35. Chapter 32
Chance
“ F or fuck’s sake!” I tossed aside the third and fourth pieces of toast that popped up burnt.
“Someone’s grouchy today.” JJ’s cheery voice had me picking up the piles of burnt toast and lobbing it at him.
He caught them expectingly.
“A little overdone,” JJ said, inspecting a slice. “But solid effort.”
“Ugh, I forgot you’re one of those people who eats their toast burnt to a crisp,” I groaned.
“I don’t eat it burnt,” he scoffed. “I just like it with a bit more colour.”
The smell of charred toast was still pungently lingering when JJ dug into the charred slices. I put two more down in the toaster, then popped it every twenty fucking seconds to make sure it wasn’t already burning.
“What burnt your toast today?” JJ asked, jumping up onto the bench next to the toaster.
“Gee, I don’t know, JJ. Maybe it’s this piece of shit toaster that’s right in front of me.” I snapped, smacking the machine in emphasis.
“Oh, I know that. Toaster has been playing up for years. Al won’t let us dump it. I was meaning the other thing.”
“What other thing?” I asked, popping my toast up to check.
“You know, your toast. Your fruit loops. Your parade.”
“What the fuck are you on about now?”
“Did someone piss in your fruit loops ? Rain on your parade ? Burn your toast ?”
“No.”
“Bullshit.”
“I said, ‘No’.”
“And I said ‘bullshit’. Did something happen last night?” he asked with a mouthful of black bread.
“No, now drop it,” I snapped. After hitting the eject button on the side, my toast popped up. I all but threw it onto my plate and lathered a thick layer of Vegemite over it.
Man, I really need to go and hit the bag.
My knuckles tingled at the thought of it.
“Yeah, that certainly sounds like something someone who’s not sulking would say,” JJ mocked.
“I am not sulking!” I dug into my brekkie. The sooner I could finish this, the sooner I could go and do bag work for an hour … or seven. Anything to get the images of last night out of my mind. Only one thing stood front and centre of them—Mari Fucking Trevino.
Well, not just Mari. Mari Fucking Trevino in a leather miniskirt that proudly showed off those mile-long legs.
Those legs that I could almost bet had been tangled in the sheets all night with that bloke she was dancing with last night.
Seeing it in real time had made my blood boil to the point of combustion—it had been an active effort to not go over and rip his goddamn hands off her.
But whatever this was with Mari wasn’t a game.
She wasn’t some plaything that I could pick up and put down whenever I wanted.
I realised in the cab ride home last night that to me, she’d never been that.
Everything about her was always more . There was a fire I felt when I was with her, a fire that burned so bright it left me feeling cold without it.
“Are you even listening to what I’m saying?”
“Not really.” My brain was buzzing, curiosity and jealousy turning out to be a dangerous mix. “What do you know about a bloke named Beau Beckett?”
“BB? Haven’t heard of him being around here for a few years now. He’s an old friend of ours, an old fling of Mari’s.” He sent a knowing wink my way. “Nice guy, had real potential to be someone, and got the fuck outta here to go do it.”
“How’d you go with Milah last night?” I asked, desperate for a change of subject that wasn’t likely to spike my blood pressure.
He sighed, finishing the last bite of his toast. “About as good as you’d expect.” He looked away and moved to flick the kettle on. “She refused to see me for the first couple of hours. So, I did what I had to do.”
“Which was?”
“Told the staff her brother would cut my balls off if I left without seeing proof of life, that I was rather fond of my pair and was willing to camp out all night just to keep them attached.” He shrugged before emptying two sugar packets into his awaiting mug and nearly half the bottle of honey. “Coffee?”
I nodded, passing over my now empty mug. “And that worked?”
“Barely. I think the staff knew I was serious and told her seeing me wasn’t optional. She spent the forty minutes I did see her berating me for not respecting her choices.”
“Sounds like one of her bad days,” I replied. Hearing about my sister’s … ventures in rehab was never easy. Every brotherly instinct in me screamed to help her myself, to just take her home and protect her.
