Chapter 3
RANGEFINDER (LEO)
The club’s screaming “Lionheart” when I walk in.
Seven rounds. Clean knockout.
They hoist me onto shoulders, jostling me through the entrance like I just conquered Rome—women reaching out, men shouting my name, phones flashing like strobes. Bass vibrates through my chest. Someone grabs my arm. Another tries to kiss my neck.
The crowd is electric, and I’m the live wire.
Yeah, I fucking eat it up. Why wouldn’t I? I earned this.
Elliot steers me toward the VIP section, hand clamped on my shoulder. “Smile. Give them the Lionheart.”
So I do.
Tomorrow, I can worry about the politics, the press, the defense schedule. Tonight is for celebrating.
He drops me off at the VIP section, and there they are—my people. Eden rolling her eyes at me. Nate sprawled back, his arm planted around my sister. Finn and Jessica perched at the table, matching smirks locked and loaded.
“Your ego won’t fit through the door if they keep chanting that,” Eden shouts over the noise.
“Good thing I don’t need doors,” I shoot back. “Walls tend to move.”
Nate laughs and claps my shoulder. “He’s not wrong. Thought they were about to crown you on the spot.”
Jessica Novak O’Reilly—brilliant, ruthless, and the reason my career stays clean—lifts her glass. “I’m shocked they skipped the laurel wreath.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Finn drawls, bumping my fist.
Finn O’Reilly, Defenders right wing, built for speed and bad decisions. He sneaks into my gym when the season gets loud. He’s not allowed to spar, so I hold pads and let him take it out on leather instead of someone’s face.
Then I see her.
Liz Adler.
My sister’s best friend. Her roommate. The woman who’s been threading herself into my awareness for months without ever stepping fully into it.
She never fawns. Never pretends not to notice. She’ll call me out, call me hot, call me reckless—like it’s a joke she can throw and walk away from—and then take half a step back, like she’s already decided where the line is and expects me to respect it.
It shouldn’t get under my skin.
It does.
She’s perched at the edge of the table now, hair loose around her shoulders, posture relaxed but alert. Watching me.
In the ring, tells live in the shoulders. With her, they live in the silence. I clock them anyway. Discipline doesn’t turn off because the fight is emotional.
The fight buzz in my bloodstream finds a target.
“Don’t even think about it,” Eden says flatly, following my gaze.
I grin. “Too late.”
She groans. “God, you’re predictable.”
“She’s a grown woman, Eden.”
“She’s my best friend,” Eden snaps. “You break her heart, I break your face. I mean it, Leo.”
I don’t look away from Liz. “Pretty sure she knows what she’s doing.”
Nate chuckles. “You’re about to find out.”
I intend to. It’s been a while since anyone’s pushed back this hard.
No idea what her deal is, but it’s got teeth.
And it has me curious.
The bass slams. Lights strobe. Finn drags Jess onto the floor, all reckless confidence and sharp timing. The crowd folds inward, heat and motion feeding on itself.
Liz doesn’t move.
She stays at the table, legs crossed, fingers tapping against her thigh. Watching the room without offering it anything back.
Until I stand.
The second I do, she recalculates. She doesn’t smile when I stop in front of her.
I extend my hand.
The music pounds. Bodies surge around us, close enough to brush, loud enough to cover a hundred bad decisions.
She could say no.
She could turn away.
She could stay exactly where she is and make me retreat.
For a moment, I think she might.
Her eyebrow lifts, just a fraction. A pause long enough to register—calculation, resistance, consent.
Finally, she takes my hand.
The crowd swallows us whole. Fire surges through my veins. Bodies crush in on every side. The music hits my bloodstream hard and fast.
Liz moves like she’s daring the room to keep up—hips rolling, spine loose, head tipped back, all heat and command.
I follow.
Match her rhythm.
Shadow every shift.
I stay close enough to feel the warmth of her without touching. My hands hover, restrained on purpose. She notices. Of course she does. Her fingers slice through the air between us, tracing the space I’m not taking, taunting me with it.
