Page 29 of Rent a Bad Boy

The first punch I take on my shoulder. He’s going for my head, but he’s slow, and he telegraphs everything, so I slip it easy. I give him two body shots that fold him at the waist, then a right cross to the temple that drops him to one knee. He gets back up, which I respect, and comes at me again. I let him. I let him connect once, a left hook to my ribs that I’ll feel tomorrow, and then a glancing blow over my eye before I finish him with a combination: left jab, right cross, left hook.

It puts him on the concrete and keeps him there.

The crowd erupts. Reece steps in, checks the other guy, and calls it. I stand there breathing hard with my knuckles screaming through the tape. But all I care about is Isla.

She’s exactly where I left her. My jacket is clutched tight against her chest. Her face is white. Not pink, not flushed. White. Like all the blood drained out of it.

I grab a towel from Reece and wipe the sweat from my face, then make my way over to her. The crowd parts the way it always does, except tonight I don’t notice any of them, because the only thing I can see is the look on her face. It’s not the look I was expecting. I was expecting fear, maybe. Disgust. The expression people make when they see what I really am underneath the jersey and the scholarship, and whatever else they’ve projected onto me.

What I see is something that looks a lot like shock. Like she knew what she was walking into but didn’t actually know, not really. Not until she saw it happen in front of her.

“Hey,” I say, stopping in front of her. “I’m fine.”

She looks up at my eyebrow. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s just a cut. It’s nothing.” I reach for her, and she doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t lean in either. “Talk to me.”

She takes a deep breath that shakes on the way in. “That was a lot more than I expected.”

“I know. I told you it wouldn’t be pretty.”

“I know you did. I just...” She presses the jacket against her chest harder than before, like she’s trying to hold herself together with it. “Hearing about it and seeing it are two really different things. Seeing you do that to someone is...”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know how to feel about it.”

Something cold settles in my gut. Not anger. More like the feeling of watching someone you care about realize who you actually are and not being able to do a damn thing. “You don’t have to feel any way about it,” I say, even though it’s bullshit, and I’m pretty sure we both know it.

“I need some time.” She says it quietly, not looking at me. Instead, she looks at the floor, at the concrete, at the spot where a guy was lying a few minutes ago because I put him there. “Just to think about things. Is that okay?”

No. It’s not okay. Nothing about this is okay. But I’ve spent my whole life watching people walk away once they see what’s underneath. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you can’t make someone stay by telling them you need them to.

“Yeah,” I murmur. “That’s okay.”

She nods and hands me back my jacket. Neither of us says anything else for a long time.

I drive her home in silence. It’s not easy to breathe, the silence is so thick. When I pull up outside her house, she reaches for the door handle, then pauses. “I’m not running,” she says, though she still won’t look at me. “I just need to think.”

“I know.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Okay.”

She gets out and walks up the path while I sit in the truck with the engine idling. My knuckles are throbbing. My ribs ache where he caught me.

None of it hurts as much as watching that door close.

11

ISLA

I’m being followed.

I notice it on Monday. Or I think I notice it. It’s hard to say for sure because the person I think is following me is very large and not exactly built for stealth. But every time I turn around, he’s there. Leaning against a wall. Or he’s suddenly very interested in his phone. Like a six-foot-two shadow that keeps ducking behind things that are not wide enough to hide him.

By Tuesday, I’m sure.

He’s in the parking lot when I get out of my car in the morning. He’s outside the humanities building when I leave my ten a.m. lecture. He’s sitting on a bench near the library with a textbook open on his lap, except the textbook is upside down. That’s either a bold artistic choice or a dead giveaway he’s not actually reading.