“Exactly!” I said. “I was planning on drawing it out a little bit, giving the audience a bit more of a show. Then you strutted in looking as lost as a poodle at a pit bull fight, and I forgot.”
Evangeline stopped what she was doing entirely. “There are so many things wrong with that statement I don’t even know where to start.” She took a drink from her vodka cranberry and then ticked off items on her fingers as she listed them. “First, what do you mean bymore of a show? Letting him rough you up a little before beating him half to death? Toying with him like a cat with a mouse? Secondly, a poodle? Of all the dogs you could compare me to, you choose apoodle? A yipping, obnoxious, useless little lapdog? Is that what you think I am, too? And third, pit bull fighting is vile and despicable. Those poor animals have no choice in those brutal fights.Youhave a choice. Youchooseto fight for money. All they get is hurt and abused.”
I held up both hands. “Whoa there, Eva, slow your roll, honey.” I stood up and moved a little closer, ignoring the way both Claire and Dru were following this conversation with unabashed interest. “First, yeah, I meant toy with him like a cat with a mouse— let him hit me a few times, make him and the audience think he’s got half a chance against me. And also, I didn’t beat him half to death. Even those fuckin’ dickless cunt-holes who tried to rape you got off easy. I hurt ’em pretty bad, yeah, but not anywhere near as bad as they deserved, and not half to death. If you’ve never seen someone literally beaten so badly they’re in danger of dying, then you can’t possibly understand the difference.”
I leveled her a look with all the hardened, world-weary bitterness I had inside me, just so she knew I wasn’t kidding. “Second, I wasn’t comparing you to a poodle. It was…a situational comparison. You, wandering into an illegal underground MMA fight isrelatableto an innocent little mini poodle trotting unaware into the ring with a pair of pit bulls. If I was going to compare you to an animal, it sure as fuck wouldn’t be an ugly-ass, stupid little goddamn poodle—more like a swan or something elegant like that. Third, you’re right, pit bull fighting is bullshit and I hate it. I once beat the shit out of a guy for kicking his dog, so we’re in agreement there. I choose to fight, because I’m good at it and I enjoy it.”
She poked me in the chest with a manicured finger. “I’ve told you several times already, my name is Evangeline, notEva. Get it right, you muscle-bound meathead.” She went back to wiping at her face, scraping a dot of blood off her perfect little chin. “Now. If it’s still all right with whomever lives here, I would be very grateful if I could take a quick shower.”
Dru grabbed my wrist, digging her thumbnail into a pressure point, and hauled me out of the bathroom. “Out, Bax. Out. Let the girl get cleaned up.” To Evangeline, then. “You’re welcome here for as long as you need. Give me ten seconds and I’ll have a change of clothes for you. Take as long a shower as you want.”
Dru vanished and then reappeared with a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, and a pair of pink Gap flip flops, setting everything on the counter, and then I was shoved out of the bathroom and down the hallway into the living room, Claire following behind us.
Dru did some kind of twist and pivot move on me, and my right arm and wrist were bent wrong, so one false move on my part would have me eating left handed for a few months—just goes to show that even the biggest and baddest aren’t invincible. I mean, I could power through the pain, chop out a kick, and have Dru on her ass in half a second…probably. But number one, she’s my sister-in-law and I love her, because she’s good for Bast and she’s just a cool-ass chick, and number two, I’m notentirelycertain I could take her. She’s a bad bitch, and I mean that with every ounce of respect I’ve got.
“What the fuck, Dru?” I held still and didn’t fight against the hold.
“Youtellmewhat the fuck, Bax. She’s wearing earrings that have to be atleastfifteen thousand dollars, and I’m pretty sure that’s a Hermes blouse, thousand dollar Manolo flats, and a Prada purse.”
“I don’t know what any of that means.” I tested her hold, and she let go. “And so what if she’s got money? What does that have anything to do with fuckin’ anything, Dru?”
“Not to be mean, Bax, but women like her don’t really tend to go for guys like you.” She moved to take the opposite end of the couch from me, where she’d been curled up when we arrived.
I snort. “Well no shit, sis. Think I don’t know that?” I shrugged out of my hoodie, leaving me bare-chested with my bloodstained tape on my hands and wrists; I sat on the couch and started peeling the tape off. “This ain’t that, Dru. I told the truth, okay? She wandered into the fight by accident, I still don’t know how or why. She got right up against the barrier, and sort of got a little blood on her. And yeah, I hit the guy on purpose so she’d get sprayed.
“She was staring at me, looking all disgusted and fascinated at the same time, and it pissed me off and made me all…I dunno…crazy, I guess. I’ve never been looked at like that before. Like I was…like I was a lion in a cage at the zoo, and she was fascinated by me but wasn’t sure she wanted to get too close. So I hit McDermott and she got splattered. Dick move, my bad, what-the-fuck-ever. Thought that was that.”
I tossed the tape from my right hand in a pile on the coffee table, and started on my left hand. “Then I take my cash and head out, pass an alley, and I hear noises. Guys talking shit, a girl’s voice sounding upset. Peeked into the alley, and saw four guys holding down one girl, and having trouble with her. One guy had a knife and was talkin’ mean. They were gonna rape her, all four of ’em, and that shit doesnotfly with me. So I kicked the motherfuckin’ shit out of all four of ’em. And, let me add, I would have done the same for any woman, rich as hell or not.”
The door opened, then, and Zane swaggered in. He was meticulously clean, except for a spray of blood down one cheek. “Bax, bro, we gotta talk.”
“Iamtalkin’, Zane. Filling the girls in on what happened.”
“Well, there’s more filling in to do, if you know what I mean.” He sat down on the love seat kitty corner to the couch where I was perched.
Dru and Claire both stared at Zane suspiciously, and then I saw concern flicker across Dru’s face.
“No. No—tell me you didn’t, Zane,” Dru murmured.
He kept his face admirably blank. “Didn’t what, Dru?”
She eyed me, then him. “The fight Bax got in tonight, in the alley. Were you there?”
Zane’s gaze didn’t waver. “At the end, yeah. I wasn’t in on the fun part, though.”
“Thefunpart?” Dru flicked an eyebrow up. “Would that be the part where four guys almost raped a woman? Or the part where Bax put the hurt on them?”
He held up his hands palms out. “It’s just an expression, Jesus.”
The door opened again, and a massively pregnant Mara stormed in. “Zane, you fucking asshole! It’s two thirty in the fucking morning and I expected you home forty-five minutes ago! I’ve texted you sixteen times, called you four, and you’re sitting here with your brother like it’s no big deal?”
I surged off the couch and moved to intercept. “Mara, babe, cool off. It’s not his fault. He was helping me.”
“Don’t tell me to cool off, Baxter, you fucking cave troll!” She halted, her gaze going from me to Zane, to the pile of bloody tape, to the girls, and then to the unfamiliar Prada purse sitting on the half wall separating the kitchen from the living room, and then to the sound of the shower in the bathroom. “Wait. Helping you with what? Whose pimp-ass Prada purse is that? Who’s in the shower? Because if Brock comes out buck naked again with that dick of his swinging around and I gotta see it again, I’m gonna bepissed.”
Claire snickered. “We should all be so lucky. But no, he’s downstairs behind the bar. You’d have seen him had you not been storming through on the warpath.”
“When Zane ignores me, I get pissed. I’m about to have a baby any day, and he needs to answer me if I’m trying to get a hold of him.”
