Chapter 7
Mari
“What are you doing here?” Kas demands.
He’s barking at me and my heart rate hasn’t had a chance to return to its resting state. If anything, its tempo increases.
“I almost died,” I mumble, looking distantly at a rusted set of lockers.
Kas managed to escort us safely to a gross, unmaintained changing room. There’s mold climbing up the walls, a rusted shower in the corner with no head, and an overfilled trash can spilling paper towels onto the yellowing, tiled floor.
“What are you doing here?” Kas repeats.
I swallow and move my focus to him. My hand slaps over my mouth at the sight of his face.
His eye is swelling up, and he has a small laceration on his eyebrow. Two crimson trails trickle down his face; one follows the curve of his nose and the other etches its way between his slightly parted lips. Kas spits into the porcelain sink next to us and rinses it out. The skin between my eyebrows bunches when I scrunch my face in disgust.
“Excuse me,” he says, the back of his hand rubs against his lips to wipe away the remaining blood.
He looks under heavy eyelids at me. Some strands of his longish, walnut brown hair stick to his sweat-clad forehead, and a couple are tinged with blood. It’s grown out since I saw him at the exhibition, and it’s a huge change from the buzz cut he donned in high school. He suits both styles criminally well.
I glance down at the shattered lens of my camera and try the power button. It turns on. My glee lasts all of two seconds before the camera turns off unprompted.
“It really is broken,” I whisper. At the word “broken,” Kas stops unwrapping the scraps of fabric around his wrist and trails his hands over my arms. “Oh my god, can you just—ugh.” I gently swat him away so I can step back to focus on the damaged lens.
“Forget about the camera and answer my question. What are you doing at my fight?” he says. Kas’s nose flares and his cheeks tinge rouge.
“First of all, no, I’m not forgetting about my camera. Second of all, your fight, my life. I chose to be here.” I peer down at my camera again.
“I’ll get you a new camera.”
I look up and search his face for a hint of humor. Kas’s blue eyes are hard and unforgiving—completely deadpan.
“No, it’s fine,” I say.
My words contradict the ball of anxiety rolling around in my stomach. A broken camera repair is just another expense I don’t need.
I start pacing around the changing room. The floor is wet, and I catch myself from slipping a couple of times.
“Careful,” Kas grits out. “Wouldn’t want you to fall.”
“Oh, sure you wouldn’t,” I reply sarcastically.
On my second lap of the room, my foot slips out from under me just a step away from Kas. He catches me with surprisingly gentle hands, and I make a face crossed between a grimace and relief.
“Told you so,” he says with an infuriatingly quirked lip. I attempt to ignore the heat from his palms when he helps straighten me up. “It was dangerous being that close to the ring, by the way.”
I press my lips together and tense between the hands still grasping the outside of my arms. “I figured that out pretty quickly, but thanks for the warning.”
The upturned corner of Kas’s lip stretches into a wince when he unhands me and flexes his split knuckles. He steps to the sink and moistens a handful of paper towels to wipe himself down like a barbarian fresh off the battlefield. I avert my gaze when he drags it over his torso, just to be polite.
“Thank you for getting me out of there, and for catching me just then,” I say. My pride doesn’t like that, but my unbroken body does.
“Let me fix your camera,” he demands.
Kas has completely bypassed my show of gratitude.
“Um, no. I’ll get it fixed myself.”
Blazing cerulean eyes scorch my own, and Kas presses paper towels to the cut on his eyebrow. “Mari, give me the camera so I can get it fixed.”
I scoff. “I’m not giving you my camera.”
Kas impatiently clicks his tongue. There’s a knock at the door just as he’s about to reply.
“Medic!”
“One minute!” Kas shouts, stepping closer to me. I have to tilt my head up to maintain eye contact with his colossal form. “It broke during my fight, I owe you,” he says with a softness that has me gravitating toward him like he’s some sort of pillar of safety.
