The Fighter (The High Rise, Book 1) (25 page)

Thank you,
Jesus.

Two younger
guys come to the table to place bets and I take their money while
Craig hands them tickets.

“Is that it?”
I question.

“I know they
went into my bedroom and had to have fucked because they left a
nasty-ass wet spot on my bed. The covers were messed up too.”

I think my
heart goes into afib because it’s doing something crazy in my
chest, probably breaking, and I know I black out for a moment but
I’m still standing. Everything is fuzzy and when I finally come to,
Craig’s frowning at me asking if I’m okay.

I nod just as
the bell rings and I turn to see another fight has started.

Where’s Heath?
I need to see him because I have to kill him now.

Another group
comes to the table and I take their money, all the while looking
around for the cheating bastard who’s played me from the fucking
start. And then we make eye contact. I’m just going to assume he’s
seeing as much anger in my eyes as I now see in his and when he
starts making his way toward me, I welcome it because the son of a
bitch is going to get an earful.

“What the fuck
are you doing here?” is the first thing he says to me.

“That’s my
question too,” I fire back wanting to ask if he’s okay because he’s
got a nasty cut on his cheekbone but tossing that notion aside when
I remember he’s a lying, cheating asshole.

He looks at
Craig. “Hold down the fucking fort.” Then he grabs me by my upper
arm and leads me to the stairwell. I jerk my arm out of his grip
once we get there, glaring up at him. “Again, what the fuck are you
doing here?” he snarls.

“If it’s any
of your business, Elton couldn’t make it, so Uncle Edward asked me
to take over.”

“So you’ve
known about this all along?”

“I told you I
did. Tonight when I saw you, of course, I was shocked because you
lied to me, but I thought you were probably doing this for your
brother.”

His mouth
drops open and he looks as if I’ve slapped him (which I so would
love to do right about now). “You fucking liar,” he states.

Now my mouth
falls open and I find that I’d
really
love to slap him.
“What did you just call me?” I ask in disbelief, even more confused
that he’s calling me out on whatever the hell he’s calling me out
on.

“I knew it.”
He lets out a humorless huff. “I knew it from the beginning. But
you’re good. You’re fucking good.”

“Me? If
anyone’s been lying, it’s you! You’ve been fighting all along,
haven’t you? Making shit up telling me you had shutdowns at work!”
He’s shaking his head at me as if I’m pathetic. “Don’t you dare
look at me that way, you son of a bitch! And I know all about
Glenda!”

He pulls his
head back and frowns.

“Yeah. I know
all about it, you fucking prick,” I spit. “You fucked me first then
went to Craig’s and fucked her!” I smack my hand against my
forehead. “I’m so stupid! And at the party you tried acting like
she was annoying you! Oh! And in the weight room too! And all this
time we’ve been together, you were fucking her too, weren’t
you?”

I’ve never hit
anyone out of anger. Until now. I don’t even think I could’ve
controlled it if I’d tried, but somehow my right hand bunches up in
a fist and I just swing, hitting him smack dab in the chin. It’s
like slow motion as I first see the surprise on his face and then
watch as his head jerks back from the force of my hit.

I’m just as
shocked as he is but I’ve got to own it now. “You played me from
the start. I called it but for some reason I didn’t listen to my
gut.” I start crying and that just pisses me off even more. “So for
all I care, you can go fuck yourself, you lowlife fucking
asshole.”

I turn and run
up the stairs, having to hang on to the railing to keep from
falling because my eyes are blurry from crying. In the lobby, I run
to the elevator pushing the up button and thankfully it opens
immediately. After hitting seventeen, I step back against the wall
and slide down to the floor, my sobs overtaking me.

How could I
have been so stupid? I knew I’d only end up getting hurt.

I get off the
elevator at my floor, standing and walking aimlessly toward my
door, unlocking it and going inside. Dani’s not home because she’s
gone to the Bahamas for a photo shoot with Chastity but I call her
anyway.

“Hey! What’s
up, Lane?” she answers cheerfully.

And let the
real crying begin.

When I compose
myself a little, I tell her what happened and she’s pissed.

“Do you need
me to come home? I can be there by morning.”

“No, don’t do
that. I’ll be okay. I think I’m going to take some time off,
though.” I start crying harder when I remember that Heath and I
were supposed to go to his cabin next weekend.

“I think
that’s a good idea. Maybe you could go see your sister. You haven’t
seen her in a while,” she suggests.

“Maybe.” A
shuddering sob runs through me. “Why’s it have to hurt so bad?”

“I know,
honey. I’m so sorry. I’m truly sorry. I’ll come home if you want me
to, just say the word.”

I think about
it for a second but I need to be alone right now and I tell her
so.

“All right.
But I’m here for you, okay? I should be home on Wednesday unless
Chastity decides she wants to stay longer.”

Hearing
Chastity’s name makes me think of Heath agreeing with the guys
about wanting to sleep with her and now I know he was lying about
that too.

