand curled into JC’s shirt, and the steady beat of his heart centered me in spite of the chaotic emotions whirling through me. “We were halfway through putting together our first dollhouse when she died. She’d just picked out this little blue and white pitcher, to go on the little butcher block table in the kitchen.” I fought back the tears that pooled in my eyes. In my heart. “‘Someday, baby girl, we’re going to have this fancy pitcher. We’re going to have this pretty table, and all this furniture to fill up our big house. Until then, we’re going to dream.’”

  “Come here,” JC said huskily, and I couldn’t stay out of the safety of his arms any longer. Outside of them, I was cold and lonely, and I only had to inch forward to take the comfort he offered so willingly.

  I pressed my face into his neck, drawing in the scent of his pricey cologne, the slight hint of sweat from our hours at the club and the smell of the generic soap from the warehouse shower. Home. Somehow he was my home, just as Emerson was. I didn’t know how I’d gotten so lucky to find not one amazing man who fit so well with me, but two.