Chapter 16 Bellamy
SIXTEEN
BELLAMY
The warehouse looms at the edge of the industrial district, where streetlights flicker half-heartedly and graffiti crawls up concrete walls.
Concrete stretches wide and empty, cracked in places where weeds push through.
Rows of parked cars gleam under the harsh lights—some new, some rusted at the edges.
Bass throbs through the walls in uneven pulses, vibrating against my sternum when I breathe in.
My nostrils fill with the tang of motor oil, hot asphalt cooling in the night air, and the metallic bite that lingers where sun has baked metal all day.
My palms sweat. My pulse quickens. It’s been a few years since I’ve been somewhere like this. Longer since I’ve been to The Pit.
Lola catches it immediately, her lips curving upward. “You’ve got that look.”
“What look?”
“That twitch at the corner of your mouth. You get it when you’re pretending you’re not excited.”
I huff out a quiet breath, dragging my gaze back to the entrance. “I’m not pretending.”
“Liar,” she whispers, eyes dancing. “I knew you’d have fun tonight.”
Movement at the entrance—two men detach from the crowd, their strides purposeful.
The taller one locks eyes with Lola, his face transforming.
Dark hair, shoulders stretching his black t-shirt, he crosses the distance and sweeps her up without hesitation, her feet dangling as he presses his face into her neck. “There you are.”
“Nate,” she laughs, fingers digging into his shoulders for balance.
He barely sets her down before the second one—sandy-haired, lean, hungry-looking—slides an arm around her waist, his lips grazing her ear, whispering something that makes her cheeks flush pink in the dim light.
Lola’s laugh bubbles up from somewhere I haven’t heard in years.
My eyebrow twitches upward. Two men. Both looking at my sister like she hung the moon. The dark-haired one’s fingers still linger at her waist, while the blond watches her with half-lidded eyes.
She disentangles herself from the blond’s arms, her fingers finding my wrist and tugging me forward. “Bells, Nate and East.” Her free hand gestures first to the dark-haired one, then the blond.
Nate’s eyes flick over me—shoulders to shoes, quick and clinical. “Hey.”
Easton holds my gaze three seconds longer than necessary, head tilted slightly. “Hey.”
“East, Nate, meet my big sister, Bellamy,” Lola says, her chin lifting the way it always does when she’s showing off something she’s proud of.
Nate pivots toward the entrance, his hand finding Lola’s without looking. She slides her fingers between his, their hands fitting together with the ease of a well-practiced dance.
Lola’s fingers circle my wrist, tugging. “C’mon.” Her voice rises above the bass thump. “People get crushed right at the entrance.”
I let her pull me forward, though I’ve navigated worse crowds in darker places.
Nate catches the bouncer’s eye. A barely perceptible nod passes between them, and the mountain of a man steps aside without checking IDs or collecting cover. The steel door swings open.
My eyebrow twitches upward.
Sound slams into us like a physical wall—a tsunami of shouts, grunts, and impact thuds crashing together.
The door seals shut behind us with a pneumatic hiss, trapping the chaos inside.
Sweat-soaked bodies press close, their heat radiating.
Someone nearby bleeds; the copper scent mingles with spilled whiskey evaporating from concrete.
The crowd parts just enough to reveal the layout.
Four chain-link octagons punctuate the warehouse floor.
In one, a fighter collapses to his knees while across the room, another pair circles each other, fresh and hungry.
The timing feels orchestrated—as one fight concludes, another intensifies, keeping the mass of bodies in constant migration.
Between the cages, folded bills slip from palm to palm.
Men in black T-shirts thread through the crowd, collecting slips of paper, their eyes constantly moving, calculating.
All paths lead to the raised octagon at the center of the room—empty of fighters but surrounded by the thickest knot of bodies.
Money changes hands there faster, more urgent.
Violence shimmers in the air like dust motes—suspended and waiting. One spark, and the whole place goes up.
