“Heidi, I forgot my sign. Are you all right out here?” Aubrey asks. “I’ll be right back.”
“Sure,” I answer, without taking my eyes off the door.
Someone bumps my shoulder. No big deal. The place is crowded. I’ve been getting jostled all night.
“What are you doing here?” a gruff voice demands.
Slowly, I turn and find Bryce, red-faced and sweaty, glaring at me. “None of your business.” I scan him from head to toe. “Why are you here?”
He steps closer, his angry eyes practically shooting off sparks. “You’re the reason I failed.”
“No, you’re the reason you failed.” I take a step back but square my shoulders and lift my chin. “I did my work.”
He glances around us, but everyone’s attention is on the fight in the ring.
“My parents won’t pay my rent or car payments now. And I can’t come up with the money I owe—”
“And I care about this, why?”
He lifts his hand in the air, curling his fingers.
“I wouldn’t if I were you.” I stare him down. “My man’s working security here. He’s friends with the owners. You lay a finger on me, and you’re in for the ass-kicking of your life.”
That seems to stop him. Maybe he’s not the moron he pretends to be.
“Do you understand what you did to me?” I swear he sounds more like a whiny kid who had his toys taken away than a man in college. “I have to move home. I have to take another semester—”
I hold up my hand, cutting him off. “I’m not interested in the problems of half-grown boys. Grow up and do the work, Bryce. You’ll graduate next year. It’s not a big deal.”
Lord knows it took me long enough to finally graduate. I’ll be damned if this lazy jerk is going to make me feel bad about his predicament.
He leans down, and I instinctively jerk my body away. “I’ll send those photos out. The hospital will take back that job offer.”
I try not to show any emotion. How did he even hear about my job? “Go ahead. I really don’t give a fuck.”
His lips curve into a sinister smile. “Does your husband know about the photos?”
I freeze.
His eyes widen, sparkling with evil glee. “He doesn’t, does he?”
I fake a casual pose. “I already told you, I want to give him one of the photos as a surprise wedding present.”
The muscle in his jaw twitches.
“You should thank me for not telling my husband.” I glance at the door. “He’ll chew you up and shit you on the floor without blinking.” Maybe that was a vulgar, unladylike thing to say, but I’ve never claimed to be ladylike and I don’t care about Bryce’s opinion.
“I hate you, bitch.”
“Hate me all you want. But if you’re smart, you should fear me, too.”
“Back the fuck away.” Murphy’s deep, rumbling warning tone has me breathing a sigh of relief.
Bryce blinks a few times and backs up a step or ten at the sight of the glowering biker now invading his space.
I try not to take too much joy in Bryce’s obvious fear. “Bryce was just congratulating me on graduating.”
Bryce continues to glare at me while Murphy wraps an arm around my shoulders.
“Do I know you?” Murphy asks.
Bryce shakes his head.
“This doesn’t seem like your scene.” Any smart person would take Murphy’s statement as a cue to get the fuck out.
“I have business here.” Bryce puffs out his chest, but his squeaky voice betrays him.
“Then take your business away from my wife.” Murphy glares at him until Bryce slinks off into the crowd.
“Who was that?” Murphy demands.
“A guy from school.”
He tugs me into the back room where a few fighters, waiting to go in the cage, are busy talking.
“A guy from school?” Murphy repeats slowly. “Then why did you look so scared when he was talking to you?”
“Me? Scared?” The phony laugh that comes out of my mouth makes me cringe.
“I know you, Heidi. Even from outside, I could see how uncomfortable he made you. Why? What’d he say to you?”
Nothing but some threats and blackmail.
I blow out a breath. This so isn’t the time or place to have this conversation. “He’s the one Dawn and I were working with on our group project.”
“Yeah, and?”
“It’s nothing.” I glance around. “We can talk about this at home. You’re supposed to be working.”
“Talk about what at home?” He arches a brow. “He ask you out? Say shit to you like that other kid?”
If only that’s what Bryce did.
When I don’t answer, Murphy tugs me deeper into the room, closing a door behind us and flipping on the light switch.
“Did he touch you?”
“Blake,” I plead. “You have enough going on right now.”
“Meaning what?”
“You’re up for VP. Trying to put together the support club. Building our house. Trying to get out of wearing a tux for our wedding.”
He doesn’t laugh at my attempted joke. Just stands there waiting for an answer.
“No, he never touched me.” I figure I better answer that question before Blake goes completely nuclear. “I didn’t want to bug you with silly stuff.”
“I’ll decide what’s silly.” His face hardens. “Tell me. Now.”
I shake my head. “I handled it.”
“Handled what?”
I blow out a breath and consider how to tell him in a way that won’t sign Bryce’s death warrant. I may hate the kid, but I don’t want Blake to go to prison for Murder. And he’s already pissed-off enough to kill.
“Dawn had to go to our professor and tell her Bryce wasn’t doing his share of the project.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
; “He thought I could convince Dawn to take it back? I don’t know.”
“And?”
“He wanted me to do his part of the project and tell the professor he did it.”
“Heidi, I’m getting tired of pulling this out of you bit by bit,” Blake places his hands on his hips and stares me down. “Spit it all out. Now.”
“When I said no, he tried paying me to do his work, and I still said no.”
“And?”
I’m tempted to say ‘that’s it,’ but I’ve already lied and hid this from him long enough. Besides, I know my man. He’s stubborn. Relentless. Now that he’s on this path, he won’t back off until he’s uncovered every last slight against me.
“He tried blackmailing me. I told him to get stuffed. Now he’s pissed because he didn’t graduate on time.” I shrug. “See, I told you. Stupid.”
His eyes narrow. “Blackmail you? With what?”
Fuck.
I bite my lip and can’t meet his eyes. “Some stupid photos he took.”
“Of what?”
“You and me.”
He reels back. “You and me? When? Where?”
This is so much worse than I thought. “One must’ve been a night I came to visit you at Furious,” I answer slowly. “The others were the night we went to Zips.”
He stands there and absorbs the information. “This fucker’s been stalking you, and you didn’t think I should know?”
“I didn’t want to—”
“Don’t you fucking dare spew any bullshit at me, Heidi.” He jabs his finger toward the door. “You flipped the fuck out about me fighting. But you lied to me about someone trying to blackmail you?”
“I didn’t lie—”
“Bullshit!” He explodes. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
I blink. “It’s not the same. This is dangerous. I wasn’t scared of him.”
“No one threatens my girl.” I swear the windows rattle from the power of his voice alone.
“It was school stuff. My school life. Not club business.”
“Doesn’t matter.” He grabs the edges of his cut and jerks the leather. “You think this is some magical cloak? That I stop protecting you if I’m not wearing it?”