Epilogue
EVER
Six Months Later
“Ever?”
I looked at Katy, who stood next to me as we watched Loche throw one of his new teammates from the Marauders down in the ring. Off to the side of us stood Cole, Nix, and Malachi, who all watched the practice in the gym intently, playfully shouting out critiques to throw Loche off his game.
“Yeah,” I answered her.
“How much spandex does your boyfriend own? He has to be single-handedly propping up the industry, right? Does he invest in a new pair of shorts after every fight or just the ones he wins?”
I rolled my eyes, mentally calculating how many pairs of shorts I’d seen on Loche over the last several months. It was a staggering amount, and he would only be accumulating more with the sponsorships that came along with being a Marauder.
“That’s what I thought,” Katy answered, stealing another look at Malachi, who stood with his arms crossed, intense blue eyes sizing up Loche’s performance.
Since I’d known Katy, I hadn’t seen her so fixated on one person.
She’d usually develop a crush and either lose it after sleeping with the guy or after a week had passed, whichever came first.
In the ring, Ben, the Marauder who was acting as a referee for this practice, called the match, declaring Loche the winner.
No surprise, considering he’d been dominating most of the fight.
Loche looked up and smiled when he found me.
That annoying, charming smile he had did all the right things to me, and he knew that.
“Yup. I predict more synthetic fiber shorts with a stunning amount of elasticity in your future,” Katy said.
Loche jumped down from the ring to a hail of high fives from his new teammates before sauntering over to our group, all drenched in sweat and pheromone-laden.
His abs glistened under the light of the practice gym, highlighting his tattoos that were now marred by a scar from his emergency appendectomy.
The pristine pines appeared as though someone had taken a chainsaw to a portion of the elaborate forest inked there.
“How come you never fought like that during our matches?” Nix teased him.
“Because I was tired of carrying your asses,” Loche joked, slapping Cole on the back.
“You’ve come a long way since I met you,” Malachi added. “So much more composure. Still cocky as hell, though.”
“He swears a lot for a priest,” Katy whispered. “I wonder what else he can do with that filthy mouth of his.”
“It’s not like you, or any other person for that matter, is going to find that out.” I shot Katy a look as if to say, Not here.
“And that’s a goddamn shame.” Katy’s eyes widened when Malachi looked over at us, seemingly hearing her.
“Oh, shit.” In haste, she made the sign of the cross as though doing so would absolve her of a solid decade’s worth of inappropriate thoughts and four-letter words.
“That’s how that’s done, right?” She looked at me for confirmation.
“You’re asking the wrong person.”
“It’s done with the right hand,” Malachi called out from where the four guys were still huddled together in their group.
“Right hand. Right.” Katy’s face flushed.
“Thanks for making it.” Loche bent down and brushed a soft kiss against my forehead when we made our way over to them. “I know things have been crazy with Conrad’s criminal case.”
“Yeah, well, I had to throw some things into my fuck it bucket to be here, but all of it will be waiting for me tomorrow, including a subpoena with your name on it.”
“They don’t need to subpoena me to get me to appear for that.”
“Just do us both a favor and don’t skip into the courtroom too merrily.”
“Are you kidding me? I’ve been practicing my skip since I uncovered what he was doing. It’s a very manly skip, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Do you want to get a bite to eat tonight before I go out of town for the match?”
“Sure, but I need to take Katy home first, and…”
“I’ll take her home.” Our heads collectively snapped around in disbelief at Malachi, with mine pulling double duty, pivoting back to Katy, who looked like she was on the verge of short-circuiting. “She just lives over by Ever, right? I have to go that way anyway.” Malachi shrugged.
Katy’s eyes found mine, her lips mouthing, Praise the lord.
Behave yourself, I mouthed back.
Not a chance. She winked, then turned to follow Malachai as he and Loche said their goodbyes. As I watched them walk away, I wondered how far down the road they would get before Malachi doused her with holy water.
Shortly after Malachi and Katy left, we waved goodbye to Cole and Nix, effectively leaving us alone in the gym and me alone in the training area after Loche ran to take a quick shower.
While waiting for him, I climbed up into the ring, crouching in between the ropes like I used to do between the rails of the rickety, wooden fence that was in my mom’s front yard.
I preferred the ring to the cage where Loche’s matches took place.
