Fighter

“What?”


“Has college sucked all the intelligent cells out of you? It’s Christmas Eve…” She waited, her eyebrows rising higher and higher. Then she made a circling motion in the air. “Come on…”

Christmas Eve. Fighting. Jaxon.

It hit me, and I fell back down against the couch. “Fuck me.” Jaxon was fighting at Sally’s, a hick bar known for their underground fighting matches. They always had a three-day tournament, starting Christmas Eve and ending on Boxing Day.

“Uh…” Haley tilted her head to the side. “I think he actually did that one time right there.”

“What?” Dylan looked back and forth between us. He’d grabbed his coffee cup and now reached for mine.

I pulled it to my chest, shooting him a dark look. “Back off.”

He rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

A honking came from outside, and he waved at them through the window. “I gotta go. See you later, and you’d better get all dressed and pretty. You’re going to be seeing your boy later tonight.” He gave us both a cocky smirk as he left, using his back to push open the door.

The second it closed, Haley turned to me. “Tell me you want to go too.”

“Hell, yes.”

We started knocking the ice packs off my leg. When she saw the blanket, Haley grinned and shook her head, but didn’t say a word. When all of them were gone, she took one of my hands, and I pushed up from the couch with the other. Here was the testing moment: could I put weight on my leg or not? I would have to be able to walk.

Holding my breath and my latte, I started standing up. Nope. Daggers of pain shot up my leg, and I cried out. No way. I couldn’t walk. “Great,” I muttered. The pain almost made me drop my coffee. That would be a cold day in hell. Coffee came before everything. “Now what am I going to do?”

Haley thought, then her eyes lit up. She let go of my hand, and I barely caught myself as I fell back to the couch. I screamed at the sudden rush of more pain.

“Oh.” She grimaced. “Sorry about that. But wait…” She ran upstairs, then downstairs, giving me a thumbs-up as she passed the living room. She threw open the basement door, and I heard her going down. She reappeared empty-handed and paused in the doorway to the living room. She scratched the top of her head, then her hand jerked up again. “I got it!” She sprinted back out through the kitchen, and I twisted around so I could see through the window. She was heading for the shed.

A second later, the big door for the shed opened, and she came back out, pushing my worst nightmare.

“Fuck me,” I muttered.

She grinned brightly and waved her arms toward her find. “Voila. A wheelchair!”

Yep. This was my life. I was going to hunt down my ex-boyfriend in a wheelchair. This had to be a bounty hunter’s most embarrassing moment. I mustered a weak smile and gave her a thumbs-up back.

She clapped and waved her hands in the air. “This will be fun! I want to wear a bulletproof vest.”

Chapter Three

In the end¸ both of us wore bulletproof vests and sunglasses. As Haley pushed my wheelchair up to the handicapped entrance, my elbow rested on my lap, and my hand held my stun gun.

Yes. We were badass.

Then Haley tripped, and my wheelchair bumped into the rail, hitting my hand, and I dropped the stun gun in my lap. I froze, pure terror going through me, but it didn’t go off. Haley stifled a scream as I turned and smacked her.

She yelped, cradling her arm. “Ouch.”

“I could’ve stunned myself.”

She nodded, and a laugh slipped from her lips. “Well, you’re already in a wheelchair.”

I glared at her. “We had another one in the shed.” I raised the stun gun and pointed it at her.

She kept laughing and rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Be all menacing. I know you have a mushy heart, and besides, if you stunned me, who’d bring you coffee in the morning?”

I snorted. “You’re not going to. What are you talking about?”

“That’s true.” Then, still laughing, she straightened the chair and started up the ramp again. Once we got to the door, we formed our own line. The other line of able-bodied patrons spread down the entrance and out onto the sidewalk. The ones waiting close enough to the door watched us the entire time. Some had their hands covering their mouths, laughing, but others glared. If we got in like this, I had no doubt they were going to rebel.

The bouncer turned to us, and I smiled, lifting my stun gun. “Let us in, Ace.”