Chapter 37
37
RUE
T he cage fights have started, and Red tells me Malice isn’t doing well.
“Elaborate.” I have my cell phone on speaker as I head from one darkened warehouse to another on the outskirts of the Eastside.
I accepted Malice’s apologies, which were expressed through bouquets, a to-die-for cake with a red smiley face on top of yellow frosting, and notes written in beautiful cursive, but I never told him “I love you.” I have to tell him.
The money that will help me hire a private investigator to look for my parents isn’t important. I can deal with Isaac’s ass-chewing once he finds out I stepped foot in the Eastside. What I can’t bear is for Malice not to know that I love him. Telling him will help me move on from what I felt for him as a sixteen-year-old. I loved him only to later lose him when I closed off my life to him after I lost our baby. It wasn’t him who ghosted me, as my dream suggested.
I did the ghosting. I stopped contacting him and broke all ties as though we never existed. No wonder I felt emptiness followed by a deep ache in my chest. Regret. Sadness. I never want someone to regret something because of me, yet Malice said his one regret was that he wasn’t there for me.
“He made it into the second round but took a hard clobber to the head.”
“What else?” I’ve been to other fights and have seen worse.
“Split lip. Black eye.”
And he hasn’t even made it to the last round, which would be with Big J.
“Where is the fight at? I stopped by two warehouses already, and they’re dark.”
“The high school.”
Of course. Isaac went big for this fight by offering food, alcohol, private places for people to hook up in, and a live DJ with a dance rave. A school with classrooms, bathrooms, and a giant gym is the perfect place to hold an illegal fight. If it’s the high school I am thinking of, it’s law enforcement’s worst nightmare too.
The school was built between two towns, and the sheriff and the police often couldn’t decide who had jurisdiction.
I doubt they’ll care about a bunch of kids partying and living it up on a Saturday night. If they do, Isaac will pay them off with the money he’ll get from charging entrance. The price went up to a few hundred for this fight after Isaac spread the word that, one, Malice Sterling would be fighting, and, two, the Bay Area McCabes were paying our small towns a visit.
The women are curious about Sawyer McCabe and his cousins, Gunner and Beckett. The men hoped to snap pictures and videos to post on their social media accounts, claiming to be in the vicinity of dangerous gangsters.
I only care about one person and one thing. Malice and his life.
“Gotcha. Thanks, Red. Please don’t tell Isaac.”
“I’m not planning on it. Not that he’s on speaking terms with me. He’s been egging me to give up the bet we made.”
“The one where I lost and jumped off the cliffside?”
“Yeah, that one.”
“I’m fine with you telling.” Isaac will understand the reason why Rory thought it was fine to approach me at the skating ring.
Red dared me to either kiss him at Galley’s party or jump off the cliff and into the lake. I chose a different guy to kiss instead when we were at Galley’s party, helping Leigh catch a cheater red-handed. Kissing Rory felt less like cheating on Malice than kissing Red, though Malice and I weren’t dating back then.
“Are you sure he won’t be more pissed off at me?”
“Not when you tell him jumping off the cliff was my idea. But maybe tell him tomorrow. He can be the biggest jerk during the fights. It’s not you. It’s him, okay? We’ll work on him warming up to you again.”
It must be stressful for my brother to compete with himself after every successful fight he puts together.
“I’m up for that. Thanks, Rue. He’s important to you, and that puts him high on my list to please.”
“More so than Malice?”
“I told you; family matters are different. He has to prove he is serious about you.”
“Isn’t us together and him holding and kissing me enough? I know you saw how handsy he was with me at Friendsgiving.”
“That’s not how it works with us Sterlings. PDAs are not a declaration of possession.”
“I won’t belong to him. He should want to belong with me.”
“Belong with rather than belong to. Nice choice of words, Rue.”
I can hear the smirk in his voice.
“Hurry your ass up. Malice has moved on to the last round with Big J. He’s resting up in the boys’ locker room.”
“Didn’t Isaac put in large blocks of time for people to dance and drink, and, you know, do other things?”
“You mean fucking?”
“You’re so crass.”
“I’m calling it like it is, Rue. There is no making love happening tonight. The guys and girls are here for an easy and fast hookup.”
I park under the shade of trees in the back of the school. The music is loud, and large lights, like the ones Mason let me borrow for Malice’s party, light up the main parking lot in front of the school.
“Malice?”
“Yeah, the girls grope him when he walks by. They shove papers with their numbers on them into his hands. These girls are forward, Rue. Come and claim your guy.”
