Chapter 6 #2
Rivera slides in on my other side, his tone dropping. “They’re here to start shit.”
“Damn right, they are,” Stone says from across the table. “But our coach doesn’t need that after last game.”
“Fuck you,” Bass mutters. “Asshole deserved it.”
“Damn right, he did,” Stone fires back, then nods toward the other side of the bar. “Still does. Look at that little fuck.”
Dash sneers. “Johnson’s over there laughing it up with Dingy. I swear, one of these nights…”
“We eat,” Koa cuts in, grabbing a plate from the pile and loading it with wings. “And we let our record do the talking.”
The table quiets just long enough for everyone to dig in. The sound of victory settles around us — laughter, beer clinks, and the faint tension that always comes before the next fight.
An hour later, I’m four drinks in, not drunk, but not sober, and the only reason I’m still here is that the WAGS showed up, and a couple more LA players, too. Feels too heated to leave my team and their ladies.
“What do you say you and I take off?” someone purrs in my ear.
I nod toward the crowd. “You may want to get you and the girls out of here. Tonight’s forecast isn’t looking too good.”
I watch as a little dark-haired chick walks up to Koa, who has a blonde he’s paying no attention to on his lap.
“No cutting the line,” Blondie snips.
“Be nice,” He orders.
“Ooo, a little two-on-one action in the Puck Pad tonight?” She licks her lips.
“I just need a minute, Koa.”
The blonde isn’t reading the room. This brunette isn’t here to play. “Honey, he can give you far more than a minute. KOK is legendary.”
“Oh, wow, that’s so hot,” the brunette says, void of any emotion as she plops on his other knee.
“Ah, what the fuck’s going on over here?” Dash asks as he walks up to Koa, a dark-haired number beside him.
“We’re worshipping the KOK. He’s legendary, you know,” the brunette says, clearly mocking the blonde.
“Fuck,” I shake my head. “Not just LA looking to throw down.”
Rivera chuckles, “That’s his college girlfriend, Nalani.”
I look at him, shocked, then I hear the blonde. “Is she being bitchy, or am I—”
“Ding, ding, ding,” Nalani says. “Now go find another stick to hump. I need a minute.”
“Ohmygod, what a bitch.”
“Hey, sweetheart, why don’t you come with me for a second?” another dark-haired girl, who came with Nalani says, and rubs her teeth. “You’ve got a little …”
Blondie quickly slaps a hand over her mouth, like she knows she’s either got coke or lipstick stains. “I am coming back, mean girl.”
“You do that,” Nalani says, stretching her fucking legs across his lap. “You might want to bring a chair with you.”
“Is she from LA?” Blondie huffs as she walks away.
Nalani immediately starts, “Okay, I can’t stay long, and I’ve had a few glasses, maybe more than a few, of champagne at the game tonight.
You know what they say about drunks,”— she pauses and shakes her head—“speaking their mind or something like that. Regardless, I want to talk to you. I want you and me to sit down and have a conversation.”
He says nothing, hell, he doesn’t even look at her.
“Fucking cold,” I chuckle.
She grabs his chin and turns him to face her. “Hey.”
He looks at her, “You need to wash that shit off your face.”
“I was nervous primping. I went a little overboard. The bitch in me would like to point out something that you need to change, but I don’t see one thing, not one. You’re still you—you with a few extra pounds of muscle.”
“I need you to do something for me,” He says.
“Anything.”
“I need you to get off my lap.”
“Ouch,” Rivera chuckles.
“Oh, right. Okay.” She doesn’t move; she just stares at him. “You know what? No, now I’m gonna sit right here until you tell me that you’re going to give me some of your time, because there are things I need to tell you.”
“Nalani, like it or not, I am not the same guy I was back then. I’ve changed. You’ve changed.” He chuckles. “You’ve changed a lot.”
“Actually, not so much. But I can explain all of that, after you promise to give me some time.”
He lifts her up and sets her in the empty chair beside him. “I don’t fuck with what’s not mine.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.
I’m not fucking with you. I wanna say I’m sorry.
I’m gonna tell you some things that happened that I should have told you back then.
I just didn’t know how or even why things got so messed up.
But I want to tell you that I miss you,”—she holds her hand to her heart—“like, really bad miss you.”
He stands from his chair. “Not happening.”
“Jesus, this is like watching those daytime shows with my mother,” I say, turning away and looking at Rivera. “I can’t walk away, but I sure as fuck don’t have to watch this shit.”
“Fucked him up for a long time.” Rivera shakes his head.
“You two were college roommates, right?” I ask.
“Sterling, too,” He nods toward them. “Back then, it didn't fuck with his game, but I think we need to get him out of here.”
“Oh, hell no,” his wife appears from nowhere.
