Brawl (14 page)

Letting my head fall back against the mat with a small thud, I stare at the roof and attempt to pick up the shredded pieces of my dignity.

The question of whether Hooligan is attracted to me. It’s been answered loud and clear. His hard cock pressing against my aching pussy puts any lingering doubts in that area to bed.
His strange response to what we just did...well, that just leaves me with a million new questions.

Hooligan

T
he door to the gym sounds like a death knell when it slams shut, heralding Gabbi’s exit. I’d watched her through the mirrored window of my office as she laid on the floor of the ring where I left her, pink lips swollen from our kisses, gasping for air, and appearing to search the ceiling for answers to explain my abrupt departure.

I feel like an asshole.

Guilt is like quicksand. It sucks you down, slowly but surely, until you’re up to your neck with no way out and no fucking idea how you ended up stuck. What happened to Mari and Gabe is something that no one should ever experience...I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Deep down, I know what happened isn’t my fault, yet I can’t stop feeling like it’s honorable to remain unhappy and alone. 

The ease with which both sides of our family have moved on makes me sick.

“You’re a fuckwit,” Nate’s aggravated voice cuts through my guilt-ridden thoughts. He strides into my office, approaching me as I stand near the window with belligerence written on his face and aggression stiffening his shoulders.

“You saw that?”

The hurt tinged with jealousy that crosses my nephew’s face shocks me to my core. He’s my closest family member; the only one who hasn’t written me off as a lost cause who shames our family by beating people up for a living. After being diagnosed as a teenager with Attention Deficit Disorder, and being excluded for the bad behavior that resulted from my brother and his wife’s refusal to medicate him because they don’t believe ADD exists, he’s been on the outer longer than I have been.

We’re the black sheep; the pair who darkens the shine of an otherwise upper-middle class, image-obsessed family.

“Of course, I did. A bloody bomb could’ve dropped on your head and you wouldn’t have noticed.”

After catching Gabbi and Nate together in the locker room earlier, I’d gleaned from his behavior that he liked her, however her denial had led me to believe he was just playing his usual game.
Meet. Greet. Hump...and dump.
Seeing him so worked up, and hearing the bitterness coating his words up close and personal, tells me that this might be something more.

Something serious.

“I’m guessing that you like Gabbi?”

Raking a hand over his shaven head, he hits me with a baleful look. Reproach and spite make his green eyes shine. “I do. I saw her first. She’s too fucking good for your creepy old ass.”

I take his accusation for what it is—the irate, envious posturing of a boy. If he was a man, he’d know that seeing a woman first doesn’t give you dibs.

“I think we need to let Gabbi make that decision. Don’t you?” His gaze flashes with malice, affirming my belief that while he likes her, it’s not reciprocated. “She’s made it clear who she prefers.”

Why am I goading him? It’s highly unlikely that she’s going to return to the gym to train under me after how I just behaved. Thinking about her training under me kicks up the memories of how good she
felt
under me, making my cock twitch again. It’s been three years since I’ve touched a woman like that. The realization taunts me; my conscience screaming at me that I’ve got fucking issues—gigantic issues—lusting after a girl barely out of her teens when I have an entire lifetime of experience on her.

Nate throws his head back and howls with glee. The sound reverberates around my sparsely decorated office, bouncing off the walls and echoing in my head. It’s a mocking laughter, full of vindictiveness that hints at a knowledge I’m not going to enjoy.

“Come here,” he spits the words at me as he advances on my desk with evident determination. I follow him, curiosity getting the better of me. Little shit is up to something. My stomach drops when he jabs at the pile of forms on my desk with his pointer finger—they look like the ones I told Gabbi to fill out.

“See this.”

I take a step closer and peer at what he’s pointing to. Gabriella Catherine Mitchell.

“So what? That’s her name.” Shaking my head at him, I curl my bottom lip and cross my arms over my chest. “You’ve lost me.”

Smirking, my nephew fixes me with a look I know well. Gleeful expectation. “Not her name, look underneath it.”

Doing as he demands, I swear my heart stops when I see her birth year. No way. It’s impossible. Blinking frantically as I attempt to make my brain perform the necessary calculations. Not happy with my first solution, I challenge myself to come up with a better answer. One that doesn’t leave me feeling like a creepy old man.

