Chapter 9 The Tire Started It
HART
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MY FIST MEETS the empty wooden crate in the bar’s back alley. It splinters on impact.
It’s not enough.
My head’s spinning with anger. There are too many thoughts crashing together, all of them so fucking loud.
I spot the real gem, a half-rotted old tire tucked back in the corner. It’s the perfect fucking target.
I don’t even think. I just move.
My boots scrape the gravel. My hands flex, itching for something solid to hit.
I punch it.
The impact shocks through my arm, rattling my bones. My knuckles feel like they’ve hit stone, but it’s nothing compared to the clawing at my insides.
The thought of that guy touching her, pushing her, making her feel small while I was pouting in the fucking bathroom, it burns through me like fire. And worse, damn Bronx was there to save her, to put his slimy hands on her body.
She’s not mine to protect, but hell if that instinct didn’t take over like it’s all I’ve ever known. And I can’t even be mad at him, because who the hell knows what might have happened if he didn’t show up.
Fuck.
I punch it again.
Harder.
The rubber shrieks under the force, giving just a little, but not enough.
And hearing her call out my bullshit almost broke me. But I’m stronger than my feelings. I’ve had to be. That’s how I play the bad guy so well.
And I play it like a fucking god.
The third punch is brutal, a desperate swing, to unload all the years of frustration I’ve kept buried.
But then I see her face again. Her eyes, filled with something I can’t even name, and the way she walked away from me. The way she shut me down.
It’s too much.
Too fucking much.
I pull my fist back, and this time, I don’t hold back. My knuckles crack against the tire, the sound muffling by the rubber. The damn thing doesn’t even budge. It stays in place, laughing in my face, daring me to keep going.
I take the bait and hit it again.
This time, the pain in my hand cuts through everything else, sharp and raw. But it doesn’t stop me. Nothing will. Not until I can beat the fucking anger out of me, or maybe the confusion, the regret—the goddamn longing I’ve been holding onto for years.
“Damn, man,” a voice calls out behind me.
Bronx.
Dammit.
I don’t look up. The tire’s all I can focus on. I rear my arm and throw another punch. The rubber protests beneath me.
“You tryin’ to punch it into next week?” He drawls, his voice low and amused.
I hear the scrape of him settling onto a nearby bow, but I don’t answer.
I can’t.
What the hell would I say?
I’m too far gone to explain, too tangled up in my own rage to make sense of it. The air between us is thick with the smell of his cigar.
“I guess Anger Alleyway is as good as any place to take out that frustration.”
My hand’s starting to throb.
Good.
Everything I fucked up is all rolling over me like a damn tsunami.
“Just leave me the hell alone, Bronx.”
I don’t want advice.
I don’t want a useless conversation.
I want to be left alone.
Bronx laughs quietly and easily, as if he knows something I don’t. “Uh-huh. Sure thing. But when you’re done beating the hell outta that tire, I’ll take a go at it.”
I don’t respond.
“I was a little slow with that guy. He got the first punch in.”
I launch my arm back and slam it ahead. This one feels like it’s deep enough to tear the whole damn world apart, but it doesn’t. Nothing ever does.
I stop.
My knuckles burn and bleed. My muscles are stiff, and that hollow ache inside me, the one I’ve been trying to outrun, still lingers. The adrenaline is burning out of me, leaving nothing but raw frustration.
I drop my hands and press my palms to my face, willing the thoughts to stop.
The guilt.
The regret.
The shit I never said, but it’s still there. No matter how hard I hit that stupid tire, none of it is ever going to change.
“It’s all yours.” I storm by him, a puff of smoke hitting my face.
Dickhead.
I don’t slow down. I shove open the door and storm inside. I am two steps from the front door, already typing out the group text to tell my brothers they have ten minutes before I leave their sorry asses behind, when something catches my eye.
Not a noise.
Not a voice.
A book.
Leather-bound with dried flowers and featuring a thick strap hanging off the side for the lock.
Even from Bucky’s side of the bar, I recognize it, but I watched her throw it in the trash can the night of my last game—the one that finished any chance of a football career.
She made damn sure I saw. She’d waited for my play to end, caught my eyes from the sidelines, and tossed it away like it meant nothing.
So, I have to be wrong.
But the closer I get, the more certain I become.
I step through the exposed brick hole and onto Kiwi’s shiny wooden floor. I strut to the booth where my brothers and the Fox women huddle.
