Alpha's Last Fight: A Paranormal Shapeshifter BBW Romance (24 page)

Natalie looked at me with a withering expression. Anger bubbled up inside. Why didn’t she believe me? This was my chance!

“I could get a house for us, Nat,” I said. I hated the wheedling sound of my voice just then. “You could get rid of your apartment in the city, come live with me. You wouldn’t have to work anymore.”

“I
like
to work, Hutch,” she said. “The only reason I’m here—”

“I know, I know, you’re here for your dad. But your dad’s having a tough time too, right? I mean, I didn’t want to say nothing, but there’s boxes everywhere in this place. And surgery, I mean, that can’t be cheap. If I can help out with that, I will.”

Her face softened.

“And that’ll be the last fight I have to do before everything is paid off. Then if we wanted to, we could start a family. Start a new life, you know, just us two going off to do whatever we want.”

“Hutch, I don’t know—”

“What don’t you know about?”

“Why are you getting so much money for this fight? What’s the deal?”

My stomach dropped. I didn’t want to tell her about who I was talking to. I didn’t want to talk with Nat about all the money I owed. All the shady people involved. All I wanted was to fight this one fight and be done for good. I brushed her cheek with my thumb.

“The deal, the deal. You don’t want to hear about fight stuff.”

“I do. Because if you lose—”

“Hey, if I lose, I probably won’t be around to care about it.”

“Excuse me?”

Natalie sat up and I wiped my hand across my forehead. Dummy me. Had to go and let the cat out of the bag. Well, she would have to know about it sometime.

“What do you mean, you won’t be around? Are you planning on disappearing if you lose? Going away to another town and leaving me?”

“No!”

“After all this talk about loving me, and being my mate, and starting a
family—
”

“Nat, you’ve got it all wrong.”

She stood up, her hands on her hips. I swear, she never looked so beautiful as she did when she was angry. I reached out and put my hand on hers but she swatted me away.

“Hey, come on now!”

“You won’t tell me anything about this fight, and then you say if you lose, you’ll be leaving—”

“I won’t
leave
, Natalie. I’ll be
dead
.”

Her mouth dropped open and her fists slowly opened at her sides, her fingers uncurling. There. Finally she would stop being mad at me.

“Say that one more time,” she said. “I don’t think I understand.”

“It’s a win or die trying thing, Nat. I’ll win, obviously, I’ll win—”

“What in the
hell
?!”

Natalie backed away from the bedside slowly. Her face was a picture from a horror movie. I rocked up onto my feet and stood up.

“Natalie, don’t be like that.”

“Like what? Like I care if you’re fighting to the death against someone? Yeah, Hutch, I do care. I care a lot. You can’t do this!”

“I can’t back out now Nat. It’s the only way I can fix everything,” I said. God, this was hard to explain to her. “Look, I’m gonna win, and then the pack is completely out of debt. It’s totally worth it.”

“How is it worth it? You could die!”

“I won’t die!”

“And then what? You’re going to kill the other fighter?”

Natalie’s face was red, the vein at her temple pulsing.

“You would be a killer!” she cried. “You would kill another person! Kill or be killed, right?”

“Nat, it’s not like that.”

“Oh no? Then what’s it like?”

I thought for a moment. It was hard to think with her standing there so angry. And with all of the steam coming off of her forehead, I could barely breathe. This room smelled like her scent, her sex, our love. I rubbed my head and bit my lip.

“Okay, I guess it is like that,” I said. “But—”

“Get out.”

Natalie opened the bedroom door and stood by it. She was trying to control her face, but her chin quivered and tears welled in her eyes.

“Natalie, don’t do this.”

“I’m not doing this,” she said. Her voice was hard like steel, but when she blinked, tears ran down the sides of her cheeks. “You’re doing this. You’re the one who signed up for this fight.”

“Come on, Nat.”

“Don’t tell me to
come on!”
she shouted. “Don’t talk to me like this. You want to go
kill
someone! For money! You know what they call people like that, Hutch? Murderers. Hit men.”

I sighed. I’d seen guys die in the ring before. I hadn’t ever killed one myself, but hell, it happened all the time.

“I’m not a murderer.”

