Chapter 10
Are you going to do something, or just stand there and bleed?
-Tombstone
James
Peter’s (Portal to the crowd) fist flew past my head like a fucking wrecking ball, and I pivoted, narrowly dodging his other fist by millimeters. Motherfucker, he was quick. Even quicker than the last time we’d fought. The kid was really learning how to fight. Not that he’d win. I’d been doing this since I was fifteen.
When I was a kid, I had a lot of pent up aggression. With no father to tell me how to channel it, I started punching an old punching bag that Max’s father had in his tool shed. Not one to be outdone, Max had started, too. Then the fights started happening.
Briggs, my other best friend, discovered an underground fight club of sorts one weekend when he’d gone to Shreveport, Louisiana to visit his grandparents. It wasn’t until after Briggs’ death, however, that I finally worked up the courage to start fighting.
Briggs, Max, and I met in middle school during JV football tryouts. We bonded so well because all of us fucking sucked at playing football. We never saw the point of it. We all had a problem with authority, and having football coaches screaming at you because you dropped the football wasn’t something that had interested us at the time.
So, we became fast friends, doing anything and everything together. That all ended one night when Briggs was in a drunk driving accident.
On our way home from mudding in the Tally Bottoms, Briggs had just pulled onto Highway 31 when a drunk driver hit him head on. The man had been driving in the wrong direction. Being that Highway 31 was a large highway, Briggs never thought to look the other way as he merged into traffic. That was the biggest mistake of his life.
Max and I had watched in horror as the two cars collided. The drunk went from eighty miles an hour to nothing in just a few short horror-filled seconds. Briggs’ car folded like a motherfucking accordion. Much the way my face was about to, if I didn’t start paying attention to the fight.
Shaking off any residual wraiths, I faked a right jab and swung my left in an uppercut. My fist met Peter’s jaw on a brutal upward swing, and he dropped to the floor like a stone.
Not even panting, I backed away from the fallen man, and stopped just to the edge of the ring, waiting. The unofficial referee dropped to his knee beside Peter and did the count, declaring me the winner by a knock out.
My rage somewhat appeased by the two fights, I turned my head to check on Shiloh. Much the same as earlier, I couldn’t find her. However, this time I wasn’t scared shitless. I knew her brother wouldn’t let anything happen to her now that he knew she was there.
I hadn’t realized that ownership of Fields of Punishment had transferred hands. Which was very sloppy of me. Sloppy got people killed, and I had a girl that depended on me to live. I would never let her down.
“Who’s ready for Shiva!” The Announcer roared, snapping me out of my mental assault of my dumbness.
The announcer reached his desired effect, and the crowd roared at the name. A small snort came from my opposite side, and I turned, and looked down to see Shiloh sitting on a folding metal chair just behind where I was standing.
“What?” I semi-yelled at her.
Before she could reply, I finally heard the whispers.
‘Oh, my God! Shiva’s fighting?’
‘Holy crap, Shiva never fights.’
“Shiva’s fucking hot. I can’t believe the VP of The Dixie Wardens MC is fighting. Scope’s gonna get his ass kicked.’
The whispers continued, and I finally looked to Shiloh.
“Who the fuck is Shiva?” I asked.
“That,” she laughed. “Would be my big brother.”
I started to sing ‘Joy to the world’ in my head. Why? I don’t know. I sing Christmas songs when I’m happy, and right then, I was over the fucking moon. I’ve wanted to kick that little fucker’s ass for over two weeks now. Sam wasn’t the only brother she’d been upset with, and anyone that made a woman like Shiloh cry was ‘cruisin’ for a brusin’’ like my lovely sister always says.
Rubbing my hands together in glee, I stepped back into the ring.
Sebastian made his appearance moments later, in jeans only, just like me.
“No lower body.” Sebastian declared.
“Okay.” I agreed outwardly. However, inwardly I said, ‘Yeah, right.’
“You fucked her yet?” Sebastian growled.
I didn’t reply, nor did I move. Which would’ve been what he wanted. For some reason, I’d pissed him off, and what better way to retaliate than a fight in his own establishment. Fuck me up, get his revenge against something I’d done, and make himself look good in front of his club. Win-win for everybody.
But me, however.
“Not yet. Soon, though. Maybe tonight.”
He didn’t react either, but the telltale twitch at the corner of his left eye gave away his irritation.
“My sister sucks at picking out men. She has a track record a mile long of assholes that I had to take care of. Figure I’ll just get rid of you now, and save myself the trouble later.”
“That right?” I asked him. “Where have you been for the last seven months if you protect her so much?”
“Busy.” He snarled.
Oopsey, must’ve hit a nerve with that one.
We started circling each other, neither one willing to make the first move. The crowd was chanting ‘Shiva’s’ name, urging him to ‘kill that motherfucker!’ and “Don’t hurt the pretty boy’s face.’
