On The Ropes by Cari Quinn Page B

so she would steer clear of me…not look at me with that challenge in her eyes like she was even more intrigued.
    Damn inexplicable woman.
    Then we’d sat down to her delicious casserole and the salad Mia had massacred—Carly had been right to worry about her tomatoes, because Mia had just halved a bunch and thrown them in the bowl—and Carly had spent the entire meal whispering and giggling with Jenna, who was supposedly slightly older but seemed ridiculously young. Even worse than Carly.
    I almost felt like I was tainting them by sitting at the same table. Carly, I wanted to taint, in spite of how hard I fought against my urges in that direction. Jenna, I wanted to lock up in a convent before some dickhead came along and killed that youthful joy in her big green eyes.
    It was hard to focus on the rest of the dinner conversation when I was so busy trying to overhear what they were up to. They were plotting something, I just knew it. Girls that age were nothing but trouble.
    Girls all ages, but that one especially.
    “So, I guess now’s as good a time as any to spill the beans.” Fox shot me a glance. “I’m going to fight again. One night only. Against that fuckwit at the other end of the table.”
    Silence reigned.
    Predictably, Mia broke it first. “Say the fuck what?”
    I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “It’s no big deal. Just like Fox said, one night rematch for our fight in January. Then he’ll go back into retirement with his pockets a little fuller and his chest a little more pumped up…if he kicks my ass as he claims he can.” Out of the side of my mouth, I added, “Doubtful.”
    Mia glanced at Fox. “Since when do you want to fight again?”
    He leaned back in his chair and hooked an arm around the back of it. We were all crowded around their small kitchen table, though luckily Mrs. Knox had been busy so there was one less person there than usual lately. But Jenna had taken up that room, and how with her incessant laughter with Carly.
    Times like this I realized how very young she was. Not just chronologically, but in other ways too. I didn’t doubt she’d seen difficult things, some more difficult than even I could guess, but she was still a young girl in so many ways. And I wanted her to stay that way, not become a hardened shell of a person like me.
    “I didn’t want to fight again,” Fox said finally, catching my eye. “You could say I was persuaded by very effective means.”
    “What means?” Mia narrowed her eyes in my direction. “I knew you were up to something the last few months. Trying to make us think we were all buddies now, ingratiating yourself, dragging Tray into dangerous situations.”
    She forgot to add getting her sister in trouble then fucking her senseless, but she didn’t know that part.
    “Hold it there, fighter girl.” Fox no longer looked amused. “I’m not twelve, and he didn’t drag me into anything. And trust me when I say the terms he offered will benefit you too.” He gave her a thin smile. “Assuming you don’t nag me to death and make me not want to have sex with you again for the foreseeable future.”
    “Ha. Like that’d happen.”
    Coughing into my napkin, I glanced at Carly. And found she was staring at me openly, speculation written in every line of her beautiful face.
    “There is no trick,” I said quietly, to her as much as Mia and Fox. More so, probably. “I have my reasons for wanting to have a rematch with Fox, but they aren’t sinister so much as self-serving. He stands to make a good amount from the bout, and the attention will—”
    “Son, I told you once. I don’t give two fucks about attention. I’m happy slinging drinks, teaching people to fight and taking sports medicine classes. My glory days, such as they were, are over. And I’m glad.”
    Mia speared a tomato chunk. “One night only.”
    “One.” Fox leaned forward and grabbed her wrist across the table, halting her tomato’s progress on its way to her mouth.