Avenging Angel (Pounding Hearts 5)

Sighing as quietly as I can, I pull my baseball hat down, hoping no one notices the dickhead with the cart. Not that me being incognito is going to help much, each screech of the wheel alerts everyone to my exact position.

Goddammit.

I keep pushing on, bypassing all the junk food aisles, my cart already heavy with meats and vegetables. Now that I’ve been working even harder at the gym, my gut is gone.

And Bree has been reaping all the rewards.

I’ve been spending long days at the gym and long blissful nights with her.

She enjoys my hard work, and she’s slowly adapting to the fighter lifestyle.

I fucking love it.

After the fight, we spent the night in the hospital getting me checked out. And I think Bree was doubting her sanity a few times for sticking with me. She’s never actually seen someone get stitches or endure a cracked rib.

I didn’t notice it during the fight, but that fucker cracked a rib on me, so I had to go through an entire fucking ordeal before I could get her home.

It was worth it though to see the shocked look on her face when I started grinning like an asshole as the doc went through the list of my injuries.

I know it’s probably fucked, but a lot of us fighters keep a tally of all the shit that’s happened to our bodies over the years. When I started telling her about some of my more interesting injuries, like the time I broke two knuckles, she just groaned and turned away from me.

She didn’t have any complaints though when I got her home and showed her that I wasn’t going to let any of that shit slow me down.

Yeah, that was a goo

d fucking night. She came home with me and I haven’t let her out of my sight since.

Fuck, these past few months have been amazing. Casey has been working hard at the gym with me. He’s also been working as hard as he can at school. He knows that he won’t catch a break with me and Dale riding his ass.

Bree picked up her old job at the gym, and her father is no longer in the picture. Fucking prick has been going through some shit. From the reaction I got out of Chase and Bree’s mom, nobody knew exactly how bad things were for her or what was happening to her. We threw around the idea of pressing charges against him but dropped it after all the shit about him started hitting the press.

His wife divorced his ass and he was forced to resign from his position as governor. According to Bree’s stepmom, Valerie, the divorce was a long time in coming too. She was starting to catch on to all his shady crap. After talking about it with Bree, we figure that’s why he pushed her so hard to marry Tristan. Dickhead knew he was going to lose all his money, so he was trying to use Bree to get more.

I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t see some new scandalous shit he was involved in printed in the paper.

Fucker deserves all the hell he’s getting.

And he ever tries to mess with Bree again, I’ll give him more.

I turn my cart into the alcohol and party supply aisle. I’ve been in this aisle so many damn times, I could probably find it in my sleep.

I’m just minding my own business when some jackass bumps their cart into mine. “Yo, what the fuck are doing in this aisle, man?”

I turn and hold up the happy birthday banner I picked out up to Brett. “Trying to get some stuff for Casey’s birthday.”

“Oh…” he frowns at me like he’s trying to catch me in a lie.

I’d be suspicious of me too if I were him. I was a fucking bad drunk when he caught me in the store all those months ago.

“You, uh, need any help?” he asks as he peers into my cart.

Rolling my eyes, I shove his shoulder away. “Yeah, dickhead, you just volunteered to bring the soda.”

“Wait, what?” he asks as he looks back at me.

“You and Mandy can bring the kids over and show us newlyweds how to throw a kid’s birthday party,” I say with a grin.

Brett starts to slowly back up. “Uh, we might be busy…”