Brawler (4 page)

I’d been in foster care ever since.

It wasn’t awful in the beginning. Not right away. Not until my second home. Those are months I don’t remember. Not even the good stuff. When you bury a body in the backyard, you don’t keep the jewelry. You put it all in the dirt and you live like it never happened, even as a black briar patch begins to grow above your lie.

It was at my third home that I finally came alive again. That’s when I started boxing in earnest. I was trying to learn to defend myself but I was a small kid, most of my strength and height not coming around until I was thirteen and it was too late. The damage was done. I was who I was and I absolutely knew who I wasn’t. Eventually boxing became a coping mechanism. I used it to funnel the rage, hate, and disgust that lived in my blood and seeped from my pours. I put it all in the ring, threw it all at the bag, and finally I started to detox from it. I found relief, though it never lasted long. The briars always found me.

I hit the gym hard after my meeting with Dan. After the fight in the woods, the black cloud cast over my future, the beating from the Asshole, and the cold shoulder from most of the guys I’d called friends at school, I was feeling the animal begin to growl. I needed to give it its day or risk succumbing to the rage and getting myself in even more trouble. I needed to let it run.

I needed to hit something.

I didn’t go back to Dan’s office. At least, never to discuss my case. Our next appointment was scheduled for after school a week later at his house.

That shit blew my mind.

“Be careful,” Callum warned me at school that day. “His daughter is hot.”

“Thanks for the warning, but I’m not going there to meet girls.”

He snorted. “Yeah. Sure. Good luck with that.”

“What’s funny?”

“Girls trip over their tits to get to you, dude!” he exclaimed.

Heads all around the quad turned to look at us.

“Keep your damn voice down,” I growled at him.

“Tell me it’s not true.”

“It’s physically impossible, is what it is.”

“It’s still true,” he insisted.

“Fine, okay. I swear when I get there I’ll keep it in my pants.”

“Or whip it out. That sometimes sends them running in the other direction.”

I looked at him sideways. “You know that from personal experience, don’t you?”

“Only way to learn, man. By doing.”

And I was the one with the arrest record. Perfect.

Dan lived in the posh ocean side neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes. His house was huge, the driveway long and sprawling. It didn’t faze me, though. This wasn’t my first mansion. I’d been friends with Will for years. Slept at his house, swam in his pool, and went to house parties around that very neighborhood with him a thousand times. But when I walked up to the large front steps of my lawyers house and rapped the broken, scabbed skin of my knuckles against the heavy oak door, I felt truly like trash for the first time in years. I almost turned around and went home. I could call him and tell him that I wasn’t able to find the house – though a blind man could have found it – and insist we meet at his office again.

Before I could bail, the door swung open and a striking blond woman a few years younger than Dan stood in front of me. She smiled when she saw me and the warmth in her eyes knocked me back a step.

“You must be Kellen,” she said brightly. “I’m Karen. I’m so glad to meet you. Dan has said wonderful things about you.”

She reached out for me and I took her manicured hand in mine. It was ridiculously soft. Like a baby bathed in lotion. Gentle. Strange.

“Nice to meet you.”

She pulled me inside and closed the door behind us, the air conditioning enveloping me and my sweat coated skin in a chilling embrace that nearly made me sigh with relief. It was September, deep into fall, but try telling the weather that.

“Dan is in his study on a conference call,” she told me. “It’s running long and he asked me to apologize to you but he’ll have to keep you waiting for a bit. I hope that’s okay.”

“Yeah, of course. He doesn’t need to apologize. Definitely not to me,” I said, trying to stop myself from staring at the massive crystal chandelier hovering two stories above me.

Karen tisked before leading me through the entryway into a huge kitchen coated in marble and white. “He’s keeping you waiting. He needs to apologize. Why don’t you wait here at the kitchen table? It’ll be nicer for your meeting anyway. Less stuffy than his office. I can fix you something to eat. Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

“No, thank you.”

“Alright, I’m on my way out the door, but help yourself to whatever you find in the refrigerator.”

“I will, thank you.”

