Limp aside, Beckett was up in Rixey’s face in about two point six seconds. It was like an eighteen-wheeler barreling down on him. “You really think you, of all people, should be talking about our team?”
The unresolved agitation from the day’s events banked in Rixey’s gut caught fire, heating his blood and sending him another half step closer to a man common sense generally told you not to antagonize. Huge, grim-faced, and lethal beyond measure, Murda was the kind of guy instinct had you crossing the street to avoid. But Nick had his own killer arsenal to draw from, fueled by a sea of rage that roiled just below the surface. “I fought for it. I bled for it. Damn straight I can talk about this team.”
Just when Nick was sure Murda wasn’t gonna back down, he did. Shaking his head, he turned and scoffed on a laugh. “Right. You just didn’t care about it enough to keep us together.”
A flash fire ripped through Nick’s veins. He’d agonized every goddamned day of the past ten months over what had happened to these men. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“You heard me, Rixey. You acted all gung ho brotherhood when things were good, but five minutes after we were stateside”—Beckett shoved him—“it was out of sight, out of mind.”
It was the contact that did it. Something inside Nick’s brain snapped and sent a roar of aggression flooding through him, deadening his hearing and dulling every sense that wasn’t focused on defending his honor against the accusation.
Rixey charged.
They clashed in a wall of muscle and a battle of wills. Nick took an uppercut to the gut that rearranged more than a few of his organs, and he dished out a jab to the throat that had Beckett choking and rasping for breath. Rixey’s conscience dripped acidic shame into his chest cavity over the fact that he had withdrawn from the team once they’d all returned stateside, but his sense of loyalty and honor infused his spine with steel because, while he might’ve been fucked in the head—he’d own that every day of the week and twice on Sunday—he’d never once given up on any of them or surrendered to the bullshit that had so unjustly stripped them of everything they’d once been. Out of sight, out of mind? Jesus, there were times he would’ve gotten on his knees for five minutes of reprieve from the guilt and the loss.
Another hit landed against the kidney on his bad side and he flew back against the steel doors of the fridge, his head glancing off the metal and his lower back screaming at the jarring impacts.
Beckett came at him swinging, brute strength his biggest asset. But Rixey had speed and agility, and a carefully timed dodge earned Murda’s knuckles a hi-how-are-ya with the immovable freezer door.
Raised voices sounded and tugging hands touched as if from a distance, but he and Beck were caught up in an exorcism of demons that had to play out to its brutal end.
“Stop it! Oh, my God, stop!” Becca.
Her voice hauled his conscious brain out of the fog of war and he rebounded into himself. Struggling to focus, he blinked and scanned the kitchen, looking for her. His gaze finally latched onto hers at the precise moment Beckett’s elbow connected with his face.
BECCA FLINCHED AND gasped at the force of the impact. Nick’s head whipped to the side, sending his whole body careening into the edge of the breakfast bar. The groan that ripped out of him when his side hit the granite had her struggling out of Shane’s grip and lunging toward Nick.
She wrapped her arms around his back and shoulders, hunched over the bar. “Jesus, Nick, are you okay?” Beckett hovered just behind them, his face twisted with anger. She nailed him with a glare and said, “Whatever the hell this was is over. Back off. Now.”
“Fuuck,” Nick groaned under his breath as he forced himself upright. Bleary eyes cut to Beckett’s retreating form and made a circuit around the room before turning to her. He grimaced, and the muscles down his left side spasmed, judging by the way he held himself.
Fierce protectiveness squeezed her heart and bloomed into outright fury. But taking care of Nick was all that mattered right now.
“Come sit down,” she said, tugging an empty stool closer and guiding him onto it. His face. God, his right cheekbone was split wide, blood streaming from the cut and the skin already puffing up the whole way to his eye. “You got a first-aid kit?”
“Under the sink in my bathroom,” he said, his words sounding like they’d been dipped in sandpaper.
“Would someone see if you can find it? His room is the last door at the end of the hall.”
“Sure, kid.” The older man—Nick’s PI friend?—double-timed it out of there.
Shane grabbed the roll of paper towels, wet a few, and laid out a stack of damps and dries on the bar next to her.
“Thanks,” she said, angry as hell at the lot of them but appreciating the gesture.