I wait for them to enter the locker rooms, then take off toward the parking lot.
I have a few messages, but I ignore all of them as I shove my phone into the center console. Out of sight, out of mind.
Besides, what do they actually care?
No. What doesPandoraactually care?
About me, and about anyone else… even about Rachel?
I bury my anger as much as I can, but I can feel myself fraying at the edges.
I leave the parking lot in a haze, barely paying attention to speed limits or red lights on my way to the warehouse.
There are a surprising number of motorcycles parked close to the warehouse. I have to maneuver around them to park my car.
The people at the warehouse know me by now, and I’m waved through the door around a belligerent couple who isn’t given the same courtesy. It’s still early in the evening, but peopleare milling around, every bit as ready as I am for the first fights to start.
“River,” one of the fighters greets me with a lopsided grin. “Here to get your ass handed to you?”
I scoff at him. I’m too jittery, too on edge, to think that I’m going to have several flawless victories tonight. But I’m also in the mood to knock someone’s lights out, and that counts for something.
Fuck Pandora.
I don’t need herapproval.
“We’ll see who gets their ass handed to them, old man,” I tell him.
Never mind that he’s maybe five years older than I am.
It makes him laugh, and I try to crack a grin but can’t quite manage one.
As I make my way through the crowd, I notice the different edge to the atmosphere. It’s always humid in here, the throngs of people pressed close together, but usually there aren’t this many people in leather jackets.
Leather jackets that are covered in patches.
These must be the bikers who’d crowded up the parking lot with their bikes.
I squeeze past a surly man with a handlebar mustache and go to sign up.
“Hey, River,” Gabby greets me. She’s the same woman who signed me up that first night. She smiles and takes my twenty bucks. “Make sure to win. I’ve got two hundred bucks riding on you.”
“No pressure,” I tell her, going for dry but only managing a flat tone. I force a grin. “Just be sure to cheer me on.” I scan the crowd. “Who am I up against first?”
“Me,” a guy says.
I give him a good look. He’s taller than I am by a few inches, with black hair tied back into a pony tail. He pulls his biker jacket off and hands it to the guy with the handlebar mustache. He’s only wearing a black tank top underneath, showing off his large biceps and forearms.
He looks familiar, and it takes me a second to realize he’s Pandora’s friend Reaper.
Just a friend, right?
I think back to how many guys she’d slept with in high school, how I’d always been thoroughly kept in the friend category until…
I swallow around the lump in my throat.
Until they found Rachel’s body.
That had been when everything went south with the two of us. The day we’d slept together, the day we’d thrown insults at each other.
