Chapter Eighteen
Whiskey
Twila’s already dressed when I wake up.
That’s the first sign she’s fixing to piss me off.
The second is the black duffel sitting by the front door. The third is the look on her face while she ties her hair up, that stubborn, already-decided expression she gets right before doing something she knows I ain’t gonna like.
Her service pistol is back at her hip too. I gave it back after we came out of the woods before dawn because keeping a free deputy’s gun started looking too much like another fucking wall she talks about. Should’ve done it sooner.
I stop in the hallway and look from her to the bag. “No.”
She keeps tightening her ponytail. “I didn’t ask.”
“You ain’t wrestling today.”
That gets her attention.
Twila turns slowly, and I hear my mistake before she says a word.
Her eyebrows lift. “That sounded dangerously like you deciding for me again.”
Fuck.
I close my mouth.
She waits.
Smug little shit.
I change course. “You think walking into a public building full of people after somebody followed you onto my property is smart?”
“No.”
That catches me.
Twila gives her ponytail one last pull. “I think it’s stupid.”
“It is.”
“I think there are too many exits, too many people, and not enough control over who comes through the doors.”
“Then what exactly are you fighting me on?”
“Because I’m going.”
I fold my arms, then deliberately uncross them because apparently I’m practicing personal growth before coffee now.
“Explain it to me.”
That surprises her more than yelling would. Her gaze flicks toward the duffel, then comes back to me.
“If I don’t go because somebody scared me off, then they took it from me.”
My teeth come together. “Twila.”
“No. You asked.”
“I did.”
“So listen.”
I do.
“Paradise already belongs to Daddy,” she says.
“The badge belongs to the county. Half the people who look at me still see Amos Dix’s daughter before they see me.
Cal spent years telling me wrestling was stupid.
Daddy spent years waiting for me to grow out of it.
Everybody’s always got an opinion about what I should be doing instead. ”
She jerks her chin toward the bag by the door. “That’s mine.”
I realize she packed her outfit and gear. Something settles hard beneath my ribs. Heck’s Kitchen. Twister Dix. The crowd, the ring, all those nights I watched her walk beneath the lights like somebody plugged her directly into the building.
I thought it was hot.
Thought she liked the attention. Never stopped to wonder why she looked freer there than anywhere else I’d ever seen her.
“Fine.”
Her eyes narrow immediately. “Fine?”
“Yeah.”
“That easy?”
“Nope.”
I grab my cut from the chair and shrug into it. “I’m coming.”
“No.”
I look at her.
She looks right back.
“Cute.”
“Whiskey.”
“You said I don’t get to decide if you go. You didn’t say shit about me going with you. Heck’s belongs to the Kings, after all.”
“That’s manipulative.”
“Smart.”
“Annoying.”
“Also true.”
She sighs and reaches for the duffel. “You planning to hover?”
“Absolutely.”
“You planning to start fights?”
“Depends.”
“On what?”
“How many men try to touch you.”
Her mouth threatens to smile. “You realize wrestling involves touching?”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“I hate all of it equally.”
Twila laughs and swings the duffel toward her shoulder.
I take it from her before she gets there.
She looks down at my hand around the strap. “What?”
“Keep your hands free. I got this.”
“You know I’m capable of carrying a bag.”
“Yeah.”
“Then why are you carrying it?”
“Because I want to.”
She studies me with that same strange look she gets whenever I accidentally do something decent without turning it into a hostage negotiation.
Then she opens the door. “Come on, caveman.”
“Deputy.”
Twenty minutes later, Mama’s in my kitchen with Wren, Holler’s on the porch, and Vandal and Ash are watching the road in opposite directions, Vandal taking the rear approach out of habit.
I still hate leaving my kid after what we found before dawn but dragging her into a packed wrestling hall ain’t safer.
Heck’s Kitchen is already loud when we get there.
Harleys crowd one side of the gravel lot while pickups, SUVs, and beat-up county sedans fill the other.
Music pounds through the old windows hard enough to rattle the doors, and people are backed up near the entrance beneath hand-painted fight posters and cheap strings of lights.
Cigarette smoke hangs near the outside wall, blending with fryer grease, spilled beer, sweat, and whatever bad judgment smells like when a hundred people cram themselves beneath one roof.
The place has perfected some strange blend of county fair, biker bar, and wrestling hall.
Twila gets recognized before we make it twenty feet.
“Twister!”
Her whole face changes. Not dramatically. She doesn’t become somebody else. She just lights up.
A little girl in a homemade black T-shirt comes running toward us with her mother hurrying behind her. TWISTER DIX is spelled across the front.
Twila immediately crouches. “Look at you.”
The girl beams. “I made it.”
“You did?”
“Mom helped.”
Her mother smiles. “She’s been waiting all week.”