“Fuck me sideways.” Even as the words leave my mouth, my mind is still grasping at straws...anything, something, a way to deny what’s there for anyone with basic mathematical skills to comprehend.

“Yeah, moron. She’s seventeen. You tried to fuck a girl young enough to be your daughter.” His sneer is the final insult. Before I know what I’ve done, I have Nate by the front of his shirt and I’m pushing him against the nearest wall. Leaning close to him, my eyes bore into his as I grit my teeth and force my question into the atmosphere.

“Why wouldn’t you say something?” Attempting to move me out of his face with all of his strength, he gives up when I refuse to budge. I shove him against the wall again, demonstrating that he isn’t going to overpower
this old man
any time soon. “Huh? You took her to an illegal fight. I saw her drinking with you. Fuck, you and Jep have had your hands all over her as well.”

Shame turns the apples of his cheeks red, and he hangs his head. “We didn’t know until she said that night.”

Letting him go, I barely make the three steps to my office chair before my body gives out and I fall into it. Drained. Defeated. Devoid of reason. The first woman—
Girl...I
mentally correct myself, bereft at the knowledge that my initial reaction to her was accurate—that breaks through the ice coating my black heart turns out to be a fucking child. Underage. Illegal.

She nearly turned me into an unsuspecting pedophile.

Aren’t you already? Didn’t you call out her name while you were coming two nights ago? My mind mocks me with its less-than-subtle reminder that I pulled my dick with Gabbi as the star attraction firing my need.

The thought pisses me off. Stoking my anger toward her, I swing my seat in Nate’s direction. “She’s not welcome here anymore. Tell her if she sets foot in my gym, I’ll toss her out on her ass personally.”

“Fucking hell, you can’t do that.”

“I can and I will.”

“She needs the money. Dunno details but she looks after her brother and sister. Steve said she’s gonna miss out on art school if she can’t come up with the money before it starts in a few months.”

For someone who just took immense pleasure in wrecking my day, he’s suddenly very concerned about Gabbi. He can say what he likes but I’m not going to change my mind. Whatever it was that she woke up in me, it’s over and done with.
Dead.
I can feel the icy cavern in my chest that was unthawing begin to harden into an impenetrable iceberg again. It’s a strangely satisfying sensation. Restoring my honor and Mari’s dignity.

“She can’t fight until she’s eighteen. We might be an underground fight ring but we do have
some
standards.”

“Jesus, Hooligan, that’s less than two months away. It’s not like she’s fighting tomorrow. She’ll be legal before you’ve finished training her. I saw your face yesterday; you think she’s got potential. Don’t take away her shot because you can’t control your dick around her.” Nate puts space—and my desk—between us before he says his final parting sentence.

“Get the fuck out of my face.” Flipping my middle finger at his back, I slump further down in my chair and contemplate his words.

Once I hear the gym door slam shut, I grab the phone on my desk and dial for some assistance. Running my finger down the frame that sits next to my phone while I wait for my call to connect, I try to convince myself that I’m about to do the right thing.

“Yeah,” the curt voice on the other end belongs to the last cunt on earth I thought I’d ever speak to again willingly. “What the fuck do you want?”

“Angelo,” I greet my ex brother-in-law. “I have a fighter I need your help with. She’s young but she has killer instinct and—”

“She?” He still sounds hostile, although curiosity has dampened it slightly. “I thought you gave up training women after Maria passed.”

At his cavalier mention of his sister, the betrayal I felt when they all moved on with their lives as if Mari was nothing but a blip on their radar resurfaces. It makes it way from the heavy ball that spends its days curled in the pit of my gut, up my esophagus and into my throat. I can feel it trying to choke me as I try to speak over him.

She didn’t
pass;
she was murdered by a thug while she went about her day-to-day life.

“I’m not training women again. I was going to try with this girl but I can’t. That’s why I called you...to see if you want to come back to Black Hearts and coach her.”