But I didn’t have a home anymore. And her problems had gone far beyond the need for some TLC. Her brain was wired differently after five years of drug abuse, that I knew of. And I was a fighter. A good one, yes. But how could I fight something I couldn’t see?
“Better than when I went to see her during withdrawals,” he chuckled, gesturing to the scar on his eyebrow from the metal food tray she’d lobbed at him.
I had gone to see my sister once during her withdrawal phase.
She had been in so much pain, so much agony that I refused to go back until her system had been fully flushed.
So, I’d sent the only person I could trust in my place—JJ.
He’d taken my request seriously, as I knew he would.
Visited her every two weeks on the dot so I didn’t have to.
I still went to see her when I could, and now that Talia was no longer presenting an issue, I had a hell of a lot more time for it.
That had been the first place I went when I left Talia.
I’d told my sister everything, more than everything, more than I’d ever dared say aloud.
She’d cried, we both had, and wrapped me up in the tightest hug she’d ever given me.
And that moment, that time with her, had it made it all worth it.
All of the hits I took, the shit I copped for paying her rehab bills—it had all been worth it.
“I guess after that every visit, seems sunshine and rainbows, huh?”
My sister wasn’t a bad person by any means. She’d gotten mixed in with the wrong crowd when she lived with my mother for a few years when we were younger. Mum couldn’t afford to pay the prissy private school fees that my father was dolling out for us, so she’d sent Milah to the local public school.
By the time she was seventeen, I was fully convinced she’d be dead before she hit her next birthday.
But one day, when Dylan and I were sparring out in the yard, Dad’s car had driven up.
Milah had got out, quiet as a mouse, pale as a ghost, and that had been that.
She never told us why she came back to live with us, and after how spooked—no— petrified she’d looked that day, Dylan and I had an unspoken agreement to never ask.
Our conversation stopped with an abrupt knock on the open kitchen door. There, in last night’s clothes, stood the devil himself. Beau fucking Beckett.
“Jaxon Jones,” he said in a tone that wasn’t quite as comforting as a Soggla local liked to use. Though, from what JJ had just told me, I guess he wasn’t a local anymore anyways.
A smile fought its way onto my lips when JJ’s posture shift. He stood tall, his shoulders set back with that lack of rigidity that was required when you knew shit was about to go down.
Please, please give me a reason to hit this guy .
Images of him and Mari in that tiny fucking skirt flooded my mind on cue.
Good enough reason .
But JJ got to him before I did, wrapping him in a brotherly hug.
I scoffed at the easing of tension in the room, the welcoming and greeting of old friends that replaced it.
“BB, mate. I didn’t know you were in town!” JJ beamed, gesturing for him to sit at the small dining table in the centre of the staff kitchen.
“Well, I was hoping to surprise you at the ’dig last night, but you didn’t show. Figured I best come down here and make sure you were still alive and all.” He smiled an easy, charming smile that I could tell had even JJ swooning.
Whatfuckingever .
I shoved the last bit of toast into my mouth, downing it with a final gulp of my coffee.
“You back at your ’rents house?”
“Nah, man. Staying with an old friend just up the road.”
An old friend just up the road … Of fucking course he is .
“BB, have you met Chance?”
“No, I haven’t—”
“Seen enough of you in the last twenty-four hours, mate,” I spat. After grabbing my hand wraps, I walked out.
I didn’t need another spray from Mari today. Yes, that was why I was wearing hand wraps. That reason sounded better in my head than the fact that I thought I would physically combust if she got that close to me again.
“Lynnie! Look who’s here!” JJ called.
I tossed the wraps at the far wall, the anticipation like an erupting cloud over my mind. My heart rate powered on, a thundering beat in my chest begging me to match it with my hands.
So I did.
I matched thunder with thunder, boom for boom. Over the laughter, the banter, and jokes happening in the other room.
You’re not what she wants, mate. Get over it .
So why the fuck couldn’t I?