Kellan (9 page)

~
TWELVE ~

Parker

For the second time, I was in the
winner’s room with Kellan, and he was pissed at me.

He was pacing the
room like a tiger in a cage, muscles tight and teeth clenched, snarling at me
in a tone that was just barely intelligible. Vic, his manager, had told him who
Thom and I were. Who we worked for. What we did for a living. All the things
I’d been planning on telling Kellan myself tonight, face-to-face. I thought he
deserved that, rather than a phone call.

I hadn’t been able
to get a word in edgewise since we’d made it to the room, otherwise he’d have
known all that already. Right now, I was just enduring the shit he threw my
way. After all, it wasn’t like I didn’t deserve it.

“You fucking lied
to me, Parker,” he said, stopping at last. He stared at me, blood still sprayed
across his face, turning the color of rust. “Right from the start. You fucking
lied
to me. What the
fuck?
”

“I didn’t lie to
you at the bar,” I countered, but it was a shitty cop-out, and I knew it before
the words even left my mouth. “I told you I was a writer. I just didn’t tell
you who for. Besides, you weren’t exactly forthcoming with the details of your
profession. I had to hunt you down!”

“And for what?”
Kellan raged. “You made me think it was because you saw something in me,
something you liked, maybe even could love someday. You fucking came home with
me, Parker, and slept in my fucking bed, just so you could figure me out for
some fucking story that’s gonna ruin my life, if it ever gets out! Did you even
think about that when you were sitting on my couch, drinking my beer? Huh?” He
drilled his finger into the side of his head, getting in my face. “Did you
think about that when you were sucking my cock?”

I took a step back
and held up my hands. “I know you’re pissed, Kellan. And I know you have every
right to be. But let’s not say things we’ll regret.” Honestly, he was starting
to piss me off.

“Oh, right, I
forgot: I’m supposed to respect you, even though you lied right to my fucking
face! Is that how this works, Parker? You’re right, I’m wrong, ‘cause you’ve
got the ‘greater good’ in mind?” He sneered. “Fuck you, and fuck the high horse
you rode in on!”

“Kellan, if you’d
just shut the hell up, I can explain!” I hissed, my frustration starting to get
the better of me. He wasn’t even giving me the chance to tell him what Thom and
I had found, or how I planned to get him the help he needed while taking Vic
and his underground fighting scam down. For good, this time, if I had anything
to say about it. “Yes, I’m a reporter, and yes, I’m writing a story about
this—and you—but it’s not because I want to ruin your life. In fact, if
everything goes according to plan, I’m hoping I can make your life better.”

“Better for who,
Parker?” he asked. “For me? Or for you?”

I stared at him.
“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come on.
You’re not stupid, and neither am I. The whole thing looks great on your
résumé, doesn’t it? And hey, if you get this thing shut down, you won’t have to
live through the embarrassment of telling your friends you’re dating an
underground MMA fighter.”

“Embarrassment?” I
blinked at Kellan, genuinely hurt. “I never thought of you as an embarrassment,
Kellan. Never. Not once.”

He snorted and
turned away from me, hands on his hips. “Yeah, well, stick around, sweetheart.
‘Cause you will. Just like everyone else.”

“Kellan…” I began,
but he shook his head and cut me off.

“You don’t think
things through, do you? That’s the problem with you do-gooders. You go around
looking for charity cases whose lives you think you can ‘make better’ by making
them just like yours. You always think you know what’s best for everyone. Well,
you don’t know shit. You don’t know how this is all gonna go down, or if I’ll
end up in jail when it does. The way I see it, you’re trying to shut down the
only gig I can get where I actually make some money. You’d rather see me out on
the streets than doing something that’s against the law.” He folded his arms
across his chest, obscuring most of his tattoo. “When it comes to making a
living, though, the law’s never helped me.”

“That’s not it at
all,” I said softly. “Look, just hear me out. I’m working on pressuring this
senator. Senator MacFarlane. You remember those guys in the suits? One of them
was him. He was the reason I was at The Sly Fox that day. I was trying to
corner him, trying to make him support this bill that’ll give preference to
veterans seeking jobs. That story, combined with this one, will light the flame
under his ass that I need to make this happen. For you, Kellan. For us.”

“Yeah?” Kellan
said. “And when will that bill go into effect, Parker? This year? Next? Five
years from now, after its soul has been sucked out by a bunch of politicians
who wanna make sure their campaign contributors get a piece of the pie? What am
I supposed to do until then, huh?”

I realized I
didn’t have a good answer for him. Maybe he was right. Maybe I hadn’t thought
this all the way through.

“You deserve
better, Kellan,” I told him. It wasn’t an explanation, but it was still true. “I
just want to make sure you get it.”

He looked away,
like he couldn’t even stand the sight of me. “That doesn’t mean much of
anything when this is the only thing I know how to do.”