“Is that so?” I laughed. “You and your brother have a lot in common. Sam decided that he didn’t want to have anything to do with her either.”
Sebastian came to a stunned stop, and I took advantage of his temporary lack of attention and struck. My fist met his face with a satisfying crunch, and his nose sprayed an arc of blood over the concrete floor.
Not one to be outdone, Sebastian struck out moments later with a right hook to my face, but I deflected it enough that it only grazed my jaw.
We traded punches like that for ten more minutes, and finally, the rage that had been present since finding out that Anna would be seeing my daughter started to fade. With each punch, hook, jab, and block, I started to think beyond my rage. That’s when the real fight began.
***
“You have a baby. In a bar.” I joked.
Shiloh’s eyes regarded me with annoyance before she turned and did another circuit in front of the bar in her brother’s office. The boy sleeping in her arms was much larger than the tiny little infant that we’d seen two years ago.
“Don’t use Sweet Home Alabama quotes on me. They won’t work.” She growled.
I was in a good mood for the first time in what felt like two weeks. I’d needed that fight more than anything, and I appreciated Sebastian for giving it to me, even if it wasn’t for the same reasons as I’d had.
“Where’d Terry go?” Sebastian asked as he shrugged his cut back on as he entered the room.
Shiloh mumbled something derogatory, but the only thing I’d made out was ‘crazy bitch.’
“Your lovely sister sent Terry home.” Jordan, the man who’d nearly lost his life earlier when I’d seen him on top of Shiloh, said.
Jordan was a prospect, and although I know he was doing his job and protecting Sebastian, I didn’t give a fuck. It would take me a long fucking time to think of him in any other way other than hatred.
Sebastian’s glare returned to his sister, and I barely contained the chuckle that was forming in my chest. I know how that felt. My sister did ‘things for my own good’ all the time, whether I wanted them or not.
“If you need someone to watch my nephew from now on, please call me. I don’t think it’s good to have the sitter giving a blowjob to some burly man drunk on God knows what, while my nephew is in the same room. Especially when the man is saying, ‘yeah, baby. Suck my fat cock. Get up here and sheathe that hot cunt over my throbbing pork meat.’ I think not.”
Sebastian’s face turned hard as stone, and then he turned and left the room abruptly. Seconds of silence followed, and then the sound of a large bodied person being dragged kicking and screaming could be heard. Then said man was unceremoniously dumped inside the office.
“You’re telling me you fucked the help while my kid was in the goddamned room?” Sebastian bellowed.
My eyes went to Shiloh, and the young toddler in her arms, wondering if the sound of his father’s bellow would wake him, but it didn’t. Which made me wonder what the boy had witnessed, in his young life, to not even to flinch at such a commotion.
“Awww, man. Johnny was sound asleep.” The man sporting a broken nose, and most likely a broken rib or two, whined.
“Johnny’s my goddamned kid, not yours. I decide what is and isn’t good for him. If he’s fucking sleeping, then you leave him the fuck alone. Go find someone else to fuck, and make sure it’s not the fucking babysitter, either. I trusted you to watch over him. What the fuck would’ve happened if someone had come in while you were fucking the help. What could you have done with your dick in someone, Torren?”
Torren’s face went red with embarrassment at his lack of attention.
“Oh, he found that out first hand when your sister yanked Terry off his cock and threw her out the back door naked. Then came back for Johnny, all the while giving poor Torren the lecture of his life.”
“Get out of my sight.” Sebastian growled.
Shiloh started for the exit when Sebastian sighed, superbly exasperated. “Not you, June. Torren, get the fuck out and don’t show yourself for a couple of days.”
“Yes, sir.” Torren nodded and left.
“Take a seat James. Shiloh.” Sebastian gestured to the couches across the room.
I sat down on the loveseat, leaving Shiloh the recliner, but she surprised me by taking a seat next to me, scooting close. Leaving me no choice, I raised my arm and she cuddled into my side before laying her head down, and quite literally, falling asleep.
Sebastian sat down across from us with a disgusted look on his face. “Do you have to get that close to my sister?”
“Hey,” I said, shrugging. “This is all her.”
He nodded, watching his sister and son sleep for a few minutes before looking up at me. “Tell me what’s been going on.”
I decided to ignore the demand in his voice, and gave him a recap of the last eight months.
“Goddammit. I told my father this wouldn’t work.”
“What?” I asked, trying to sit forward and forgetting that Shiloh was using me as a bed.
Leaning back against the couch, I waited patiently while Sebastian debated what he shouldn’t and should divulge.
When he finally started speaking, I quite literally had no words.
Nothing in my life could’ve surprised me more than what he said.
***
Shiloh
“Holy shit.” My mind screamed.
It’s amazing what you hear when you pretend you’re sleeping.
Mind blown.