Losing Streak (The Lane) (2 page)

I didn’t have to fake the mocking noise that escaped.

“Well, congratulations are in order, I guess.”

“For?” It was a purr, unnatural. He had a playbook and he was following it to the letter.

I slowly set the rag to the side and braced my hands against the bar.

“You just met the first girl that shit doesn’t work on. Now you gonna order something or you needing me to hose you off? I’m fine with either.”

“I’d fuck you half stupid.”

The room around us went instantly and utterly quiet. Even Andrew paused mid-note, having either heard or sensed something was about to go down. But Frat Boy didn’t so much as blink. He stood staring at me, a determined, if somewhat desperate, expression on his face. Over his shoulder, I spotted a group of guys near his age laughing and honest-to-God elbowing each other. His persistence suddenly made a lot more sense.

“Really now?” I dragged my eyes back to him and made a show of looking him over closely, as if really taking his oh-so-eloquent offer into consideration. “That’s a pretty bold statement. Does it include memory loss?”

“What?” His nose wrinkled slightly, and something about the sight of it made the bars of my beast’s cage feel white-hot and stretched too tight and too thin, in danger of snapping under the heat and the strain. My nails dug into my palm as I struggled to keep my voice even.

“Memory loss. You said you’d fuck me half stupid. Well, does that half happen to include memory loss?”

“Baby, it can include whatever you want it to.”

I smiled and leaned in closer, brushing the blond curls away from my neck. His eyes immediately fixated on the unobstructed view of my cleavage, just like I figured they would.

“In that case—” I let the grin fall from my face and fixed him with a hard look as he moved closer as if drawn by an invisible pull, “—I’d still say no. In fact, make that a fuck, no. Now get out of here before I forget how bad I need this job.”

Frat Boy’s lips thinned almost to the point of disappearing completely, and something fiery and dangerous flashed in his eyes. A sudden flurry of excitement in my chest had me swallowing back a wild burst of laughter.

“I don’t think you know—”

“I don’t,” I interrupted, almost gleeful when his nostrils flared. “And that’s the way it’ll stay, lover boy.”

Jackson took an uncertain step in my direction, as if torn as to what his move should be. There were the roles we wanted to play and the roles that were ours. His would always be the brother who believed he should be the keeper of his older but smaller sister yet knew his place was the kept. Sweet Jackson, wanting so badly to be more than he was.

Much like Frat Boy in front of me.

I leaned forward farther still, bracing my hands against the shiny wood between us. Frat Boy was nearly humming with hostile humiliation, clenching and unclenching his fists at his side. Somehow I managed to grin wider, the closest to delighted I’d come since the last brawl I’d both started and finished.

Few could manage that better than me.

“But more importantly, Casanova,” I continued, my voice both conversational and cruel, a feat I’d put real effort into perfecting, “you do not know me. Count yourself lucky for that.”

I had a feeling whatever kind of hold he had on his temper was just as precarious as the one I had on mine. He wouldn’t be able to control it much longer, and then I wouldn’t have to control mine. It’d have a target that didn’t come with any kind of risk or real consequences. Those were my favorite kind.

“Fuck you, you stuck-up bitch.” He said it low, too low to be heard, and yet in the near-silence of the still-watching room, it seemed to echo as if shouted.

I didn’t hold back the laugh this time.

“I think we established that that’s on the list of things definitely not happening.”

Then, in that space between blinks, his final ounce of control slipped.

He damn near leaped the small distance left between us, hands outstretched, as though he planned on coming over the bar or dragging me over it to him.

Jackson yelled out something that sounded like “Oi!” An outbreak of hurried, frantic activity erupted as customers shifted back out of the battleground and others rushed forward to take their place, maybe for a better view. Maybe to come to my rescue, seeing a boy that easily outweighed me twice. The ones who knew the truth of the situation, who had seen too many scenes similar to this before, were no doubt shoving through the crowd, counting on Jackson to jump in and start breaking it up for them to finish. But Jackson was never quite fast enough. I doubted he ever would be.