Somebody hands Twila a marker, and she signs the shirt carefully instead of scrawling across it like half the wrestlers I’ve watched do.
“What’s your name?”
“Lacey.”
“You wrestle, Lacey?”
The girl shakes her head. “Not yet.”
Twila grins. “Yet’s the important part.”
Her mother laughs.
I stand there holding Twila’s duffel like some kind of roadie and finally see something I should’ve understood a long time ago.
This ain’t ego. She ain’t doing this because she needs strangers telling her she’s pretty or tough.
She fucking loves it.
People keep stopping her as we work our way through the building.
Pictures. Autographs. Old men joking about how much money they lost betting against her.
Women telling her they loved the last match.
A teenage girl asks how she got started, and Twila gives her a real answer instead of brushing her off.
No badge on her chest. No Sheriff Dix attached to her name.
Just Twister.
By the time we reach backstage, I understand what Cal and her daddy never did.
The ring might be the only place nobody asks Twila Dix to be less.
Back here they want the whole damn woman. Loud, strong, cocky, mean when she needs to be. Nobody flinches when she takes up space. They cheer harder.
The whole room loves the exact woman Paradise keeps trying to sand down.
That thought pisses me off. Then Twila bends over to unzip her bag, and another thought replaces it.
Her shorts are fucking criminal.
“Stop.”
She doesn’t even look back. “What?”
“Whatever you’re thinking.”
“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”
“I can feel it on my ass.”
She straightens in her ring gear, black shorts with silver trim and a top cut low enough to make me reconsider religion. Her bright pink boots sit beside the bench. Her service pistol is secured in the locked gear case beneath the bench, exactly where she put it before stripping down to ring gear.
“Magenta,” she says.
“I didn’t say anything. Still pink.”
“Get out.”
“No.”
“You can’t be back here.”
“Looks like I am.”
“You ain’t talent.”
I smile. “Pretty sure I got talents.”
Her gaze drops slowly.
Then comes back up.
“Not those.”
I laugh.
A woman sitting across the room starts cackling.
Sheila. Kentucky Fried Carnage herself.
She’s taping one wrist and watching us like she got free entertainment with admission.
“So this the biker?”
Twila stops. “What biker?”
Sheila looks at me, then Twila. “The one you been watching like you wanna climb him.”
I immediately like Sheila.
Twila does not. “Shut the fuck up.”
She sits on the bench and starts taping her wrists.
The shift in her is immediate. One minute she’s arguing with me, the next she’s focused, working the tape around one wrist with quick practiced pulls before rolling her shoulders and stretching one leg in front of her.
I watch her bend forward. Professional appreciation. Strictly professional.
“You’re drooling.”
“Ain’t.”
“You are. For my ass?”
“Extremely professional.”
She looks over her shoulder. “You want thrown out?”
“Depends how.”
“You’re impossible.”
“So I’ve heard.”
She stands and stretches both arms overhead, every muscle through her stomach and shoulders pulling tight.
I remember those legs around me. Her hips moving over mine. Her mouth trying not to make noise because Wren was asleep down the hall.
Coming here and watching her do this while knowing exactly what she feels like naked was definitely a mistake.
Then a man’s voice behind me says, “Twila.”
My dick loses the argument with murder as Cal Mercer walks into the room carrying a medic bag.
Twila barely reacts. “Hey.”
I react enough for everybody. Cal sees me, and whatever neutrality he brought into the room disappears. I smile. Not friendly. “What’re you doing here?”
Twila cuts me a warning look.
Cal answers anyway. “Event medical.”
I glance at the bag in his hand. “Convenient.”
Twila points toward a chair. “Sit.”
I stare at her. “Excuse me?”
“You came to watch. Watch. The show must go on.”
Sheila makes a choking sound behind us like she’s trying not to laugh.
I look at Twila.
She holds my stare.
Fine. I sit.
Cal kneels in front of Twila and opens his medic bag. “Any headaches?”
“No.”
“Dizzy?”
“No.”
“Any nausea?”
“Only around controlling men.”
I smile.
Cal doesn’t. He shines a penlight into her eyes and checks her pupils. When his fingers touch her face, my hand clamps around my own knee instead of around his throat.
Sheila notices.
“You always look like that?”
I don’t take my eyes off Cal. “Like what?”
“Like you’re deciding where to bury somebody.”
“Only paramedics.”
She laughs. Cal hears.
He checks Twila’s pupils again. “You’re good.”
“Knew that.”
“Twila,” he says her name like a plea.
“What?”
“Be careful.”
Her expression closes just enough that I know exactly where this is headed.
“I know how to wrestle.”
“I know.”
“You always say that right before telling me not to.”
His mouth hardens. “I’m not trying to start something.”
“Then don’t.”