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His eyes twinkled, but the rest of his face was a blank wall. “Your cousins have gone soft since you showed up.” He was doubling down.
“Jesus Christ, Scout.” I was fully aware of Theresa watching this exchange with avid interest.
“You know they haven’t. Why are you saying this?”
He kept watching me, his face still blank. “I took a fight against a guy from Cedra Valley.”
All the oxygen left my body.
I couldn’t respond, not right away. I felt punched sideways. I was seeing stars, feeling stars. “Why would you do that?” I asked quietly.
“You know why.”
I felt the room swimming around me.
“Apparently, he’s a big deal there. Has a lot of friends.” He waited another beat, watching me. “I made sure that the fight was here. Make him come to me.”
Him. I knew Max wasn’t the fighter he was talking about, but we were both referring to Max. “I don’t want him here. This is my place,” I said, forgetting Theresa was in the room. If there was a fight happening anywhere near me, Max would be there. He loved the local fights. He loved pretending he had a say in who won.
He would salivate over coming to a fight here.
Scout leaned down. “So, we’ll do the fight not here, but close. I want home advantage. We can do it at the place you were at last week.”
That would be fine. I nodded. “Just not here. Not in Pine River.”
He studied me again. “Okay. If something else goes down, are you going to interfere again?”
That was why he was asking all of that?
I started to shake my head, but then more understanding dawned.
In his way, his fucked-up way, he was asking if I wanted my cousins involved.
“No. They can’t be a part of that.”
His eyes flared. He knew I was telling him to do whatever he was going to do away from my cousins.
I had friends who never said a word back in Cedra Valley. I came here for my family, but here was Scout. He was willing to do this for me? I knew he said it before, but it didn’t make sense to me. Why would he get involved?
“Why?”
“He doesn’t deserve to walk around. I’m going to do something about it.”
“Scout.”
He kept watching me, and his eyes were blazing. I knew he wanted to touch me. He wanted to lift me up on the counter and sink deep inside. I recognized the look, felt it inside me. My body was heating, and if I’d been on the other side of the counter with him, I would’ve stepped toward him.
“His family is powerful.”
“Even better,” he said, shaking his head. “This is the shit I know how to do.”
He remembered we had an audience before I did, his eyes sliding to Theresa. He straightened up from the counter. “Where’s your booze? I can drink tonight. I got one more night. I want to booze it up.” He picked up his plate, taking it with him as he went searching for my mom’s liquor cabinet.
I reached for my wine and drank half of it in one gulp as I rounded the counter. I was going to need something stronger.
Max was coming here. He’d hear about the fight, and he’d come.
I felt sick to my stomach.
“Don’t let that piece of shit make you feel like that.” Scout returned, a bottle of vodka in hand. He put it on the counter.
I blinked back tears because fuck Max. “Stop, Scout.”
“You stop. Get mad, Ramsay. What that piece of shit—”
“I know what he did!” I had to take a breath. God. My chest heaved. “I know what he did. I loved my dad, and I’m the reason—”
He leaned down, getting in my face. “No, you’re not. You’re not the reason for any of this. Did you give him the gun he used? He beat the shit out of you. Your cousins showed me the pictures.”
“Stop.” I shook my head.
“He broke you. You—”
“Stop!” I shoved him back, and I kept shoving him because that felt good. To shove him. To shove someone. “Stop it! You don’t know anything.”
“I know there’s a time to heal, and there’s a time to fight back. You’re at the point where you have to fight so that you can get back to healing. You shut down. That article—”
“Stop, Scout!”
He didn’t understand.
I grabbed the vodka and took it upstairs.
I was in a mood, so I opted for faux-leather pants, black, and a simple gray T-shirt. Normally it wouldn’t work, but I made this one work. The shirt was torn down the front, almost halfway. I was going for sexy messy. It was a little over the top for a football game, but I didn’t care. People could wonder where we were going afterwards.
“Hey.” Theresa pushed open the door, coming in to sit on my bed. “I gotta say, my head is spinning from whatever is going on between you and Scout Raiden.” She looked up at me. “And holy shit, you look hot.”
