Wreck (Bareknuckle Boxing Brotherhood Book 2) (4 page)

He usually hung back from the crowd until after his match, but tonight he walked through the crush of people clapping him on the back and announcing his odds for the fight so he could watch for Shea. Kyle stood near enough to the door that the bouncer jokingly threatened to make him pay a cover to go back in.

“Waiting for a girl?”

“Yeah,” he admitted, “She’s got brown hair and a bad attitude. You can’t miss her,”

Soon Shea arrived, paid the doorman and found herself in Kyle’s arms, her face pressed to the curving twists of the tribal tattoo that splayed from his right shoulder down across his collarbone and halfway down his chest.

“Glad to see me?” she asked, pulling back from him.

“You might say so, yes. Let me get you a drink before the match begins,”

“I think I’ll stick to water. I’ve heard rumors about you and the girls you buy a beer for,”

“You’re that nervous of a rumor that you’d turn down a free pint?” His blue eyes burned with mirth and something more.

“Thank you anyway,” She said and took the seat he found for her.

“I’m fighting Magnus Carney tonight. He outweighs me by three pounds, but I’m hoping it’s fat and will slow him down,” he said with a surge of bravado. “I know for a fact he’s a lapsed Catholic and living in sin with his brother’s ex-wife. The Lord can’t look too kindly on that.”

“I’m always afraid to ask if you’re joking,” she mused.

“Think what you like, then,” he said. “I’ve a bout to win.”

Kyle pulled the tape off his thumb and cast it aside, stepping through the ropes. A ring bunny showed the sign, and the announcer introduced the fighters and called for final bets in his carny barker drawl. Sweat came out on his brow from the hot lamps above. He grinned, waving at the crowd with all the force of his hubris and magnetism, the inextinguishable hope and sureness that seemed to shine out of him. The bell rang and Carney started dancing around him with footwork elaborate enough for a high school production of
Riverdance
.

Kyle quickly jabbed for his opponent’s cheek, knowing that the man expected a body blow. He connected with Carney’s face and, with a feint, dodged the barrage of punches Carney levied at him one by one. He smiled, but it was a grim one that didn’t reach his eyes. He tried to get close enough to land a solid hit. He took a few jabs to the face, spitting out blood, in hopes of lulling Carney into easing his defense a little. The man was crowding him, and he couldn’t get a decent punch. He felt the heavy blow to his side before he heard it. He let loose a stream of obscenities, hurling himself hard at Carney, pounding on him with more force than finesse. He pummeled the man’s arms and shoulders, but never got an unblocked shot.

Breathing hard, he stepped away for a moment, relying on feints to buy himself a minute to think. Every time he tired to get his mind around it, he kept seeing that picture of the blue-eyed kid that was his daughter, and it broke his concentration. If he didn’t get his head in the game, he was going to have his ass handed to him, he knew. He remembered Shea in the crowd, wanted so much to breach her take-no-crap defenses and taste her. It was while that image flashed through his mind that he felt the blow to the side of his head. The next thing he knew, he was on his hands and knees on the mat, blood dripping from a cut somewhere on his face. The ref pulled Carney off of him, but not before the bastard kicked him in the side. Kyle set his hand to the spot where he was pretty sure from the pain that a couple of bruised ribs were throbbing and shook his head. He’d lost the match. Magnus Carney was walking away with two grand, and all Kyle had to show for it was humiliation and a left side that hurt when he tried to take a deep breath.

He made his way out of the ring and went for the locker room, not wanting to face Shea and her inevitable smartass remarks. He was rinsing the blood out of his mouth at the sink when she swung open the door.

“That sign says Fighters Only. No women. No gawkers,” he said, “I thought I was supposed to be the illiterate one. Get out.”

“I wanted to see how you were,” she said, sidling up behind him until he could see her face behind his in the mirror.

“I got distracted. It was a fluke,” he said sharply.

“You okay?”

