Playing with Fire

She stared at me, her face marred with disgust. Nothing I hadn’t seen on my parents’ faces a thousand times before. Just another Friday. Which reminded me—I had a fight today and needed to get my ass in gear. I grabbed her by the arms, picked her up, moved her away from my path like she was a traffic cone, and marched to the gym.

“You’re a monster!” she bellowed behind me, her voice taut with anger.

I pushed inside the gym’s door, ignoring her.

She wasn’t wrong.

Kade Appleton was not a fucking walk in the park, that was for sure.

Unless that park was in Chernobyl.

He continually broke the few rules we had in the ring in his quest not to have his ass handed to him, which resulted in my being more beat up than I’d ever been the entire three years I’d been doing this gig.

I’d be lying if I said I minded. The floor was jam-packed with people crammed together, like worms pouring from rotten meat. Beer sloshed from red Solo cups all over the sticky concrete, which was filthy with blood, dust, and sex juices. The place hadn’t been this crowded since I started attending Sher U. There was cheering, yelling, and whistling. Chicks sitting on guys’ shoulders to get a better view.

At some point, the guys who sold the tickets ran out of stamp ink to mark those who’d paid. They had to doodle on people’s hands with Sharpies. Max was on cloud nine. I could practically see the flashing pictures of him in a Hugh Hefner robe running through his Pornhub-infested brain.

It was a bloodbath in the ring. I’d popped Kade’s nose in the first ten seconds with a mean uppercut to get people riled up, then kneed his face to make every blood vessel in his mouth gush like a fondue fountain. He’d managed to bust my lip and eyebrow open by getting two solid shots to my face minutes after. The mat beneath us was slippery, squeaking with every movement we made.

Reign and East were behind me, shouting unsolicited advice. My eyes stung with blood and sweat, and I was pretty sure I spat out a tooth ten minutes into the fight. I swayed, bumping into one of the cardboard boxes that marked the ring.

Kade and I circled each other. We were entering our fifth round. I’d never had a fifth round in my amateur fighting career, but Appleton was no spring chicken. I didn’t find his size or technique challenging. I was just as good a wrestler and boxer as he was, and he figured it out when I cracked his rib before we even finished the first round with a kick that sent him flying like a kite.

Which was why he shoved fingers into my eyes, jabbed me below the belt, and tried other third-grade bullshit to slow me down.

Injured or not, I could still massacre the motherfucker.

“St. Claire! St. Claire! St. Claire!”

The chants vibrated the mats under my feet. Kade zeroed in on my face, his eyes already sporting two shiners. He had a face not even a mother could love (unless she was blind), with a nose that had been broken in the double digits, bug eyes, and nonexistent lips. His neck was as wide as some streets.

We were on opposite sides of the makeshift ring.

Max blew the whistle. “Fifth round! Make it count, gentlemen.”

We approached each other in guarded stances. I dodged a few easy swings, ducking and bouncing on the balls of my feet, before going in for the kill. I sent a perfect right hook to the side of his head, knocking his lights out. I watched him falling down on the mattress Max stole from the college gym, his body bouncing on top of it.

He lay there, eyes shut, knocked out. The crowd exploded. I spun on my heel, gliding a hand over my bare chest to wipe off the sweat and blood. Reign cupped my cheeks, screaming in my face in ecstasy.

Max wobbled into the ring and took my arm, flinging my fist in the air.

Roars. Claps. More whistles. Not one to bask in attention, I was already halfway out of the ring when I heard a voice behind me.

“This is bullshit!” Kade’s manager, a meathead called Shaun, blazed between the boxes, pointing at me. “Kade wasn’t prepared.”

“No shit.” I plucked a bottle of water from a random girl who offered it to me, taking a gulp and splashing the rest on my face. “Next time I’ll be sure to email him my game plan.”

Easton elbowed me.

“The fifth round didn’t start before you threw in that last shot!” Shaun bellowed, kicking something between us out of his way. His smoker’s breath skulked into my nostrils when he jabbed his finger against Max’s chest. “Pippy Longstocking over here didn’t whistle.”

“Umm, bro, I did whistle.” Max positioned himself between us. “And Kade made a move toward West first. He tried to throw in at least a couple punches before the KO happened.”

Shaun wasn’t having it. Neither was Kade. As soon as Appleton swung up on his feet, he began shouting in my face, claiming he’d been set up. That Max hadn’t blown the whistle, that I’d ambushed him. Throwing excuses around, seeing which one might stick.

An interested crowd molded around us, eager to see if we were about to start a second, free-of-charge fight.

Rather than hang around and argue to death with these suckers, I told Max I’d meet him in his “office” upstairs and cordially suggested Kade should go to hell where he belonged, and get a hearing aid and a pair of glasses on his way there, if he truly believed anything about the fight wasn’t kosher.

Max’s office was what was supposed to be the management floor in the mall that never came to be.

“You’re not getting away with this.” Appleton made a slashing motion at his throat. “Consider yourself a dead man walking, St. Claire.”

“Dead or alive, I still rode your ass tonight, and I’m not the one limping out of here.”

I cut through the mass of people cheering and slapping my back. The random chick who’d handed me water waved at me, smiling and batting her lashes at me. She had long blonde hair almost down to her ass, and her smallness reminded me of a certain infuriating little hick.

“Legal?” I breezed past her, not stopping. Her friends thrust her my way, giggling into their palms.

“About to turn twenty on August sixth!”

No need to get specific. My ass is not about to get you flowers.

I jerked my head upstairs.

“Really?” she squeaked.

“No talking.”

“Okay. Sure. Totally.”

That was three fucking words, but I let it slide.