Hard (24 page)

Still
holding him with one hand, Ryder clocks him in the jaw, and I hear a
cracking sound from Sebastian’s mouth as his head spins to the
side.

“Don’t ever call her that again,” Ryder says,
punching Sebastian in the temple. Sebastian’s body crumples and
slides to the floor. His eyes are open, unblinking, though his chest
still moves up and down with breath. Alive, but unconscious.

But
it’s over. Forever this time. The police sirens getting nearer
make me sure of it.

I glance at us in the mirror: me, in my jeans and bra, one strap
hanging over my shoulder, and Ryder with his shirt ripped open by
Sebastian, his firm, gorgeous chest smeared in blood.

We’re together. We’re alive.

“Let’s
get out of here,” Ryder says. “Before he comes to again.”
He turns toward me, dragging his hurt leg behind him.

I stand and walk to him, careful not to put pressure on my cut foot.
I lay his arm around my shoulder and mine around his waist, holding
him against me. Since our injuries are on opposite sides of our
bodies, we balance each other.

“You’re reading my mind,” I say.

“Start thinking dirty thoughts then,” he says. “Because
I could really use a bright side right now.”

He kisses the top of my head and we hobble outside into the warm
night.

CASSIE

Atlanta Medical Center is pandemonium when we arrive. “Everyone
thinks the lines at the clubs are long,” says the nurse who
checks us in. “But this is the hardest place to get in on a
Friday night.”

After I get my foot sewn up and the crutches that the doctor assures
me I’ll probably only need for a week, I find Ryder in his
examination area, a makeshift room partitioned only by curtains. He’s
naked except for his underwear, lying on his stomach as a woman in a
white coat stitches the lower part of his calf.

“Hi,” I say, shuffling to him. I comb my fingers through
his hair. “How are you feeling?”

“Better now that you’re here,” he says. “But
ask me again when the anesthesia wears off.”

“Ryder Cole got anesthesia for stitches?” I say. “And
here I thought you were a tough guy.”

“Let’s just keep it out of the statement for the cops,”
he says, grinning. “I’ve got a rep to maintain.”

But the police statement we give later starts like this: It turns out
that Ryder
had
noticed I wasn’t at the fight yet and was
starting to worry. He asked Gunner to track Sebastian’s cell
phones and credit cards, check rental car places, airlines, hotels.
Gunner found a charge at the Night Light Inn, which maybe no one
would have thought much about until Jamie called Ryder not long
after, about a break-in at our house. When Jamie saw that I wasn’t
there but that a downstairs window was broken and the upstairs closet
door was ajar with my clothes all over the floor, he knew something
was wrong.

“If there’s one thing I know, it’s trouble,”
Jamie said when I called him from Ryder’s cell phone as we
waited in the ER lobby. “And you were in pretty deep.”

“Thanks, Jamie,” I said

“You help me, I help you,” he said. “I’m just
glad you’re alright. That you both are.”

“Okay, Mr. Cole, you’re all done,” the doctor
says. “The bandage may need changing later in the week, but it
should heal well and quickly. A benefit of your being in good shape.”
She stands. “Hope the rest of your weekend is more relaxing.”

I’m pretty sure every night for the rest of our lives will be
more relaxing than tonight.

After the doctor leaves, Ryder scoots over on the examination table,
and taking me by the hand, pulls me onto it, right next to him. He
folds himself around me and kisses the back of my neck, and though
I’m still shaken from everything that’s gone on tonight,
I don’t care that we’re hurt, I don’t care that
we’re at a hospital, I don’t care about crutches or
stitches or police statements. I only care about his warm skin
pressed against mine, his big hand clutching my small one, squeezing
away the bad memories of the night and replacing them with the one
thing that counts: being with him. “I can’t believe I
nearly lost you,” he says.

And for the first time since we got here, I start to cry. But they’re
not tears of sadness or even happiness. They’re tears of
relief.

I turn over, facing Ryder, taking his face in my hands. “I am
so sorry, Ryder,” I say. “I am so sorry.”

He smoothes my hair back. “What are you sorry about?”

I exhale. “You’re hurt. You could be dead. And it’s
because you had to get me out of trouble that I should have done more
to avoid.”