“I’m planning on it. Thanks, Red.”
“For what?”
“For being a great friend.”
“Don’t jump the gun so soon. The family matters aren’t settled yet. Remember, Malice must stake his claim.”
What does that look like? So, I’m property, a possession to Malice, like his expensive sports car and shiny new motorcycle? I won’t believe it.
Malice has only treated me like a princess, his future queen. The woman who will rule over his world. Smiling, I haul ass out of Tessa’s car that she let me borrow and run toward the back of the school with my NVGs on and my backpack slung over my shoulder.
I blend in with the darkness, dressed in black from head to toe. Red said Malice was in the boys’ locker room. I know exactly where that is. I sprint across the back lot.
Isaac didn’t put lights back here. No one is guarding the back exit. Why would they when the most anticipated fight happens soon? Or they can dance and drink the night away in the front parking lot, where there are lights. It’s not scary like back here, where the school backs up to the woods.
I shiver, but not from the cold. We have coyotes, and when it is mating season, they go a little crazy. I do not want to be on the end of that kind of crazy.
At the back of the school, I take off my NVGs, shove them in my backpack, and enter through one of two back exits. One door would take me to a hallway lined with classrooms. At the end of the hallway, I could take a right to the gym or a left to the cafeteria.
But this other door? This one leads to a secret corridor that ends at the theatre. Next to the theatre is the gym. I’m not sure who came up with the design, but the girls used to sneak in this way to watch the basketball players practice before the guys invited them inside the locker room for a game of show-and-tell or never-have-I-ever.
The crowd's chants are a rumble under my feet before I hear them. I pull Mason’s baseball cap lower over my face and flip the hood of my hoodie over the cap.
Anyone who saw me would think I was one of the guys. I walk around the theatre’s stage and speed-walk to the gym. Rather than walk past the bleachers where Isaac kept the spectators from crowding the cage or interfering in the fights, I head for the door in the back of the locker room. Two guys guard the door.
How do I get past them? Just my luck, two girls who look around Riley’s age poke their heads out of the locker room. One crooks her finger and the over waves. Both men head inside the locker room. This is it. I cross my fingers, hoping Malice is in there.
I hurry inside before the door shuts behind me. Each guy follows a woman into a bathroom stall. I wrinkle my nose. To each their own. I walk around the corner to where there should be benches for the guys to sit on as they put on their shoes and run into my nightmare come true.
Malice’s hands are gripping a girl’s shoulders. Her small hands cup the back of his head, like she’s clinging on for dear life, or he’s giving her the best kiss she’s ever experienced. Here I was worrying like crazy that he was hurting, only to catch him swapping spit with another girl? That jerk!
I hurl my backpack at him. It hits him on the back.
“I hope that freaking hurts, you cheating, lying bastard!”
Malice whirls around. There’s guilt on his face. The girl steps from behind him. It’s Cassie.
I ball my fists at my sides. “And here I thought you needed babying and saving, but I was wrong. I hate you , Malice Sterling.”
I bolt from the locker room.
What is the antonym of hate? Love. I still love him, even with the truth staring at me so blatantly. Red is right. Malice hasn’t declared me as his, and I doubt he ever will when he has someone as beautiful and angelic as Cassie.
She is his angel, and I am nothing but the devil masquerading as an angel in the hopes I could change my troublesome ways. A dangerous thought crosses my mind, but I dash it away.
I used to believe that I could cause destruction with my thieving because I was the one who had to live with the consequences of my actions. But my decisions affect more than just me.
If I steal the purse money, I’ll harm my brother’s reputation and his crew. Not to mention the disappointment on Malice’s face every chance I see him, which is never.
I never want to see the cheating jerk again. Except did he cheat? We never talked about being exclusive. My head throbs. Unshed tears obscure my view. I look down at the floor, not wanting anyone to see me cry, and run across the gym and past the crowd.
Near the door to the theatre, I run into someone. The person jerks back. Another body brushes against my back. Two pairs of shoes. I look up and gasp in shock.
Narrow face. Honey-colored eyes. Baseball cap pulled low.
Like me, Olivia is hiding her face and identity, but her honey-colored eyes are a dead giveaway for me. I spent a lot of time looking at pictures of Olivia on Red’s cell phone. He liked to talk about her as he scrolled through her Insta pictures.
“She has beautiful eyes, doesn’t she, Rue?” he would say. “Golden, like sunlight.”