“I can help you,”
I said. “Kellan, we can get through this. I know I lied to you before, but
trust me when I say that I’ll make this right. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“It won’t be
enough!” he yelled, throwing up his hands. “Parker, this is my fucking
livelihood! This is all I have! You’re being unrealistic. Stop looking at the
world with these rose-tinted glasses you have on and for once see it for the
way it really is. I’m living hand-to-mouth. So are the rest of these guys. You
are literally going to put us on the fucking streets again, if not in a jail
cell!”

“You can’t keep
living like this, Kellan. None of you can. It’s not sustainable. This job, it’s
not what you think it is—”

I shrieked as
Kellan drove his fist just inches from my head and into the wall behind me. My
heart leapt into my throat and I stared at him, wide-eyed, as he brought his
face close to my own. I could actually feel the rage radiating off of him in
waves, piercing my heart and soul. I’d never been on the receiving end of his
fury before. It shook me to my very core.

“Don’t tell me
what I can and can’t do,” he said softly. “And don’t you dare act like you know
the first fucking thing about my job, or the world I live in. Or me.”

I couldn’t form a
reply. My whole body was trembling and my throat wouldn’t unclench. After a few
moments of silence, Kellan’s expression sharpened, like he was coming out of
some kind of fog. He looked at his hand buried in the drywall, then at my face.
He pulled away.

“See, Parker?” he
whispered, drawing his hand back. He’d ripped through the tape and torn open
his knuckles again. He was covered in blood, only this time, it was his own. He
held it up for me to see. “I’m dangerous. And you shouldn’t be around me.
You’re just gonna get hurt.”

“Kellan,” I
finally managed to say, but he was already at the door, flinging it open.

“Go the fuck
away,” he said over his shoulder. “And don’t you ever
think
about coming
back.”

And then he was
gone. Just like that. Kellan Jarvis had walked out of my life, and something
told me that unless I could show him that he was wrong about me—and himself—he
was gone for good.

~
THIRTEEN ~

Kellan

I was pissed. Royally pissed. And
when I was pissed, there was only one thing that ever helped: pounding my fist
into something I could smash.

Thankfully, Vic
had access to a makeshift training room that me and the other guys used from
time to time. It was meant to keep us sharp, but usually, it was my very own
anger management session. It had kept me from going crazy and getting into some
real deep shit more than once.

I couldn’t believe
the bullshit that had come to pass in the past few days, how my whole life had
gotten turned upside-down because of Parker fucking Jones. Vic had warned me
she was trouble. He’d said things were changing too fast, and it was gonna be a
problem. But did I listen to him? No. I thought I knew myself well enough that
I wouldn’t fall victim to exactly the kind of ploy Parker had tried to trap me
with. Apparently, I knew nothing at all.

How
much of it was a lie?
I wondered, torturing
myself as I beat the shit out of a dusty old punching bag hanging in the corner
of the room.
The things I felt with her. The things I thought she felt with
me. Was that all bullshit, too?

For all I knew, it
was. Parker had been hiding shit from me from day one. Maybe I hadn’t been
upfront with her about everything in my life, but at least I had an excuse.
What I was doing was illegal, and getting her involved could have gotten her
hurt. Shit, I’d spent so much time and effort trying to protect her, and it
turned out I should’ve been protecting myself all along. Now
that
was
irony.

Keep
your hands up,
I reminded myself.
Nobody’s gonna
protect you but you.
That was the real truth, right there. Inconvenient?
Sure. Hurtful? Hell yeah. But the truth often was. That was why nobody liked
hearing it, why people went to such incredible lengths to cover it up with a
heap of lies. If Parker had told me she was a reporter from day one, I never
would have told her about what I did for a living, never would have let her
into my heart, my home, my
history.
And she knew it, too, which was why
she’d lied to me about it. She knew she was doing something wrong from the
start.

Okay, so she had
good intentions. Fine. But wasn’t that what the road to Hell was paved with?
That was what I was going through now, because of her—Hell.

I heard the
training room door shut and looked up briefly from the bag I was terrorizing.
It was Vic, headed toward me with a big envelope. That must be my winnings from
last night. I pulled the hood off my head and ran a hand through my sweaty
hair, giving him a curt nod of greeting.

“Hey there,
Killer. What’s up?”

“What’s it look
like, Vic?” I asked. I didn’t mean to be rude, but fuck, what did he think was
going on after that bombshell he’d dropped on me the night before?

Vic looked the bag
over, shaking his head. “Looks like you let that reporter girl get under your
skin. Don’t worry about her so much, huh? You’re better off.” He extended the
envelope to me. “Here. This is your cut. Don’t spend it all in one place, you
hear? Especially if you’re lookin’ for some time off.”

“Do me a favor,
Vic,” I said, opening up the envelope. “Don’t talk about Parker. You don’t know
half of what was going on between us, and you never will. Shit between us is
way more complicated than you make it out to be.”