I wasn’t moving from that chair. The whole house made me nervous, especially when she left me alone. Were they insane? They didn’t know me! I was a kid from the hood with a brand new arrest record. They shouldn’t have even let me in the front door.

I started to feel cagey the way I did when I was cornered in the ring. My hoody felt hot and too tight, like it was sucking all the cold air from the room and turning it to pure fire around me. It was strange feeling this way alone in the open, but I couldn’t fight it. The tension was building. It was surging through my veins. I suddenly hated everything about that white kitchen and the pale wood of the table under my battered hands. I felt like a psycho sitting in a sanctuary. I was losing—

A young girl walked into the kitchen, freezing when she saw me. I pegged her age around thirteen. She looked just like her dad – just like Dan. Her hair was long, dark, and thick. Her eyes were round and gray with the same blatant open, honesty as his. Even though her mouth was different – full and pink like her mom’s – I knew her smile would be his.

It was that – the fact that she was familiar to me before I even met her – that would forever shape the way I felt about her.

She looked at me for a long time without saying anything. Just stared at me. At my face.

As I stared back, I heartily hoped that this was not the sister Callum had warned me was hot. She was cute, no doubt about it, but she was a kid. If Callum had a chub for her, I was going to have to rethink our bromance.

“Hey,” I said, lifting my hand to wave at her. To try and break the spell.

“Hi.”

That was it. One word, then it was back to staring blankly.

I was used to it. I got it from women of all ages all the time. An ex-girlfriend had told me it was because I looked like a cologne ad had dirty sex with an underwear model, producing a freakishly sexy baby that was raised by a Calvin Klein billboard.

And I was that baby.

A baby this girl couldn’t stop staring at.

"I'm Kellen,” I said, fighting a smile.

Her eyes narrowed and her backpack came down on the table in front of me with a serious
slap!
She knew I was laughing at her.

“Jenna,” she said firmly. “Are you here to see my dad or my sister?”

“Is she pretty?”

“Prettier than my dad,” she shot back.

My smile broadened. “I wish I was here to see her, then.”

Her eyes flickered to my knuckles, catching the damage before I could hide them. Kid was quick. “Did you get in a fight?”

“Yeah.”

“What was it about?”

“Something stupid.”

“Then why’d you fight about it?”

“Because I’m a guy,” I answered, feigning helplessness.

Jenna scowled at me, unhappy with my obvious dodge. “That’s not an answer.”

“When you’re from my neighborhood it is.”

“That’s dumb.”

“I already told you that.”

“Was it about a girl?”

“Do you mean over a girl or for a girl?”

“What’s the difference?”

“A lot.”

“Tell me.” She started to sit down, then burst from her seat to head deep into the kitchen. “Oh, wait, hold on! Do you want a soda?”

“I shouldn’t,” I answered as she opened the fridge, but I wasn’t entirely talking about the drink. What I knew I shouldn’t do was talk to a kid about fighting. Definitely not a kid who lived in a house like this with a mother like hers. My violent life was a dark shadow passing through this place, one that I hoped wouldn’t leave any marks on the floor or furniture.

“You shouldn’t have gotten into a fight either,” she said with a sly smile, coming back and setting a can firmly in front of me, “but you did it anyway.”

I grinned despite myself as I took hold of the cold can. “You’re a bad influence.”

She rolled her eyes impatiently. “So tell me the difference.”

I took a moment to size her up. My mom would have said she had moxy and she’d be right, the girl was flush with it. There was a spark in her that went beyond her age and her area code. She was alone with a strange guy in obvious legal trouble and she wasn’t fazed. Wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t looking down her nose or judging me either.

“Fighting
over
a girl is pointless,” I explained carefully. “Either she’s yours or she’s not, you don’t have to beat a guy to the ground to find out. If you do, she’s not worth it. Fighting
for
a girl, that’s different.”

“How?”

I took a sip of the soda, stalling. I didn’t want to tell her too much about Emma because I didn’t want to talk about the fight. I also didn’t want to explain what had happened to her in those trees. That was Emma’s business, not mine.

“I don’t know,” I dodged as I set down my can and spun it between my hands. “It just means something being able to defend someone who can’t defend themselves.”