“But you will be. Or you’ll be dead. How can you even
think
this is a good solution?”

“It’s not!” I yelled. “It’s the only solution I have! If I had a better one, I’d be all over it!”

“You could find a job, a real job.”

Now I was mad. Nobody, not even my girl, tells me what to do like I’m some kind of idiot who hadn’t thought about it yet. A bitter sarcasm seeped into my words, and I spat the next sentence at her.

“Great idea, Nat. Who’s gonna hire a guy like me? What am I gonna do, be a Wal-Mart greeter? Hey, welcome to the store, I promise I won’t beat you up and there’s thirty percent off diapers on aisle six.”

“Jesus, Hutch, I don’t know! There’s got to be something! This can’t be the only way!”

“You don’t get it. You never got it.”

“Then
talk
to me. Don’t go off making crazy deals for fights that will get you killed!” Natalie’s voice broke at the end and she covered her face in her hands. Normally I would go to her, wrap my arms around her, tell her that everything would be okay. But it wouldn’t be okay. I bit my lip and softened my tone. I had to explain, somehow. I had to get her to understand that this was my only option.

“The pack—hey, look—I screwed up. I sold them out and I have to do right by them. I have to fix things or I’m not fit to lead them.”

“Then don’t. Leave the pack. Let someone else take over.”

“I can’t—are you
crazy
?”

“Out.”

Natalie pointed out through her door. Her face was frozen like ice.

“Get. Out.”

“Natalie—“

“Out.”

Rage boiled through my blood. There was so much I was juggling. All of my responsibilities to the pack. Once Tommy had wrung us dry we’d have nothing. I couldn’t do that to them. And now Natalie, the one person I loved, was shutting me out. It turned my stomach over in pain.

“Fine. I thought I could count on you, Nat. I thought you were the one person I could count on.”

“Not now. Not like this, Hutch.” Her face was stained with tears and her hands were shaking. “Count me out.”

“Fine. Whatever.” I stormed to the front door and turned around on the step. “I’m not going out like this Nat. I’m going to win and when I’m back—”

“You don’t get it Hutch. This is it. If you go through with this, win or lose… it’s over. I never want to see you again.”

“Natalie, I promise—”

“No more promises. I’m done. Goodbye, Hutch.”

With that, she closed the door.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Natalie

I sat in front of the blank piece of paper. Once, I’d been able to paint anything and make my problems disappear. It had been a week since I’d kicked Hutch out, and I still didn’t know if I’d made a mistake. A knock on the outside of the garage door broke me from my thoughts.

“Natalie?”

I looked up from the empty sheet to see my dad standing outside of the garage, peering in.

“Yeah, Pops? Are you okay? Can I help you with anything?” It had been two days since the surgery, and my dad was healing up alright. He hated to ask me for help, though, and I had to press him to let me do anything. At least I’d been clearing out some of the trash. The kitchen was the cleanest it had ever been, and you could even see the floor in some spots of the living room.

“I’m making lunch,” he said. “Corndogs and macaroni salad.”

“Thanks, I’m not that hungry.”

“You haven’t been hungry all day.”

“I’m just not hungry.”

He paused but didn’t leave. His shadow cast a darkness over the piece of paper I was unsuccessfully trying to paint on.

“What is it, Pops?”

“What happened with that guy you were seeing?”

I sighed. I did
not
want to get into a discussion with my dad over my love life or lack thereof. I lay down my paintbrush and pulled my hair back away from my face into a loose ponytail.

“He’s gone. I broke up with him. We didn’t work out.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“No, Pops.” I didn’t need him to commiserate with me.

“You sure? Maybe you would want to talk about it.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. We’re done.”

“Well, why? It was over so fast—“

“Pops, you married a shifter. Don’t tell me you don’t know what it can be like.”

My dad flinched back. I was immediately sorry I’d brought up my mother. Hutch wasn’t nearly that bad, but he was a wolf at heart. I couldn’t be with someone who brought that side out of me. It was impossible to keep a straight head when I let the monster loose, and I didn’t want to ruin any future relationship with stupid plans like the one Hutch had made.

God, what an asshole. What a monster. I was wrong to ever trust him. In the doorway, my dad shifted his weight onto his side. He coughed.

