Unleashed (A Bad Boy Stepbrother Romance) (94 page)

The next two days went by in a blur. Just one big smudged passage of time. Cassie and I studied Kaminski’s fight videos. She became my scout, studied MMA techniques at an astonishing rate.

She picked it up fast, and as each day passed, we became less interested in goofing off, in enjoying ourselves on this brief holiday before a fight night that we knew would be the most important thing to happen to us in a while.

When you’re in trouble, the stakes have a way of seeming larger than they are. It’s true we could just run away if we lost the fight, go into hiding, or even take a chance back in the States under new names, or in different states.

But to us, it felt like the end of the world was coming. Cassie handled it well, as well as anyone could hope to. She’s a fighter, just like me. Brave beyond her life experience had any reason to make her.

Some people paid her father a visit, nasty looking people. How they had reach even out here in the United Kingdom, I have no idea. Whoever he borrowed from was connected, and in a big way.

Kyle explained the situation to them, told them he’d have their money.

And they told him, in no uncertain terms, that if he didn’t, there’d be a price he’d have to pay, and it wouldn’t be in green, and it wouldn’t just be him who paid it.

But after several nights of tireless training and studying, of her sitting endlessly at the computer and watching fights, and me working on my conditioning, getting my health as perfect as possible before the big night, we decided to go out.

We needed a break.

And it was just what we needed.

We went out for dinner and drinks, a proper date. You might even call it our first.

Cassie wanted to go to a place she read about in her guide book. She’s got this mental checklist of things she
has
to do while in England, and it strikes me as an odd way to travel.

I’d rather wing it, go where the wind takes me.

I shouldn’t have had any drinks, but a few wouldn’t hurt me, anyway. The only rule was I had to stay on the hard liquor – no beers or wines… none of that excess sugar. No bloating, no extra water weight. I need to be at my quickest to win this fight. It’s the major advantage I have over Kaminski.

Cassie went through glass after glass of a sparkling chardonnay, and I matched her shot for shot with twelve year-old Glenlivet. It was an expensive night, for sure, but with three days until the fight, I had the distinct impression we both needed to let off some steam, cost be damned. We burned through a ton of our cash, but we came out of that restaurant laughing, hand-in-hand.