“Tremendous, and yourself?”

“I was a little worried out there when he kicked you. Let me check out your ribs,” she said, putting a hand on his shoulder and turning him around to face her. With cool, efficient hands, she felt his ribs on both sides, fingers traveling upward as she counted silently. She paused at his tattoo, traced one tributary of ink with the tip of her forefinger and, biting her lip, stepped back. “You need to put ice on those ribs. Probably not cracked, just bruised. It’ll hurt like hell,”

“I’ve had it before and survived,” he said flatly. “Thanks for your professional interest.”

“My interest is regrettably unprofessional, Dolan. I didn’t like seeing you get punched and kicked. I wanted to pepper spray that son of a bitch and then yank his shorts up to give him a wedgie that would make his eyes cross.”

Kyle chuckled, “So you thought that through?”

“That was one of many scenarios I had in mind for him. But I want to make sure you’re okay, ribs and psyche unscathed.”

“If you came charging in the locker room to feel me up and then lecture me on my ego, you can walk right back out.”

“Can I get away with the feeling-you-up part if I say we were just playing doctor? I’m sure your ego is bulletproof and won’t be harmed by anything I say about how stomping in that ring with your head in the clouds and a score to settle against God and fate and condom failure wasn’t the brightest thing you’ve ever done.”

“So I deserved to lose?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, Rocky. Let’s just say that a dose of reality won’t hurt you. You have this Chosen One complex going on, like nothing should ever go wrong in your life and—“

“And you’re an OR nurse, not a shrink, so stop trying to analyze me. You’re wearing out all the goodwill you’d built up with me.”

“What?”

“Stephen Covey, lass. All relationships are transactional, and you run into trouble when your withdrawls exceed the fund of goodwill. My mother made us listen to the audio book from the library. Most boring shit imaginable, but the man talks some sense, which you might try.”

“Speaking of sense, did Carney knock any into you tonight? There are things in the world that ARE your fault, and not just bad karma and statistics being stacked against you. You have music to face tomorrow, and I hope you show your kid a better man than the one I see standing here,” she snapped.

“Then quit looking, Shea. You said you were out for a bit of fun, but all I see is an angry, bitter woman who wants to tear me down. So get out.” For emphasis, Kyle shucked off his shorts and stepped into a shower stall, turning the cold water on full blast. By the time he had scrubbed away the drying blood and the tragic sense of unfair burden, she was gone.

He dressed and went home to lie awake until it was time to get ready to meet his daughter. He stared into the dark, listening to Zoe and Aaron laughing and talking in the next room, his eyes livid with waiting. He wished this would all go away, that he could somehow avoid the life-altering responsibility that had fallen on him. He drifted off sometime after dawn, and his alarm woke him.

He thought about wearing a tie, feeling that it was oddly like going to pick up his prom date and meeting her parents. The thought of some boy eventually taking this new daughter to prom made him want to gag. Boys, he knew from personal experience, were not to be trusted. She was about nine or ten, so he had a few years yet before that particular hell was unleashed, but even now he could imagine it. All blue eyes and bright crooked smile—she was going to have boys lined up around the block to take her out.

She was definitely going to need self-defense classes. He added that to his mental list of things he had to change immediately. He wanted her to see the same kidney specialist as his mom. He wanted her in classes at the fight school. He wanted her to have a phone, if she didn’t already. That way they could text with each other and he could get to know her.

He paced the aisle between tables in the fast food place, checking the time on his phone constantly and having to look at it again because he had glanced without paying attention. He wondered if they weren’t coming, if Ashley had changed her mind and decided his influence was worse than battling kidney disease without the proper information. He’d fill out the questionnaire she sent him whether they showed or not, but he hoped so hard that they’d come. On approximately his seventeenth lap around the restaurant, he saw Ashley push the door open, some guy with a scraggly beard behind her, and the kid bringing up the rear. She was playing an app on a phone and didn’t even look up when she walked in.

