I had known that was going to happen. I knew it as soon as I saw them, and I was ready. I punched the first guy who came over and grinned when I felt his nose break. Someone grabbed me from behind, and I fired back with an elbow, striking something hard, probably someone’s mouth. Cruz came over to help the two others, but before he got there, I’d already hit goon number one again in the face. Now it was my turn to suffer. Someone punched me in the right eye, hard enough to knock me aside, but still, I managed to kick whoever was trying to grab my arms. I held out awhile longer, but three against one was too much even for me, especially with Cruz in the picture. He was every bit as tough as Lion. One-on-one, I might have taken him, but with the other guys restraining me, there wasn’t much I could do.
Cruz started pounding me in the ribs, and I tried not to scream as I thought how much I’d like to kill him with my bare hands. Ronnie came over. The look on his face told me this wasn’t going to be the end of it.
“Tell your little sister I haven’t forgotten what happened on the track,” he said. Noah’s innocent face appeared in my mind. Ronnie grabbed me by my hair and pulled my face close. He stank like cheap beer and weed. “And tell her when I see her, I’m going to make her pay, and I’m not just talking about cash or a car.” I saw red all over. I was trembling with violence. I was going to kill that motherfucker.
“I’m gonna bust her wide open, Nick,” he said. If I could have moved, I’d have headbutted him and knocked his nose bone up into his brain. “And when I do, I’m gonna wreck that pussy so bad you won’t even want to go near it.”
“I’ll kill you,” I said. Three words, one promise.
He laughed and punched me in the stomach. Every ounce of air in me came out, and I had to bend over to cough and spit up blood.
“Don’t come around here no more or I’ll be the one to kill you. Don’t think I won’t,” he said, turning around. The guys holding me let go after one final punch in the face.
Those sons of bitches.
I stumbled off to my car. I barely made it home. Everyone was asleep; it was after one in the morning. Strangely, there was no light coming from Noah’s room. No way she was still out. I opened the door. Her bed was made.
I cursed, walked into my room, and pulled off my clothes, trying to grit my teeth through the pain. I was in bad shape; it had been a long time—four years to be exact—since I’d received a beating like that. It had been dumb of me to wander down that alley by myself. I’d made it easy for the bastard.
I got into the shower and let the water wash away the blood and sweat. They’d mostly stuck to my stomach and ribs, so I could cover up my bruises with a T-shirt. The black eye and busted lip were a different story. I’d need to come up with a good explanation for Dad or avoid him until the swelling went down. I had some practice. I didn’t get hit in the face often, but when we had our fights and money was on the line, sometimes there was nothing I could do about it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about how Ronnie had threatened Noah. He must have wanted to strangle her after that public humiliation at the races. The mere thought of that scumbag touching her made me so mad I could hardly keep from punching the mirror in front of me.
I dried off and threw on some sweatpants. I stayed shirtless, since some of my wounds were still bleeding. I rinsed out my mouth and made sure I hadn’t cracked any teeth, but I was good. My lip had even stopped bleeding, but it was red and purple, just like my eye. And both would be that way for some time.
I grabbed my phone and walked out into the hallway, thinking I’d try to find out where the hell Noah was and get some ice for my wounds.
Five minutes later, as I was walking out of the kitchen with my phone to my ear, I heard the key turning in the front door, and the main reason for my bad mood appeared.
Her phone was buzzing. It stopped when I hung up. She looked up at me. Her eyes were surprised and then horrified.
“Where the hell have you been?” I asked.
25
Noah
The last thing I expected when I opened the door was to see Nick standing there with the shit kicked out of him. I was surprised, as I walked up the stairs, to see that he was calling me. When I looked up at him, that feeling changed to terror.
“Where the hell were you?” he shouted. As always, he was intimidating. The question was unsettling, but his appearance was truly awful. His left eye was purple, his lip split, but that wasn’t the worst: his torso was covered in bruises still spreading under that tanned skin, over those shapely abs. Seeing those wounds paralyzed me. In a panic, I started to feel faint. I hated the sight of blood, and my ears started ringing. I had to hold on to the doorframe to stay standing.
“What happened to you?” I asked quietly.
He was angry. I could see it in his every gesture. It was almost as if his wounds were my fault.
“I asked you a question,” he said.
I shook my head and shut the door soundlessly. My mother and Will were in bed, and I didn’t want to wake them. Nick didn’t seem to care, though, to judge by his voice, which was nearly shouting.
“I was with Mario,” I said, walking closer to him. I wanted to run away from those horrible wounds, but I couldn’t ignore the state he was in. “Lion and Jenna met up with us to have ice cream. What do you care, anyway? Have you seen yourself?” I reached out without realizing it to touch a bruise on his ribs.
He reached out to brush me aside but seemed to change his mind and grasped my hand tightly until it hurt. I looked up and saw the rage and fear in his eyes.
“Come to the kitchen. I need to talk to you.” He pulled me away, and I couldn’t help looking at his bare back. My God, you could see every single muscle in it as he walked! That awakened in me a desire to touch his firm body. Another bruise was starting to form on his side. I hated whoever had done that to him so much, my vision started clouding.
Nick turned on a table lamp, so the light was dim as we sat down on a bench next to the island. He never let go of my hand. It was killing me to see him like this; his eyes were squinting from the pain, and all I could think about was what I could do to make him feel better.
“Did you notice anything weird while you were out?” he asked, worry clouding his face. “Anyone following you or something like that?”
I hadn’t expected the question. Looking him straight in the eye, unable to believe what I was hearing, I said, “No, of course not. Why?”
He let me go and turned aside, frustrated. I wished he had gone on holding me, but I just sat there, still.
“Ronnie hasn’t forgotten about the race.” Now I could guess what this was all about. “He wants revenge, and if he sees you, he won’t hesitate to hurt you.”
“Is he the one who beat you up?” I asked, cursing the bastard in my mind.
“Him and his three friends,” he admitted.
“My God, Nick!” I said, feeling a strange pressure in my chest. I brought my hands up to his face, feeling his wounds. “Four against one?”
He stiffened and then relaxed. Skirting over his wounds, my fingers traveled down his cheeks, feeling the raspy touch of his stubble, which made him so frightening and sexy at the same time.
“You worried about me, Freckles?” he asked. He was trying to be funny, but I couldn’t laugh as I felt his bruises and he grimaced. He reached up and pulled my hands away. “I’m fine,” he said.
“You have to go to the police,” I said, walking off toward the fridge. I grabbed a bag of frozen peas and returned to him, placing it over his eye.
“With guys like that, you don’t go to the cops, but anyway, we’ve got other problems.” He grabbed the bag and pulled it away from his face so he could look directly at me. “Noah, until things calm down, I don’t want you going anywhere by yourself, hear me?” His voice sounded like that of a big brother. “These people are dangerous, and they’ve got their eyes on you. Me, too, but I don’t care if I have to take a beating. I can defend myself. You, though… If they find you out on your own, they’ll eat you alive.”
“Nicholas, they won’t do anything to me. They don’t want problems just because I wounded some dickhead’s ego,” I said, ignoring the look of warning in his eyes.
“Until this is over, I’m not going to take my eyes off of you. I don’t care how you feel about it.”
Were we never going to get along?
“You’re unbearable, you know it?” I hissed.
“I’ve been called worse.” He shrugged.