Trapped (Caged #2)(52)

“I’m sorry I was such an ass to you tonight,” I said against her shoulder. I kissed her skin lightly. “I never should have let you go.”

“It wasn’t your decision,” she reminded me, “though if I hadn’t gone, it wouldn’t have happened.”

I laughed once.

“It would have just found another way of happening,” I said, contradicting her.

“It would be a lot easier to understand if you would tell me,” she said. I felt her arm finally wrap around the back of my neck and pull me closer.

I could only shake my head and sigh.

*****

Life throws shit at you, no doubt about it. It’s usually pretty unexpected, too. Sometimes it’s something awesome, like a gift that came straight out of heaven or whatever.

Other times, not so much.

About a month after the wedding, my family had finally given up trying to contact me by phone again. There had been at least sixteen unreturned calls, and I had taken to just ignoring the telephone any time it rang. Tria seemed to think I should actually answer, but I refused to discuss it, and she had eventually given up.

Tuesday night I headed to the bar in a rush because I was supposed to have been there twenty minutes earlier. It was challenge night, so anyone in the bar was welcome to get in the cage with me and see if they could manage to keep going for five minutes. I was supposed to be there early so they could check me out a little bit beforehand.

I groaned as I got halfway there, reached into my jacket pocket, and came up with nothing. There weren’t any smokes in my gym bag, either.

Ah well, I could always bum a few off of Wade.

I nursed a cheap beer Dordy handed me. I wasn’t really going to drink the shit, and he knew that. The idea was to make others think I might be a little tipsy, which would make them more likely to challenge me. I kept my shirt on, too, and spent most of the time sitting on a bar stool so people couldn’t tell how tall I was.

By the time Yolanda opened the cage, there were plenty of guys lined up for a fight. The first two went down without much trouble, but the third was a wiry thing. He kept dodging my blows. I finally took him out with a roundhouse kick to the face, then landed on his chest with both knees. He tapped out and then had to be half carried out of the cage.

Those in line to fight next promptly left, and there weren’t any more takers for a while.

“Ham it up a little, will ya?” Yolanda sighed. “Get the crowd going.”

I started growling and yelling at people through the cage and even climbed most of the way up the side to yell down at people—taunting, challenging, and verbally emasculating. While I was up there, a bouncing mahogany ponytail caught my attention.

Tria was up near the edge of the bar. She gave me a half smile and a little wave as I looked at her quizzically. She never came to watch me fight, so it was weird to see her there. My heart beat a little faster as I considered maybe she had changed her mind, and she was going to watch me work. Dordy approached her and reached across the bar to shake her hand. He glanced up at me, gave me a little wink, and then handed her some fruity daiquiri or something in a plastic cup.

I glanced around, wondering if I had time to take a little break and go talk to her for a few minutes. Dordy had gone to help some other customers, and I couldn’t catch his eye again. I looked around until I found Yolanda, but she was already hauling someone up to the cage for me to fight.

“We’ve got another challenger!” Yolanda yelled from the center of the bar.

I craned my neck to see her walking through the crowd with a guy behind her. She dragged him like a child being dragged through the grocery store by an impatient parent. With the crowd all over the place, I couldn’t get a good look at the guy until he discarded his shirt on a table outside the cage. Yolanda pulled him up the stone steps and opened the door to push him inside.

The man who walked up had black hair and thick, square shoulders. He was big—both tall and broad—but didn’t hold himself like a fighter. He was young—much younger than I was, and he glared at me, not with the excitement of a challenge, but with hatred.

Keith Harrison.

In the cage.

With me.

I was never one talk to God, but I felt like a prayer had been answered.





Chapter 14—Pay the Price


I wanted to dance and sing but settled for laughing my ass off instead.

“You think you’re going to prove something?” I asked him as he walked through the entrance and stood on the opposite side of the cage.

“Just going to give Tria a little lesson,” the idiot replied. He reached up high like he was stretching out his arms or something. As if that was going to help.

I laughed again.

“In what?” I asked. “How to watch the ex get his ass kicked? You’re going to be demonstrating that for everyone here!”

I waved my arm around in a big, dramatic arc.

“Oh, you never know what kind of surprises I might have,” Keith said with a smirk. “You’re just an overgrown meathead with no regard for what’s important. I’m going to show her that. Later on tonight, when all this is over, she’s going to walk out of here with me.”

“You aren’t walking out of here.” I snickered before I slid my mouth guard into place.

Yolanda walked up and did the usual overplayed performance of checking us both over. I was in my fighting trunks and he was in a pair of jeans. Less maneuverability, more bulk, and generally a bad idea. Fucking amateur.