I’d already latched on to Frat Boy’s short, purposely messy locks and I used his momentum against him. Twisting my wrist around, I brought him cheek first onto the bar he’d probably thought he would be vaulting over. Before he had a chance to realize his position and switch gears from fight to flight, I added my other hand, grabbing the back of his neck and standing up on my tiptoes, putting as much weight as I could down to keep him pinned there.

I felt rather than saw Jackson’s helpless presence at my side, his hands half-raised as if he wanted to pull me back but knew he was probably better off not. I ignored him, instead pulling Frat Boy closer toward me, taking care to let my nails really get deep into the tender, vulnerable skin of his scalp, knowing instinctively he’d try to fight it, making it that much more painful for him. Using that to my advantage, I bent close to his exposed ear.

“I told you not to make me forget how bad I need this job.”

He attempted to rear back and I let him only far enough to slam him back against the wood. Behind him, Mike, the smaller of our two bouncers, had broken through the gawkers and I knew he would let me continue, at least until Jared caught up. Mike loved few things more than a good bar fight.

“You whore!” Frat Boy snarled and I chuckled.

“Of course I am, sweetie. I’m a whore with standards. Standards you are far, far beneath.”

The security officer at our old high school had once shown me how to locate the mandibular nerve along the jaw that connected a bunch of other nerves in the face. She’d said pretty girls who lived in bad neighborhoods needed to be able to protect themselves. I never had to use it back then. Used it frequently now. It could be tricky to find—a person’s head had to be tilted at just the right angle—and you had to sort of dig your thumb in, almost underneath the jawbone where it angled down toward the chin, and wiggle it around until you hit it.

Frat Boy let out a strangled yelp and bucked in earnest. Hurt like a bitch, having your mandibular manipulated. It was different for everybody, depending on their level of pain tolerance and how merciful the person pressing on it was feeling. But for most, it was as if razor blades soaked in acid were scraping slowly across the length of your jaw and up the side of your skull. It didn’t leave any kind of permanent damage, but it was enough to make you want to claw your own skin off in an attempt to make the pain stop. Which was exactly the effect it was having on Frat Boy, judging by the way he pawed at the wood underneath him.

I didn’t have much longer. Jared had almost shoved his impossibly large frame through the last of the spectators.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” I continued in a rush, wanting to see this through to the end before he was ripped away from me. “You listening, Casanova? Because I’m only going to say this once.” He didn’t answer, but I plowed ahead anyway. The clock was ticking. “You are gonna reach into your back pocket and pull out your wallet. You are then going to give me the biggest bill you have in there. If it’s anything smaller than a twenty, I’ll reach into my back pocket. Heads up. Sometimes I have to open beers or cut seals off the bottles. What ends up in my hand will be a surprise for both of us. Either one will work to give you a nice little reminder about how to act in the future when a girl tells you no.”

“You thieving—”

I dug my thumb in a little further, and, for a little extra encouragement, wiggled it slightly as I scanned the room quickly, ignoring his thrashing. I caught Mike’s eye and smirked when he gave a small nod of approval.

“Thief?” I scoffed, turning my attention back to Frat Boy. “Please. It’s a tip. A generous tip, if you value your pretty-boy face. And to show my appreciation, I’ll let you go back to your friends without letting one of my friends take over where I left off.” I jerked his head back, keeping my thumb in place and forced him to look at me. “So what’ll it be, Casanova?”

It pained him to do so—I could see it in his eyes. But I’d just proven that he wasn’t a match for me, not when I wasn’t afraid to fight dirty. Slowly, grudgingly, he reached into his pocket and with shaking fingers, extracted a crisp fifty from his wallet and held it up.

“Appreciate it, lover boy.” I snatched it, then shoved him backward as hard as I could. He stumbled slightly and glared as he attempted to straighten himself out. I flashed a grin at him. “Now get. And thanks for buying me dinner. Don’t wait around, though. I’m not gonna call.” I flashed him the bill, wanting to laugh out loud when he let out a sound between a stutter and a snarl before stalking back to the table of his guffawing instigators. They’d never let him live this down.

Which was exactly what I was hoping for, of course.

