“Oliver!”
“I invited you here so you’d have a place to rest. Not to do manual labor and pay me for it.”
“I’m gonna keep making lists,” she grumbles. “On the next one, I’ll addpaper,since you’re set on wasting so much of it.”
ROUND TWENTY-FOUR
OLLIE
She shakes all over. Her legs. Her arms. Her chest. Her jaw chatters, and her entire being curls in and wraps around my arm. Her fingers twine with mine, but it’s not a woman holding a man’s hand, not in any romantic way. It’s a human being scared out of her fucking mind, approaching a new place filled with uncertainties.
But she walks, at least. I didn’t have to peel her off the door of the truck.
“These are my friends, okay? Every single one of them.”
She doesn’t talk. I’m not sure she actually can. But she clings to my arm and gulps as we cross the parking lot and approach the Love & War gym door.
“Tommy knows I’m bringing you, and he said it’ll be a quiet night, anyway. He had no classes planned.”
“No classes?” She glances up and searches my eyes. “B-but you said…self-defense…”
“I said they run them, and I could hook you up. I didn’t say they had any on the schedule for today.”
She drags me to a stop just three feet from the door. “If there are none on, then we should leave, right?”
“Wrong. The kids’ classes are over and they’ve all gone home, so now it’s just my friends. Everyone else was told to get the fuck out and not come back till tomorrow.”
“Ollie—”
“It’s just us. Just my crew. And you’ve met a few of them already.” Istart forward again, pulling her along until her sneakers slide on the snow, and her grip on my arm is the only reason she stays vertical. “Tommy and Alana and the kids are here. Chris and Fox. Cliff said he was staying back, ‘cos he’s a sucker for a damsel in distress.” I swing the door open and tug her into the warmth. “It’s you, Rose. You’re the damsel. And Eliza’s here, ‘cos she can’t help herself. But that’s it.”
She shoots her nose into the air, wide-eyed as she sniffs.
“I know it’s kinda smelly in here. But after a while, you stop noticing.” I lead her past the unmanned reception desk, then into a hall lined with glass cabinets and shelves filled with Love & War merch. Hoodies. Shorts. Gloves and wraps. Finally, I bring her to the doorway and stop just in time to catch Eliza blitzing Tommy and backing him up to the cage wall. He’s bigger than her by double, and in a competition fight, she’s not likely to win. But in here, while they’re training, he allows her a chance to test her skills. She throws a left jab, right hook, left hook, and a nasty uppercut combination, knocking his head back until, I swear, I hear his neck crackle. And while he’s dazed, she drops her shoulders and runs straight at him, hooking her arms around his hips and twisting.
Someday, eventually, she’ll probably blow her back out doing that move. But she’s still young and fit, so she tosses the world champ and slams him to the canvas, his two-hundred-something pounds hitting the ground with a boom that makes Rose gasp.
She tears her grip from my arm and claps her hands over her mouth. Tears fill her eyes, and fuck, her pulse thunders against the side of her neck.
“You’re too slow, Tommy!” Chris rattles the cage wall. “You’re up there with Tweety-birds flapping ‘round your head, all ‘cos she smacked you. But then she uses your distraction to ground you.”
“That left arm is loose, Lize.” Cliff mirrors Chris, but six feet to his right. He practically fucking climbs the cage. “Slide on over and grab on— Yesss,” he hisses. “Attagirl.”
“You’re the lady with the brain injury, huh?”
Rose squeals and jumps two feet off the floor, then she whirls around and faces Franky, Alana and Tommy’s oldest kid… ish. He’s in middle school, smarter than a whip, almost always carries a book around with him, and really should visit the optometrist sometime to get a pair of glasses thatdon’tslip along his nose.
He pushes them up and grins. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you. But you’re her, huh?”
“Franklin.” I set my hands on my hips and glance left, to the one I didn’t expect to still be here tonight. “Molly Jenkins. Your mom and dad didn’t come by and get you yet?”
“I was helping her with her homework,” Franky quips. Then he brings his focus back to Rose. “Did you know that in America, we have a one in one-hundred-and-sixty chance of suffering a traumatic brain injury?”
Rose trembles and clamps her hands together. “Um… okay.”
“One in one-sixty is decent odds. Like, I could probably go my whole life and not experience that, ‘cos I’m reasonably calm and never do silly things. And then there’s Molly,” he hooks his thumb in her direction. “I caught her climbing the flagpole at school a few days ago, which probably increases her chances of a TBI.”
“I had to!” Molly scowls. “I got down fine, didn’t I?”
