Loving Lawson (8 page)

Heath

I parked a bit away from the bar, not wanting to attract attention to my truck in a spot where there were loads of people and car-jacking was the norm.

              “Alright,” I told Allie as we stepped out into the night, “keep close to me. You’ve never been to this place, and you don’t want to be a lone girl in there. There are no gallant men. They have one thing on their mind and that’s the golden treasure between your legs.”

              She cringed at my words, shutting the car door and hurrying to my side. I had to look away from her. She’d decided on wearing something… tight
er
than usual, and it really emphasized her body shape, which was soft and feminine. A simple white tunic with grey leggings that would have classed her as a nun in comparison to the booty shorts I was already seeing the other girls wear.

              But it suited her.

Fuuuck,
it really suited her.

She had her long elbow length hair up in a tight ponytail, and it seemed to really open her face up. Allie was beautiful, and it pissed me off that she’d been bullied as a kid. I’d have gladly fucked up every single kid that uttered the word “spider” to her. Fuck heads. Her words had got to me today. I kept trying to remember where I was when it was all happening and why the fuck it was Ryker that had to notice her before me. How different would things have been if it was me instead?

Shit, not a good thing to think about.

              As we neared the place, I grabbed her arm and pulled her close to my side. “Like that. Pretend you’re
with
me, alright?”

              Her eyes stayed drawn to the pavement as she nodded. “Okay, Heath. You don’t need to explain. I’m from around here too, you know.”

              Yeah, but she hadn’t really witnessed the drinking culture. For a second, I wondered why in the fuck I was taking her here in the first place. But she’d seemed intrigued, maybe wondering where Ryker had disappeared to every time we had a boys’ night out. He’d always been protective of her, making sure she was somewhere tucked away. But if I had a girl like Allie and I was smitten to bits by her, I’d never have sheltered her. I’d be on the rooftops, showing her off for the world to see.

              As I stepped inside, I greeted my fellow fighters. This bar was practically ours, a place we reminisced our stories and talked about our opponents. They asked me how I was going, where I’d disappeared to, and it was then I realized how long it’d been since I was here. Since I’d even drank. Shit, it’d been forever.

Still close to me, I led Allie to the back as she gawked around the room with eyes as wide as saucers. The bar wasn’t anything spectacular whatsoever – actually, it was a fucking dump, really. But it was the outgoing atmosphere that drew the crowd in. I found my guys, Matt and Jorge, sitting around our usual table, and they hooted at the sight of me. I took a seat around the table with Allie.

“Who’s this?” asked Jorge, eyeballing Allie with a grin on his face.

“Ryker’s girlfriend, Allie,” Matt said before I could. He looked at Allie and gave her a warm smile, and something about it didn’t sit well with me. This was Matt, pretty boy extraordinaire, working his charm.

Allie waved at him. “Hey, Matt.”

“How are you doing, beautiful? Been talking to Ryker?”

She hid her discomfort well, but I could pick that shit up from a mile away. “Yeah, good,” she answered.

“Started school yet?”

“Next week.”

“Cool. What’re you going into?”

“I’m sticking to English. Only thing I’ve ever been good at.”

He nodded enthusiastically. “Nice, hon.”

I frowned at the next smile he gave her, wanting to wipe it off his face with the back of my hand. The fuck was he doing giving Ryker’s girl flirty smiles? Zero respect, these guys. He caught my scathing glare and shrugged. Yeah, he knew exactly what I wasn’t saying out loud.

I handed Allie a menu and she looked through it while the boys talked about some of the fights they’d been to. I was regularly invited out to see what my competitors had in store, but I never bothered to. I didn’t watch fights. I strictly went
to
fight – and win. I liked facing the unexpected. Learning about my competition tamed the thrill of it for me.

“You want something to drink?” Matt then asked Allie as he signalled a waitress over. “It’ll be on me.”

“No,” I butt in before she could answer. The girl was pregnant… and underage, not that the latter even mattered in a place like this. Everyone drank; the young and the old. That was Hedley for you. “We’re not here to get wasted, Matt.”

“Well, al-fucking-right then,” he said to me, annoyed. “She’s got a mouth, Heath, how about letting her use it?”

I ground my teeth at him. “Not the night to be a dickhead,” I warned him.

He returned the icy glare but didn’t respond.

Eventually, he backed off and got up to play pool. I chatted with Jorge for a while before he, too, joined him. Allie ate her plate of burger and fries, and I tipped half of my food next to hers, knowing she would probably still be hungry after. She smiled at the act, her blue eyes glowing. My chest tightened, and I had the sudden urge to wrap an arm around her and pretend that she really was mine. Too many guys were noticing her, and tonight there were at least three times more men than there were women, and to my frustration, those girls seemed to gravitate toward me.

“Hey, Lawson,” they cooed, one at a time. I managed a nod in their direction, hoping that would be the end of it. I didn’t like the way Allie watched them watch me. For the first time, it made me uncomfortable. Her impression of me was important. I didn’t want her to think I was some sleazebag, but I didn’t blame her if she did. I had a long history of women, and even though I was careful to make sure they were clean and I was completely protected every time, it still didn’t impress my image.

I glanced around the room, making sure there was no tension anywhere. The slightest ruffling of someone’s feathers and the bar was likely to descend into chaos.

“Oh, my God,” said Allie in horror. “There’s that guy you fought when I went to you for help that night.”

I followed her direct line of sight to Tank. The guy was a hot mess, sitting at a table with a huge mug of beer and a barely legal, half-naked girl on his lap. He was all smiles, laughing it up as another man began setting up a game of cards.

“I thought enemy fighters were meant to keep away from each other in social places,” she continued, looking at me for an explanation.

