I slid off my watch and handed it to Emma. She was looking at me like I was the next in line to be hanged. “If Emma ever chooses me over you one day, it will be of my own merit. Not due to your lack of it.”

Ty cracked his knuckles, rolling his neck around. “What are the rules?”

Idiot, since when did fights for honor involve rules? We weren’t playing a game of chess.

“No rules.”

“No.” Emma’s voice was so tight it was a note from breaking. “Don’t be stupid. Just walk away. I can handle him.”

I unzipped my motorcycle jacket and handed that to her next, just to give her something to wring her restless hands into. “I’ve never been one to walk away, Em, and that’s something I’m not about to change now.”

“Back away, Emma,” Ty said, hopping in place to spike his adrenaline. “Might want to say goodbye to pretty boy’s face. There’s not going to be much left of it once I’m done.”

“This is a one time deal, dickhead,” I said, stepping away from Emma since she wouldn’t step away from me. “Do your worst.”

“That’s the only way I work,” Ty answered, pulling something out of his back pocket. The metal caught the sun as he slid the brass knuckles into place.

If my opinion of Ty Steel could have gotten any smaller, it would have. Who carried a set of brass knuckles around in their back pocket? Just think of the most despicable person you’ve had the misfortune of meeting and that pretty much describes him. “No rules right?” Ty said with a wicked grin.

Emma gasped. “What the hell, Ty?” Her voice shook across the grass at him.

Holding up the index finger of his knuckled hand, he reached his other hand behind him, revealing another set. Sliding this set into position, he held his fists in front of him, sliding them together so I could read the encryption etched into them: Don’t fear the reaper, fear me.

A man who was taller than me by a couple inches, heavier than me by a solid fifty pounds, brass knuckled to the teeth, set on ending me because I was after his girl, about to enter a fight with me where I wasn’t allowed to throw a single punch . . . I should have been pissing my pants right about now.

So, of course, I laughed. “Done stalling, big boy?” I called out, making sure the crowd heard me. “Quit playing with your toys and throw down the pain already.”

“I won’t hold you to your promise anymore,” Emma said, bracing herself in front of me as I began loping towards Ty. “This is not a fair fight. Hit him, kick him, I don’t care, do what you have to to defend yourself. Okay?”

“Stay out of this, Emma,” Ty warned, taking an indirect route at me like he didn’t believe that I wasn’t going to fight back.

“Yeah,” I said, looking at her. Tears were streaking her face, but I couldn’t retract the offer now. Had I known she’d be crying more now than she had when Ty had been saying those terrible things to her, I might not have made this deal with Ty, but that was hindsight. “Stay out of this, Em.” Gripping her shoulders, I guided her into the crowd, handing her over to a girl I recognized who lived on the same floor as her and Julia.

“I know it’s hard for you, but stop being an idiot,” she pleaded when I turned to face a two minute beating. “The last guy he used those things on was unconscious by the second punch.”

I glanced back at her and winked. “Good thing I’m not the last guy.”

I was just looking back around when a cool crack crushed into my jaw. The crowd gasped—Emma screamed.

So, of course, I laughed—again.

I should have been expecting the sucker punch from the master of all things suck. It was an oversight I wouldn’t make again.

“I told you to punch me, not to give me a sweet little kiss on the cheek,” I said, pretending to smear the kiss away.

His next hit was fast and loaded with a potent amount of power. Not to mention the brass knuckles had a way of driving a punch so deep you could feel it radiate through the ends of every nerve.

Spinning around to the crowd, I lifted my arms to the sky. “Did someone turn a fan on in here?”

The next was an upper cut that felt like it would have shattered my jaw had I not been so . . . invincible.

“Is there a butterfly migration going on? I keep feeling the gentle brush of velvety wings on my face.”

A few members of the crowd laughed at my weak attempts at humor, but most stared like they were about to witness an execution. Emma was now being held back by two of her brothers who’d appeared with the rest of Stanford. That was a relief because I knew they wouldn’t let her get anywhere near to the cluster f-bomb taking place in the arena created by gawking bodies.

By the fifth hit, I wasn’t making witty comments anymore. And by the eighth, I wasn’t laughing either. I hadn’t been in more than a handful of brawls with beings of a fragile nature, but when I had, the random hit I’d let past my defenses to experience what it felt like had felt like nothing. Like someone tapping at me to get my attention, not to cause me physical damage. Then again, I’d never experienced the wrath of a man who was likely related to the devil, wielding a convincing pair of brass knuckles.

Spitting out the metallic taste swirling in my mouth, I realized this was one of those experiences I didn’t want to have again. Once was enough. I hadn’t felt this Mortal since the day I’d died with the rest of my family.

