Love Tap(80)

Placing my hands on the back of my neck I blow a breath through hollowed cheeks. I’m anxious, and second guessing all of this.

I can do this.

Can I do this?

I feel like without Camden standing ringside I’m doomed to fail. I need him cheering me on. I need him by my f*cking side.

Not just as my lover, but my f*cking coach.

A knock sounds at the door and I jeer. Fuck I’m on edge.

Silvia walks in. Her hair sleek and trim, her body shoved into an expensive black dress. She reminds me of a Black Widow.

“Tatum, so happy to have you.” Her smile is fake as she sashays inside the locker room.

I don’t respond as I grab my bag to switch into my fighting gear.

“I just want to remind you that whether you lose or win this fight you signed a NDA and you are not to speak or discuss of this fight.”

I glance up. “I know the rules,” I reply dry.

“Right, I just want to make sure you know that you’re dealing with the some of the top profiles in the country.” With her monotone you’d think she read that off the inside of her palm. “The people bidding here tonight rather enjoy their entertainment in The Underground and will not take threats lightly. If their entertainment is at risk of someone breaking the only rule we have, they may… shall we say… do what comes natural to them.”

My eyes flick to hers as anger begins to fill my veins for the evening.

“You mean someone might kill me if I tell someone?”

“Oh I’m sure they’re much more creative than that.” A sly smile crosses her face, as my heart skips a beat. That is exactly why I didn’t want to tell Camden. I feared for his life.

“Don’t break the rules, and you’ll be fine,” she quips.

Biting my cheek, Camden sets heavy on my mind, a question I’ve wanted so bad to ask him but can’t because I’ll be disclosing that I myself am fighting in The Underground.

“One question, did Camden Steele fight in The Underground?” Slowly I lift my head as I ask my question. His fight seemed sketchy, like this one.

A tight lipped smile crosses her tight face, her eyes flashing with the answer as she replies.

“I can’t disclose that information.” But she already did with the look on her face. This is the fight that Camden killed someone in, the one that ruined his career. That ruined him.

“Got it,” I mutter.

Sitting on the bench I rest my elbows on my knees, the pre-fight jitters getting run over as fear begins to strike up a storm in my chest. I could die here tonight. Hell, I could kill someone tonight.

“Who am I fighting?” my voice cracks with fear.

She smiles so big wrinkles form around her eyes.

“You’ll see… and good luck Mrs. Davis, and remember. All is fair in fighting and surviving.”

Camden

Pissed that Tate hasn’t even texted me back I throw the f*cking phone across the gym as a roar erupts through my throat.

“Dude, what the f*ck?” Cate lifts her hands up as she eyes my shattered phone.

Swiping my hands through my hair I exhale an angry breath.

“I can’t find Tate anywhere and she’s not answering her phone,” I inform frantically. I know she didn’t leave town because all of her stuff is still at my place and her dad’s place. So where the f*ck is she?

Cate’s eyes flick to the left way too quickly. Her parted mouth and sudden tension telling me she knows something.

“Do you know where she is?” I ask more aggressively than I intended.

She rubs at her forehead.

“Look, I heard Debs and Tate talking the other day and I heard she was fighting in a place in Nashville—”

“A fight?” I step forward my heart skipping a beat. I didn’t hear anything about a fight, surely Tate would have told me, why would she not?

“Yeah, an underground one or something. I thought you knew so that is why I didn’t think twice about it.”

Like a lightning bolt to the chest a rush of energy spreads through my arms as my world spins. My heart beating so wildly I think I may erupt into the f*cking antichrist right where I stand.

“What else, what else did you hear?!” I have to ball my hands into fists from reaching out and shaking the information from Cate.

“That’s all I heard man,” she shrugs. My eyes land on Thomas’s office. If Tate is with Debs, then Thomas knows where Debs is.

Pushing past Cate I kick open Thomas’s door and he nearly falls from his desk chair from the sudden noise. Not giving him a chance to recoil I grab him by the throat and lift him from his seat, slamming him against the wall.

Rage pounds in the vessels in my neck.

“Where the f*ck is she?” I seethe.

His eyes flash with fear as he claws at my tightening grip.

“Camden, I don’t—”

“WHERE!” I squeeze so hard his jugular may snap beneath my fingers.

“She deserves her shot too, just like—” Keeping a tight grip on him I wipe the desk using his head. The contents flying across his shitty office. The violence doing nothing to settle the fire building in my chest.

“Debs said an old tire company just outside of Nashville, that’s all I know!” his voice cracks from his bruised throat.

I point at him. “I warned you both not to put Tate in that f*cking underground.”