“A girl can defend herself,” she snapped at me.

“I think you can, Nonpareil, but not everyone has as much piss as you.”

“What does nonpareil mean?”

“It’s French for unequaled. It means nothing can measure up to you.”

She blushed lightly, taken aback. “Why would you call me that?”

I felt bad about that – the blush. The accidental flirtation that could leave her with a crush on a guy that was too old, too poor, and too much trouble for her. “That’s what they called Jack Dempsey," I explained quickly and clearly. "He was an Irish boxer in the 1880s. He couldn’t be beat.”

“Because he was full of piss?”

“Yeah,” I chuckled. “And please don’t tell your parents I taught you that word.”

“I knew it before you got here,” she said with annoyance, insulted. “I go to public school. I don’t live under a rock.”

“But did you say it before?” I asked. When she didn’t answer, I nodded. “I should have watched my mouth. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. So he never lost a fight?”

I leaned back, surprised she cared. “Dempsey? No, he did. One to a guy he later went back and beat. Two more to a guy that had rigged both fights to win. He lost his last fight because he had tuberculosis.”

“If he lost so many fights, how did he get that nickname?”

“Because fighting isn’t always about winning,” I told her seriously. “Sometimes it’s about not giving up.”

“Why do you know all of this about him?”

“He’s a boxing legend.”

“I’ve never heard of him.”

“Because you’re not into boxing. I bet you’ve heard of Mike Tyson. Muhammad Ali? George Foreman?”

“The guy on QVC with the grills?”

“Yeah,” I laughed, “that’s the guy.”

“You’re really into boxing. Is that why you fight?”

I flinched inwardly at the word. I never called myself a fighter. I always thought of myself as a boxer because I liked the structure of the sport. Of being an athlete, not an animal. At least not all the time. “No, I told you. I fight because I’m a guy and I’m stupid. Boxing is different. It’s a sport, one I’m into because my grandpa was a boxer. He came over from Ireland to fight in Vegas.”

“Did he ever get big enough to sell barbeques on TV?”

I laughed again, shaking my head emphatically. “Nah, he couldn’t even sell matches on the side of the road.”

“That’s too bad.”

“It’s a tough sport. How ‘bout you? You play any sports? I’m looking at you and thinking basketball.”

She scowled at me, her gaze surprisingly scathing. “That’s what everyone says. Just because I’m tall I’m supposed to play basketball?”

“I guess not. What do you play?”

“Golf,” she replied with clear disgust.

“Are you any good?”

“God, Jenna, could you be louder?!” a voice demanded from the hall, interrupting Jenna’s reply.

A blond bombshell, a perfect knockout from head to toe, stormed into the room.

I grinned at the girl as I stood from my seat, not really understanding why I’d done it. Some crazy masculine instinct kicked in, demanding I stand up and show her how much larger than her I was. How strong and capable.

I felt like a damn caveman.

“Hi,” she said breathily, smiling up at me.

“Hi.” I offered her my hand. “I’m Kellen.”

She took my hand slowly, lingering her hold. “I know. I’ve seen you around school. I’m Laney.”

“You go to Weston?”

“Yeah. I’m a sophomore. You’re a senior this year, right?”

“Yeah, but I might graduate a semester early.”

Get out before they can throw me out.

She laughed brightly. “God, why?”

“I’m in an accelerated program.”

“You’re in Higher Focus? The classes with all the gifted kids?”

Shit, I hated that word almost as much as I hated being called a fighter. Gifted sounded like what little I had wasn't really mine. Like it was a present that had been given to me rather than anything I'd earned or accomplished on my own.

“Yeah," I replied evenly. "It’s how I ended up at Weston High. The schools in my neighborhood were too easy. Now I’m just serving my time, waiting to get out.”

“Like prison?”

“Let’s hope not,” I joked, but it wasn’t funny. Not to me.

“But if you get out early you’ll miss out on all of the good stuff.”

“Like what?”

“Like Prom and graduating with everyone else. What happens if you graduate early? They hand you your diploma and you go home? No parties? No fun? You like fun, don’t you, Kellen?”