Page 17

TOMMY

I charge my brother and slam him to the cage wall, earning hisses and jeers from those who watch on the outside.

Bringing my knee up and crushing his ribs, I scoop a hand between his legs, lift without a single thought for my back and the poor posture I exhibit when my temper burns hot, and spinning us both around, I dive toward the canvas and make sure he hits with the rage I’ve carried all my life.

“Jesus.” Ollie clings to the outside of the cage, gritting his teeth while Chris heaves for fresh oxygen, and I, being the prick I am, use his moment of weakness to drag his arm and head between my legs, trapping him in my lock and choking him with his own damn arm.

“Dude!” Ollie rattles the cage. “This ain’t the world title.”

“Tap.” I tighten my hold and slap my brother’s forehead. “You’re gonna tap, asshole.”

“Fuck I am.” Red in the face, he walks his feet along the cage, lifting his hips from the floor. “I don’t tap.”

“You will.” I squeeze my knees closer together and watch him turn from a standard red to something verging on purple. “I’m not playing today, Christian. Give me this one.”

Instead, he bridges his hips, bouncing them off the floor and stealing back an inch of freedom.

“As your treating physician, I suggest you idiots stop.” Oliver stalks the perimeter of the octagon and shoves through the door. “It’s my professional opinion you need oxygen to live.”

“Don’t fucking touch him.” My arms burn, and my legs scream, and still, Chris breaks the steely grip of my hold and inches around. Not free yet. But he’s damn near close. “Get out of the fucking cage unless you’re volunteering to spar, Doc.”

Chris twists just enough to get his knees underneath him—and risks a broken neck in the process. But he’s a fighter through and through, and we’ve been doing this shit since the womb. He draws his free arm back, then barrels it forward and slams an unforgiving fist against my ribs.

I swear, he relocates the fucking bones, probably piercing an organ I’ll need later. And when I still don’t release his head, he hits again. Then again. And a third time, until my lungs refuse the abuse and my legs fall open.

Instead of scrambling to my hands and knees and chasing after him, I simply fall flat, melting against the canvas and sweating myself dead.

“I had you, asshole.” I watch him from the corner of my eyes, in case he gets a sudden urge to Watkins and pile drive an elbow into my gut, but I don’t bother rolling away.

“You’d rather kill yourself than tap out.

” I wheeze for fresh air. “You could break your neck pulling that shit while I’ve got you locked up.

But you’d rather squirm like an idiot than admit you were bested. ”

“I wasn’t bested.” He stands over me, grinning past his mouth guard and doing nothing about the sweat that drops from the edge of his chin and lands on my chest. “If I was bested, I’d be asleep right now.”

Amused, Oliver chuckles and paces the edge of the octagon. Though I can’t help but notice how he makes damn sure to stay out of reach.

“Both of you have untreated rage you need to talk to a professional about.” He scratches his jaw. “One would rather kill his brother than admit he’s in a bad mood, and the other would rather die than admit he lost a fight.”

“I wouldn’t have killed him,” I grumble.

“I didn’t lose the fight,” Chris adds.

“How do you claim to be teaching the next generation with this family-friendly bullshit, all that Kumbaya, don’t hit, walk away from the fight , when right here in the fucking cage, the Watkins boys have lost their damn minds?”

“You’re overthinking it.” I draw a long, chest-filling breath and roll lazily to the side.

One arm, then the other. Then, twisting my hips, I make a damn good impersonation of a caterpillar after a big night out at the local bar.

“The kids enjoy watching us whale on each other. It gives them their fix of bloodlust and keeps them from hurting someone else.”

“Er… no.” Eliza wanders forward, platinum blonde hair tied in a high ponytail and the ends tickling her bare shoulders.

Unlike her older brother and sister, who chose the academic track after school, Eliza chose the gym, which means she can wear a tight crop top and itty bitty shorts and have the confidence to flash a perfect eight-pack and a body most of the guys in town want a piece of.