“You didn’t know Sebastian was going to do this,”
he says. “And you were right. We couldn’t revolve our
lives around him, waiting for his next psycho move. If I had to get
stabbed a thousand times for you, I would. I love you, Cassie.”

His blue eyes, the color of the ocean on a clear day, gaze into mine,
and for the first time, maybe ever in my life, I feel seen, like
Ryder understands me in ways maybe I don’t even understand
myself. Maybe that’s what it is to be loved. Sebastian always
used
I love you
as an excuse for bad behavior, a manipulation.
The words aren’t any different, I know. But they sound
different in Ryder’s voice. I believe him, and that makes
hearing them feel different too, as though finally, they mean
something real.

I smile. “I love you, too.” I kiss the corner of his
mouth, the scruff on his cheek, his bare collarbone. “You saved
me tonight,” I say. “If you hadn’t shown up, or if
you had left me there…” I start, but I can’t bring
myself to finish the thought of what could have been.

“I’m never leaving you,” he says. He holds me to
him tightly, and I tuck my head beneath his jaw. A perfect fit. “And
you saved me, too. No one’s ever defended me like that before.
You actually broke his nose.”

“Well, I learned from the best,” I say. “You always
win, right?
“We won,” he says. “Together.”
He strokes the space between my shoulder blades and rests his hand on
the small of my back.

His fingertips graze the top of my ass as the curtain that separates
the room from the hallway rustles.

“Knock knock,” a voice that sounds very much like
Shelby’s says.

“Ryde?” Cash says. “Cass? Y’all here?”

I sit up on the table in time to see Cash’s smiling, dimpled
face as he pushes through the curtains. He turns behind him and says,
“This is the one,” and Shelby, Avery, Ruby, Savannah,
Jackson, and Parker flood into the tiny space, crowding around the
examination table shoulder to shoulder.

“They don’t give you much room in here, do they?”
Avery says.

“I don’t think most people get visitors at the ER,”
Parker says. “Or maybe Ryder would have put on some clothes.”

“Good one,” Cash says.

“I’m so glad y’all are here,” I say, leaning
over, reaching for my crutches.

“Oh, don’t you fucking dare get up,” Savannah says.
“We’ll come to you.” She hugs me.

“How did all of you manage to get back here?” Ryder says,
pushing himself to sitting. “I thought they were pretty strict
with that stuff.”

“Cash used to sleep with one of the nurses,” Ruby says.

“That’s not true,” he says. “She’s a
doctor, thank you very much.”

“Y’all are like family,” Shelby says, taking my
hand and kissing my cheek. “We would have snuck in through the
window if we had to.”

“Seriously, though,” Jackson says, “Are you guys
okay?” He glances at our bandages and the faint, dried blood
still on parts of our skin.

Ryder and I look at each other. I can’t say for sure what he’s
thinking, of course, but from the way he smiles, it might be the same
thing I am:
I am so fucking lucky to love you.
“We’re
good,” he says.

“Great, actually,” I say. “We’re great.”

Ryder drapes his tattooed arm around my waist, and I curl into him,
my head on his chest, my ear to his heart, right where I will always
belong.

RYDER

There
are some things in life you take for granted. For me, watching Cassie
McEntire get dressed after sex will never be one of them.

In
just a black bra and panties, she leans forward a little as she slips
each perfect long leg into her skirt and pulls it to her hips, right
where my hands held her only a few minutes before as she rode me in
my office chair at Altitude, her shoulders stretched as she moved on
my lap, back and forth, then teasing me up and down, her fingers
gripping the nape of my neck as she came.

Usually we can be civilized people and wait til
we’re home to get naked together. But sometimes, like when I
know I’ll be here late closing up or I have to go to the fight
and may not be done til sunrise, we find our way back here. I love
this bar and I love fight night, but I love being inside Cassie more
than anything.

Earlier we’d been in the bar with
everyone, our usual Friday night now. Even though it’s a work
night for me—the weekends seem to get busier and busier here, a
good problem to have—it doesn’t ever feel like work. I
never dread it, always look forward to it. Cash was making drinks,
Shelby and Avery and Ruby and Savannah were gossiping and laughing in
their usual reserved booth. Parker and Jackson were talking to me
about our new spot in the old Ogden’s Books. Then Cassie walked
by us, on her way to join the rest of the women. She smiled at me and
ran her hand across my arm, her fingertips like a breeze across my
shirtsleeve, and I didn’t hear a word Jackson or Parker said
after that. All I could hear was the sound of Cassie coming in my
imagination, her gasps and moans and the way she exhales my name,
quiet and quick, like a secret she can’t hold onto anymore.

