Page 2 of Until You're Mine
“I know, I know,” Finn said, holding up a hand. “I’m not looking for a fight.”
“Funny, I thought fighting was kind of your thing.”
“Yeah, but I only take on opponents I’m confident I can beat. I’m not volunteering for a verbal sparring match with you.”
“Chicken,” I teased, and he pulled me in like he was going to give me a noogie. I shoved at his chest, pushing him away. “I take it back, I take it back.”
“Do you want me to show you to your desk?” Finn asked.
“Already? Don’t you usually give new people the tour?”
Finn tilted his head. “You know every inch of this gym.”
“I know every inch of the front desk, too, and I’d rather walk through the gym again. Or there’s always the locker rooms.” Maybe I could get the minor fix I was suddenly itching for in there, a testosterone contact-high to get me through the day. I also wouldn’t say no to a quick introduction to every hot shirtless guy training here.
Careful, you’re tiptoeing into dangerous territory.Territory I’d exiled myself from. Besides, hot shirtless guys were the daydream version of the locker room. Usually it involved ten different kinds of B.O. and an out-of-control stack of towels that needed washing, and guess who’d end up doing the laundry?
My brothers and dad had acted so shocked that I didn’t want to turn the catchall admin and occasional cleaning lady into a fulltime career. When I’d told Dad about my plans to go to art school—after a disastrous gap year I never should’ve taken, nonetheless—he’d said, “Painting is a hobby you can do anywhere, when you have some time to waste. We run a family business, and you need to stay here and pull your weight. No one gets a free ride, and you can’t just run away from your life every time a guy dumps you.”
The following fight was uglier than any I’d ever seen in the cage, inflicting the kind of damage that didn’t heal with stitches, ice packs, and time. We didn’t talk for three months after I moved—against his wishes and without his financial support—and when he finally did call me, it wasn’t to apologize or even check in to see how I was doing. He asked about a file he couldn’t find on the computer’s hard drive. Residual pain rose as I remembered how inconsequential I’d felt, like I was only useful if I was one of his trained soldiers, barking, “Yes, sir,” after every order.
“B?” Finn waved a hand in front of my face, a mischievous gleam in the bright blue eyes we’d all inherited from Dad. “Are you on pause? Which button unfreezes you?”
“This one.” I lifted my middle finger, and he laughed. I expelled a deep breath, trying to send the pains of the past out with it—this was my life for the next couple of months, so I might as well accept it and throw myself into it. “Fine, let’s just get it over with.”
As we started toward the front of the gym, I glanced at the cage again. A buzzer sounded, meaning the end of a round. Usually they switched from striking drills to ground-and-pound to takedown ones. Sometimes they did that circuit a few times through. Other times they also threw a five-minute sparring round into the mix, since that was how long each round of a fight would be. I ignored the impulse to look for the fighter I’d spotted when I’d walked in, and forced myself to focus on Liam and Liam alone.
“How’s our big brother dealing with life without Chelsea?” I asked. Liam was the oldest and had always been the most serious of us, with a surliness that rivaled Dad’s. But for a certain number of people, he turned into a big teddy bear. Finn, me, and the girl next door. She was one of the few people in our lives without a connection to MMA, UFC, TSE, SCC, or any other three-letter acronym that translated to us living and breathing the cage-fighting world.
Finn ran a hand over his head of thick hair that used to be dirty blond but looked closer to light brown these days, a couple of shades darker than Liam’s and mine—well, like four or five shades from mine, but I had chemical help. “How do you think? He’s grouchy as hell, and if you bring up her name, he’ll just about take your head off.”
There were a lot of days Chelsea and I were the only two girls at the gym. She’d become such a permanent fixture, I almost expected to see her sitting off to the side, red hair piled into a high bun, either cheering on Liam as he sparred, or with her nose in a book as she waited for him to finally call it a day. She’d moved away for a job a month ago, and when I’d heard about it, I’d worried Liam would take it badly. They both insisted they were just friends, but occasionally I’d caught one of them looking at the other in a way that spoke to something beyond friendship. “Basically you’re saying that her move halfway across the country has made him a shoo-in for Little Mr. Sunshine.”
Finn snorted a laugh. “Bingo. But don’t even try to tell him that’s why he’s pissy, or the aforementioned off-with-your-head thing will apply again.”
I stopped a few feet short of the half wall the front desk was nestled behind. “I know that in theory they were just friends, but did he at least tell her he cared about her before she left? Did he fight for her at all?”
“What do you think?”
I sighed. “Of course not—the Roth men are famous for being emotionally stunted.”
“Hey!”
I patted Finn’s cheek. “Except you, of course. You’re all evolved and shit.” My sense of humor evaporated when I rounded the wall and looked at the stacks of disorganized madness on the desk. “Are you frickin’ kidding me?”
“I told you it was rough over here. We’ve had the hardest time keeping someone behind the desk since you left. We’ve tried nice old ladies, mean old ladies, college kids, and a couple of uptight accountant dudes.” Not sure why the ages mattered, but Finn always was a bit of a chatty oversharer. “The last chick—a pretty coed who mostly distracted the guys by doing yoga in the corner—just up and quit, and when we started going through the books, it was clear that she hadn’t been inputting anything for months.”
“Of all those people, how many did Dad scare off?” Like I’d said, gruff and blunt was his M.O. Any losses the gym took, he, in turn, took out on whoever sat behind this desk. I’d told him dozens of times that a receptionist and an accountant were two very different things, but he’d insisted on saving money and getting a twofer deal. I was pretty sure I was the only twofer deal who could handle it, and that was because he couldn’t plow over me as easily as everyone else.
Finn shrugged, and I crossed my arms, giving him the narrow-eyed look that—if I still had it—would get him to crack. “Fine. Like seventy-five percent.” He lowered his voice and mumbled, “Plus, maybe another twenty.”
“This is really why you wanted me back for the summer.” I lifted a stack of unopened envelopes that most likely held overdue bills. “So I can fix the disorganized shit pile and do all the crap no one else wants to.”
“Wow, a little heavy on the poop metaphors, sis.” At my glare, his grin only widened. Then he sat on the desk, facing me. “It’s not just that we don’t want to do all that stuff—even though, yes, a valid assessment—we seriously don’t have time. We can’t keep up with our training and do the trainingandadmin stuff. I’ve already had to postpone a fight, and if I do it again, it’ll be a bitch to ever book another.”
I shook my head at the mess, doing my best to avoid Finn’s puppy-eyes, but then he dipped his head, and damn him for being so charming. “I’m such a sucker.”
“We’ll all do some shit-shoveling, I swear. You can even direct it.”
