“Cool. At French’s?”
I do my best not to look absolutely stunned. She knows about French’s? There’s a very select few people in this city that know about the underground fighting ring that sets up underneath La Maison Markets every Saturday night. She doesn’t even sound fazed by what I’ve told her. “Yeah, that’s right. You go?” It sounds like a ridiculous question, even as I’m asking it.
“My brother fights there every weekend.” She sounds perfectly bored.
“Huh. What’s his name?” Like I would know his damn name. Tonight is my first night fighting. I won’t know a single person there, apart from my buddy, Ben, and he’s in the higher ups. He won’t be able to babysit my ass for me. I’m going to be flying solo.
“Jameson. His name is Jameson Rayne.”
I feel my own damn breath catching in my throat. For a second there I feel like I’m choking. “Jameson Rayne is your brother?” Jameson was the youngest guy to take the pot at French’s. He bet on himself and won upward of forty thousand dollars in one night, and all at the age of twenty-one. As far as I know, he’s twenty-six now and he’s still making bank betting on himself. No one ever wants to fight him. And why the hell would they? The guy’s a savage bastard.
“Urgh, not you, too,” Kaya says. She leans her forehead against the window, looking away from me. “Jameson Rayne, the world’s most notorious fighter.” She makes an agitated sound at the back of her throat. “Gets really fucking old.”
“It’s no fun having a badass for a brother?”
“Not when he’s intensely protective and borderline crazy, no.” Kaya absently holds out a whole red vine, still refusing to look at me. I accept it, kicking my own ass. I want her to look at me. I complained about those intense eyes studying me, picking me apart at the seams, trying to figure out what’s inside, but now that they’re focused elsewhere and it feels weird.
“Older brothers are meant to be protective over their younger sisters,” I whisper.
“You say that like you have some sort of experience in the field.”
“Maybe I do.” I’m pulling into Seattle University, though, so I don’t have to tell her about that. Thank fuck.
Kaya jumps out of the car and grabs her bag from the back seat. When the door slams, I think that’s it—she’s just going to leave without saying another word to me—but then she’s there by the driver’s side window, tapping against the glass. I buzz the window down.
“You never told me if I was right,” she says.
“I’m sorry?”
“I said you thought I was pretty. Is that not the case?”
I just stare at her. She barely has to bend down to talk to me through the window, she’s so small. Her eyes are bright, her cheeks still blushed red against the cold. She doesn’t look like she belongs here. She looks like she’s made out of something breakable. China, maybe. I have an overwhelming urge to protect her, to prevent her from ever breaking, but I can’t. My hands are already too, too full.
“Of course I think you’re pretty. I think you’re fucking beautiful,” I whisper. “But we’re in different places. If things were different…”
“Oh, I know,” she says, smiling. She doesn’t seem pissed at the fact that I’m trying really fucking carefully to tell her I’m not interested. Even though I kind of am, which is the hardest part. “Don’t worry. Whatever’s meant to be always is, right?” She beams, pats her hand against the windshield, and then she’s pulling the hood up on that gigantic Parka and walking away. I sit there and watch her as she runs up the steps into the building in front of me, feeling honorbound to make sure she gets inside safely. Once she vanishes, I do the sanest thing I can thing of: I speed out of the parking lot like the very devil himself is on my heels.
Chapter Eleven
Mason
“Why do I have to sleep at Wanda’s house?” Millie hugs her soft toy, Roo, to her little pigeon chest, the Winnie the Pooh character looking faded and more than a little worse for wear. My baby sister looks like she might cry. I suddenly feel really fucking sick.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Mil. You want me to stay home here with you?”
She looks up at my with those big eyes of hers, shiny from the potential tears that might fall—she hasn’t decided yet whether staying at Wanda’s is a big enough deal to warrant tears—and blinks. “Where are you going?” she whispers.
“I’m going to do another job.”
“But you went to work this morning.” She rubs the pad of her index finger against my knee, staring at it, clad in my jeans, apparently absorbed in the feel of the material.
“I know, kiddo, but this is for extra. Extra money. So we can move and get a better place, right?” We’ve talked about this enough that Millie knows how important moving is for us. She gives me a very solemn nod, still not looking at me.