What’s so great about being civilized
anyway? When I want her, I want her. Simple as that.

Cassie flicks her head toward where I still sit
in the chair, my jeans on but my shirt off, still hiding in whatever
corner she flung it. “What are you looking at?” she says,
grinning as she zips her skirt.

“Just
enjoying the show,” I say.

“Maybe
I should sell tickets.”

“Will
I get the boyfriend discount, at least?”

She twists her mouth and cocks her head. “I don’t know,”
she says. “I’ve got a reputation to protect.”

“Very
funny,” I say, shaking my head at how long ago that
conversation about erasing Jamie’s debt seems.

“I like to think so,” she says. The
kid did finally finish paying me back the rest of the principle, plus
interest. But I told Tyler to put him on our blacklist—no
loans, no bets—and to ask other guys in town he might borrow
from to do the same, as a favor to me. If Jamie needs money, he can
come to me personally, though with the rent he’s making on
Cassie’s bedroom at their house now, he should be able to keep
his head above water while he looks for a job. She moved into my
place a couple weeks ago officially. My idea. Even though we’ve
both had pretty negative experiences living with people, it’s
weird how effortless it’s been so far to share each other’s
space. Maybe because the past has been bad, now we can recognize good
things when we see them, I don’t know. I don’t want to
overthink it. I doesn’t matter to me why we’re so good
together. It just matters that we are.

She
sits on the edge of the desk as she puts on one high heel and I
stand, handing her the other. It’s been about a month since the
incident with Sebastian and her foot’s healed pretty well. My
leg, too. We have no idea how Sebastian’s injuries turned out,
and frankly, we don’t fucking care. The police took him into
custody that night and he’s been in jail ever since, awaiting
trial for aggravated assault and battery. He’s actually
pleading not guilty. Cassie told the district attorney it didn’t
surprise her. “He never thinks anything is his fault,”
she said. “But all that counts is that the jury does. And after
our testimony, there’s no way they won’t.” We think
by the time the case starts their divorce will be final. Divorce
usually takes months, sometimes years, but the lawyer working on it,
a colleague of one of my fight night regulars, says she’s
having the paperwork expedited, given the circumstances. But it’s
all a technicality at this point. We both want the divorce to happen
quickly, of course, but Cassie’s mine anyway and I’m
hers. A legal document won’t make me love her more.

Cassie
pulls her tank top on as she walks to the other side of the desk. She
bends out of sight, then stands with my shirt “Not that I ever
want you to get dressed,” she says, folding the shirt on the
desk, then resting her hands on my bare chest, “but if we’re
going to back to the bar, I think this place has a no shirt, no
shoes, no service policy.”

“That
doesn’t sound right,” I say, wrapping my hands around her
waist and pulling her toward me. “We would never have a policy
that discourages our customers from taking off their shirts at
Altitude.”

She
laughs and tucks her dark hair behind her ears. “Your bar, your
rules, Mr. Cole.”

I
kiss the top of her head. “I like that attitude, tiger,”
I say. “You keep that up, I may just have to keep you around
forever.”

“Forever?”
she says, rubbing her hands across my tattooed arms. “That’s
an awfully big word.” She stands on her tiptoes, tilting her
face up at me, her eyes dancing, her lips parted. “But you know
I like things big.”

I
do. I know lots of things about her. That her hair smells like
lemons, even if she hasn’t washed it that day. That sometimes,
after she comes, she giggles. That being inside her mouth is like
having my cock wrapped in warm silk. That she likes tomatoes but
doesn’t like ketchup so she eats her French fries with mustard.
She hates horror movies. She loves old country music. I know that
when her dad died, she was afraid she would forget the sound of his
voice, so sometimes she still falls asleep listening to old
recordings of him reading fairytales that he made for her when she
was a kid. That she’s a protective sister and a loyal friend, a
person who believes in making things right, who takes chances, who
will risk herself and her safety for the people she loves, and that I
am one of those people.