IMAGINES: Celebrity Encounters Starring You (28 page)

Nick’s smirk fell. “What?”

“I said,
I quit! I QUIT!
” You tossed your bo staff at him and stormed out of the room.

YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN
at Cesspool, yet there you were. To you, the place was paradise. To others, the place was an ugly shithole with even uglier people in it.

The first thing a rookie would notice about Cesspool was the smell. It had damp walls and a pungent, foul odor that clung to your clothes like tobacco on a smoker. That odor, paired with the stench of sweaty men and BO, made most rookies retch the second they stepped into the arena.

The arena was cavernous and congested with people. Matches didn’t usually last long because of the tendency for the crowd to get involved in the fights. A handful of men had been hired by the head of Cesspool to keep the place in order. They didn’t really do anything unless someone’s life was at stake, or one of the fighters ticked them off. You sure as hell would never tick them off because they all looked like a mix between Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rock.

The last thing you wanted was to cross paths with Rhett, but you were too riled up from
Nick
to let your intense emotions build inside you, and you wouldn’t let Rhett disrupt your life. Fighting was your only outlet.

Your chin was down and your gloves were up, pounding at the beat-up punching bag in front of you. Warming up was great, but you had to channel all your anger into something quickly or else you were certain you’d explode with rage. Thirty minutes before, Chip had reluctantly set a match for you. He was concerned that Rhett would come back to Cesspool, lose his temper, and hurt you. Chip had every right to feel that way, but it was ultimately your choice, and you’d made him a lot of money. Plus, you were setting Chip up with the hot cashier at the bagel place by your apartment. He
owed
you.

When you stepped over the ropes and into the ring, adrenaline pumped through your veins. It heightened your senses as it
always did, and all your problems in the world temporarily disappeared. Your opponent was a man who topped your height by only a few inches. He was white, lean, with black eyes and a skull-trim haircut that made him look malicious. He bounced on his toes in the corner of the boxing ring with two men at his side giving him advice. They held his arms back, as if he would charge toward you at any moment. When he caught your gaze, your opponent growled around his mouthpiece like a wild animal.

The announcer referred to him as Savage.

Great.

This guy was a fucking lunatic. You’d fought men twice his size, but this was a rare moment when you were becoming afraid of your opponent. This guy was like a rabid dog, waiting to be released so he could bite off your head. You couldn’t back out now. You wouldn’t lose to a man
twice
in one day. They didn’t call you Knockout and Slugger for nothing.

Then you saw
him
. Your eyes had hitched to the audience, and there he was. Everything froze.

Nick Bateman. In a black sweatshirt with the hood up and black sweatpants to match, he towered over everyone else and stood directly below a filthy fluorescent light, arms crossed over his chest. His expression was unreadable and he had yet to catch your gaze. Why the hell was
he
at Cesspool?

The fight began and Savage charged at you. You snapped out of your thoughts and maneuvered around him, mostly to put your back to Nick and make sure he didn’t recognize you. The quick decision worked in your favor. Savage charged past you and hit the thick ropes around the ring. When he ricocheted off the ropes, you rushed forward and hit his face with a series of compound hand strikes. It seemed like something straight out of a film or a cartoon.

Your strike to his gut was blocked. Eventually, your guard was
down and he counterpunched you hard in the gut, knocking the wind out of you. The rest of the fight was a blur. Your head wasn’t in it, and you were getting the shit beat out of you. Bad.

Finally, Savage had knocked you to the ground and you couldn’t get back up. Pain blasted in your cheek and your nose was bleeding profusely. The crowd was going wild.

“Savage. Savage. Savage.”

You’d lost. You
never
lost a fight. Now you’d lost twice in a day.

Savage shouted slurs at you and basked in his glory. Your head lolled to the side. Not because you were about to pass out, but because you felt too defeated to stand up and leave the ring.

“Get the fuck out of there!” Chip’s large hands reached under the ropes of the boxing ring and tugged on your arm. Since Cesspool had few rules, the audience frequently got out of hand and started their own fights after matches. Men had begun to fling themselves into the ring and were going at it. Before some sweaty man with tattoos stepped on your head, you slid the rest of the way out of the ring.

