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Fucking coward.
It wasn’t the first time some big talker failed to live up to the noise, backing down at the last second because of some bullshit excuse.
I finished my whiskey and hollered around the curtain for another, tapping my empty glass on the cement wall as I swiped the back of my hand over my mouth.
Lighting my last cigarette, I went back to the benches in the private room, inhaling deeply until my lungs were filled with the sweet tarry taste of tobacco.
Grey held up his phone, showing Ava Jade a video of Alpha; the female fighter Diesel had wanted to acquire for a fight here since we started the events.
“See how she uses her legs,” Grey was saying, pointing to the screen, and Ava Jade nodded. “She weakens your stability like that so when she strikes up top you go down harder. She’s good on the mat, too. Don’t let her bring you down. If she does, you won’t be able to get out of it.”
Her cheekbones flared. She disagreed.
I couldn’t say whether she was right or wrong about her ability to take Alpha. I’d only seen her fight once, but she was a lethal combination of speed and size. The other girl, even one in the same weight class as her, didn’t stand a chance.
And Ava Jade was at least a full weight class down. Possibly two weight classes. But then again, she’d almost had me that night out behind the apartment buildings. She hadn’t needed her blades then, just the incentive of getting her winnings from betting on me in the fight and the rush of a challenge.
As twitchy as I was that I wouldn’t be smashing heads tonight after all, at least I got to watch this fight. It was the best alternative, and maybe I’d get a second hand release from watching her take Alpha down.
It wouldn’t lift the heavy burden pressing down on my soul, but it might soothe it. For another day. Another hour. Another minute at least.
If Julia didn’t call soon…
I finished off my cigarette and stomped it out beneath my boot.
“How are you on the ground?” Grey asked my Ghost, and her lips pressed together tight.
He took her silence and expression to mean something they didn’t. It wasn’t that she wasn’t good on the ground, it was that if she got stuck in a hold, unable to move with someone on top of her, she panicked. It was that panic that would be her undoing someday.
It was a scar that we needed to help her heal. It could save her life.
“Focus on what you’re good at,” I found myself saying.
Her gaze flicked up to meet mine, burning eyes boring into me. “Too bad I can’t use my blades,” she said with a smirk that didn’t reach her eyes.
“You don’t need them,” Corvus said, entering through the curtain with my fresh whiskey in his hand. He passed it to me, going to kneel in front of Ava Jade with thin strips of torn cloth to wrap her knuckles. “She might have more skill than you, but it’s at a professional level. She won’t fight dirty, and she won’t be expecting you to.”
“She also won’t expect you to be able to take a hit as well as you can,” Grey added. “You need to outlast her and wait for your opening.”
“She’s weak in the knees,” I put in. “During the fight I saw last year in Lodi, she took a hit to her inner right knee, not even a hard one, and it almost put her flat on her ass.”
Ghost nodded, taking it all in.
The noise and light from the main floor pushed into the private space as Diesel and Pinkie entered, throwing the curtain back shut behind them. “Alpha’s here,” he announced. “Fight’s in fifteen. Is she prepped?”
“Almost,” Corvus growled.
“Put this on,” Pinkie said, and I noticed the tiny ass top and shorts in his mammoth fingers. He tossed it to Ava Jade, and she caught it in the fist Corvus wasn’t currently wrapping.
Corvus snatched them from her fingers before she could get a good look at them. He pushed to his feet, holding them out to Diesel with murder in his eyes. A smile found my lips.
“The fuck is this, Dies?” he asked, holding the tiny shorts and sports bra between his fingers like they personally offended him. He shoved them back at Pinkie. “She isn’t wearing that.”
Ava Jade didn’t hide her amusement at the exchange, calmly offering her hand to Grey for him to finish the job Corvus started.
“She is,” Diesel said. “She can’t fight in a skirt and a baggy band tee, son.”
“That’s fucking lingerie,” he argued, jabbing two fingers to the outfit lying on Pinkie’s palm.
