He nods once, already shifting slightly so he’s angled toward the movement of people instead of fully facing me—like he’s tracking the space without thinking about it. “Yeah, same.”
He leans in, closer to my ear so I can hear him over the noise. “I’m over at—“ He pulls back. A beat. “What are you up to these days?”
I open my mouth, but before I can answer, Lola catches my hand and gives it a tug. “We’re going closer.” She doesn’t wait for my reply, already pulling toward the front of the crowd.
I let her draw me one step before I glance back at Ryder. “I guess I’m going to the front.”
“Yeah,” he says easily, already moving with us. No hesitation. “I’ll come with you.”
He falls into step at my side, close enough that our shoulders almost brush, his gaze flicking once over the crowd ahead before settling forward again.
Nate moves first, and the crowd opens. Not dramatically—just enough. A guy in a gray hoodie turns sideways without being asked. Two women step back mid-conversation, not breaking it. A man with a drink in each hand finds somewhere else to be. East follows the same path a half-step behind, and nobody closes it back up until we’re already through.
By the time we reach the front, the cage directly in front of us is empty. The noise has shifted from scattered chaos into something tighter, more focused, anticipation gathering in the space like static before a storm.
Then the announcer’s voice cuts through it. “Get loud. Because he’s back,” he says, dragging out the last word into four syllables.
The room detonates. Excitement lives in the air, heavy enough that I can almost taste it.
Beside me, Lola grabs my arm without looking at me, her nails finding skin. Bodies surge forward. The smell of it hits first—sweat and copper and something electric—and then the crowd becomes a single organism, every head swinging toward the far side of the cage at once.
A man steps through the opening, and my next breath gets trapped in my lungs.
He’s shirtless, hands wrapped to the wrist, the industrial lights catching the ink across his ribs and shoulders and turning the sweat on his skin into something that looks almost like armor. He doesn’t scan the crowd. He doesn’t roll his shouldersor shake out his hands or do any of the things fighters do when they need the room to know they’re ready. He just walks to the center and stops, and the noise keeps building around him like it’s got nothing to do with him at all.
“No way,” I say, and I don’t realize I’ve said it out loud until Lola’s grip tightens on my arm.
It’s Bishop.
I shouldn’t be surprised—I’mnot. Except that my next breath comes out wrong, and for a second I’m somewhere else entirely—black upholstery, blood in the air, the sound of fabric ripping—and then I’m back, and he’s still there, still walking to the center of that cage like the noise is something happening to a different room
Lola turns toward me, her eyes wide and mouth open. “Holy shit, Bells.”
“I know,” I say, and I don’t look away from him long enough to confirm whether she heard me.
His opponent comes in heavier, broader through the shoulders, with hands that move like he expects them to end things. The crowd responds to him—noise, movement, a few bills changing hands nearby—but it’s the kind of response a room gives something it recognizes. Not something it’s been waiting for.
The bell sounds.
Bishop lets the first swing come close enough that I stop breathing. Then the second. He doesn’t step back so much as redirect, weight shifting in a way that makes the other man’s momentum look borrowed. There’s a half-second where his opponent thinks he has an opening, commits to it—and Bishop is already somewhere else, watching him arrive.
Beside me, someone grabs a stranger’s arm. A woman screams in delight.
I’ve seen people fight. I’ve seen people who are good at it. But no one moves like Bishop does. It’s the difference between someone who has learned how to hurt people and someone who simply knows how, the way you know your own name, without having to think about it.
The crowd screams at a near-hit that was never actually near. Sweat, money, blood, heat—everything in The Pit condenses around the cage until it feels like the whole building is breathing with the fight.
Beside me, Ryder leans in slightly, his hand settling for one brief second at the small of my back so I can hear him over the noise. “I’m glad I ran into you.”
I glance at him, his touch already gone. “Yeah?”
He tilts his head toward the cage, then back at me. “You still run with the Calloways, pulling shit like you used to?”
My brows dig together but my grin grows. “If you mean do I still cut board straps off the cars of out-of-town assholes who think they own our beaches?” I pause and laugh. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
“Sure.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “And the other stuff?”
I do a slow scan of the people nearest us, my brows digging toward one another. This feels a lot like he’s trying to pull a confession out of me. But no one is paying any attention to us.