Kyle went forward, moving jerkily as a marionette, blood pounding with nervousness, and extended his hand, first to Ashley, then to the scraggly beard guy, Greg, to whom he took an instant dislike. They had cats, he thought with one whiff of the stepfather, because the man smelled like cat piss. Trying not to wrinkle his nose, trying to remember they were doing him a favor, he tapped the girl on the shoulder. She glanced up at him, frowning.

“I was about to level up,” she said.

“Olive,” Her mother’s voice warned.

“Hi. I take it you’re my dad,” she said, looking him up and down appraisingly. “The Beatles are crap,” she said, indicating the t-shirt he’d chosen for the occasion. Out the window went any hope that the child would think he was cool and rebellious.

“Don’t say crap,” her mother said automatically in a weary voice.

The girl, Olive, was skinnier than she’d looked in the soccer photo, her brown hair in a braid, her blue eyes assessing and suspicious, not at all the open childlike gaze he had expected.

“So, you like
Hunger Games
? I notice your hair is in a braid. Isn’t that a Katniss thing?” he asked, proud of the research he’d done on preteen girls’ interests the night before.

“Huh.” she scoffed, “no, Mom did that. She won’t let me cut it off.”

“Okay, can I get you anything? Ice cream?”

“Decaf coffee,” she said, turning her attention back to the app.

He looked helplessly from Ashley to her husband. He brought her the coffee and a sugar packet. She nodded, and her mother kicked her under the table pointedly.

“Thanks, Kyle,” she muttered.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “You’re not going to make this easy, are you?”

“Why should I? Way I figure it, you show up about ten years in and expect me to be daddy’s little girl. It don’t work that way.”

“How does it work?” he challenged

“I don’t know. Not that way.”

“Can I give you my number and you can text me if you want?”

“Are you on Facebook?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t expect to friend me. I like my privacy.”

“You’re a kid. You’re not entitled to privacy for another nine years or so,” he said with a laugh.

“That’s what my parents say.” She said ‘parents’ emphatically and watched his reaction.

“I know I’m a little late to try to give you advice or anything, but you’re a kid. Enjoy being a kid and save the smartass crap for when you’re in high school.”

“Mom, he called me a smartass.”

“I heard him,” Ashley said warningly.

“Yeah, I did. She is one. I’m not blaming you. She’s smart and healthy and walks upright, so obviously you’re doing your job. If she acts like a jerk, let’s just put that down to my bad DNA, shall we?”

“I didn’t bring her here so you could call her names.”

“No, you brought me here so he could look at me like a trophy, and then he’d give you the papers you wanted,” Olive said.

Her mother snatched the phone out of her hands and stuck it in her own purse.

“I didn’t say he was wrong. I said he shouldn’t say it to your face. Otherwise, his manners are no better than yours.” She glared at the girl, somewhat justifiably, Kyle thought.

“Fine,” Olive hissed. “What do you want to know?” She turned to Kyle.

“I don’t know. What are you interested in?”

“Money, mainly. I like trucks, fashion, soccer. I want to create my own line of soccer clothes for girls who don’t want to dress like boys on the field.”

“That’s very…innovative of you.”

“I figure a lot of these little princesses will drop some coin on sparkly soccer shirts and socks with bows on them and crap. I’d make a fortune,” she said.

“Don’t say crap,” her mother said.

“What do you think you’re going to do now that you know you’re my biological father? Because Greg is my real dad. He taught me to ride a bike and took me to the monster truck rally last year,” she said mutinously.

Greg smiled proudly at her and lit a cigarette. Kyle glanced from him to the no smoking sign and back again. “Dude, you can’t smoke in here,” he said in a lowered voice.

“Who’s gonna stop me?” He chuckled, showing a rotted front tooth.

Kyle turned his attention back to Olive.

“He always smokes everywhere. Anyone who says anything to him about stopping, he makes them back down. They always say they’re sorry,” she said admiringly.