The familiar handwriting sharpens, the doodles take shape, all etched in my mind since my teen days.
A stain on the book’s corner looks just like the Dr. Pepper she spilled on it that one day, still there after all this time.
My jaw tightens.
And now it’s back. And worse? They have it. My moonshine-brained lunatic brothers. All hunched over the thing like it’s a treasure map.
“Where’d you get that?” I growl.
“Told y’all he’d sniff us out eventually.” Dean points to a heart. “Find love.”
“That’s so lame.” Josie steals the book, and my heart jumps at the thought of her tearing a page. “Going from cringy creep to corny that fast is a talent, but you suck at this.”
At what?
What the fuck are they doing?
Josie slides the book across the table, and it takes everything in me not to snatch it up and warn them about wrecking the cover. “Wheeler, you try.”
Try what?
“You have a kid, and she’s a girl, so maybe you can relate.” Josie lifts both hands like a scale, weighing invisible options.
Wheeler spins the book upright. I love my brother but watching him manhandle the book really tests that love.
“She draws horses and frogs, not whatever this is.” He flips a page, shaking his head.
They’re trying to decipher it.
Why the hell would they do that?
My brain is about to bloody burst.
“Hey.” I clap a hand on Dean’s shoulder, my bloody knuckles a distant thought. “What are guys doing?”
“We’re decoding it.” He glances at my hand. “Dude, what happened to your knuckles?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
He shrugs. “Got a wager going.” He reaches across and points to a thunderbolt. “This definitely means lightning.”
Josie shakes her head. “No shit, Sherlock.”
“Nope. We’re leaving,” I say.
Levi holds his beer to me. “And there he is, ladies and gentlemen. Our grumpy, bossy mascot.”
I liked it better when he was the grumpy mascot, pouting around after his divorce, before he decided to chase after Hope selfishly.
Now he’s some damn hero because the Wildes can sit in Kiwi’s bar with the Foxes, and no one is threatening a gunfight.
I’d threaten a gunfight if I knew it would end this truce and we could go back to the way things were.
“If we crack the list, Jade’s coming to the rodeo.” Why does Levi sound so invested in the idea?
I blink. “She wants to go to the rodeo?”
Josie’s grin widens. “Not even a little bit.”
“If we guess before Peggy-Ann finishes her dance on the floor, we win.” Again, what is it to Levi?
I glance at the dance floor and see Peggy-Ann with her next victim. Based on the current grinding, my guess is they don’t have much time.
“We’re working on it.” Hope and Levi take their shot to intercept what the doodles mean.
I don’t get why they care so much. What does finishing the book have to do with them?
Their guesses are not even close.
None of them.
And even if they get one, they’ll miss the second part. They won’t realize each one has a second part.
“Listen, maybe apply some pressure here.” Dean sets a napkin on my hand. “Before you bleed on my shirt.”
I snatch my hand away, the napkins landing on the floor, and watch as one by one, they fail.
When Natalie’s turn comes around, she holds the book in my direction. “Let’s have Hart take a go at it. He’s the same age as Jade. I bet he can decode this little mess.”
I hesitate.
I have no business decoding it.
Then again, she lied about the town meeting, viciously sank Peggy-Ann on me with kinks I’m not into, hit me with a dart, flirted with a biker, and then let Bronx put his hands all over her. I don’t care how unreasonable the last one is.
I let that settle inside me for a beat as I take the book and stare at the open page.
“Seriously, you’re dripping.” Dean ducks his head under the book, and I feel him press a cloth to my raw knuckles.
“It looks like you got in a fist fight,” Levi says.
Dean sits back, his hand holding the napkin on mine. “Hopefully, the other guy is in worse shape.”
“Anger Alley.” Fucking Bronx.
“Nope. Go.” Josie waves her hands. “You’re on the wrong side.”
“You let all these Wildes here, but you cross the line at a Buckley?”
“Kiwi!” Josie whistles.
“Traitor,” he snarls.
“You better move your ass back to Uncle Bucky’s bar before she shoves a pool ball up your asshole.”
He grins, but he’s backing away. “I might like that, but you wouldn’t understand, kid. Did you use your fake ID to get in?”
Josie flips him the middle finger.
I block out their arguing.
To anyone else, the pages look like chaotic doodles. A sharp heart split down the middle, ink-dripping lines that look like blood or paint, and a needle winding through a ribbon.
The insignia screams ink me.