“I’ll be
okay,” I sniff. “You have fun. Don’t worry about me. I might go
stay with Mom and Dad for a while too. I love you.”

“I love you
too. Call if you need me, any time.”

We hang up and
I stand in the middle of the living room staring at nothing. I
don’t know how long it goes on (five minutes? An hour?) before I
finally go to my bedroom, change into my pjs and crawl into my
bed
.

Twenty

I’m in
shock
.

I can’t
believe she pulled this shit off but she did. Had my dumb ass
fooled from the get go.

I leave the
stairwell going back into the basement to the back to get my bag
that I left with Matt.

“Everything
okay?” he asks.

“No.”

His brow comes
down. “Anything I can do?”

“Yeah.
Tomorrow when Jake breaks into Kyle’s files, take the printout I
give you and turn the motherfucker in.”

Back in my
apartment, I start packing shit up. After tomorrow there’s no need
for me to stay here any longer. The furniture and TV aren’t mine,
so all I’ve got to get is my clothes and a few personal items then
I’m gone.

I call Jake
making sure he’ll be here first thing in the morning. Then I call
Aaron and tell him it’s all going down tomorrow and he should be
free. I hang up when there’s a knock at my door and I swear to fuck
if it’s Laney, I’ll go ballistic.

At the door, I
look through the peephole to see it’s none other than Edward Kyle
himself. I almost tear the door off its hinges when I rip it
open.

“What the fuck
do you want?” I snap.

“I came to
tell you to stay the fuck away from my niece,” he replies.

I laugh.
“That’s none of your goddamned business. But to ease your mind, you
don’t need to worry about it. Found out tonight, she’s a fucking
Kyle through and through.”

I want so
badly to tell him to enjoy his stay in prison but I don’t know if
that’ll happen. All I care about right now is that I get Aaron
out.

He looks proud
when he answers, “She certainly is.” He gives me a look before
turning and leaving and I laugh again because he’s such a fucking
prick.

I close the
door and go to the kitchen getting a new bottle of whisky from the
cabinet. Just as I get ready to take a swig, someone knocks
again.

“Goddamn it,”
I mutter, ready to serve Kyle his ass on a plate since he’s come
back for more. But when I open the door, I see it’s Matt. I open it
wider letting him in before closing it then walk back to the
kitchen getting down two tumblers pouring us both a drink and
handing him a glass. Holding my glass up, I say, “To bitches who
cut your fucking heart out,” and down it all pursing my lips at the
burn as it goes down.

“Hear, hear,”
Matt mumbles doing the same.

I grab the
bottle and walk into the living room sitting on the couch setting
my glass on the coffee table and refilling it. He does the
same.

He holds his
glass up. “To taking down motherfuckers who screw with people’s
lives.”

“Hear, fucking
hear,” I answer and drink the entire contents of that one down
too.

“That fucker
you fought tonight was bad news,” he says.

I snort. “He
was good.”

“Yeah. I was
just trying to make you feel better.”

This makes me
laugh and I pour us another drink. We finish the entire bottle and
I don’t remember anything after that. I think what happened was
I
finished the bottle while he listened to me complain about
how fucked up everything was. No, I didn’t whine like a little
bitch, I know that much, but I did gripe about how Laney played me
and that I’d never trust another woman again.

Someone’s
banging on my fucking door and my phone’s going off at the same
time.

“What?” I
answer as I get up to open the door.

Jake’s
standing there on his phone talking to me. “’Bout time you answered
your door, you lazy ass bitch.”

I speak back
into the phone to him. “Go fuck yourself, asswipe.” When I realize
I’m still talking to him on my phone and he’s standing right in
front of me in my living room, I end the call giving him a dirty
look. “Bastard,” I mumble then go take a piss while he laughs at
me.

When I come
back into the living room, he’s got two laptops and a printer set
up on the coffee table. “If these can’t get through, nothing can,”
he mumbles, typing shit in on both of them.

I sit on the
couch and watch him when ten minutes later he yells, “Hell yeah!” I
sit up to see what he’s yelling about. “I’m in!”

He tells me
he’s going to find Kyle’s account and password and I don’t give a
shit about the play-by-play calling he’s giving me. I just want to
know the final outcome. I sit back and another ten minutes or so
goes by and he says, “Look at this shit.” I move to the edge of the
sofa to see he’s got several files pulled up. “Bingo,” he says,
smiling.

“Damn, you’re
good,” I mutter, clapping him on the back. “Can you take Aaron off
there?”

“Will do,” he
says, and I watch as he finds Aaron’s name and deletes the over
sixty-thousand dollars that’s listed by in the column by his name
along with payments and interest. Jesus.

When he gets
ready to print them, I say, “Also, can you take off Matt Baldwin
too?” He scrolls until he finds his name and deletes his name and
numbers too. “Thanks.”