Looking back down at the photo sitting on my desk, I take in the four of us—me, Mari, Gabe, and Angelo—standing under the Black Hearts MMA sign with huge grins on our face. It was taken the day we opened the gym. One short week before my five-year-old son and childhood sweetheart were killed.

“Why now, Hayden? What’s changed? You hate all of us, you’ve made that very fucking clear.”

Coughing, I attempt to clear the ball of animosity choking me at his use of my given name. Too many fucking memories are wrapped up in it which is why nobody addresses me by it unless they have a death wish. “Her life’s shitty. Sounds a bit like yours and Mari’s. I don’t know why exactly but Nate says she takes care of her brother and sister. She needs this, but I can’t do it.”

I hear his lighter flicking through the phone, and I picture him lighting a cigarette, one of his fifty-odd for the day. Chain smoker doesn’t begin to describe Angelo. The only times he doesn’t have a smoke hanging from his lip is when he’s training or sleeping.

“She sounds young.” The unfriendliness in his tone is gone. I knew the mention of Gabbi’s unusual family life would get to him. His and Mari’s upbringing was rough—a world apart from mine—and he fancies himself something of a champion for the underdog.

“Seventeen.”

“Perfect age. She’ll be ripe and ready to learn. She fit? What discipline does she do? What belt?”

He peppers me with question after question but I tune him out, lost in inappropriate thoughts of just how ripe Gabbi is. Her full curves were filling my hands perfectly not yet an hour ago, her hot pussy pushing against my cock every time I thrust against her. She’s more than ripe—she’s a decadent, forbidden fruit that’s proving impossible to let go.

Bringing Angelo back into the business so that my unfortunate attraction to her doesn’t derail her fighting plans is starting to look about as bright as letting her fight Jep for a position on my team. Idiotic. Stupid. Doomed to come back and bite me in the ass.

Before I can change my mind, I interrupt his flow. Dumb dickhead hasn’t drawn a breath, too busy channeling his enthusiasm into questions. “Listen. If you’re in, be here at seven tomorrow night to meet her and get started. I’ll fill you in then.”

He scoffs at me, “You haven’t changed a bit, have ya? Still a fucking—”

Throwing the phone back into the cradle, I end the call. I don’t have the energy to listen to his assessment of my character. I was never good enough for his baby sister when she was alive, I highly fucking doubt his opinion has changed an iota in the three years since we’ve seen each other. Dealing with him on a daily basis while he trains Gabbi is going to be hard, although the lightening of my conscience tells me that I’ve done the right thing, regardless of any discomfort it’s going to cause me.

Laying back in my chair, I fold my arms behind my head and stare at the photo again. What the hell would Mari think about my life since she’s been gone? I don’t know if she’d be happy with how I’ve handled myself without her.

Looking at Gabbi’s paperwork where it still sits on my desk, posing like a poison chalice—innocuous in appearance but destined to hurt me—I blow out a deep breath. If Angelo turns up tomorrow to train her, my next mission is to make myself as scarce as I can when she’s here. If today has taught me anything, it’s that I can’t be alone with her.

I miss my wife like a junkie who needs a fix, yet Gabbi has taken up residence in my mind, having slipped through a tiny chink in my armor when I was least expecting it. 

Gabbi

I
thought walking into the gym was hard yesterday. Compared to today, it was a piece of cake. Not knowing the greeting I’m going to receive from Hooligan is freaking me out, and coming hot on the heels of an uncomfortable run-in with Nate as I left work, I have a sneaking it suspicion it’s going to be worse than I can imagine.

The way he practically ran from me after what amounts to a mild make-out session tells me he has serious issues with me. What they are, I can’t figure out. I’m a bit younger than him; I get that. But fifteen years isn’t a huge age gap. It’s not like he could be my dad or anything. My father’s forty-seven.

Maybe it’s my tattoos? Maybe it’s the skin I show? A depressing thought dawns on me. I’ll bet it’s because of Nate. He thinks I’m not telling the truth about me and Nate.

Determination strengthens my resolve and with a strong arm pushing open the door, I stalk inside. I can get to the bottom of this, prove that nothing’s happened between me and his nephew except for Nate annoying me to death because I was going to fuck him, once upon a time, before I backed out because I work with him.