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5
Libby
The Rollin On Gym
“Officer Tate! Hey!”
I glance up and smile when a group of teens horsing around at the front doors of the Rollin On Gym call my name. Trouble makers, law breakers, smartasses, they’re the very delinquents I, as a cop, should hate. But their rebellion is all for show. They’re good kids, and their loyalty for family and their town is fierce.
“Officer! Help me.”
Slowing my steps, I stop in front of the foursome and lift a brow. “Got a crime to report, Miss Kincaid?”
“Yeah!” Evie wears a sports bra, booty shorts, and a thick scrunchy in her hair to keep the wild curls off her face. She’s sixteen, I think, and has the body that comes with spending her life inside a pro fighting gym. Defined abs that I secretly envy every day, ropey muscles on her shoulders and biceps, and a mean right hook when someone steps up in the boxing ring. She’s a champion fighter already, and has lofty plans to go pro when she’s old enough and her daddy says she can.
She can look after herself just fine, so I know her calling me over now has nothing to do with a crime, and everything to do with the two guys that stand at her and her cousin’s back. “Ya know the sasquatch, right?” She jabs a thumb over her shoulder to Ben Conner, the boy not-so-affectionately known asSasquatch. “He made a bet, see? So, one, betting as a minor is a crime. And two, when you lose your bet and cry like a little bitch instead of pay up, that’s a crime in my gym. Tell him to hand the fifty over, and we won’t have a problem.”
“Okay, but…” I drop my bag and eye the foursome. Evie’s cousin, Lucy, also known as Bean, is a fighter just like Evie. Similar bodies, but where one is light skin, light hair, light eyes, the other is her opposite. Darker skin, mahogany hair, brown eyes. And where Evie is loud, Bean is humble, often laying her opponents out in silence. “You’re saying Benny the Sasquatch made an illegal bet?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Evie argues. “And now he won’t pay up.”
“But there are two sides to every bet, right? So that means you werealsomaking illegal bets… right?”
“Right!” Her eyes widen. “No, wait…”
“What was the bet? Perhaps I can let it pass if it was reasonable.”
“It was a circuit,” the fourth and last member of the group speaks up.
Macallistar Blair was a fighter until recently, but he had to undergo surgery on his heart, so what was once a promising fighting career is now, according to my sources, over. He carries anger in his eyes for what’s been taken from him, and I’m not sure anyone else sees that anger the way I do. Everyone is so focused on the fact he’s alive, when there was a good chance he wouldn’t be, that they don’t see his feelings on his fight career. He was planning to go pro, and now he’s not even allowed to jump rope.
“Thirtyrounds,” he continues. “Push-ups, sit-ups, hip escape, a thousand kicks, ten rounds of sparring. First to complete wins.”
“Took all damn day,” Evie growls. “The whole effing day! I won fair and square, and now he’s all ‘but my hamstring! My poor, tender, sissy hamstring was tight’.”
“You cheated!” Ben growls. “You know you don’t deserve the fifty.”
“How’d you cheat?” I wait for Evie’s bright eyes. “What did you do to have the cop’s son calling foul?”
“She—”
Benny’s voice cuts off on a squeak when Evie throws her elbow back and nails him in the gut. “I did nothing. I won fair and square, and he’s crying like a little bitch. Now I need my money, so I’m coming to the cops.”
“Snitches get stitches,” Benny growls. “I don’t have room in my life for snitches.”
“No.” She rounds on him and plops her hands on her hips. “Snitches end up in ditches. Pay up, Sasquatch, or face my wrath.”
“Alright, see, this is how this is gonna go.” I grab Evie’s shoulder and spin her back to face me. “You’re both making illegal bets, you’re bordering on child abuse with a circuit the size of the one you did, one of you threatened stitches, and another, death. Am I following this so far?”
Evie grins and nods her head.
“Right, so you’re both idiots. Take your problems to the octagon and away from me. Otherwise I’ll toss you both in the tank, separate cells, and you won’t be released until the toilets have been scrubbed.”
Wide-eyed, Evie curls her lips back with disgust. “Ew.”
“Exactly. Still want me to recover your money from the deputy’s kid?”
“No.” Turning, she grabs Lucy’s hand and tugs her away. “We’ll settle this on the mats like men.”
