Fix You: Bash and Olivia, Book 3 (3 page)

Chapter Three

Olivia

They were calling his name.

The whole place was screaming for him now, those fickle bastards. Stan apparently wasn’t a fan of this change of allegiance, because he threw his head back and bellowed before coming at Bash again, fury giving him another burst of energy. I only hoped Bash could weather the storm again without getting seriously hurt.

He managed to dodge several blows before Stan put him in a headlock, and the spectators howled in protest. They didn't want to see wrestling. They wanted blood.

"He's setting him up," Matty said, leaning low so he could talk in my ear. "See the way he's leaning into it, not fighting to get free, swinging all the while? He knows he can’t take him out with a shot to the head or face, so he’s punishing his soft parts. Eventually, those blows to the body are going to be debilitating."

I clung to that hope, fists clenched at my side so hard I could feel my nails cutting into my skin. “Eventually” could be a long time away and I just wanted to go in there and help somehow. To run up and give Stan's nuts the same treatment I'd given Mr. Grabby-Hands a few minutes before.

But I didn’t have to. Right then, Bash jerked free, yanking out of the other man's grasp in one fluid motion and planting himself behind the giant. He tried to turn his massive block head to locate his prey, but Bash was already there, mercilessly pummeling his sides from behind. His fist connected with a thud so loud it actually hushed the room to near silence. Stan groaned and dropped to the ground in a heap, without even the courtesy of a “timber.” Bash stood there, sweaty, muscular chest heaving as he gazed down at Stan to see if the other man would get up.

He didn't, instead rolling into fetal position and clutching at his back. A second later, the place erupted into cheers. The MC climbed back into the ring and held Bash’s hand aloft before shouting into the mic.

“We have a new champion in the house!”

He’d won it. Bash had beaten The Tank and he wasn’t even close to dead, as far as I could tell.

I squealed and launched myself at Matty, legs shaking with relief. To his credit, he handled the spontaneous display of affection well, hugging me back and patting my shoulder absently as he called his brother’s name and cheered.

“He did it. He fucking did it.”

Bash was led around the ring in a circle and then down the stairs. He pulled away from the handler amid high fives and congratulatory slaps on the back from now-adoring fans and headed our way. A line of blood still trickled from the cut above his swollen eye, but other than that he looked okay.

Hell, who was I kidding? He looked amazing.
Vital and alive and healthy and frigging amazing. He stopped a few feet from me and I let go of Matty to face Bash head-on.

“Congratulations,” I murmured. Ignoring the blood and sweat, I leaned in and kissed him gently on the mouth. “I’m really proud of you.”

The rest of that speech—the part where I ripped him a new asshole for scaring us and risking his health and safety that way—could wait until later. After I’d gotten past the just-grateful-he-was-alive stage and could feel anger toward him again.

“I’m so sorry about earlier tonight. I’ll make it up to you,” Bash said into my ear right before
Matty pulled him in for a half hug.

His voice sounded suspiciously thick as he told Bash how proud he was of him. “We have to take care of that eye ASAP, bro,”
Matty continued as he stood back and surveyed his brother’s injury.

Bash raised his fingers to the wound and winced as he explored the area around the cut. “Yeah, it’s definitely swollen and needs
a half dozen stitches, I think, but Mickey has a cut man here who can—”

“Cut man, my ass,”
Matty snorted. “Is he a pro, like your trainer out there? Fuck that. We’re going to the emergency room. You need a real doctor.”

“The whole point of this was to make money. If you don’t want Mickey’s guy to do it, then you can do it at home, but I’m not going to the ER. It will cost a grand, easy.”

The McDaniels boys faced off against each other, and it was something to see. They looked so different, Bash with his stubble of black hair and piercing blue eyes and that stubborn jaw, and then Matty with his close-cropped honey-colored hair and laser-green eyes and that just-as-stubborn jaw, but just the expressions on their faces were so similar, it was easy to tell they were brothers. Brothers who loved each other like crazy.

The goon who’d led him from the ring wound up breaking the tension and ending the standoff by tapping Bash on the shoulder and gesturing behind him. “We
gotta go. Mr. Flynn wants to see you.”

"I'll be back in a few minutes. You guys can meet me by the exit—I shouldn't be long."

I opened my mouth to protest, but Matty beat me to it, barking out a laugh.

"You think I'm letting you out of my sight right now? You obviously can't be trusted."
Matty faced the goon, a blatant challenge in his gaze. "We'll go see Mr. Flynn together. You have a problem with that?"

The guy looked like he was going to argue but then shrugged his beefy shoulders. "Hey, man, I'll bring you over there. It's up to him if he lets you in.’

I swallowed a sigh of relief and latched on to Bash's arm. We cut through the crowd quickly, although we got held up a few times by new fans wanting his autograph. I was still riding on the high of his victory and relative good health when a girl in a tank top stopped right in front of him and lifted her shirt to expose her boobs encased in a barely there lace bra.

"Can I have your autograph?" She handed him a Sharpie with a flourish, and I was about to take it and jam it up her nose when he shook his head.

"Sorry, I'm in kind of a hurry."

She pouted her overly lined lips and ran a finger over his biceps.
"Maybe later then?"

He gave her a tight smile and went around her.

"Is this what it's like?" I called to him over the chatter of the now-dispersing crowd.

"What do you mean?"

He glanced back at me with a carefully blank expression, and I was pretty sure I had my answer. So apparently, part of being Bash's girlfriend meant dealing with hos trying to hook up with him. Apparently that was a common occurrence in real boxing too. Groupies.