I couldn’t help the laugh that came out of me. “Fuck, Allie, you’ve watched too many movies. It’s not like that here. You keep your personal baggage out of a fight. You never want to make it more than business between two fighters.”

“So you guys are like… okay?”

Jesus, how sheltered was she? “Haven’t you been to a lot of the fights?”

“Yeah, but Ryker used to take me straight home after.”

“He really suffocated you, didn’t he?”

She shrugged and looked away. “I didn’t feel that way at the time.”

Not wanting to make her feel uncomfortable, I looked at Tank and whistled loudly. “Hey, Tank! How’s it going tonight?!”

Tank looked up from his game of cards and met my eye. With a nod, he shouted back, “Fucking A-okay, man. How you doin’, Lawson?”

“Doing damn good, thanks.”

“That your misses right there?” he asked, gesturing to Allie.

“Off-limits to you if that’s what you’re really getting at,” I told him.

He winked. “Off-limits, hey? I love a good challenge.”

From my peripheral, Allie cringed and I laughed. Tank was being a shit head. Unlike many, he was a happy drunk, and despite his fighter status, he was as harmless as a fly to the public.

He raised his beer to me and gave me another nod before returning to his game. I leaned over to Allie and said, “He’s easy. Don’t worry. Good guy on the inside, that one.”

“That’s crazy,” she replied, smiling back at me. “When you guys were fighting, he seemed so aggressive. Call me silly, but I didn’t think that sort of thing could be easily turned off.”

“You’re right. Some of the fighters are naturally aggressive even outside the matches. But it’s their hot-headed tempers that land them straight in jail. You’ll see them around, but personally, I’ve gotten along with most fighters just fine. Like I said, we keep the personal shit out.”

She nodded in understanding. For a while I let her soak up the place. She listened in on the chatter, relaxed and ate her little heart out. This was nice. For once, I didn’t need the buzz that came with drinking. I was getting it from her.

“I like this song,” she suddenly said, pointing to the jukebox.

I stopped moving and listened intently on the song playing.

“Love is the drug” by Bryan Ferry.

It was bittersweet. Mom liked this song too.

“Is that right?” I asked with a smile.

Before she answered, I stood up and grabbed her hand. I pulled her off the chair and took her to the centre of the bar where others were dancing. She was bright red as I brought her hands up into the air and yelled at her to dance like everyone else. She laughed and, to my surprise, started moving her body around to the music.

“You know the words?” I shouted to her.

She nodded. “Of course I do!”

“Prove it!”

She took my breath away when she opened her mouth and started singing to the lyrics, getting louder and more confident as she went on.

“Late that night I park my car
              Stake my place in the singles bar
              Face to face, toe to toe
              Heart to heart as we hit the floor
              Lumber up, limbo down
              The locked embrace, the stumble round
              I say go, she says yes
              Dim the lights, you can guess the rest
              Oh, oh, catch the buzz
              Love is the drug I’m thinking of.”

              Her whole body was flushed, her face glowing, acting her age for once and not consumed by the recent pressures in her life…

              Allie Wallace.

              This unbelievable girl.

              What the fuck was Ryker thinking throwing
this
away?

              She was breathless by the time she finished the song, and the loud sound of applause by the guys sitting at the bar behind us suddenly filled the room. She jumped and glanced at them over her shoulder, her eyes widening and her face – if it was possible – getting even redder. She hadn’t expected an audience, and I’d been so absorbed by her, I didn’t notice them too.

              “Brilliant singing, Allie,” hooted Matt, coming in from behind her. He had a pool stick in one hand and his arm went around her, pulling her into his chest to give her a “welcoming” hug.

              Fuck, this guy wanted to die, right? He was begging for it.

              Allie smiled up at him, and my irrational anger simmered as I watched her give him attention. I wanted it all on me, and it was a pretty fucked up, childish thing to admit to myself. I headed straight for her, glaring at Matt, and took her by the arm. I motioned her to me and said, “Let’s get back to the table, Al.”

              She moved to leave, but Matt’s grip around her shoulders tightened. “It’s alright, man,” he told me, “I want to have this next dance with her.”

              “She needs to rest,” I told him, flaring my nostrils as he scowled at me.

              “She seems fine to me,” he retorted. “Isn’t that right, Allie?”

              Now her smile faded, and she looked between us uncomfortably. She cleared her throat and made to move out of his grip again, saying, “Actually, you know, that really tired me out. Heath’s right. I’ll just take a seat for a while.”

              I pulled at her arm when she said that, and Matt reluctantly let her go. I softly pushed Allie in the direction of our table, and when she was a safe distance away, I turned back to Matt and gave him a rough shove back, growling, “What the fuck is wrong with you, man? Are you really that drunk?”

              He was – and that was the only thing saving him from a beat down – but he shook his head and snapped, “Nothing is wrong with me. She’s been through rough shit. I wanted to give her a good time.”

              “And what’s a good time with you?” I took a step closer to him, intimidating him with my width and height. Matt had nothing on me in the body department.

              He was angry. “Man, what’s your problem? Since when does it bother you when I talk to a girl?”

              “You know that’s Ryker’s girl, right?” I scolded him.

              He raised a brow, glazed eyes daring to look into mine and said, “The real question is, do
you
know that’s Ryker’s girl? You think because she got a taste of one brother, she’ll want a taste of another –”

              He didn’t finish that sentence. Not with the punch I gave him anyway. He fell straight back and landed on the ground like the drunken ass he was. Blood poured out of his busted upper lip and he gawked up at me with shock and anger. Would he have preferred I hit him in the nose? That would have been a broken bone, and I was feeling hospitable enough not to want that on the guy. He should be thanking me for going easy on his ass after saying what he did in a packed bar.