We bantered back and forth for a while until Slater took his position around the bag and began to throw out some oldcommands and routines we used to do together. His role in the club demanded that he knew how to fight and to lead, to be at the front when those battles started. I’d always respected him, but something about being back in our natural environment and seeing the determination of his body had me respecting him even more. He started out light at first, and I knew a lot of that was to do with him seeing how I fared being back in the middle of all these old memories of sweat and tears. It was the tactical man in him. He needed to know where my mind was. I also knew deep down that I should have been filled with tension, and that even the thought of going up against something like this should have made me back away, but that just wasn’t who I was. Not around boxing. It was what had led me to making all those wrong decisions, all those years ago. It was like breathing to me, and Pete had been responsible for making that a part of my life.
I’d be insulting his memory if I threw it away.
Even if I was finding joy in something that brought about his death.
Slater continued to hold the bag, shouting out different sequences in quick succession for hours on end. Left, right, left. Right, left, right, left, right, right, jab, jab, right cross, fake an uppercut, right hook. Whatever he told me to do, whatever insults he shouted my way, I answered him with the power of my arms and the drive through my legs. I respected him. I wanted this. I craved it. Only he could give me it. This was where I got high.
It wasn’t long before Slater’s voice turned to that of Pete’s, and even though that just made my jaw tense harder and my frown crease deeper, I kept on keeping on. The low groans in the back of my throat turned to grunts. The aircoming out of my nose mimicked that of a fucking bull. I was on fire and my muscles were aching for me to stop.
“You fading on me, Tucker?” Slater wheezed out after my footwork took a stumble to the side and I was forced to correct myself, my forearm reaching up to wipe the sweat from my top lip while I tried to find my balance.
“Tucker don’t fade, Slater. Never has…” I threw a hard hit right, smashing my arm into the side and growling through the release of air in my throat. “Never will.”
His laughter got caught as his own feet slipped sideways and he raised his brows back up at me. “That’s fighting talk, right there.”
“You bet it is.”
“You’ll be bigger than Kenny by the end of the week if you keep this up.”
“Fuck Kenny,” I answered, doing a quick three-jab sequence before bringing my arms up to my chest and bouncing on my toes. “Fuck. Kenny.”
“Never gonna happen. I don’t think he swings that way, brother. Not if the looks he’s been giving that girl of yours are anything to go by.”
I knew for a fact that he’d said what he’d said just to throw me off course and hit a nerve, but I wasn’t going to bite. Ayda wasn’t mine and they could all go to shit if that’s what they thought was happening. “Good luck to him,” I snapped back, pushing forward to go for another round, stopping short as the door behind us swung open suddenly and I heard the sound of a familiar voice cry out.
“Drew?” he yelled from across the room before his feet started to scurry across the hard floor. The fact that it was Deeks’ voice that was doing the shouting was what made mestop more than anything else. After last night outside Ayda’s house, I’d put him on watch out duties for the day. He wasn’t much use around this place for anything else, and for my own sanity, I’d grabbed him before I went to my room last night and told him what I wanted him to do. Sutton could pour his harassment shit on me all he wanted, but no one else. Not even Ayda. Turning my body, I frowned over at him when I saw the panic on his face.
“Deeks, calm the fuck down. You’ll give yourself a hernia.” Slater laughed breathlessly behind me. He hadn’t known of the undercover mission I’d put Deeks on. Nobody had.
“We got a problem.” Deeks marched towards us both quickly, the worry on his face only forcing my frown to sink even deeper.
“What?” I snapped back.
“It’s Ayda…”
My chest heaved up and down like a fucking animal as the sweat from the workout trickled down my spine. “What about her?”
He looked from me to Slater and back again before he scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “Uh, Maisey Sutton got to her.”
I had no fucking idea what he was talking about, but the second I heard that two-dollar whore’s name fall from his lips, I had a pretty good idea. “Got to her how?”
“It was at the diner. Maisey just strolled inside and started shouting shit. Even managed to fit in a little slap across the face.”
“Maisey slapped Ayda?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought I told you to keep your fucking eye on her, Deeks.” I took a step closer to stand over him. Why I was getting angry over two bitches throwing claws all over the place, I had no idea. But I was, and I was blaming the man who was standing in front of me.
“That’s not the worst part…”
“You put Deeks on bodyguard duty over a chick?” Slater laughed behind me, the disbelief in his voice pretty damn obvious.
Ignoring him as much as I could, I growled down at the man beneath me and held his gaze. “What’s the worst part?”
“Umm. She knows I was sent to watch her, and she… She ain’t too happy about that, Drew, I gotta tell you.”
My hands fell to my waist as I let my head roll back and groaned in frustration. Great. Just what I needed. Another person pissed at me. And they said prison life was tough.