“Being forcefully kind doesn’t make you a good guy, it makes you weird.” I step closer to him, matching his glare. “Don’t be a weirdo.”
“Don’t be stubborn.” His words, though quiet, echo against our barren surroundings.
I open my mouth to respond and snap my lips together. Heat emanates from the wall of carved muscled in front of me, and an awkward laugh escapes my lips. I don’t even know why I’m pushing against his obvious desperation to go out of his way and fix it at what I’d hope is no cost. He’s literally begging for it.
The small smile on my face screams pettiness. “Say please,” I say.
Kas sniffs and looks toward a damp patch on the ceiling. He wipes under his nose. “Stop fucking around.”
“Fucking around? You’re trying to steal my camera.”
Kas squeezes out watery, red liquid from the paper towels and throws them aggressively into the trash can with a loud splat. He cocks his head and I mirror the action.
“Mari.” He sighs dejectedly. I harden my gaze. “Okay, please,” he grits out while averting his eyes.
I nod with a mild smile and slide out the memory card before pushing the camera into his damp, bare chest. The tips of my fingers graze his skin, and he palms the top of my hand, holding me and the device to his body.
“Give it to Violet once it’s fixed. I’ll get it from her,” I say with wavering tenacity.
I haven’t looked at Kas as anything more than some guy I went to school with. Even now, he’s just Violet’s boyfriend’s hot—and demanding—best friend. That doesn’t explain why my breaths are becoming shallower with each one I take.
Kas looks between me and my camera with an indecipherable look I attempt to match.
When the silence stretches for an uncomfortable amount of time, I yank my hand away and clap once, encouraging Kas to blink rapidly.
“Well, I should probably look for Vi ... or Freya ... or Devon.” Kas nods stiffly, tilting his head curiously as I inch away from him. “And you should probably get looked at. I can already see a gnarly bruise forming.” I gesture under my eye and Kas continues nodding, his lips twitching at my hesitant retreat.
I muster up the lamest wave and tight-lipped smile combination I can when my back hits the door of the changing room.
“Stay safe, Mari,” he says. “You should probably get looked at too.” He motions around his chest like I did with my eye. “Gnarly,” he adds.
“Don’t make fun of me,” I warn.
“I’m not making fun of you. You were pushed up pretty tight against the ring.” Kas’s eyes narrow for a moment and he looks almost regretful.
I throw him a genuinely humored grin and open the changing room door. My tongue decides to betray me and I face him for the final time. “You know what? You’re a lot hotter when you aren’t trying to be aggressively blunt,” I say loudly over the cacophony of distant shouts from the crowd.
A throat clears and I spot three men hovering outside the now-open door. One holds on to a medical bag, another looks like some shifty kid, and the last is D, the ref-slash-gym trainer that led me into the venue in the first place. His smile drops when he sees that I’ve noticed him, and he guiltily looks to the ceiling. I don’t wait for Kas’s reaction because I’m already storming up to D.
“You,” I hiss.
“You good?” He seems genuinely concerned, though it’s too little too late.
“You left me for dead.”
He twists his lips and laughs dryly. No laugh can minimize the hellish experience of the latter part of the fight.
“I didn’t know it’d be this busy,” he argues and feels around his jeans. “Here.” He slides out a designer wallet and holds out two Benjamins.
Is he serious? I smash my lips together and hold my hand out in a silent bribe. He sighs and fishes out a fifty, then an extra fifty when I don’t budge.
“Thank you,” I say, stuffing the bills into my fanny pack.
This might be enough to fix my lens. I glance back at Kas’s changing room and decide against returning for my camera when the men filter in.
D looks suspiciously to the side as he edges closer to the changing room door. “So, same time next week?”
I roll my eyes. With my pounding heart, I look once more at the changing room and briefly lock eyes with Kas before the closing door severs our gaze.
Attending a bare-knuckle fight can be ticked off the GTFO agenda, because if there’s one thing for certain, I’m never coming back here and I never, ever want to witness another live combat sport again.