Not me. And not Chris. And especially not Oliver, since they’re family and all that.

But everyone else, including the married kind, thinks the sun shines out of Eliza Darling’s asshole.

“The kids constantly ask to try the ‘ Tommy Watkins Smasher ’ move,” she drawls.

We’re not her brothers like Oliver is, but I reckon she thinks of us the way she thinks of him.

“They’re also known to ask about the ‘ Chris Watkins Life Destroyer ’ and the ‘ Twin Turbo Twister Upper ’.

” She sets her hands on her hips and burns us with a glare.

“You’re bad influences! Both of you. Supposed to be mature, grown-ass men.

Business owners. Mentors to growing minds.

Your average six-year-old student has more common sense than the both of you. Combined!”

I fall back to the canvas, my cheek smooshed against the floor and coated in, I loathe to admit, someone else’s sweat. “You’re being mean. Why do you insist on hurting our feelings?”

“Because—” She jabs a finger in her brother’s direction.

“The resident doctor is telling you to cool your shit or risk a fricken aneurysm. And word travels fast around Plainview now that Bitsy’s out of the hospital.

She was up at Bingo last night spouting out some real interesting tidbits of information. ”

Fuck. Me.

“Don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what?” Oliver stands over me, scowling. “What’s Bitsy yammering about?”

“Oh, you don’t know?” Eliza taunts. “I heard from four different sources that Alana Page is back in town.”

“What?” His voice cracks despite being thirty-two years old. “Alana’s back? Since when?”

“She’s back, alright. And oh, look at this coincidence.” Eliza pins me with a sneer. “Tommy Watkins is out here fighting like he doesn’t care if he breaks a bone before Vegas.”

“Wait…” Oliver scrubs his eyes. “What the fuck is happening?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it.” My words muffle against the floor. Which is kind of apt, I suppose. This is how I felt after she left. It makes sense I’d repeat the fetal position thing now that she’s back. “We’re here to train, not to gossip.”

“When Bitsy talks about it, it’s gossip,” Eliza growls. “When we talk about it, it’s a Code Four, life-or-death situation. I saw Crazy Stanley on the way here. You wanna know what I heard?”

“Not really.” Die, Tommy. Just hold your breath and let it happen. “His name is Crazy Stanley for a reason. I’d hardly consider his word reliable.”

“He said you were out at Bitsy’s this morning, having words with Alana while she was in the yard in her underwear.”

“Fuckin’ Bitsy,” Chris chuckles. “She wasn’t in her underwear. She was just… ya know. They were little jammies.”

“Shut the fuck up.” I close my eyes and groan. Am I dying yet? Feels like it . “Stop talking about her. I beg of you.”

“And the crème de la crème?” Eliza seethes, coming in for her final blow, much like she does in the cage. Taunting, teasing, weakening her opponent, then BAM! “She brought her kid to town. She has a kid! What?”

“Technically, we already knew that,” Chris inserts. “We just didn’t gossip about it.”

“She has a kid.” I close my eyes and imagine myself on a deserted island somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. No one else is there. No televisions. No fucking Wi-Fi. Just me and my alcohol, charging toward braindead and smiling the whole way. “He’s a cutie, too. Quiet, but decent.”

“He can’t walk more than six feet without falling over,” Chris laughs. “And he ain’t shy about telling me to shut up. He wanted to listen to what his mom and Tommy were bickering about, and he wasn’t having it when I tried to tell him the history of combustion engines.”

Dead. Dying. Nearly gone. But I turn my face and stare up at my brother. “He was listening?”

“He was ready to rip the ear right off the side of his face and toss it out of the truck. He wasn’t panicking or anything. He wasn’t scared for her. But he was curious.”

“Did I say anything I shouldn’t have?” I try to remember back, but fuck, I think I had a stroke at some point during that conversation. “I didn’t… did I?”

“Nah.” He wanders across the cage, peeling his grappling gloves off and bending to scoop up a bottle of water. “You said some shit about how she left. But nothing inappropriate a kid probably shouldn’t hear.”

