Make It Right by Megan Erickson Page A

off?”
    She laughed and smacked his arm. “Shut up.”
    He rubbed the reddened area. “I think you hit me enough today, doll, geesh.”
    “Sorry. But you were the one who challenged me. Acted like all you had to do was avoid getting poked in the eyes. Which, for the record, hurts really badly.”
    He shrugged. “I guess a well-timed punch works just as well. Those fucking shitheads try to beat me up and steal my shit, they won’t know what hit them. I bench two seventy-five.”
    Lea’s smile faded. “What, you think this class is only for girls?”
    “Well . . .”
    She wasn’t pissed. Or at least, she didn’t look pissed. But he knew a lesson was coming.
    “What do you think weak means? You think a skinny guy, like, five-five, weighing a hundred and thirty pounds, is weak?”
    Max shrugged. “I don’t know, I met a lot of little guys that are pretty strong.”
    She shook her head. “You look at me and you think I’m physically weak, right? I mean, I weigh a little over a hundred pounds and have a permanently disfigured leg that is painful every single day.”
    He opened his mouth but she kept talking.
    “And you think you’re strong because you can bench a lot of weight and can hypothetically take on three guys at once if they attack you?”
    Is that what he thought? Because now that she said it, it sounded pretty fucking stupid.
    She shook her head. “It’s not all about physical strength, Max. You know that. I know you do. It’s about technique. It’s about courage. And most of all”—she tapped her temple—“it’s about what’s up here.”
    Max mulled that over, his mind flipping between his father’s words and Lea’s. “Wouldn’t it be courage to fight back? Hurt them? Make them pay for what they’ve done to others and to Nick?”
    She took a deep breath and shrugged, then let her eyes roam the room. “Sure, I guess. But there’s also something to be said for being smart. Knowing you’re outnumbered. To have the courage to ditch all the pressure society puts on men to fight back, to man up, and protect yourself, get out and call the authorities.”
    Pressure of society? His dad was a whole fucking society of pressure on his own. Fuck everyone else. Max had been raised with “an eye for an eye.”
    But Lea had a point, too. Because how much would he be called a hero when three attackers overpowered him and kicked his head in? Who would care that’d he’d bloodied a nose or blackened an eye? Who would visit him in the hospital like Lea did with Nick?
    “Hadn’t thought about it that way,” he mumbled.
    Those all-knowing eyes again. They bored into him as he stared at the floor. “I know,” her musical voice said.

 
    Chapter 9
    M AX SLAMMED THE drawer of the register shut as the last customer of the day left the tiny shop office.
    He looked down at his nails, caked with dirt and grease, and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. A loud metal clang rang out in the attached garage, followed by his dad’s husky curse and a mumbled apology from one of his brothers. Probably Brent.
    Cal walked into the office and flopped down on the couch, propping his booted feet on top of the coffee table covered in outdated and coffee-stained magazines.
    Another clang. Another curse.
    “What’s going on out there?” Max asked.
    “They’re cleaning up and Brent keeps putting the tools in the wrong place. I think he’s doing it on purpose because he’s pissed Dad made us stay late today.”
    “I hate when Brent does that.”
    Cal laced his hands behind his head and leaned back. “Why do you think I’m out here?”
    Max turned off the Open sign and locked the door, then returned to the register to begin running the reports and closing it out for the night.
    “What’s with the . . .” Cal pointed to his eye and twirled his finger in a circle.
    Max reached up and prodded the bruised area. “Oh, uh, I was in self-defense class.”
    Cal frowned. “I thought you wore pads and shit