The Harder He Falls: 2 (So Inked) (21 page)

Quin swung a right-handed punch and landed it on Mouse’s jaw, and the kid crumpled back like a house of cards.

Oscar rushed into the ring, glancing between them. Quin waved him toward Mouse, who lay in a heap on the mat, his hands twitching as he came to.

Well, fuck. Quin sat up and sucked in several deep breaths. He hadn’t meant to knock him out. That was bad. Very bad considering the fight coming up.

Jacob knelt next to him and offered a towel and water. Quin accepted both, taking a pull on the chilled bottle and swiping at his face.

“What brought this on?” he asked, thumbing at Mouse.

“We had a disagreement. Sorry, Coach.” Jacob appeared as unreadable as ever.

Oscar finished evaluating Mouse and helped him out of the ring. The other fighters and a few of the gym regulars lined the fence, waiting for the rest of the drama to unfold.

Jacob stood and offered him a hand, which Quin used to hoist himself to his feet. Even the bruises he would have felt good. It was easy to get drunk on the siren song of adrenaline and raw power. All too easy to forget he couldn’t go back to fighting for his meals.

“Everyone get water and circle up by the bags in five,” Quin called.

For a moment the fighters continued to watch him.

“You heard Coach, move it.” Oscar blew a short burst on his whistle and shouldered back into the ring to Quin’s side.

“Go on,” Quin said to Jacob. He watched the young men mosey off to water bottles and the drinking fountain before turning his attention to Oscar. “What was that about?”

Oscar shook his head. “Mouse hit on Jacob’s girl and she turned her nose up at him.”

“That’s it?” Quin found it hard to believe. There was more going on between Jacob and Mouse than one could see on the surface.

Oscar merely shrugged.

Quin sighed. He could only solve so many problems at once, and that one would have to wait. “T-man’s signing a contract with Greg.”

Oscar snorted.

“I want to address the guys, try and nip the gossip in the bud. Why don’t you go get those new t-shirts for tomorrow night. We can hand that out.”

Oscar nodded and headed for the storeroom where they had stashed the boxes. The plan had been to hand the shirts out before they left for the match, but if there was one thing Quin had learned from his time in the service, it had been how to improvise and improve morale.

“Circle up, guys,” he called, his voice reverberating through the gym.

The fighters meandered toward him, some dropping down onto the ground, others standing and a few taking advantage of the moment to run through a few stretches. On the other side of the gym, T-man was exiting the doors for the last time. He might want to fight, but taking on the responsibility of a family was a burden that would change his life and either make him into a fighter or take him away from it completely.

“Good practice, guys. I’m seeing a lot of improvement across the board. We have a great team here, and tomorrow starts a run of fights for us. There is some not so great news. T-man is leaving the team. He’s been offered a contract, and I wasn’t going to step in the way of him getting a shot somewhere else. We have no hard feelings about him leaving. It was a business decision on his part, and one I support. That in mind, we have asked that if I am going to organize fights for you, you sign a non-compete. Any questions?”

One of the scrappy guys Quin had brought in from California jerked his head up. “Coach, who is T-man going with?”

“Greg’s gym.”

Several curses and creative uses for T-man’s name were uttered.

“Doesn’t matter where he went. What does matter is that tomorrow is fight night. I want you to get a good night’s rest and show up tomorrow wearing these.” He reached into the box Oscar had dropped at his feet and pulled out one of the new shirts. They were the gym blue, with white scrollwork and the gym name printed diagonally across the left shoulder. “Wear it tomorrow and come support the gym and Mouse. Two weeks from now Jacob and Ash have their matches. Any questions not about T-man?”

Silence.

“All right, I will see you guys tomorrow. Go home, get a good night’s sleep.” His voice was drowned out by the chatter of the men milling around and coming up to claim a t-shirt.

He stood shoulder to shoulder with Oscar and handed the shirts out. Addressing T-man’s departure didn’t make him feel any better. He was the first to go. There would be others. Quin had been expecting some to leave. Half of them had followed him to Texas when he’d just relocated to be a coach under someone else’s name, and while they were promising fighters and friends, many of them were too young to know what it was like to live without the support of their family. The others had girlfriends or debts that needed to be paid.

The road to becoming a professional fighter was rough, demanding and filled with uncertainty. Quin would give anything to be on the other side of the fence. To fight again. But it wasn’t in his cards. He’d played his hand and that run was over.

“What are you doing tonight, Coach?” Mouse gathered his discarded pads and placed them in a duffle bag.

“Not sure. Big plans?” He wanted to see Kellie tonight, to touch her again. He might not care like she did, but he felt. Maybe not as she did, with fire in her bones, but he liked her a lot more than he’d liked any other woman.

“Going to hit up a bar, watch the basketball game.” He straightened and flashed a perfect smile of fake teeth. “Pick up some ass. Interested?”

It was something they’d done before, but it didn’t even interest him. Not in the slightest. “Nah, not tonight, man. Hey, how’s Jacob doing?”

Mouse sobered. “Chink’s fast and hits like a jackass.”

“You can’t say that shit. What did I tell you?” Quin scowled and clenched his hands. It was that or strangle him.

“Sure I can.” Mouse turned to where Jacob was talking with another Asian man he didn’t recognize. If Quin was lucky, he was one of the former regulars come home. “Hey, Chink, we talked about this, didn’t we?”

Jacob’s expression never altered as he turned. He said something to his companion and crossed the distance between them.

“Mouse, you can’t call Jacob a Chink.”

“Sure I can. We’re friends.” The grin he gave Jacob was a little too toothy, a little too aggressive to be called friendly.

“It’s okay, Coach.” Jacob’s impassive gaze slid from Mouse to him.