I tightened my fingers on his arm and he gave my hand a squeeze. We had more important things to worry about right now, but once this was all settled, I was going to have to do some serious soul-searching. I refused to be one of those whining, simpering women who lived in constant fear and paranoia of their man cheating. Bash had done nothing but prove time and
time again that he was honorable and loyal and a true gentleman. We couldn't control how anyone else behaved, and with everything we'd already been through, I sure as hell wasn't going to let some silly trick get between us.

Bash pulled up short as Mickey's muscle stopped in front of a door.

He knocked three times and swung it open, waving us in. "These two insisted on joining us. You want I should take them outside, or…?" He leveled a questioning brow at his boss, who smiled.

Oddly enough, I’d imagined him being bigger, for all the trouble he’d caused us, but in reality, he was small enough that the giant chair he sat in dwarfed him.

"Nah, they're okay. I'm sure they won't be any trouble now that we're in business together, am I right?" He aimed the question at Matty, who stiffened beside me.

"I don’t know about being in business, but I have no plans to cause any problems,"
Matty said, but his tone was icy to say the least.

That clearly didn't worry Mickey any, and he gestured to his boy to go.

Once the door was shut, he leaned back in his chair and clapped his hands together three times. "Bravo, kid. Bra-fucking-vo." He shook his head, a bemused grin splitting his face. "I didn't think you had it in you. I'd heard about you around town. They said you were slick and smart. You proved that tonight."

He leaned down to tug open a desk drawer and reached in. Bash and
Matty both took a step in front of me, at which point Mickey laughed. "What? Like I'm going to shoot you? What am I, an animal? I got your money, is all."

He tossed a pile of bills bound with a rubber band onto the scarred desk and it landed with a
thunk
.

"Five grand."

He said it and sat back, waiting. Like he was waiting for the argument.

Bash didn't disappoint. "Bullshit," he spat, and stepped forward to smack the desk with a taped hand. "You know I gave them a hell of a show out there, Mickey. I earned more than that."

"That's debatable, kiddo. See, my line of work requires more than a few fighters coming out there with a fancy move or two. It was only a couple rounds. We need four or better to really make it worth people's while. You fought for a total of six minutes. Where else can a guy without a college education make five g's in six goddamned minutes?"

"In a fucking boxing ring, that's where,"
Matty said, stepping up to stand next to his brother. "He could've gotten killed out there. We all know this isn't a per-hour gig. The money has to be enough to make the risk worthwhile." His voice was getting louder by the second and the dread in my stomach was getting worse the louder he got. This wasn't going to end well.

Bash put a hand on
Matty's now-heaving chest and pushed him back with a murmured word in his ear that I couldn't make out. When he faced Mickey again, he seemed calm and in control. "Let's be reasonable here, okay? We both know you made out huge here. The money you let Matty borrow is in your possession to loan out again at your usual rate, and you had to have made a killing on that fight. No more money needs to exchange hands. You keep that, wipe his debt from the books and we all walk away happy, okay?"

Mickey's eyes took on a cunning glint that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. He looked to me and tipped his head.
"You the girlfriend?"

I wet my lips and nodded slowly. Bash stepped closer to me and took my hand.

"She's got nothing to do with this, Mick. Let's keep it between us."

He waved him off and kept his gaze locked on me. "What do you think would happen, missy, if I just let them back out on a deal without there being any consequences? People would start to call me soft. Think I'm a sucker. I can't be nobody's sucker, doll. That's suicide in my business. You understand?"

I swallowed hard and looked away, hoping that was a rhetorical question, but then reconsidered. "Well, I wouldn't think you were a sucker. I'd think you were a fair man and I'd want to do business with you." My voice cracked on the end, but not bad, all things considered.

He nodded approvingly and turned his attention back to Bash. "She's a keeper. She's got big balls, like the two of you. I'll tell you what. Take the five grand and I’ll think this all over, look at the numbers from tonight, then I'll give you a call tomorrow. At the very least, you've bought yourself a little more time to get the rest of the cash. If I can do more for you, I'll let you know."

He stood and walked to the door, swinging it open wide. Matty seemed to hesitate, but Bash gave him a shove and he started walking. There wasn't much else to do at that point. Now we'd have to wait, and odds were pretty good this whole thing wasn't over.

And still? Bash was okay. I could deal with anything that came my way now. As we walked down the hallway toward the exit, I was already thinking of where to take my car to get
the best price for it when Bash tugged me to a stop.

"We'll meet you back at the apartment," he said to
Matty. His brother nodded and made his way through the door out toward the parking lot.

"Let's just go, Bash. I don't want to spend another second here," I said, leaning closer, soaking in his warmth. He pulled back, his intense gaze captured mine, and I forgot everything else for a second as the world fell away. He tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and dipped down until his face was level with mine.

He kissed one corner of my mouth and then the other before whispering, "Thank you. Thank you for caring enough to come. Thank you for realizing you couldn't stop me. Thank you for being you." His beautiful face was so sincere, my heart nearly exploded. "Mickey's right. You got balls, doll."

The words comforted me from the inside out and I offered him a hard-won smile. "You should've seen me earlier. I broke away from this guy and kicked him in the nuts just like you showed me.
Hard, too. You would've been proud."

His eyes clouded with worry, but I shushed him before he could grill me.

"It was fine. A silly thing, but I was glad you taught me those moves. I feel stronger every day I'm with you. But if you ever keep something like this from me again, you're going to see exactly how tough I can be."

He nodded and bent to give me one last kiss, this time on the mouth. "Roger that."

He slung his arm around my shoulder and we stopped off at the locker where he’d stored his street clothes and keys, and then headed out to his car. I felt a thousand pounds lighter without the weight of his possible impending doom on my shoulders. Now to go back to his apartment and watch Matty stitch him up.