She spins, drops low, then snaps back into my space. The hem of her dress skims her thigh, a deliberate flash of skin she knows I see.
I don’t grab her.
Not yet.
The room narrows around us. Sound folds inward. All I hear is the beat and her breath.
The DJ flips tracks. The crowd tightens. Neon slides over her skin, sweat catching at her collarbone, turning her luminous.
I step in.
My hand curves around her hip. She doesn’t pull back.
Then she leans with the smallest shift right into my touch.
My other hand finds her waist, sliding into the dip where her body narrows. She’s soft there, warm, shaped exactly to my palm like she was built for it.
My grip tightens before I tell it to.
I loosen it immediately. She doesn’t notice. Or she notices and doesn’t say anything, which is worse.
Every time she touches me and pulls away, it’s a hit I feel in the center of my ribcage. She rolls into me, hips aligning with mine. Deliberate. Testing the fit.
The lyrics grind overhead, filthy and slow. I move with the rhythm, guiding her deeper into it, every shift measured, every press intentional.
She leans harder. Arms loop around my neck. Her body fits to mine without surrendering an ounce of defiance.
The room disappears.
We end up pinned against the bar, bodies pressed close, my palm braced beside her hip. Her chin tilts up, eyes locked on mine—steady, unflinching, daring me to misread her.
“Still giving me attitude?” I say. “You’d think you’d learn.”
Her expression turns wicked. “Learn what?” A pause. “That you can take up more space?”
Christ.
She doesn’t raise her voice. Doesn’t blink. Just names it and leaves me to decide what to do with it.
It’s been her spiel for months. Calling the obvious. Refusing to be impressed by it. Offering just enough space to tempt me, then pulling it back the second I assume it’s mine.
I lean in. My knuckles brush the bare skin of her thigh where the dress rides high. Warm. Smooth. Dangerous.
She could stop me.
She doesn’t.
Instead, she tilts in, granting me another inch, making me earn it.
“Careful.” My voice vibrates between us. “I’m still running hot.”
Her smile doesn’t soften. It sharpens. “Good.”
My attention drops to her mouth. It’s relaxed and unguarded, waiting to see what I do.
She wets her lower lip slowly, like she knows exactly what it costs me. I have to work to keep my jaw loose.
I lift my hand, slow enough that she can stop me at any point. My thumb skims her cheekbone, light, exploratory, tracing the line down to her mouth. When my thumb grazes her lower lip, everything in her says “go ahead.”
“Yes?” I murmur, closing the space.
She nods, barely. Her fingers curl into the front of my shirt, grounding, decisive, pulling me the last inch.
Her lips part…
And the air shifts.
Cold slices through heat, a shadow stretching across the floor.
My mind goes quiet the way it only does before impact.
Instinct fires. Assessment follows.
I straighten, look up, and know exactly who just walked into my night.
Travis Drake.
A name I haven’t thought about in years. The last time I saw him was under bright lights in Atlantic City—two hungry heavyweights still climbing the ladder. I took the win, but it was a war. A real one. The kind that leaves both men bleeding and the crowd howling.
Sometime after that fight, he vanished from sanctioned cards. Missed weigh-ins. An arrest that never made it to public records. Then the rumors—underground MMA, backroom fights, places where nobody stops the clock and nobody checks who you hurt on the way out.
The kind of circuits that chew men up.
I figured he’d burned out or gotten himself banned for good.
But here he is.
Bigger than I remember.
Meaner.
Eyes fever bright, jaw clenched like he came here looking to find a body to break.
He plants himself too close, chest heaving, breath sour with whiskey, posture screaming for someone to give him an excuse.
Liz locks up against me. The heat between us flash-freezes.
Drake’s focus cuts to her first—possessive, territorial—then snaps back to me.
I don’t move fast. I move final. Out here the win isn’t blood, it’s keeping her from the fallout.
His smile is ugly as he snaps to me. “Didn’t expect to find you here, Carver.” His words are a growl, laced with venom. “With your hands all over my wife.”