Maybe it was a test. Jacob was challenging Mouse. Jacob couldn’t beat him yet, but he would, and that threatened Mouse. If Quin intervened, it could get worse before it got better.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Fuck it. Whatever. If someone complains, it’s your ass that’s answering for it.” He jabbed a finger at Mouse, who merely shrugged.

“Coo. Catch ya on the flip side.”

Jacob and Quin stood in silence while Mouse swaggered off to join a few of the guys hanging around the water fountain. A nervous-looking young woman passed the group and they all watched. He was going to have to give them more to do. Clearly the practices weren’t tough enough. Maybe he could make some calls, bring in a Judo master to vary the training up some.

“Is he riding you too hard?” he asked without looking at Jacob.

“No.”

“Does him calling you Chink bother you?”

Jacob snorted. “I’m not Chinese. It just makes him look ignorant.”

“If it bothers you, tell me.”

“That would make it worse.”

Quin pinched the bridge of his nose. “Shit.”

“I can handle myself, Coach.”

“I never said you couldn’t. Just, keep me in the loop.”

Jacob merely nodded.

“Coming tomorrow night?”

“Bringing my girlfriend.” His lips were too thin when he stopped speaking.

“Something the matter?” Quin pushed one of the leftover shirts into Jacob’s hands and bent to pick up the box.

Jacob grabbed the other side, and together they hefted it and took it to the closet. It hit the concrete floor with a thud, and both men stood staring into the darkness.

“She’s a good Korean girl. My parents want me to marry her.”

“And you don’t want to?”

He shook his head.

“Then don’t.” Quin shrugged and grabbed one of the shirts tucked against the side of the box.

“It’s not that simple.” Jacob leaned against the doorframe, his face partially shrouded by shadow. “Our families have been friends for generations. They’ve always had sons. She’s the first daughter born to either family.”

This was America. If a person didn’t want to do something, their family couldn’t make them. Hell, his dad would have liked to force him to stay in the service like his brother, but that hadn’t worked out. “They can’t force you to marry her. Does she want to marry you?”

“She does what she’s told to do.”

“Which in this case is to date you?”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re bringing her tomorrow night because?”

“If I’m going to marry her I should at least try to do things with her.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“It is.” They stared at nothing for a moment. “Your eye’s healing up.”

“Yeah, thankfully Kellie wasn’t too mad at me.” Quin touched the still-healing gash. It would scar, adding to his collection, but that wasn’t what bothered him. He’d cared when he’d seen Kellie, known she misunderstood what was going on, and it had killed him.

“Are you going to treat her well?”

Another woman, he would have snorted and made an offhand comment that if she treated him well, he’d return the favor. But Kellie was different. She demanded his respect, stole bits of him he hadn’t known were unprotected.

“Yeah, if I didn’t, she’d kick my ass.” It was a little unnerving how Jacob stood there completely impassive. “Hey, can you give me her address? I wanted to surprise her, but I haven’t been to her place yet.”

One beat, then another passed. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Come on, she won’t go out tonight because she’s spending time with her grandmother. I just want to surprise her a little.”

Jacob was silent and still for several more moments. “Fine.” He turned toward the office, forcing Quin to follow him.

He’d be surprising Kellie with himself. It was time to step out on a ledge.

* * * * *

Quin glanced up from the GPS mounted on his dashboard just in time to see a Scion Cube turn in front of him, almost cutting him off. He grinned and braked hard.

What was his luck he’d find Kellie on her way home?

The wide four-lane road had a steady stream of traffic, and it wasn’t long before one and then two cars slid between them. But her car was so unique it wasn’t hard to track. She turned onto a quaint, tree-lined street. The houses were spaced evenly apart, well taken care of and unique. One was painted mauve. Another had brick archways from the house to the garage. These weren’t cookie-cutter homes. Most looked to have been built in the sixties or seventies, judging by the exteriors.

Kellie pulled into the drive of a moderately sized white house with peeling paint. It looked a little worse for the wear, but paper lanterns hung in the trees and the bushes in front of the house were a deep green and trimmed at perfect right angles.

He eyed the street, with its narrow one lane and two-way traffic. He pulled in behind her, his tailgate barely clearing the drive.

Kellie stood frozen between her car and the front door. Her eyes were open wide and the way her lips compressed didn’t speak well of this being a surprise she was happy about.

He killed the engine and popped the door open. She hadn’t moved in the time it had taken him to get out of the truck and circle the front.

“Hey, doll.” He shoved his keys into his pocket and slowed his stride.

His voice seemed to snap her out of her shock. “What are you doing here?” she hissed, casting glances over her shoulder.

“I wanted to surprise you. You said we couldn’t go and do something because you wanted to hang out with your grandma. I thought I’d come over and I could meet her.”

“No.” She shook her head and advanced on him. “No, no, no. You can’t be here.”

He stopped and she almost ran into him. Was she hiding him from her family? He hadn’t thought about that, but then again, before his conversation with Jacob it hadn’t entered his mind.

“Kellie!”

She whipped around so fast her hair slapped him in the face. A woman wearing pink scrubs stood in the front door to the house. Her hair was partially up in a ponytail, the rest looked as if it had been yanked out of the elastic band.

“What’s wrong?”

“I need your help now,” the woman said with an edge of desperation in her voice.

Kellie bolted for the front door. Quin didn’t stop to consider whether she needed his help, he followed, hot on her heels. He had the impression of a house frozen in the seventies, worn décor and none of it American made. They went through a kitchen, past a dining table and bottlenecked in what appeared to be a tiny laundry room. The woman in the scrubs stopped, blocking his path, while Kellie proceeded into what must be the garage.