For some reason, the cage made them seem more brutal, even though there was still the same amount of force behind each hit.
It was hard to believe how far my life had come in the span of a year when I was essentially a hermit, surviving but not really living in isolation.
It had been almost two years since the first package from Loche had turned up at my door, and now look at me, obsessed with the man whose obsession with me was a misdemeanor. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Jesus Christ!” I shrieked when I moved to turn around, crashing into a solid wall of man. “When did you sneak in here? I didn’t even hear you climb into the ring.”
“It’s my cat-like reflexes,” he answered, chuckling. He smelled of cedar, and his basic white t-shirt and blue jeans, though simple, still looked dressy on him. A far cry from my white tank and black skirt I’d changed into before heading over here. Over his shoulder was his gym bag.
“I’ve never been in a ring before. It’s surprisingly unremarkable.”
“What did you expect, Nevermore? It’s a practice ring, not an Airbnb.”
“Would you teach me how to fight?”
“As far as I’m concerned, you already know how to fight. You just prefer to do so in more of a stabby way.”
“It gets to the point faster.”
“I bet it does.” His eyebrow raised, and a smirk spread across his frustratingly gorgeous face.
“God, I can’t even be mad at you for that one. But, seriously, teach me how to fight.”
Loche sized me up in a professional way that still gave me butterflies even though it wasn’t meant to.
“All right. Let’s do it.”
“Great. It may come in handy sometime, considering the neighborhood I live in.”
“Yeah, about that. I think you should move.”
I dropped my arms to my side, breaking the playful, defensive move I was going to break out on him. “Pardon?”
“Move out of that house you live in.”
“And go where, exactly?”
“With me. Move in with me.”
I stood staring at him like Katy had at Malachi when he offered to give her a ride home. “What about Nix? It’s his place, too.”
“He’ll be fine. He likes you.” Loche shrugged as though he hadn’t just asked me whether I wanted to take our relationship to a new and very serious level. “He’ll also be there when I can’t be.”
“You know I don’t need protection, right? I can take care of myself.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“Then why not make me even more lethal by showing me some of your moves?”
“As opposed to moving in with me?” Loche stared at me before, resigned, he let out a sigh.
“Okay. Fine.” He set his gym bag down on the mat and crouched down to open it, taking out his mask.
“For old time’s sake.” He winked at me, standing up and pulling his mask over his face, showing me the face of V for the first time in months.
Fixated on a glimpse of the familiar, I was caught off guard when, in a split second, Loche picked me up and had me over his shoulder before I had time to react.
“So, little bird, how are you getting out of this?”
“Wits and charm?”
“I guess you’re dead, then.”
“Funny, because it always seems to work on you.”
He grumbled something under his breath, I couldn’t quite make out as all the blood had rushed to my head. “If you’re ever grabbed like this, you have one of two options to fight back. First, you could begin kicking and punching me, especially in my lower extremities.”
“Which I can’t reach because I have short legs.”
“Correct. Another option is to go limp and throw your attacker off balance. Go ahead and do that.”
Loche used every ounce of his strength to keep his body steady as my body became deadweight, slumped over his shoulder.
“Good. Now wrap your arm around my neck.”
“You want me to choke you? Since when did this become foreplay?”
“There’s nothing sexual about this.”
“Says you.”
“Would you just wrap your arm around my neck.”
I followed Loche’s instruction, taking my arm and putting it around his neck, fitting it under his chin.
“Now feed that arm between your stomach and me and grab your other arm.”
I adjusted my body, following Loche’s instructions, which tightened my hold around his neck, causing him to fall to his knees, taking me down to the mat with him. “Wrap your legs around my waist and lock them together as you drive your hips up into the air and squeeze my neck tightly.”
“Yeah, this isn’t sexual at all.”
“I think I’m starting to learn more about you than I ever wanted to know.” His voice came out strained.
“Are you scared?”
“I’m an unhealthy mixture of terrified and turned on that I may need to explore with a counselor later.”
“Okay, now what?”
“In a real-world scenario, you would have the leverage and would be squeezing my neck hard enough to hopefully make me lose consciousness and buy you enough time to roll me off of you and run away.”
I drove my hips into him, rolling him over onto his back.
“Perfect, except you would run away and not continue to straddle your attacker while grinding your pelvis into his crotch.”