Page 66 of Liar & Champion
I squeezed his hand tighter while black specks filled my vision. “The Crocodile of Alabama?”
“His mother.”
I took a deep breath and leaned against him while I tried to get it together.
He put a careful arm around me and kind of patted me, hardly making contact, because he wasn’t a snuggler. Still, he didn’t mind however much I climbed all over him like a monkey. “Sorry for the shock, Sugar. I guess Nix was going to break it to you gently, but Trevor had different ideas. What is that miscreant’s problem?”
“He was sober,” I mumbled into his shoulder. He smelled like blood and arnica. What would Nix smell like when he got home tonight? What was I supposed to do? Pretend I hadn’t seen it? Like it hadn’t happened? It was none of my business. I didn’t own him and we didn’t have any real relationship. But how could I just ignore all of this when I’d specifically said how much I disliked violence?
“Nix doesn’t know that we’re acquaintances,” Beastie said softly. “I gave him the list of debs he had to pick from, and youwere on the list, but I told him to pick someone else, because you were a virgin, and he hates virgins. Is that it? He won’t have sex with you because the idea of your virginity makes him freeze up and lose his?—”
I straightened up and grabbed his broken nose. “Where did you get so vulgar? You could have told me that you were Nix’s cousin when I told you that I’d married him. Why didn’t you?”
His eyes were icy behind my hand where I still had hold on his nose. “Because I didn’t want to interfere. I’m your friend and his family. I’m not choosing sides.”
I let go of his nose and started for the door. “You chose sides a long time ago, Beastie. It wasn’t mine.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
I whirled around and held up my hand. “No, you’re going to do whatever you do for family, not me. I feel really betrayed by you, Beastie.”
“What do you want, Sunny?” He asked it in that cold way that hid all of his emotions.
That’s what Nix asked me all the time. I shook my head and sighed. “Nothing. I just hope that the deal with his mom doesn’t fall through if I die too early. You can help with that, right?”
His creepy eye darkened, narrowing and looking even creepier. “Yeah. That’s the plan.”
I shivered and rubbed my arms. “Oh, good. No wonder Nix left that whole world. So cold. I guess it’s good that he had his fists to fall back on when his family turned their back on him.”
I walked out before I burst into tears. It was all too much. Dealing with Beastie’s injuries was one thing, but watching Nix beat the crap out of some other guy in my periphery on the screen? Even though I didn’t look directly at it, that whole conversation had been full of the muted sounds of fist againstflesh, my husband’s hands which were always so utterly gentle with me turning to steel when facing an opponent. He made Beastie look soft, slow, indecisive, unskilled. Beastie wasn’t, but Nix had almost a decade on my friend plus all those years growing up, trained to be nothing but brute force. Weird that the senator hadn’t instilled anything else into him. No, he was a prince of what sounded like organized crime. He knew manipulation too. He’d said that was part of his upbringing.
My mind was a mess, so I didn’t even see the guy who threw a bag over my head and picked me up. I screamed. Were there two guys? My wrists were zip-tied almost immediately, and I lost Beastie’s shoes while they carried me. They didn’t say a word, which was the creepiest thing. I struggled and screamed, but Nix’s fight was filled with screaming fans whose voices rang on and on. No one was going to hear me. Now would be a good time to die, before Michael Dupre put his filthy hands on me. What a crappy day, and it was all Trevor’s fault.
Chapter Twenty-One
CHAMPION
Bulldog was a good opponent, but I was filled with frustration that made me extra focused and hungry for blood. He didn’t try too hard, actually tried to minimize the damage I did instead of attacking because he knew I was pissed about how the Three-
Hundred had ended. We were attacked by non-participants, and if my mother’s house hadn’t been there to push them back, there’d probably be a death count. As it was, we didn’t recover soon enough to make up for lost time, and Bulldog who didn’t get rockets shot at him, took first place.
Horse had stayed back to help our team, or he would have taken the gold. That also pissed me off, that I’d needed his help, but at least I knew it was because of Trix and his sense of misguided honor instead of anything personal he thought about me. With his weight and his skill, it was odd that he’d never won a fight against me, because I hadn’t always brought my best game. I’d had some years that were a blur of too much indulgence, not enough discipline, but I still hadn’t ever lost to him. Bothered me. But not as much as the thought of my Kitten home alone, eating who knew what because I wasn’t there to make sure she took care of herself.
She was a grown woman and could handle things like eating, but I wanted to see to it myself. At least she let me keep her in my bed. If she wasn’t too tired, I was going to kiss her for hours and hours absolutely everywhere she’d allow it. I could give her pleasure without sex easily enough. It would probably be addictive and distracting for me, because having her sleep in my arms was bad enough, but I needed more of her, as much as I could get. We’d already been in Vegas for a week, two weeks at the cabin, and another week in Alabama, and you were looking at a month down, five to go. It was going too fast. I needed to be enjoying her every moment I could get.
Bulldog hit me hard, right across the face, bringing my full focus back to the fight. Right. I needed to do this too. Because this was my real life without Kitten. Pain. Hunger. The battle.
I smiled at Bulldog and that was the last good hit he got on me. When the last bell rang, when Bulldog was down on the mat, I pushed my way out of the ring and then stopped when I saw Tom. One split-second of frozen uncertainty and then I was moving. I grabbed him and dragged him with me towards the tunnels, to the room where I’d left my phone and where I had access to all the security cams in the place.
Tom spoke quickly. “She went into the restroom and didn’t come out. When I asked Lily to check on her, she wasn’t there. It was ten minutes, no more, and then she was just gone. I called the hotel to see if she was there, but they said no one went through the lobby in a yellow dress. You’ll have to ask Horse to check his cams to see if she’s already there.”
“She was here? My Kitten came here? Did she see me fight?”
“Mr. Nix, you can’t keep what you do a secret. No one who sees what you do wouldn’t be impressed.”