I let my gaze move the way it always does, tracking exits first, then flow, then faces. Who’s watching the fights. Who’s watching the people watching the fights. Where the pressure points sit if something shifts the wrong way.
And under all of that—something else. A pull. Low and steady, curling just under my ribs in a way I don’t let myself sit with too long.
Because I know what it is. And I know better than to lean into it.
Nate looks back at Lola, his mouth curving.“You picked a good night.”
“Yeah?” Lola says, leaning into him until their shoulders touch.
East slides up behind her, his palm settling at the small of her back. “This one’s gonna be good. The guy’s undefeated.”
The crowd thickens around the far cage, bodies pressing forward. A woman stumbles into me, beer sloshing over her plastic cup onto my shoe.
I tighten my grip on Lola’s wrist. “Don’t wander off.”
“Relax, Bells.” She tosses the words over her shoulder, already moving deeper into the crush. “We’ll be fine.”
The crowd shifts around us in restless waves as we settle in and wait for the next fight, bodies milling around the space as the fight winding down in the far corner pulls to its brutal, inevitable close.
The whole place feels like it’s balancing on the edge of something, all heat and pressure and appetite, and the worst part is how quickly my body remembers the rhythm of it.
If I were here alone—I cut the thought off before it finishes.
I keep my attention split between the cage and my sister, tracking the way she leans in toward Nate when he says something in her ear, the way East glances over his shoulder and throws a quick nod to someone deeper in the crowd.
It’s less to do with trust and more to do with knowing how fast places like this can change shape.
Someone clips my shoulder as they push past, harder than they need to, and I stumble into the guy behind me. “Shit, sorry.” The apology is automatic, out before I even look at the person I hit.
He’s already staring at me. A beat passes before his face splits open. “Bellamy fuckin’ Hale.”
I blink. “Ryder?”
He lets out a low whistle. “Holy shit, man. I haven’t seen you in years,” he says, leaning in and hugging me. “How the hell are you?”
I push onto my toes and hug him back before I’ve decided to. “I’m good. What about you?”
When we separate, I get a proper look at him.
Same jaw, same grin, but the grin sits differently now—less like something he’s performing and more like something he’s allowing.
The restless, look-at-me energy he used to carry in high school is gone, or at least it’s been folded down and put somewhere less visible.
He holds eye contact a half-second longer than the Ryder I remember would have bothered to.
“You visiting or you back?”
“I’m back for now.” I pitch my voice louder as the crowd noise swells.
He nods once, already shifting slightly so he’s angled toward the movement of people instead of fully facing me—like he’s tracking the space without thinking about it. “Yeah, same.”
He leans in, closer to my ear so I can hear him over the noise. “I’m over at—“ He pulls back. A beat. “What are you up to these days?”
I open my mouth, but before I can answer, Lola catches my hand and gives it a tug. “We’re going closer.” She doesn’t wait for my reply, already pulling toward the front of the crowd.
I let her draw me one step before I glance back at Ryder. “I guess I’m going to the front.”
“Yeah,” he says easily, already moving with us. No hesitation. “I’ll come with you.”
He falls into step at my side, close enough that our shoulders almost brush, his gaze flicking once over the crowd ahead before settling forward again.
Nate moves first, and the crowd opens. Not dramatically—just enough.
A guy in a gray hoodie turns sideways without being asked.
Two women step back mid-conversation, not breaking it.
A man with a drink in each hand finds somewhere else to be.
East follows the same path a half-step behind, and nobody closes it back up until we’re already through.
By the time we reach the front, the cage directly in front of us is empty. The noise has shifted from scattered chaos into something tighter, more focused, anticipation gathering in the space like static before a storm.
Then the announcer’s voice cuts through it. “Get loud. Because he’s back,” he says, dragging out the last word into four syllables.
The room detonates. Excitement lives in the air, heavy enough that I can almost taste it.