“What’s
complicated about it?” he asked. “She lied to you. Used you. She was gonna take
you away from us, your family. Or at least, take us away from you. She was no
good for you, Killer. You got a career here. A life.” I fingered through the
cash in the envelope as I listened to him ramble on about shit he didn’t know
the first thing about. “You can’t just go givin’ your heart out to every new
piece of strange that waltzes in here, y’know?”

“Where’s the rest
of this?” I said, holding up the envelope.

Vic spread his
hands. “What do you mean, ‘the rest of it’? That’s all there is. Your winnings,
minus my cut.”

“I thought you
said the payout was ten thousand on this one?”

“Well, sure,
Killer,” Vic said. “That’s what you were lookin’ at
before
fees. There’s
your fight fee, the one you pay every time you step onto the mat so’s you get
the opportunity to win big. Then there’s my manager’s fee, and then there’s
your princely sum. C’mon, you get the lion’s share. That’s how this works,
remember?”

I stared at the
money in my hand. I knew about the fees. If you wanted the bigger prize money,
you had to be willing to put a little money down. That was how they prioritized
things, like how they did in strip clubs, where if the girls wanted to dance on
a lucrative night, they had to pay for the privilege. That all made sense. But
still, that left me with only five thousand dollars. How in the hell did that
work out?

“How much was the
fight fee?” I asked him.

“Hey, Killer,” Vic
answered, “if you’re not happy with your pay, you can always take on the harder
fights. The
real
illegal ones.”

No. That was shit
I would
never
do. What we did here was brutal enough, but some of the
other stuff I’d heard about was like something out of a snuff film. Duels to
the death. Fighting with weapons. Gladiatorial-style combat. The hazard pay was
high on shit like that, but the cost could be my life. Or someone else’s. No
way I was putting myself in that position, or contributing to anyone’s death.
Not
anymore, anyway. If I wanted to still do that, I’d have stayed in the Corps.

“That’s not for
me,” I said, stuffing the money back in the envelope. Five thousand wasn’t bad,
really, especially since it was my third fight of the month. And it was way
more than I’d gotten paid before. “I just… thought it’d be more. Closer to what
you quoted me. You know?”

“Yeah, these fight
fees are really screwin’ everyone over,” Vic said, patting my back. “If I had
the power to change it, kid, I would. But there’s only so much that even Vic
Dallas can do. C’mon, cheer up. Shit, for some people, that’s a down payment on
a house.”

I nodded. It sure
was. And on any other day, I’d have thought Vic was being straight with me. But
after what happened with Parker, I didn’t know anything about anyone anymore.

“We’ll talk about
it later,” I said, tossing the envelope onto a nearby bench and going at the
bag again. “See you later, Vic.”

“Yeah, no
problem,” Vic said, staring at me for a few moments, studying me with his
bloodshot eyes. “But like I said, Killer, if you want a bigger profit, you’re
gonna have to put yourself out there for some shit you might not like to do.”

“I never do the
shit I like to do,” I said, driving my fist harder into the bag. “That’s my
whole fuckin’ life, Vic.” Or at least it was, before Parker showed up. With
her, things had felt different. I’d actually been loving life a little. Now
that she was gone, exposed as just another pretty lie, it was like all color
had been drained out of the world. I hated it.

So when Vic said,
“I’m just tellin’ you how it is, Killer. You’re gettin’ your fair share, and
anybody tells you otherwise is lyin’ through their damn teeth,” it took
everything in me not to turn on him and ask him again, specifically,
how
much was the fucking fight fee?
Because it hadn’t exactly gone unnoticed
that he’d refused to answer that question.

“Leave me alone,
Vic,” I warned him. “Now.”

“All right, all
right,” Vic said, holding up his hands in mock surrender. Over his shoulder,
though, he added, “But you’re better off, Killer. Trust me. Women are nothin’
but trouble.”

Fuckin’
Vic,
I thought, hitting the bag over and over
and over.
Always has to have the last word.

As soon as he left
me alone and I heard the door close behind him, I put everything I had into
beating that bag to a pulp. I thought of Parker’s face and all the lies she’d
fed me. I thought of how good she’d made me feel and how none of it was real. I
thought about how, for the first time in a long time, I’d felt like there was
hope in my life. And how she’d taken that away from me, robbed me blind of the
most precious thing I had—the very gift she gave me.

You’re
never gonna be like the rest of those people out there, Kellan. You’re a
weapon. You’re a monster. This is the only thing you’re good at. The only thing
you’re good for.

I repeated that
mantra in my head every time I sunk my fist into the bag, over and over and
over again until one of its seams burst and it spilled its contents all over
the floor.

I took a step back
and regarded my handiwork, breathing hard, the cold air stinging the back of my
throat. The pain and destruction felt good, felt right to me. They soothed my
soul in a way that nothing else could.

You’re
a weapon, Kellan Jarvis. That’s all you’ll ever be. This is where you belong. And
fuck Parker for trying to make you think any differently.

Maybe that was
true, but when it came down to it, false hope was the worst kind of weapon of
all.