Wicked Restless (Harper Boys #2)(59)

“I don’t know, dude. You think we can roll him out there?” Bill asks.

Harley looks at him, his back to me still, and the silence means he must be making one of his faces at Bill, the kind that says shut the f*ck up without the use of words. Bill leans forward and spits on the concrete floor, then looks at me.

“All right, boss. You know best,” he says, his grin either crooked from getting punched by Danny a few minutes earlier or because he’s snickering at me.

“Roll who out where?” I ask, ignoring Bill and hoping like hell this means payday for me.

“Pitch has a fight tonight. It’s kind of a big one, and I need it to look good, but I need Pitch to feel good—like he can kill in his next fight, ‘cuz that one will be real. He’s been off, so I need to get him right again. Danny usually works with him, and he was going to go tonight, but that * hurt his hand doing some goddamned house project for his wife or whatever. You’re close to the right weight, and you’ve handled Pitch before,” he says, tossing a pair of shorts my way along with a backpack.

“If by handled you mean let him knock my front teeth loose and deviate my septum,” I say. I need money, but f*ck—Pitch could honestly kill me if he tried hard enough.

“Funny septum joke. I like it. Look, it’s late and I just sent Danny home. Are you in or are you going to f*ck me over? Because if you’re going to f*ck me over, you can just get out of here and find a new place to work out your juvenile-aggression shit or whatever it is you do when you come here.”

I swallow hard, and I know he sees it. I can’t cut myself loose from Harley—I need both the money and the pain, and I think he knows it. I nod and sit on the folding chair to pull out my gear from the backpack.

“Where’s this thing at?” I ask, my tongue in my cheek as I check the gloves, tape and mouth guard to make sure everything looks ready, wishing there was armor buried in that bag, too, for the massive stomach shots Pitch always likes to land.

“It’s by Cicero, just down the street from Union. You can ride with us,” he says.

“I’m good. I got a car,” I say, wrapping my wrists and hands early, cutting the tape with my teeth.

“Well look who finally grew up and got himself a license,” Harley teases.

“I’ve had a license, *. My car’s just back from the dead finally. And I have work and practice in the morning, so I wanna head home right after we’re done,” I say, looking up to notice Harley and Bill have already made it to the back door to leave, not bothering to listen to me—not really giving a shit, more likely.

“We’ll pull around; you can follow us,” Bill says as the door shuts behind them.

“Oh, you’re welcome, Harley. Always happy to help out. I’m sure I’ll love getting my ass kicked for thirty minutes in front of an angry, drunken crowd. This all sounds super,” I whisper, chuckling to myself as I grab the rest of my things and walk back through the sliding door, pulling it down behind me and tugging up to make sure it’s locked.

Actually, I’ll probably like it more than I’m willing to admit. And I know if it’s a Pitch fight, the pay is going to be pretty damn sweet too.

I toss my bag in the passenger seat and get in, pulling out as soon as I see Bill’s black Tahoe in front of me. I follow them down Lakeshore for the twenty minutes it takes to get to our highway, then manage to find their car again on Roosevelt after losing them in traffic. We stop near sixteenth, where the roads are packed with BMWs and Porsches parked illegally. I’m not sure who else is on the card, but if Pitch is going, I have a feeling a lot of these people are here for him. I hope they’ve come to drop some cash, and I hope like hell I can make it four rounds.

I find a spot near the exit reserved for the crew and Bill holds up a badge when one of the club owners tries to give me grief for parking there. He nods and waves me forward to join them.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Sweet ride. I’d park that shit somewhere close, too,” Bill says.

The back rooms are swelling with people, half of them women all waiting to get with one of the fighters for the night. They drag their hands over my body as I pass through the narrow, crowded spaces behind Harley and Bill until we slip into a training room near the main hallway to the ring. Most of the fights I’ve done have been in front of dozens—maybe a hundred people at the most. The crowd I hear through the brick and concrete walls sounds like it reaches close to a thousand.

“All right, here’s the deal,” Harley says, already running through texts and numbers on his phone. “You need to make it to four. You understand? Four.”

I nod. Shit, I hope I’m standing after four. My heart is pounding with the force of a boxer trying to break out from inside, and my body is drenched with sweat already. How ironic. I keep my game face on though and get to work, changing and prepping myself for whatever I’m about to step into.

“You go four, and we’re looking at eight K for the night, you feel me?” I don’t react on the outside much, just nodding that I hear him. Inside is a different story, because eight thousand dollars is about four times the amount I normally make at one of these. That also probably means my face is about to take four times the force from Pitch’s fist.

Tuition. Paid.

Insurance for six months. Paid.