“Did he... did he hurt you, Nat?”

“What? No! God, no. No, it was just... look, we didn’t work out, okay? I don’t want to be like that. I don’t want to be around people like that.”

My dad’s shoulders relaxed.

“Okay. So you’re going to stay here a while longer?”

“Sure. Just for a while. I want to make sure the post-surgery stuff goes okay.”

“It’s going fine.”

“I know, Pops. But I want to be sure.”

Truth be told, I didn’t want to go back to my apartment in the city. Living out here had its downside, but I kind of liked the community and...well, it felt like home. People would come by and chat, have lemonade. You never met your neighbors in the city, not unless they were stalkers. And Hutch was right. My city apartment felt small and cramped after I’d let my wolf out.

“I’ll leave your lunch in the fridge, then,” he said.

Staring back down at the page, I dipped my paintbrush in the mason jar of water and then into the alizarin crimson. Red. My favorite color. My brush hovered over the paper. I’d never been one to sit and agonize over a painting, but now I... I couldn’t paint.

The brush went back into the mason jar. The red paint swirled through the water off of the tip of the brush, like the aftermath of a shark frenzy. The clear water turned pink, light reflecting through the watered down pigment. Try something else, then. Try—

Another knock made me slip and drop the paintbrush. It fell onto the paper, ruining the page with diluted color.

“Shit,” I said. “Pops, I don’t—“

“Oh, she doesn’t write, she doesn’t call, now she’s telling me I look like her old man. Some friend you turned out to be.”

The voice was female, and when I looked up, there was only one silhouette that I could recognize.

“Gina?” I asked. I stood up, stretching my legs out and tossing a paper towel over the wet page. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same of you,” she said. “Hutch needs you right now. Where did you go running off to?”

Angry as hell, I nearly banged my head on the top of the work table scrambling out from my painting lair. I left the ruined paper behind and came out into the sun to face Gina.

A loose tank top hung over her wiry frame and her hair was back in a long dark ponytail. Her eyes, too, darkened as I came out. I tripped over a box and stumbled before standing finally in front of her. My cheeks flushed.

“Look,” I said. “I don’t want anything more to do with Hutch. I can’t be with him when he’s risking his life on a stupid fight.”

“That’s what I need to talk to you about,” Gina said. “He’s gone.”

“Gone?”

Her eyebrows knitted together in worry, and she glanced over to the front door of the house.

“He left. He told me about this fight thing, but... hey, can we go someplace without other people around? To talk?”

“I don’t have anything to say,” I said.

“Look, Natalie,” she said, “I don’t know what went on between you two, but Hutch is in trouble. Serious trouble. And not just the fight. I...look, I just want to talk. I don’t expect you to come running back to the pack, but I need your help right now. I don’t have anyone else to talk to about this, and Hutch didn’t leave so much as a note telling anyone where he was going.”

When I first met Gina, I thought she was a dumb fighter. All muscle, no brains, and definitely not someone who would ever want to talk to a girl like me. But her voice was so earnest and worried right now that I couldn’t help but listen to her. I sighed.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s take a walk.”

I led her down the sidewalk, the same way I’d taken Tommy. Gina had a fierce stride, though, and when she looked around the street, there wasn’t the same look of disdain in her eyes. Instead, I saw her examine the neighborhood with something that looked an awful lot like envy.

Shortly we came to an abandoned lot. The grass grew wild and weedy up to the short retaining wall, and we sat down on the crumbling brick. Gina crossed her legs and leaned forward, her elbows resting on her knees.

“Natalie, I don’t know how to save him.”

My chest tightened. I thought of the last time I’d seen Hutch, laying in his arms.

“What do you mean, save him?”

“He told you about the fight, yeah?”

I nodded slowly.

“He didn’t ask me about the deal at all,” Gina said. “I would’ve told him not to do it, I swear. He let it slip one night when he was drunk, like it was some kind of grand gesture that would make up for all his fuck-ups. I know I’d been down on him and, don’t get me wrong, he deserves it, but I’ll always have his back y’know. But I told him he was an idiot to even consider it. I wish I hadn’t, though. Maybe if I’d listened better he wouldn’t have left without telling anyone where he was going.”