Page 20

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brITT

HIS TELL

I walk into the Rollin On gym three days after our picnic on Lookout Hill and stop at the telltale sound of heavy fists thudding against flesh.

I turn with a giddy grin.

It’s him.

I know it’s him.

Poking my head around the corner, past the front desk and into the main room, I smile and watch Jack float around the boxing ring with wet hair flopping around his face, and red shorts swinging every time his hips move.

Despite hooking up with this man a couple times, I’ve never actually seen his naked torso. The first time, we didn’t take our clothes off. The second time, his house was dark and we were in somewhat of a frantic rush.

Finally, months after the first time we met, I see the chest that’s been teasing me, but better yet, I see the sleeves of tattoos I’ve only seen glimpses of, shimmering beneath sweat and rippling over muscle.

Both arms are covered from the ball of his shoulder right down to his wrists, then from shoulder to shoulder across the top of his back and chest.

Somehow, without making a single sound, Annie’s sleeping form comes alert, and her eyes lock onto mine. Standing from her place right beside the boxing ring, she trots toward me on three legs and lets her tongue loll out to the side .

Nosing my stomach the way she does, she has me smiling and scratching her ears. Planting her butt on the floor and leaning against me, we watch her human spar and move the way I never could under pressure.

It’s loud in here; thudding fists, loud kicks, shouted instructions, and heavy metal music screaming through the speakers.

Bobby and Jon – two of the brothers I recognize from Jack’s family estate – stand on the outside of the ring and shout instructions at Jack, and the man inside the ring, a man I don’t know, smiles and dodges lethal fists.

“Wait for it.” Kit’s whispered words make me jump and tug on Annie’s ears.

“Shit!”

“Sorry,” she murmurs. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I hold my chest and try to step away. Jack’s sister scares the crap out of me. “It’s alright.”

“Didn’t mean to interrupt your ogling, either.”

“No! It’s not– I wasn’t–” I was totally ogling.

Running her tongue along her teeth, she grins and lifts her hands in surrender. “I’m not judging. I used to watch Bobby train for hours. All the time. Hell, I still do. And though Jack’s my brother and quite possibly the biggest pain in my ass I know, I know he’s handsome. It’s cool.”

My heart thumps dangerously as nerves and excitement war in an effort to kill me. Watching Jack spar – sweaty and throwing meaty fists – amps my nerves up in the most amazing way. “What did you mean wait for it ?”

She nods toward the ring. “Watch his hands; that left arm. He broke it about a year ago, messed it and the shoulder up pretty bad, so now, for some reason, it twitches half a second before he throws it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s his tell.”

I frown. “His tell?”

“Yeah. When you’re at this level of competition, you’re fighting pretty amazing athletes. These athletes study you as much as you study them. They watch your fights. They’re looking for a tell, something, anything to give you away before you hit them. That twitch now telegraphs that he’s going to throw a jab before he does it. Which sucks dirty dog balls for him.”

I frown and turn back to watch him. I don’t see a twitch, but Jack’s sparring partner obviously does, since he blocks every single left jab.

“But thankfully,” Kit continues quietly, “no one outside this gym has figured that out yet. We’re family here, so we keep our shit close. We won’t be advertising it. We’ll just keep working him until he stops, or until he gets knocked out.”

My eyes snap back to hers. “Knocked out?”

She simply smiles.

“Has he ever been knocked out before?”

“Once, professionally. A few times here. Probably once from each of his brothers.”

“You’re all very violent people, you know that?”

“We do know that, Bambie.”

Jumping when a sweaty arm slams down over my shoulders, I look up into the goofy smile on Jimmy Kincaid’s face, but then a solid thump and a falling body has my eyes snapping back to the ring.

Jack stands solitary, a victor standing over his squashed enemy. His chest heaves, and his eyes bore into mine.

“Well that’s different,” Jim muses smugly.

Kit smiles. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen that happen.”

“What just happened?”

“It would appear you just gave our boy a testosterone boost,” Jim explains on a gentle laugh. “Good job. Steph used to do that, too.”

Well… umm…

His eyes snap to mine. “You know about Steph, right?”

I nod. “How do you know I know?”

“He told us.”

“He tells us most everything,” Kit adds.

Well shit. I don’t know if I like that.

“Bambie?” Jack’s chest continues to heave. Pulling a white – tinged red with blood – mouthguard from his mouth, he tucks it into the waistband of his shorts and rips open the Velcro on his fingerless gloves. Tossing them to the floor, he looks back to his opponent and helps pull him to his feet.

Jumping over the ropes without a backward glance, he stalks toward us with a silent inferno raging in his blue eyes.

The sweaty arm slung over my shoulder begins to feel like a five-hundred-ton anvil, and as Jack’s eyes burn into it, Jimmy’s smug chuckling tickles my ear as he turns into me and tries to hide his amusement.

Looking me up and down slowly, appreciatively , Jack has me fighting the insane urge to squirm. I don’t squirm. I’m not a squirmer.

But I haven’t seen him in days, not since he kissed me on the hood of his Mustang.

Without saying another word, he helped me back into his car, drove us back to town, dropped a second – just as sweet – kiss on my lips, then he patted my ass and sent me away.

That was three days ago.

Three days of deafening silence.

He stops so close in front of me, the heat pushing off his body hits me in waves. “What are you doing here?”

“Umm.” Glancing around him, I swallow down a ridiculous case of nerves as Jon and Bobby grin.

The anvil on my shoulder weighs heavier for every second our group stands here and everyone stares at me.

Finally catching on, Jack scowls and looks up at his overbearing family. “Can you all get lost? And you,” he pushes Jim’s arm off me. “Get off her.”