But it’s the quieter symbols that matter—a pair of parted lines curves like thighs. Anyone who didn’t know would miss it. Beneath them, a small crescent shape and an upside-down keyhole spiral inward.
It’s not just secrecy. It’s intimacy.
Near the bottom, a barely drawn ribbon wraps like a waistband, and just above it, a whisper of an eye, half-closed, as though it only opened for someone close enough to kiss.
These aren’t just symbols. They are directions. And I know exactly where they lead and revealing it would force Jade into attending the rodeo: something she’s dead set against. It’s precisely the ammo the bad guy would use to keep his title.
“It’s getting a secret tattoo.” I watch my words sink into the others. “But if you really want to win—”
“We want to win.” Josie places her hands together like she’s pleading.
I shouldn’t.
I do.
“The tattoo has to be in a place only a lover can see.”
They all blink.
Dean’s mouth opens. Closes. Then opens again. “No way.”
Wheeler blinks. “It doesn’t mean that.” He grabs the edge of the book to look at the pages. “Does it?”
“I believe him.” Natalie’s admission goes unheard.
“I don’t see that.” Dean’s big hand presses the pages so he can look while I’m still holding it.
“You don’t see much past what is important to you,” Beck says.
I drop the book on the table and tap the page. “Pelvic region. Inner pelvic region. Secret tattoo where no one can see.”
“That’s oddly specific,” Levi remarks.
“Win or lose. I don’t care. You’ve got ten minutes.” I’m already turning. “Texted Sammy. He’s sober. Ride’s outside in ten.”
“Wait—” Dean starts.
But I’m already walking away.
Don’t look back.
Not at the book.
Not at her.
But I’m not that lucky. As I reach the opening between the two bars, Jade passes by me. Our eyes connect. We say nothing. We glare even.
I should keep walking straight out the front door, but I stop and glance back.
They’re slouched around the table like overgrown kids, cracking a secret code and deciding whether to believe me or not. Hands rise in what I assume is a vote. Heads shake, and another discussion ensues. Another set of hands rises, and they repeat their frustrated conversation.
“Looks like I owe you a thanks, too.” Bucky wipes down the bar with a white rag, nodding at my bloody hand. “Whatever you did to those guys cleared them out.”
“It wasn’t me.” I hold up my hand. “Anger Alley.”
I turn my back to him as I watch Jade join the group. Confidence in every step. Convinced, she’s going to win the wager.
And without me, she would have.
One hundred percent.
Josie climbs onto the booth bench, making a show of announcing their final decision. The way her hand gestures toward her thigh gives away that they’ve gone with my guess.
Which wasn’t a guess at all.
I watch it hit: watch Jade hear her puzzle spoken back to her, word for word.
Her mouth parts.
Her brows lift.
Her posture straightens.
That stillness consumes her. The kind she gets when she’s caught off guard, but also when she’s not sure how to react, so she does nothing at all. Then the shock in her eyes flips like a switch. Her body goes rigid with the kind of fury I know all too well.
Our gazes collide.
We hold it, no words, no noise, just the two of us in that long, suffocating silence. A standoff, and neither of us is blinking. Neither of us is backing down.
I told you, I’m a fucking god at being the bad guy.
I expect her to lie her way out of it, but when the table erupts in cheers, I know she hasn’t. She’s just agreed to attend the rodeo and finish the bucket list we fucking wrote together.
That anger returns with a vengeance.
My brothers peel themselves from the table and beeline toward me.
“Absolute legend.” Levi claps me on the back like I just lassoed a wild horse.
“You’re leaving Hope?” It’s not like my brother.
The two have been inseparable ever since they got together. Nothing seems to pull them apart, not even a centuries-long feud.
The reminder pierces me.
He even takes turns eating meals between the Foxes and the Wildes and splitting holidays between the families. It’s sickening.
“She’s the gal’s DD.” Levi glances over, checking on her again.
If there was enough room in their vehicle, I’m sure he’d linger at Bucky’s until it was time for her to leave. Sappy sucker, or fortunate fucker.
“Heroic.” Wheeler’s grinning like an idiot, which he mostly does when he’s drunk, and he’s rarely drunk.
“You’re the cowboy Rain Man.” Dean double slaps my back as we walk to the door.
I say nothing and continue forward, ready to take another shot at the tire, only to be greeted by a group of leather-wrapped, irate velociraptors on Harleys.
Shit.