A little chill goes through me. Who is he hiding it from?
Before I can ask, we come out the end of the aisle of boxes he led me down, and he pulls me to the back corner, where the pit remains, as promised.
The pit is exactly what it sounds like—a dirt hole in the ground where the slab was broken at some point, and some genius decided to drag the concrete off and dig about six feet down. It’s small, maybe eight by ten feet, with uneven edges that are a bitch to climb up and down over. Some chunks of the concrete foundation used to line the edges for people to sit on, but they’re gone now, leaving just the jagged hole.
This isn’t a place MMA hopefuls are going to get discovered by scouts and go pro, like the back of a rec hall somewhere that puts down mats or opens a real ring at night. This is literally underground, bareknuckle boxing. The goal isn’t skill and finesse that people can see, though it takes plenty of both to do what has to be done here. The goal is to keep a fight going for as many rounds as you can, draw more blood than your opponent, and walk away with money and no broken bones. A KO on the first round will get you booed out of the place, spit on, and sometimes worse.
Tonight, there is no crowd, no women like my mother lounging on the cement blocks pretending they’re not trying to look sexy. No men stand around with tepid beer in plastic cups. There are no betting slips. The usual chatter and edgy, bloodthirsty excitement is gone. There are only three people, sitting in three chairs at the far end of the pit. In the dim security lights of the warehouse, I can barely make out that they’re all wearing hoods pulled down over their faces, like something out of a hostage video.
I turn to Royal, my heart giving one hard thud and then skipping the next beat. “What the fuck?”
“You’re welcome,” he says.
“Again, what the fuck, Royal?”
“They’re all yours,” he says. “Go talk to them. I think you’ll find they have some interesting things to say.”
I swallow hard, balling my hands into fists to keep them from shaking. “Why are you doing this?” I whisper.
His eyes turn earnest. “I’m trying to make it right.”
I stare at him incredulously. “You can’t make this right, Royal.”
“Can you just let me try?”
We stand there another minute, our wills battling as we gaze into each other the way only we can. The fucked up part is, I still understand him, even after what he did. I worked on it for so long, and it didn’t just go away. I can’t unknow what I know about him. He really thinks this is what I want.
“No,” I say, pushing past him, toward the door. He thinks he still understands me, because we used to be the only ones who understood each other. But he can’t understand me now, after what I’ve been through. No one except maybe Mabel Darling can understand that.
Royal grabs my elbow from behind and spins me around.
“Go deal with them, or I will,” he says quietly. His gaze is stormy, intense. There’s no question in this look. He’s giving an order and telling me the consequences of disobeying, just like he did when I climbed over the gate into his neighborhood. I should have listened then, but I didn’t, and he did exactly what he said he would. I have no doubt he’ll follow through on his promise this time, too.
A shiver runs through me when I remember what he did to Colt. I know how he deals with people. It’s what they deserve, and yet…
When our gazes meet, I can see so much in his eyes, so much rage and pain, that it shocks my own system, like my heart has stopped and he has enough energy to shock it back to beating. “I don’t want to see them,” I admit.
“You’re going to see them, anyway,” he says. “You can’t hide away forever.”
“Why not?” I ask. “They’d be happy to pretend I died that night. Tell them I’m a ghost, that they can’t talk to me at school. If you say I don’t exist, they’ll make it true.”
“I don’t go to your school anymore, Harper.”
“So?” I demand. “You still have power in this town.”
“That’s not going to help you.”
“I didn’t ask for your help.”
We stare at each other another long moment. “You have no fucking idea how hard it was to bring them here without bashing their skulls together until there was nothing left but bloody stumps on their necks,” he says. “If that’s what you want to do, do it. If you want to cut their dicks off, stuff them up their own asses, and watch them bleed to death, do it. But stop running, and fucking take care of it.”
“So, I’m supposed to thank you?” I ask. “This is some kind of gift that’s supposed to make up for what happened to me?”
He gives me that hooded look, staring me down. “If that’s what you want it to be.”
“Sorry, I’m not a sadist,” I say. “I don’t get off on hurting people. I just want to be dead to you and all of them, like you said.”
He swallows hard. “You’re not dead to me, Harper. You know that. Obviously, you’re not.”