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“Well then he shouldn’t come into the crowd to see me,” I tell him and he snorts out a laugh and nods his head.
“Oh, yeah, sure. I’ll just go relay that message to him.” He pretends to wipe a tear from his eye. “I just going to always miss the way my face looks now.”
I roll my eyes. “You’re so damn dramatic and way too full of yourself.”
“Speaking of full, I gotta piss,” he says, gesturing toward the portable bathrooms set up by the trailers and I let out a surprised laugh. “I don’t wanna leave you here in the crowd.”
I nod. “Yeah, that’s fine. I need a break anyway.”
We start making our way through the crowd toward the trailers and when we finally break out of the main huddle, I release a breath. A bead of sweat drips down the side of my face and I shake my head.
“God, this is insane.”
Jumper nods. “Regular fight nights aren’t like this but tournaments are always crazy. You good here?”
“Yeah,” I tell him, glancing over at the bathrooms. We’re only about forty feet from them now and I’m sure he’ll be quick. He nods and starts heading in that direction as I turn to watch the next fight begin.
“So, you’re Rooster’s new girl, huh?” someone says from my side and I glance over, my brows raised.
“What?”
She smiles. “You and Rooster. You guys are a thing?”
I nod, studying her. She called him Rooster, not Hyde. I get the impression that only a select handful of people at these fights know his actual name so how the hell does she?
“You know Rooster?”
She nods. “Oh, yeah. He and I go way back.”
“Okay,” I say, turning back to the fight. I don’t know who this bitch is or what she wants but I don’t really feel like entertaining it.
“He’s amazing, right?”
My eyes slide over to her. She’s watching the ring and I nod. “At fighting? Yeah, he is.”
“Yeah,” she says with a laugh. “At that, too, but I meant in bed. That man knows how to make you feel like the only damn woman in the world.”
My thoughts slow to a crawl as I stare at her, trying to process her words. “What?”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong,” she says, waving her hand through the air dismissively. “In that moment, you absolutely are. Rooster is a one-woman kind of guy but he’s not the guy who sticks around, you know?”
“So,” I say, my throat suddenly feeling thick as my brain feels like mud. “The two of you?”
She nods, letting out a laugh. “Yeah. Three weeks ago, I was right where you are now. He’s really damn good at making you feel special until he gets bored and then he’s on to the next.”
I shake my head, my heart pounding in my ears. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because, babe,” she says, genuine sadness in her eyes as she turns to look at me. “I wish someone had told me the same thing before I was stupid enough to fall in love with him.”
“You wanted to warn me?”
She nods. “Just don’t get too attached, okay? Because it won’t be long before you’re me, watching him make out with the next girl in the crowd and remembering what it was like to be in her position.”
I stare at her, trying like hell to make sense of everything she just said to me.
No.
It can’t be true.
