Keeping Score

“Aren’t you supposed to be saving the world’s children?” she mocked the situation.

“Savi, look you have to do something. I want out of th

is. You puts a guy like me in with a bunch of little kids?”

“It’s not happening, Kane You got in a bar fight. This is your only chance of redemption. So suck it up and do the time.”

I looked out on the field. How in the hell was this supposed to work?

“I’m one week away from playoffs. I don’t have time for this shit. You know it. I know it. What’s more important?” I asked, appealing to the sports side of her. If there was anything I knew about that woman it was that she loved to represent a champion.

I heard her groan. “Hawk, you either get your ass at that center every day and work with those kids or you heard the judge—he’s going to release the court statements and make your case public.”

“It’s already public.”

“You know what I mean. He’ll put you in jail. At least this way it’s not officially a sentence. You are volunteering. And the league is ok with this situation if you volunteer. You have a leniency with this judge for some reason. Take it and be grateful. ”

I gritted my teeth. “I’m not fucking volunteering. It’s blackmail.”

“Damn it, Hawk. I don’t have time to waste on a guy who wants to sink his career. The judge threw you a life raft. Take it and work with the kids.”

“You know it’s bull shit, Savi.”

“Doesn’t matter what I think. If I’m going to continue to represent you I need to know you’re going to volunteer there every day. Can I trust you?”

“Does anyone care I was defending a woman? She was being attacked. That’s what really happened? Doesn’t that matter? I was chivalrous, damn it.”

“One of your regular whores?” she asked.

I felt the anger sweep through me again. Julie was anything but a whore. I knew she didn’t fit in at the bar. The fact that she was now the one supervising my time at the center only cemented what I knew in my gut—she was a good girl. A good girl I wanted to hold and kiss. I wasn’t done exploring her body. I wasn’t done tasting her. I needed more.

But this situation was fucked up. The way she looked at me five minutes ago, I was going to be lucky if she let me within ten feet of her. Last night she was a different person.

“It wasn’t like that,” I argued.

“Get your hours in. Go to practice. Call me tomorrow. Ok?”

Savannah was such a hard ass. “Fine.”

I hung up and stuffed the phone in my back pocket. I couldn’t help but feel as if I had zero people in my corner. No one thought Kane Hawkins could do this.

I shouldn’t even be here. I should be on the field practicing with the Sharks, but because some drunken asshole decided it was okay to put his hands on Julie’s ass, after being told to stop, I had to save her. It damn sure didn’t look like anyone else planned on helping her out.

Everything would have been fine still, if the dumbass would have just paid his tab and left the bar, but no. He had to get riled up and take a swing at me.

He couldn’t walk away.

He couldn’t take no for an answer.

Even after I knocked him back the first time with an uppercut to the jaw, he still kept coming back for more. I just wanted to relax and enjoy a night out with my team. Drink a few beers. Score a little action.

The chair flying through the air was the final straw for me. Up until that point I was trying to take it easy on the drunk. You don’t strike a man when his back is turned and you damn sure don’t do it with an inanimate object. Luckily Jason, my center, was there to shove me out of the way and snatched hold of the chair before he hit someone else with it swinging it wildly through the air.

When I finished laying into him that time he didn’t get back up. Joe pulled me to my feet as the police filled the building, blue and red lights ricocheting across every surface.

I was in handcuffs and thrown in the back of a squad car before you could even say who did it. Not that I blamed them much. I was the only one standing with blood dripping down my arms and fingers, pooling on the ground at my feet where the biker lay motionless.

It’s not the first time I had blacked out when fighting. I liked to think of it as my escape mechanism. The one tool that has kept me alive over the years when I had no one to protect me.