Beside me, Lola grabs my arm without looking at me, her nails finding skin. Bodies surge forward. The smell of it hits first—sweat and copper and something electric—and then the crowd becomes a single organism, every head swinging toward the far side of the cage at once.
A man steps through the opening, and my next breath gets trapped in my lungs.
He’s shirtless, hands wrapped to the wrist, the industrial lights catching the ink across his ribs and shoulders and turning the sweat on his skin into something that looks almost like armor.
He doesn’t scan the crowd. He doesn’t roll his shoulders or shake out his hands or do any of the things fighters do when they need the room to know they’re ready.
He just walks to the center and stops, and the noise keeps building around him like it’s got nothing to do with him at all.
“No way,” I say, and I don’t realize I’ve said it out loud until Lola’s grip tightens on my arm.
It’s Bishop.
I shouldn’t be surprised—I’m not. Except that my next breath comes out wrong, and for a second I’m somewhere else entirely—black upholstery, blood in the air, the sound of fabric ripping—and then I’m back, and he’s still there, still walking to the center of that cage like the noise is something happening to a different room
Lola turns toward me, her eyes wide and mouth open. “Holy shit, Bells.”
“I know,” I say, and I don’t look away from him long enough to confirm whether she heard me.
His opponent comes in heavier, broader through the shoulders, with hands that move like he expects them to end things.
The crowd responds to him—noise, movement, a few bills changing hands nearby—but it’s the kind of response a room gives something it recognizes. Not something it’s been waiting for.
The bell sounds.
Bishop lets the first swing come close enough that I stop breathing.
Then the second. He doesn’t step back so much as redirect, weight shifting in a way that makes the other man’s momentum look borrowed.
There’s a half-second where his opponent thinks he has an opening, commits to it—and Bishop is already somewhere else, watching him arrive.
Beside me, someone grabs a stranger’s arm. A woman screams in delight.
I’ve seen people fight. I’ve seen people who are good at it. But no one moves like Bishop does. It’s the difference between someone who has learned how to hurt people and someone who simply knows how, the way you know your own name, without having to think about it.
The crowd screams at a near-hit that was never actually near. Sweat, money, blood, heat—everything in The Pit condenses around the cage until it feels like the whole building is breathing with the fight.
Beside me, Ryder leans in slightly, his hand settling for one brief second at the small of my back so I can hear him over the noise. “I’m glad I ran into you.”
I glance at him, his touch already gone. “Yeah?”
He tilts his head toward the cage, then back at me. “You still run with the Calloways, pulling shit like you used to?”
My brows dig together but my grin grows. “If you mean do I still cut board straps off the cars of out-of-town assholes who think they own our beaches?” I pause and laugh. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
“Sure.” The corner of his mouth lifts. “And the other stuff?”
I do a slow scan of the people nearest us, my brows digging toward one another. This feels a lot like he’s trying to pull a confession out of me. But no one is paying any attention to us.
“Nah, it’s not like that.” He smiles, a little crooked this time, a little more like the teenager I remember cutting class with and less like the man standing beside me now. “Let me buy you a coffee. I want to run something by you.”
Curiosity gets there before caution does. “Depends what you want to run by me.”
He laughs under his breath and fishes his phone out of his pocket, holding it out toward me. “Something I think you’ll be interested in hearing.”
I take it, type in my number, and hand it back just as Bishop drives his opponent into the fence hard enough that the cage shudders on its anchors and the woman beside me cheers.
Ryder glances at the screen, then back at me. “You ready to make some magic happen like we used to?”
It’s so corny it catches me by surprise. A laugh gets out before I can decide anything about it—loud enough that Lola turns to look at me.
“Does that line ever work?” I look back toward the cage just in time to see Bishop turn toward me.
His gaze finds mine with the force of a collision, sharp and immediate and stunned enough that for one impossible second it feels like something has struck the center of the room and knocked all the air out of it.