Chip steadied you when your feet hit the cold, filthy cement floor. Dozens of shouting faces were around him, screaming things at the wild mass of men fighting in the ring. You forced your way past sweaty men to Chip’s cluttered office.

Chip was a big guy, and most of the men at Cesspool feared him because he had a short temper. There were rumors he had killed a man before. However, you knew
Chip
had been the one to spread that rumor to assert his masculine position at Cesspool. Men.

Chip unlocked his office and walked in after you, slamming the door behind him. “What the hell was
that
?” Chip demanded after he’d locked you both in. He kept a hell of a lot of money in his office.

“Oh, here we go,”
you growled, and threw open his minifridge to grab an icepack and an energy drink. You fell into an old leather chair and pressed the icepack to your swelling cheekbone. You were soon going to have one nasty bruise.

“You were so stiff and absentminded looking out there.” Chip paced the floor. “I couldn’t tell if Savage was fighting you, or a training dummy. You looked like a
girl
out there. A chick. A female. I saw motherfucking juicy tits and a nice ass, instead of my badass
fighter
. You feel me?”

“That has to be the straightest thing you’ve ever said to me.” You tossed him the energy drink. You winced as you reached into your duffel bag next to the chair. With your free hand, you carefully pulled out a sleepy Rat Dog and held him in your lap. Once again, you hadn’t had it in you to leave the dog at your apartment, alone. He was taking a liking to your duffel bag, anyway. You didn’t blame him, considering you put your softest blanket at the bottom of it and kept little pieces of beef jerky in it at all times.

“Damn it, you could have gotten yourself fucking killed.” Chip continued to pace the floor and chugged down the energy drink. You’d never seen him this anxious about you, or maybe you just hadn’t focused on it before. If anything, you’d expected him to yell at you about all the money you’d cost him from the loss against Savage. “It took everything in me not to call the fight early.”

“I’m very much alive, Chip.”

“
Barely
. You look like shit, if shit put shit on top of its fucking self.” One of the things you liked about Chip was that he sure as hell never held back. He raked fingers through his dirty-blond hair. “You were giving me fucking chest pains out there. I’m too young to have chest pains.”

“
Relax
. I’m just not having a good day. My head wasn’t in it tonight.”

“Damn right, your head wasn’t in it,” Chip seethed. “Is this because of Rhett? I
told
you not to fucking fight here until I gave you the okay. I
knew
I shouldn’t have given in, but you know I have a soft spot for you—”

“Chip, I appreciate your concern and pulling me out of the ring back there, but I’d like to drop this.” You grit your teeth, which made your jaw sting. “It’s not about Rhett.”

“Then what’s wrong? Talk to me, babe.”

“I quit my job today.” You wrapped Rat Dog in the blanket in your large duffel bag and zipped it up, leaving an opening so he could breathe.

“You
what
?” Chip put his hands on his hips, looking like a concerned big brother. “Do you need money, or something? A temporary job? Because I’ll—”

“No.”
You stood up, carefully shouldered your duffel bag so you wouldn’t crush Rat Dog, and put the icepack back into the freezer. “I appreciate your friendship and everything that you do for me, but I’m not a charity case.”

As you started to leave the office, Chip blocked your exit. He dug into his pocket for his wallet. “Come on,” he muttered, and took a wad of cash out. “You know you’re not a charity case. At least take a little something to hold you over. I know how hard you work to keep your apartment.”

You pushed his hand away. “Chip, Jesus Christ. I can’t accept that.”

He shoved the money into your palm and closed it. “Take it. You’re unemployed and I don’t wanna see your pretty little ass on the streets. You’d get eaten alive. Just take it to make me feel better, all right? I know you’re tough.”

