Not wanting to make a big deal about the reason she’d used the daisy, I went with a dirty response, which would hopefully piss her off enough to distract her from the problem for the rest of the night. Hopefully, it would also get her thinking about a specific body part of mine that definitely thought about Sadie a lot.
“Baby, you can pluck my daisy anytime you like.”
And with that, I carried on walking to my seat. A glance over my shoulder had me bursting out laughing, though, when I saw how red her face had gotten in the time I’d had my back to her.
Sure enough, she shot me the birdie and then hurried over to where a customer was waiting to get served.
I made sure to keep an eye on her the rest of the night. I didn’t see her hands shake, but I definitely saw her mouth “wanker” at me a couple of times.Chapter TwoElijahLife out of the Coast Guard was like the brakes in your car failing when you were at the top of the hill with a descent that went for thousands of miles ahead of you.
One minute you were stable, you could see the whole world ahead—the next, you were falling with zero control over your fate.
Added to that, I no longer had my best friend, so I had zero foundation under me.
Some weeks I had no nightmares, some I had them frequently like the one I’d had tonight where I was being dragged underwater while I held onto Cooper. I swear I could even taste and smell the sea.
Mind and heart racing over the memory of holding his body, I threw the covers off my legs and got out of bed. It was better to beat the shit out of something than to relive one of the worst moments of my life. At least for me, it was!
So, picking up my phone, I dialed the number I’d gotten after taking part in a fight in Florida when I’d visited my parents.
The underground circuit was a close-knit community. One organizer knew another, fighters had heard of each other and knew who they wanted to fight at some point, and the spectators were eager for the thrill of seeing it play out in front of them.
Me—I just wanted to get rid of some tension and to have the pain snap me out of this repetitive cycle of bullshit I had going on inside my head.
“Pepper Pizza. How can I help?” a young guy’s voice answered after it’d rung three times.
“I need a pizza with just pineapple and anchovies,” I told him, following the directions I’d been given and holding back the gag that wanted to accompany the words.
This time when he spoke, he sounded slightly sharper than he had previously. “Just pineapple and anchovies?”
“Yeah, hold the cheese, too.”
There was some rustling, and then a deeper voice asked, “What’s the name?”
“You can put it under Ross,” I instructed, giving him my fight name.
For some outrageous reason, people always went with a dramatic name when they fought. The Indestructible, Hulk, The Hermanator, Good Will Thumping, and shit like that. Me, I’d gone with something that made me seem regular and average, and it’d worked for me until I’d won enough fights for people to realize I was far from it.
The sharp breath my name received showed the organizer had heard of me. There was only one Ross actively fighting right now—me.
“I see. Our Bakeridge Pass restaurant’s open, so they’ll have your pizza ready for you to collect. What time would suit you?”
“What times have you got?”
“How about forty-five minutes?”
And with that, I was ready to go. Bringing up directions on my phone to where he was talking about, I pulled on shorts and a t-shirt and got into my truck, my head already focused on how I was going to fight tonight.
SadieSomehow, I’d managed to sleep until four o’clock in the morning—something I rarely did just now after getting kidnapped with Ariana and shot—and I felt excellent for it. I was averaging around four hours a night, so the extra two I’d had tonight was a luxury I was grateful for.
And I would have slept longer if it wasn’t for the sound of my flipping doorbell pinging every thirty bloody seconds.
Turning on the lights in the living room, I only just dodged the tipped over side table as I stomped to the door.
“Is there no respect for the sanctity of sleep anymore? First, Dobby takes out the furniture, then a flaming idiot bing bongs for—” the words died as I threw open the door, expecting it to be a drunk neighbor again, but finding a bruised and battered Elijah instead.
Looking behind him to make sure the hallway was clear, I pulled him inside. “What the hell happened?”
When he leaned heavily into the wall and groaned, I almost lost my mind.