A quick jab, followed by a hook, rocked me back on my heels, but I recovered, assuming my spot in the center of the ring. I’d made myself a sitting duck, refusing to duck, not about to block him, and keeping my promise to not strike back. I’d promised the man two minutes to dole out a free for all beating and he wasn’t going to let a second pass wasted.

I kept myself angled towards Emma because I knew I’d find the strength in her I needed when every fiber of my survival instincts begged to be set free.

She’d called the cops after the first hit. I’d heard her brothers advising her not to, and I’d heard her succinct, one word answer, but we both knew Palo Alto’s finest wouldn’t be here before the two minutes was done.

She never stopped fighting against her brothers. I don’t know what she thought she’d do once she did break free, but I hoped she was seeing a piece of the woman I saw when I looked at her. She was a scrapper, courageous to the core, yet she didn’t see it.

As Ty completed making a punching bag of my head, she threw herself hard against her brothers, getting the closest she had to busting loose.

“Just a walk in the park, Em,” I called over at her, spitting the bitter taste from my mouth again. This time, there was blood. I hadn’t bled real, red blood since 1806. Russo-Persian War. Long Story.

“A walk in the park,” I repeated, bracing myself as Ty threw his fist into my stomach.

I curled over, wondering if time had decided to slow to a crawl so it could have a good laugh at Patrick Hayward getting his butt handed to him. Vulnerable, Ty charged into me, hoisting me into the air with his shoulder. And then I was flying, but not in the cool, trippy way I did in my dreams. In the this-is-going-to-hurt-like-hell kind of way.

I skidded across the sidewalk face first. The pissant had thrown me onto concrete. Face first. I wanted a piece of him so badly I had to wind my hands behind my back and lace them together so I wouldn’t be tempted. At my current level of anger and agony, I’d kill him with one strike.

Ty’s feet came into view, although my eyes were glazed and no longer able to open all the way. They were swelling closed. Ty seemed to have picked an excellent day to throw on a pair of steel toed boots, at least that’s what I had a good internal laugh about before they started taking turns bashing me in the face.

I hadn’t felt pain like that ever. Not even when I’d been shot close range in the stomach my last day of Mortality. Immortals experienced pain on a superficial level, if ever, but I was feeling it like it was cutting me open and spilling my insides out in the process. I’d never felt so human. Couldn’t have picked a worse day to feel Mortal.

I kept my hands locked behind me, not about to act the part of a coward and protect myself when the seconds were ticking to an end. I wouldn’t go down as someone who ran out of courage at the last minute. I didn’t want that to be my legacy.

Black dots were just beginning to cloak my vision when I heard a chorus of shouts. “Time!” most yelled. “Your two minutes are up, Ty!” some called. “Get him the hell off of him before he kills him!” a couple called.

“Patrick!” one voice screamed—the only voice that mattered.

Releasing their sister, Austin and Tex charged Ty, each one grabbing a shoulder and pulling him away from me, but he still managed to get a few last kicks in.

“Stay down, punk” he sneered, fighting against the Scarlett brothers’ holds.

Two minutes was up, I’d taken it like a man, keeping my promise and honoring my deal, and I was hurting hard core. My body felt like it’d just gone through an assembly line of heavy weights throwing their top-notch, grade A TKO punches. I could have curled up and gritted my teeth until my body did the Immortal thing and recovered itself like a new shiny penny, but because he’d told me to stay down, I did the opposite.

Trying to right myself with as little hobbling as my busted body could, I had to spit out the warm fluid trickling in my mouth before I could reply. More red, lots more red.

“That’s it? Just a wham, bam, thank you ma’am and you’re gone?” My body was broken, but my voice carried just fine. “No cuddling after or anything?”

The crowd’s eyes did a unified amplification, like if they hadn’t been before, they were now looking at a dead man. The humor in that was that I’d been a dead man before their great great grandparents had been born.

Ty fought harder to free himself, but the only thing more hulking on campus than him was the Scarlett brothers. He’d have better luck freeing himself from Alcatraz. I didn’t know if he was incapable of responding because his quivering red face was taking up all his energy or if he didn’t have a comeback worthy enough to speak, but I was relieved I’d managed to shut him up.

He wouldn’t look at Emma as he was dragged out of the circle, and I realized I’d never heard him disrespect her around her brothers. He must know all gloves came off if he talked that way to their sister. My estimation of the Scarlett boys increased two-fold.

“Thanks again for the rub down,” I yelled over the diminishing crowd to Ty, because I never knew when to quit. “You really worked all my kinks out. Same time, next week?”

I heard another growl and surge of effort, but Ty didn’t bust through the crowd to take another swing at me. Too bad, because one solid round house to the mouth would have been one of the few things to make me feel better.

Well, that, and one set of arms wrapping around me like she was trying to put me back together. God, I could have melted into a puddle of slush from those arms.

“Why did you do that?” she cried into my chest. “What the heck were you thinking?”