“But, Jacky–”

Taking my hand in his, Jack tugs me away and leads me down a long echoing hall. Trotting behind us with a grin similar to Jim’s, Annie’s nails tap the floor, and the sounds of Jack’s family’s heckling follow us until Jack huffs out an impatient breath.

Pushing open the fourth door on the left, Jack steps back and allows me to walk ahead, and as soon as Annie sashays in, he slams the door and locks everyone out.

I look around at the scarred and nicked desk, at the shitty chair on wheels behind his desk, then the even shittier set of chairs in front of it. One of them looks so flimsy, and the material so thin, I worry that it will turn to dust the second I sit down.

I look at the walls, picture frame after picture frame, canvas after canvas. I recognize most of the faces. Jack and his brothers. Jack and Kit. A young Jack, standing in a line of men; Jack and Jon both with black eyes, though they all wear crazy big grins. Pictures of Jack in a tux. Pictures of all the guys and an older lady, those same breathtaking grins on every face. I see a picture of the entire family wearing shirts with Tink and Jon’s faces on them.

Then I see pictures of Jack and a girl. Jack in a tux, and that girl in a gown. Jack shirtless, holding that girl against him as she wears a modest two-piece bikini. Jack holding fresh baby after fresh baby, with that girl standing beside him in almost every picture.

Steph was there for all of it.

They grew up together. She was always on his wings. And going by his body language, the proud smile on his face and the wicked glint in his eyes, she was exactly where he wanted her .

Turning with nerves deep inside my stomach, I smile and study his eyes. “She was beautiful.”

Sitting against the edge of his desk, his hair still wet with sweat, his chest still bare, he nods. “Yeah. She was.”

Turning back to the wall, I frown thoughtfully. “There are no pictures of you from before you met the guys.”

“I guess my life didn’t really start until I met the guys,” he muses. “Before that, I was on a similar path to destruction that I was on earlier this year.”

“Why do you do that?”

He shrugs dismissively. “Dunno. The only two times I’ve ever lost someone really important to me, I guess I just shut down. The world… hurts. I feel too much, so I become an asshole to try and spread the hate. I drink to try and numb the pain.”

“You drank a lot?”

He nods, though his eyes turn stormy. Disappointment shines within them.

Disappointment aimed straight at himself.

“I guess I’m a self-diagnosed alcoholic. I drank. All. The. Time. I smoked pot. I took every last painkiller the doctors prescribed me. But when it all came to a boiling point, it was the alcohol I craved. I wanted a drink so fucking bad, and the more I craved it, the angrier I got at myself for creating that dependency.” He shakes his head. “I don’t drink anymore.”

“At all?”

“Not at all. Not a drop.” Shaking his head with disappointment, he runs an unsteady hand through his hair. “Steph died from a drunk driver. Then I became no better than him. I almost ran my nephew down in our own driveway.” Swallowing heavily, he drops his eyes to the floor. “Luke, one of the twin boys, was riding a tiny plastic trike in our street. I was so angry, I was always so fucking angry. I tore out of my driveway, and if it wasn’t for Jon being right there, snatching Luke up at the exact right second, I might’ve killed him.”

My heart thumps painfully, not from nerves or excitement, but from the pain in his voice. This strong man, this man who is easily twice my size, sits bent over as though life is just too heavy.

“But that’s not even what snapped me out of my… funk . Somehow, for some reason, it was you.”

“Me?”

“Mmhmm.” Lifting his head, desperate eyes bore into mine. “Doesn’t make sense, right? If anything, it should’ve been that near miss. It should’ve been the fact I almost killed my nephew. But it was you , the hot chick with sass, the woman who just wouldn’t slink away when I told her to go. You shouted at me, you stood up to me, and something that night finally pushed through the fog.”

“Jack–”

“That next day, I tried to go back to the old me. Like I could just decide and it would be that easy. I went for my first run since before the accident. I didn’t last more than ten minutes before I limped home, retching and shaking. I went to Kit’s house, I hugged my nephew and begged his forgiveness. When he kissed my nose and squeezed my face with his chubby little hands, when he told me he loves me and that he didn’t even hold a grudge that I almost killed him, whatever key you started to turn the night before finished its revolution, and I started to work on getting better. I mean, fuck, Bambie.”

Jack’s haunted eyes dig deep into my heart. “Kit took me in, just like that. Saving my life, not for the first time. Jon hugged me, even though it was his son I almost killed. Everyone simply forgave every horrible thing I ever did to them.”

Walking forward, I stop between Jack’s open legs, close, but not touching. “Your family is very special.”

Nodding, his watery eyes flick between mine. “They are. They’re everything, and the only thing I have.”

“You have me.”

His eyes blink… blink… blink.

“I don’t mean to replace Steph. I could never– No one could ever–” I take a deep breath. “I just mean, I can be your friend. I’m not looking for a husband. I’m not even looking for a boyfriend. But I like you. I think you’re a very sweet man. Loyal. Kind. My life would be better for having you in it.”

Shaking his head, he looks down between us. “I don’t know how I can continue to treat people the way I do… the way I did, and yet, I’m still rewarded with people like you.” He points toward his door. “People like them.”

“Maybe because the universe knows you’re better than that guy. Or maybe it’s your dad or Steph, because they know who you really are, deep down, and they’re pointing the right people in your direction.”

Kissing his fingers, Jack shoots them into the air. “Thanks, Dad. I love you.”

“Not Steph? ”

Laughing shakily, he lowers his hand. “Definitely not Steph. She’d be mad at me for this shit. She’d make me pay for it.”

“She sounds like exactly the kind of girl you needed.”

He nods. “She really was. She kept me grounded during some really huge years. I was a punk twenty-year-old with a giant ego and millions of dollars. I could’ve really torn this town up.”

I laugh at his shy grin.