Suddenly, that triggered a memory of your father.
Stop crying, baby. You’re tougher than any man I know. Just like your mom was. The world doesn’t know what’s coming for it
. He’d told you that after you’d come home crying in the fourth grade because
some girl had pointed out that you only ever wore three outfits to school. Your dad had always found a way to make you feel better when you cried. You could still remember how you felt that day he never came back from work. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, the police said. That pissed you off when people said that. Wrong place at the wrong time? Where was the right place to be, when a stranger could take another person’s life at any moment?

Your head felt heavy. Your face was swollen. All you wanted to do was lie down in your bed and maybe have a good cry. You hadn’t had one of those in a long fucking time.

You shoved the money back. “Chip, you and I both know if I was on the streets and someone so much as poked my pretty ass, I would knock them the fuck out.”

Chip grunted and put the money back in his wallet. He walked to the back door in his office, which led to an exit out of the arena, and held it open for you. “Unless the one who pokes your ass is Savage,” he muttered playfully as you walked past him. “Then you’re screwed.”

You punched Chip’s arm. At the top of the stairs, you called out, “Bye,
Norbert
!”

Chip stopped laughing—now
you
were the one with the huge smile.

You pushed open a heavy metal door and stepped out into an alleyway. A few drunken homeless people were wandering about, and a fighter leaned against the brick wall to your right with blood all over his face. He smoked a cigarette and scowled at you as you walked by. Hmm. You must have kicked his ass before.

As you walked on, your body began to feel like a trash compactor had crushed it into a ball and then pulled it back apart. Chip’s icepack also hadn’t done its job on the swelling in your face. Thank God your house wasn’t
too
far away.

You pulled your hood up and left the alleyway and went to
the curb, adjusting the duffel bag on your shoulder. Your sneakers crunched over a thin layer of snow on the ground. The corners of your mouth tilted upward. Your father loved snow.

You looked up from the sidewalk and stopped in your tracks.

LA Surfer Boy was walking at a leisurely pace just in front of you. He had his hood up as well and also had a duffel bag. Somehow, you could recognize him from his shoulders, legs, and the way he walked. It had to be him. You didn’t want him to see you. He’d probably watched you fight that night and was so sickened that he had to leave early. . . .

As if sensing your eyes on the back of his head, Nick turned to look over his shoulder. You unglued your feet from the ground and practically dove for cover behind a bus stop. How the fuck did he keep doing that? Did he have a fucking sixth sense?

After a few moments, you peered back around the bus stop and watched as he began to cross the street. Where was he going? You had to go in the same direction anyway, so you pulled the strings on your sweatshirt to hide your face more and followed him from a safe distance. And followed him. And followed him . . .

He was going in the same direction as you: toward your
apartment
.

Shit. SHIT!

Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe he was going to that bagel place near your house. Their everything bagels with vegetable cream cheese could bring a celibate man to immediate orgasm. Wait. Was that place even open this late? Possibly. . . . Was it Friday?

FUCK!

Your heart was pounding against your ribs like a jackhammer, and your mind raced. Nick was totally going to your apartment. Was he going to make fun of you for your loss at Cesspool? You’d beat the shit out of him before he could.
Crap.
If you let him up,
he’d see Rat Dog. Maybe that needed to happen already. Shit, what were you doing holding on to his dog, anyway?

You started to fear being alone in a room with Nick. Was he a closet psychopath and stopping by to
murder
you? Would he take advantage of you? Why did that idea suddenly make you all . . .
tingly
? You needed to get ahold of yourself. The man had fucking driven you to quit your job. Your
passion
. How could you still be attracted to him after that? You seriously,
seriously
needed to get laid. Or maybe you just needed one of those everything bagels with vegetable cream cheese. . . .

Only a few blocks to go. You fantasized about catching up to Nick and yanking him back by the hair, taking out your frustrations on his pretty face with your fists. Then that fantasy turned into your sitting on that face, taking your frustrations out that way. . . .

What the fuck?
You needed to stop this madness. You were a strong, independent woman. . . . You chose the chicken route and picked up your pace to nearly a jog, tensing as you passed him. He was checking something on his phone and didn’t seem to think twice about you.