I’ve never heard romantic words from Red’s mouth except for when he reminisced about his time with Olivia.
“Olivia? What are you doing here?” I look at the guy next to her. “Johnny? Shouldn’t you be with Isaac?” As I look from Olivia to Johnny, the truth hits me. Same honey-colored eyes and facial bone structure. Alone, no one would make a connection, but standing next to one another… “You two are related. How?”
“She’s my half-sister. No one knows, and you better not tell, Rue.”
“I won’t.” I turn to Olivia. She has a familiar looking magenta cloth bag clasped to her chest. “Put the purse money back.” She shakes her head. Crap! I direct my next words to Johnny. “How could you? Isaac loves and treats you like you’re his blood.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“How else am I supposed to think? How did she get it out of the safe anyways, other than with help from you?”
“She’s her own woman. I’m here to talk sense into her. I left her for a few minutes to deal with two dudes fighting over a girl in one of the classrooms, and she took off on me.”
“You left the safe unguarded ?”
“Isaac wanted it that way. He suspected you would crash his event, cuz he was, you know…” Johnny waves his hand.
I narrow my eyes. “He was testing me.”
“Yes,” Johnny admits.
I growl low in the back of my throat. First, I catch Malice kissing a girl he said meant nothing to him. Second, I run into, literally, the girl Red’s been hung up on. Finally, I find out my brother’s been testing me. For what? Does he want me to steal something for him? He uses his fists to hurt, and now he wants to use me for more destruction? What else can go wrong tonight?
“Well, well, what do we have here?”
Deep voice. Menacing tone. I recognize Sawyer McCabe’s voice from watching too many social media videos of him proudly talking his admirers through his workout routine, followed by the raven-haired devil with the jade-green eyes kissing each bicep as he flexes his guns for arms.
I grab the bag from Olivia and whirl around with the bag behind my back.
Olivia is Johnny’s half-sister. Johnny admitted to making a mistake by leaving her with the safe. The safe was left unguarded to test me because Isaac believes I’ll never stop stealing. Isaac is a jerk for thinking I can’t change my ways, but I won’t let him get in trouble with the McCabes. I have to save him from himself. Save him from himself . Do harm for the sake of doing good, like when I tried stealing Colton’s vape pen. I cause destruction with my habit of stealing when I could do good by talking instead.
When have I ever shared my thoughts with Isaac that he could do better with his smarts and influence? When have I ever told Colton that I care for him and so does my brother, and it kills me to see him destroying his health for a bad habit? I should open up, talk more, and steal less.
Sawyer steps into my space. “Answer the question, kid. Whatcha hiding?”
I push back the hood and remove my baseball cap. My hair falls around me in waves. “I am not a kid, and it’s none of your business.”
But first, I have to save Olivia from her mistake.
He laughs, and it’s not the friendly kind. “Feisty, aren’t you?”
He snatches the bag from my hand and tosses it to another giant who looks like him. Before I can curse him out for taking what’s not his, he throws me over his shoulder and storms back toward the gym.
“Where are you taking me?”
“To my truck for fun times.”
Panic claws at my chest. I pound at his back. My fists are small compared to the wide expanse of his back. I lift my head. Other McCabe guys are holding Johnny back from helping me. Olivia isn’t with them. Where did she go?
“Let me go.”
“Not until I get what I want.”
“Whatever it is, you’re not getting it from me. Now, put me down.”
To my horror and humiliation, Sawyer marches past the spectators with me over his shoulder as though I’m a prize he’s won before he saunters over to the cage. In front of Malice and Big J inside the cage, and Isaac on the periphery, he smooths his big palm over my ass and thanks Isaac for the invite.
“Otherwise, I would have missed this fine piece of ass.”
I smack my fists on his back. Malice rushes up to the cage and rattles it. “Put her the fuck down. She is my girl. Mine,” he growls.
I stop hitting Sawyer and glare. “How could you say that after I caught you kissing Cassie?”
“A misunderstanding, Rue.”
“Rue. That's a sexy name, baby. Want to get out of here?”
“Yes.” I hang my head. My headache starts again. I’m tired of fighting a losing battle in my head and my heart. I saw what I saw, and I saw Malice kissing Cassie.
“Don’t you dare leave with him, Rue. He’s a monster. A hot-tempered mess who mistreats his women.”
“Then what’s the difference between you and him? Nothing. Goodbye, Malice. Have a great life with Cassie.”
If he lives.
Oh, God, please let Malice live .