“Riley,” Theo shakes his head. “You—”
“You,” she snaps, “Will leave them alone.” She then looks at me. “And so will you.”
I hold my hands up. Trying not to laugh at this tiny little terror, who has two kids at home, one in her belly, and one hell of a mom look. “Yes ma’am.”
That’s when I see Koa get shoved.
“On second thought,” I say as I hop across the table.
“Deacon!” Riley Rivera calls to me.
“You really wanna fucking go right now?” Koa says tucking his ex’s friend behind him and shrugging off his jacket, “I have years’ worth of fucking anger boiling inside of me right now, so I’m gonna ask you again” he says as I shove past groups of people watching him as I unbutton the cuffs of my sleeve and start to roll it up—“do you really wanna fucking go right now?”
I shove in front of him. “Fucking walk.”
“That piece of shit shoved a girl; he deserves what he’s got coming.”
I shake my head. “Then for Frosty, we take it outside.”
“You mean, like the snowman?” The brunette friend of his ex asks.
And that’s when I hear a crack.
“Oh my God, Dash, what the hell?” the girl laughs.
Koa wraps a protective arm around her when all hell breaks loose. Then he grabs the blonde who is standing there too, as the whole place seems to be being shoved outside.
Outside, I hear a familiar voice yell. “What the fuck are you doing, Claudia? Open the fucking door.”
“Listen, dipshit, this is my ride,” Koa’s ex, Nalani, says.
“You better move, you little bitch.”
I see Koa go stiff as he hands the girl off. “Dash, Noelle.”
I shove through and see Dingy gripping the top of the SUV, rocking it. Koa grabs his shirt and throws him back. Dingy whirls on him, and Koa blocks his attempt.
“Dingy, you apologize to this woman, and then you get to stepping, or I’m going to clean the fucking Brooklyn streets with your face.”
“My fucking kid’s in that SUV. Her bitch of a mother won’t open the damn door. She’s probably fucked up, so you do what you gotta do, Cock.”
He looks at Nalani, “His kid in the vehicle?”
She’s shaking her head.
“It’s Sofie’s car.” She holds up her phone, recording him?
“Sofie Fairfax of Fairfax Media. So, if you don’t mind your name all over sports news networks tomorrow and possibly going viral all over the country, with this video as proof that you got drunk and assaulted a vehicle, because you and your little Lancers got spanked by the Bears and came out looking for a fight, then keep it up, Dingy. ”
He points at the vehicle. “I saw her. I know she’s in there.”
“You sure you wanna chance getting traded again this late in your career?” she asks.
“You fucking—” He clamps his jaw shut when Koa steps up to him.
He starts to spit another line, and Koa steps forward, a physical promise. “Before you walk away, you apologize for calling her a bitch.”
There’s a beat where his nostrils flare, teeth bared, and then he mutters, “Sorry.”
Koa narrows on him. “Nah, that wasn’t —”
Nalani interrupts, “It’s all good. Now walk away, Kyle Dingy, goalie for the LA Lancers.”
Dingy stomps off, muttering under his breath, eyes on concrete. For a blink, it feels like it’s over. People scramble back into the rhythm of the bar: curses, laughter, the clink of glass, trying to stitch the moment closed.
They pile into the SUV — bodies thud and settle, car doors slam. I step to the side to give them room, and that’s when something explodes across the back of my skull.
The world tilts. Pain blossoms pure and hot, and lights up everything I can’t see.
On instinct, anger answers pain. I twist around and grin — ugly, because I know the grin is a lie, and I’m saying Come on, is that all you got? — and he lunges exactly like I knew he would.
The first connection is a rush of motion: a shoulder into my chest, a fist into my jaw. I throw weight, not finesse. The world narrows to the contest — breath, balance, hands. I’m on him before he thinks, because if you give a drunk the space to think, he gets dangerous.
Fists, a grunt, someone screaming for security. My knuckles find him, his jaw, the hollow behind his ear. He hits me back, and it’s stupid and glorious and stupid again because every time I land, I remember the kid in the SUV, the woman being harassed, and all the reasons this had to stop.
Koa’s voice is cutting through the din. “Enough!”
He clamps on my shoulder like a vice and drags me back hard. “Get in the vehicle, Deacon. Now.”
I fight the impulse to go back for the guy, to make him regret the swing, but Koa’s hand is a law. Dash’s grip catches my other arm.
I’m in a seat, eyes still trying to come into focus, and still fighting back the anger.
“I hope they pay you well,” Koa says to someone.
“They pay very well,” a man answers.
“You’re bleeding,” someone says, and I look back as someone hands me a cloth.
“Appreciate it.” I hold it to the back of my head, sure that’s where the blood must be.
“Did he sucker punch you?” Dash asks.