The sheer punch of his face ripped away my breath. With dawning recognition, I tried to snatch my gaze away. He’d stolen it, compelling me in a way I’d never experienced.
Somehow I managed to turn away and reach for the door. The cool handle pressed into my hand. Now I was hallucinating in broad daylight. It couldn’t be him. Why would he be here? This wasn’t his neighborhood. The Cage was on the other side of town.
Bottom line, I wasn’t ready for it to be him. All these months of plotting and planning couldn’t come down to a chance meeting when I was limping and looked like I’d played Dodgeball with a brick wall. He’d never take me seriously like this. Hell, I wouldn’t take me seriously in his position either. How could I pose a reasonable challenge to him in the ring when I already appeared whipped?
So I wouldn’t let it be him, even in my mind. I’d just keep walking and maybe this whole clusterfuck of a day would turn into a bad dream that I’d wake up from, gritty-eyed and dry mouthed and grateful as hell that it wasn’t reality.
Ignoring the pinch of heat along the back of my neck, I strode inside the bar. I didn’t look back to see if he was watching.
I already knew he was.
Chapter Two
Tray
She turned away before I glimpsed much of her face. Just a curve of cheek, hidden by near-black hair. Eyes as heavy and bruised as the clouds that rolled across the sky, full of snow. She hurried inside the bar I’d walked past yesterday, the one with the sign.
That sign slapped up on the glass with fraying masking tape had drawn me back, for reasons I still didn’t fully understand. It drew me toward a nondescript bar and a nondescript girl, yanking me closer like a magnet.
Whether I’d end up being pulled in or repelled remained to be seen.
I pushed open the heavy wooden door, my gaze fixated on the pane of glass emblazoned Vinnie’s. My gut fisted, and I nearly turned around. I didn’t need the cash. I’d won most of my fights since the beginning of the year. No one got rich off of amateur bouts, not even close, but I was an anomaly on the circuit. My fast fists and surfer looks brought comparisons to Van Damme. I didn’t give a shit what they called me, if it meant more green in my pocket.
A couple of the locals had tried to bribe me to throw some fights, and that hadn’t gone down so well. Since then, they’d decided to invest in the winning team: me. The promoters knew I lured in the crowds. Some of my corner crew worked for peanuts, figuring I’d turn pro and they would ride my coattails all the way. They were wrong, but I wasn’t about to tell them that.
I would never make serious money fighting in amateur leagues, but I was doing okay. And living life my way, with my own money and my own fists.
So why was I at Vinnie’s Taproom? Did I really want to sling drinks for a bunch of angry drunks in my precious free time?
Maybe. Maybe I just wanted to get out and talk to people. See if I could meet a woman who didn’t have anything to do with the lifestyle. I’d seen a few prospects when I ventured out to have a drink a few weeks ago. Showing up at a bar when I’d been fresh out of a match and still thrumming with adrenaline had been kind of stupid. Most times I isolated myself after fights, because that natural chemical spike could convince me to do dangerous stuff.
Including taking home a chick I didn’t want to see over breakfast in the morning, just to get my rocks off. But I never made them leave. I bruised faces and occasionally broke bones for a li
ving, but I’d never left a woman feeling bad about herself. My dignified Long Island upbringing hadn’t left me even though I now lived in a walkup in Brooklyn.
Truthfully, my friends from the neighborhood were way more gentlemanly than the privileged fuckwits I’d known back home. Those were the guys you shouldn’t let near your teenage daughter, rather than the hard-edged ones people crossed the street to avoid in the boroughs.
Wolves, sheep’s clothing. People never fucking learned.
Not that I could talk. I was the one following a brunette with a battered face, simply because I was intrigued. Because I didn’t have anything better to do.
I strolled up to the bar and shook off the snow that had collected on my bomber jacket. It was one of the few relics I had from my old life, and it had even more scars than I did. Women told me it made me look dangerous. Then they got me naked and saw the checkerboard of bruises and welts that decorated my torso on a daily basis and usually forgot all about my clothes.
Leaning against the polished, well-worn wood, I smiled at the blonde bartender on duty and opened my mouth to speak. The words disappeared under the shout of indignation from the back room. Female, from the high-pitched quality. Sort of like a weasel in heat.
Almost instantly, I knew it was her.
“Gimme a freaking break, Carmine. I’m no worse now than I’ve been a million times before.”
I couldn’t hear Carmine’s reply but I guessed it couldn’t have been good, judging by the next deafening noise that erupted from the squealer. I glanced at the blonde, whose pale pink lips had rounded into a surprised ‘O.’
“Unhappy employee?” I offered her a wide grin as I rested my arms on the bar. I’d shoved up the sleeves of my jacket and the shirt I wore beneath, and her gaze dropped to my forearms. I’d seen the look before and counted on it to get me laid. If I’d seen her before the brunette, I might’ve considered it. “If so, my timing seems especially fortuitous.”
She blinked, making me think she didn’t know what I meant. Inwardly, I sighed and tucked the frustration under another smile. I’d been in the fight game for three years, but it hadn’t completely erased what some people thought of as my snooty style of speech. I might be a college dropout, but I was an Ivy League one.
“I’m here about the job in the window.”
Before she could answer, the door to the back room swung open hard enough to hit the opposite wall. Out strode the most furious chick I’d ever seen.