Of course, off the mat, they never were. People thought fights were like they saw in the movies, all roundhouse kicks and technique. In real life, all that went to shit the first time some bastard jammed a dirty thumb in your eye and a knee to your kidney. It was messy and bloody and involved a lot of grunting.
The two of them scuffled on the grimy linoleum, blood smeared out around them. Clay managed to pin the stove door—and Hadley’s cuffed arm—to the floor with one knee while gripping handful of Hadley’s hair. He smacked the other man’s head off the floor a couple of times, before his grip slipped and he was just left with a handful of dirty blond strands in his fingers.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Grade skirt around the edge of the fight, between the smears of gore. Good plan. Get out while you can. Clay couldn’t hold it against him.
Hadley drove a knuckly punch up into Clay’s armpit, the pain scorching precisely through his arm and down his ribs— and managed to wrestle them both over so he was on top. He jammed the edge of the stove door into Clay’s throat and held it there while he scrabbled for the gun in Clay’s waistband.
Clay slapped his hand away twice as he choked. He grabbed Hadley’s face and hooked his thumb into the man’s mouth. A yank pulled Hadley’s cheek out grotesquely, his lip splitting at the corner and his eyes wet as the pain bit. He recoiled, drool and blood slick on his chin, and the pressure on Clay’s throat let up. Before he could take advantage, Hadley grabbed the door in both hands and brought it down like a hammer. Clay got his arms up enough to block—his braced forearms at first hot with pain and then heavy and numb—as Hadley hammered at him.
After a handful of blows, Hadley flung the door to the side—still tethered to his wrist—and went for Clay’s gun again. This time Clay couldn’t get his arms to cooperate enough to block. Hadley lurched back as he scrambled awkwardly to his feet, stove door dangling from one hand and gun in the other. He stepped back and spat a bloody gob of spit to the side.
“No hard feelings,” Hadley said. The gun twitched from Clay’s center of mass up to his face. It didn’t waver. “Some opportunities are just too good to pass up. So I’m afraid I’ll have to end our association.”
Clay grinned up at him. He could feel the blood slick and wet on his teeth.
“Get on with it,” he said. “I ain’t got all day.”
Hadley shook his head. “People said you had a death wish, but—”
“I think he meant me,” Grade said.
Clay hadn’t, but he wasn’t going to argue. He tilted his head back and squinted up at Grade as the younger man straightened up and aimed Arlo’s gun at Hadley.
“Put it down, kid,” Hadley said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Grade tightened his grip on the butt of the gun and shifted his stance. “Do you know how many people were shot by toddlers last year?” he asked. “Over two hundred. I have a feeling it’s not that hard. Get away from him.”
For a second, Hadley’s finger flexed around the trigger of the gun, skin pulled tight over his knuckles. Still sprawled out on the floor, Clay bit his lower lip as the almost sexual anticipation tightened his muscles.
“Big talk,” Hadley said. “Do you think you have the balls to kill someone, to put a bullet in their head and watch them die?”
Clay propped himself up on his elbow and wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “You know better than that,” he said.
“Stay the fuck down,” Hadley warned him coldly.
Clay sat up instead. The gun’s muzzle was close enough he could smell the gun oil.
“It’s like whiskey,” he said. “Everyone thinks they can hold their liquor the first time they belly up to the bar. It’s only the morning after that regrets set in.”
Hadley glared at him, but his finger didn’t move on the trigger. He worked his jaw from one side to the other as he flicked his attention from Clay to Grade and then back again. Blood trickled from his nose, and he absently licked it away as it puddled on his top lip.
“Yeah,” he said. “Lot of things work that way. By the time you have second thoughts, it’s too late to climb back out. Is that what you want for him, Clay? To be like us?”
No.The realization was a sharp-edged, unexplainable object lodged in Clay’s throat. He swallowed, but the scratchy knowledge that hedidn’t want thatwouldn’t budge. He clenched his jaw on admitting it.
Grade cleared his throat. “For the record,” he said, starch in his voice. “If you don’t get away from him, we’re all going to find out if I have the balls to pull the trigger.”
Temper grimaced Hadley’s lips back from his teeth. For a second, it looked like he was going to call Grade’s bluff. Then he backed away slowly, careful of his footsteps on the bloody floor, toward the back door. The gun stayed aimed squarely at Clay’s face.
“We’re not done with you,” Clay said as he got his feet under him. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Hadley grinned, the wide, personable smile that said, “Trust me, the whiskey is worth the price.”
“You can tell Pulaski there to shoot me,” he said as he reached behind him to fumble for the handle of the door. “But he better have damn good aim, because I do. If he doesn’t put me down with a kill shot, I’ll blow your brains all over his feet.”
Grade took a breath. Hopefully, the muttered “Ugh” at that idea was low enough that only Clay heard it.
“Did you kill Buchanan?” he asked.