“Wait…” Frustrated, Oliver scratches the back of his neck. “Alana Page is back in town?”

“You’re really friggin’ slow.” Eliza comes around the cage and saunters through the door. “For a guy with as much college debt as you have and a job that literally saves or loses lives, your processing speed is a little pathetic.”

“Shut up.” He parries her jab, swinging her around and tossing her toward Chris. “Cut me some slack. The last time I saw her, I was?—”

“Arrested by your own father because you’d been streaking down Main Street?

” Chris turns and releases Eliza, taking his mouth guard out and pinching the rubber between his fingers instead.

“Had to call Tommy to pay bail. And bring you pants,” he laughs.

“Because your wang was embarrassingly small, despite it being summer and sweltering hot.”

“Ew!” Eliza gags. “Can we not discuss my brother’s dick, please?”

“Not small,” Oliver grumbles. “And no, I saw her after that night. Graduation,” he decides. “That’s how long it’s been.”

“Gossip travels faster than light out here in Plainview.” Wandering closer and lowering into a crouch, Chris searches my eyes. “What are you gonna do? She’s here, and I doubt she’s leaving anytime soon. Not until Bitsy’s gone, I reckon.”

Swallowing, I push up to my elbows and desperately search for Oliver.

He throws his hands up in surrender. “I’m not discussing it.”

“Ollie—”

“I can’t discuss it!” He charges through the cage door, stomping down the steps and onto the matted floor. “Absolutely not happening.”

“Give us a hint?” Chris bargains. “Cough if she has, like, three months or less. Scratch your ear if it’s three-to-six months. Do a cartwheel if it’s not terminal at all.”

“I’m going for a shower.” He snatches up a towel and storms toward the hall. “Leave me the hell alone.”

“Have a shower if it’s six to twelve months,” I call out. “Oliver?”

“You know he can’t say.” Eliza begins her warmup, lifting her legs into check position, then lowering them and switching sides. “He could lose his license if he did.”

“Do you think she’ll leave again once Bitsy dies?” Forlorn, I drag my gaze around and search for my brother. “Head back to New York once it’s done? ”

Of course he doesn’t know. He couldn’t. So he shrugs and slips the mouth guard back in. “I’ll spar with you, Darlin ’. Get my blood pumping again, but without having to sniff my own brother’s ball sack.”

“There’s something sincerely wrong with you.” Eliza begins circling the cage, bouncing and fixing her ponytail while she moves. “Guys, in general, are fucking weird.”

“Not all guys.” He jabs, knocking her off balance when she comes too close. Though his hit is barely more than a push. His smile, too fucking pure.

She’s the baby sister he never knew he wanted. And now, either of us would set the town alight if she ever left.

But who am I to say? That could be residual trauma.

“There are some guys in the world who are decent. Not us,” he volunteers, sweeping his leg out and wiping her off her feet with a fast, vicious move.

But he grabs her hand while she flies, slowing her transition to the ground and standing over her when she lands.

Then he grins. “Tommy and me, and Ollie, too… we’re all fuckin’ idiots.

But I’m sure there’s some kind of prince out there, just waiting for his chance to romance you. ”

“I’d rather fight.” She yanks him off balance and scissors her leg out to buckle his knees, then she rolls to the side when his two hundred-something pounds come tumbling down.

“Men are exhausting. My sister has the right idea; she understands the merits of a rubber penis and avoiding men altogether.”

Drained, I climb to my hands and knees, then to my feet, while my brain swims and my vision turns dark at the edges.

But I start toward the cage door before they pull me into their shit.

“So we can’t talk about your brother’s tiny, naked penis.

But it’s cool if we talk about your sister’s penchant for dildos?

” I shove through the gate. “That’s how this is gonna go? ”

“It’s how it is.” She stands over Chris and slams her knee into his gut. “It’s how it’s gonna be forever. Get up, bitch.” She taps his cheek. “You’re being a baby.”