Though the action was clearly over, the rest of the room was still watching, their gazes heavy, one more so than the others. I squinted, attempting to make out the figure at the back of the room, close enough that he’d been able to see everything, but far enough back the line between him and everyone was obvious. For a second, a pang of barbed anxiety shot through me, and I felt my eyes widen. But Joshua King only shook his head and pointed a playful finger in my direction before turning and heading back toward his office. I let out a relieved breath. It was like I had told Bri. We had an understanding, Joshua and I. We might have never spoken of it out loud, and I wasn’t entirely sure the whys of it, but there was no denying it existed. So long as I mostly kept myself in check, he’d turn a blind eye to the times when I didn’t.

Dismissing the others, I turned and put my back against the bar, tucking the fifty in my bra. Finally, I addressed Jackson, who was still standing next to me, all but wringing his hands. “Go on. Say it.”

“You ever think about that kind of stuff before you do it?”

I cut my eyes at him.

“Of course I do. Thought about every possible outcome of every possible action. Picked the logical one.”

He shook his head, causing a stray curl to fall across his forehead. I fought the urge to move it back into place, then adjust his cap for good measure.

“You’re always lecturing me to stay out of trouble and then you go and do shit like that.” He grinned then, big and easy. It was his “Jackson smile” as Mama called it, as if his was unique to every other one in existence.

“There’s a saying for that, you know.”

“Yeah?” He laughed. “Obviously not practice what you preach.”

“Definitely not,” I agreed.

“So what is it then?”

“Do as I say and not as I do?”

We whirled around at the sound of the unfamiliar voice, Jackson still smiling, me with my much more natural frown in place. The guy standing across from us managed to mirror both somehow without looking utterly ridiculous, his lips half-curled in an almost smirk.

I narrowed my eyes but nodded.

“That’s the one.”

“Thought so.” A full-on smile played at the edges of those full lips, contrasting with the hard edge in his eyes. Now this was a boy who had a beast that he didn’t bother locking away. He’d made friends with it. “My second guess was going to be ‘one in the hand, two in the bush.’”

He was rewarded with a loud, startled bark of laughter from Jackson but his eyes never left mine. He didn’t even seem put off by my lack of a reaction.

“You want something in particular or you just here to butt into other peoples’ conversations?”

“Rosie!”

I ignored Jackson as I continued to stare down the intruder, attempting to intimidate him, wordlessly inform him that if he was here to play, too, I was more than willing to handle him like I did the last guy. And the guy before him. And anyone else who dared to cross my path who wasn’t crucial to it. Because while his aged leather jacket and genuinely messy hair indicated that he was not a part of Frat Boy’s Khaki and Plaid entourage, you could never be sure. He could have been their token townie. He might have come to avenge his brother’s battered dignity. Or get his money back.

Neither was going to happen.

“Well?” I prompted when he didn’t answer right away.

He smiled for real this time but it was dark. It was the smile of a boy with a beast who recognized a girl with one inside her and approved.

“Thought I’d get a refill. The butting in was a bonus.”

“Should have stuck with the refill.” I scowled. “What do you want?”

“Bud Light, if it’s not too much trouble.”

“It is.” I turned to Jackson still standing next to me, now with a weary look in his eyes. “You heard the man. Fetch his piss water so he can go.”

Jackson merely shook his head, muttering something about my attitude and the lack of tips from it as he moved toward the coolers. Once we were alone, I rested my elbows against the bar, aware the action pushed my breasts up toward the top of my V-neck. I only just managed to keep the surprise off my features when he gave them only a cursory glance before focusing his attention back on my face.

“So. You rough up potential suitors often?”

I shrugged. “Enough.”

“Take it you don’t have a boyfriend.”

“You take correctly.”

“Having a hard time finding someone who’s enough of a masochist?”

“Something like that.”

His smile was back as Jackson returned with his beer and put it down in front of him. Before Jackson could ask, “Tab or receipt?” I piped up.

“That’ll be three-fifty for the piss water. Another dollar for the Spanish Inquisition act. That’s four-fifty if you’re particularly bad at math.”

Without a word or even a change of expression, he handed me a twenty. “Keep the change.”