Chapter 6

Matt opened his eyes on a gasp, intending to come up swinging. No way would Lawson best him. No fucking way—

“Hey. He’s awake.”

Reed.

The guy pressed him back with a firm insistence that belied his normally cheerful demeanor.

“Gotta…” Matt attempted to sit up again before his brain caught up with what his body already knew.

He’d been knocked out. He was no longer in the ring. He owed Curtis ten-fucking-thousand-dollars.

“Shit.”

He flopped back onto Curtis’s couch, one arm flung over the bag of frozen peas someone had put on his face. Probably Reed. No way Curtis would be that nice. And it sure as hell hadn’t been Lawson.

Just the thought of the man shattered Matt’s pride. Even without the crowd baying for Lawson to smear Matt from one side of the ring to the other, it had been a thoroughly humiliating loss. One Matt realized he’d never even seen coming. Well, at least not until after the second time Lawson had landed him on his ass. Then, he’d lost his shit and practically handed the guy his victory. Not that it would have mattered much. He might’ve lasted longer and made a better showing, but Lawson would have won in the end. The man fought like a machine.

A beautiful, brutal machine...who thought he was a piece of shit Neo-Nazi.

A door opened and footsteps approached the couch. Judging by the softer soled shoes and lighter gait, it wasn’t Curtis, and Matt sure as hell hoped it wasn’t Lawson.

“He’s awake, Doc.” Reed spoke to whoever had joined them.

“Good. I’m surprised he was out for as long as it took you and Curtis to get him up here.”

The frozen vegetables shifted as the guy Reed called Doc peered underneath and made an appreciative sound. “Well, that will do nicely, yes.”

Matt glared at him from his good eye. Sadist much?

“I’ll have to stitch up that gash on his cheek.”

“No.” Matt made to sit up again, but the room spun and his stomach twisted along with it.

Thankfully Reed was there with a bucket. When Matt finished puking up the water he’d drunk before the fight, the bartender handed him a towel. Matt dabbed his swollen mouth with it and the white cloth came away smeared pink.

“Concussion?” Curtis’s question came from the corner of the room nearest the window.

The sun had begun to set, slanting through the blinds in a way that spiked Matt’s headache when he glanced that way.

“More’n likely.” Neoprene gloves on his hands, Doc threaded a needle with all the absent-minded concentration of a man who’d done the same thing a thousand times before.

Curtis’s chin nudged up. “Use anesthetic.”

Doc paused, considered, and nodded. “If you say so.”

Jesus. Whatever happened to ‘do no harm’?

Something cold and wet pressed lightly against his face and Matt nearly shot off the couch at the sting. “Fuck you, asshole!”

Doc tsked. “It’s only a little rubbing alcohol.”

Curtis crossed the room and lightly gripped Matt’s shoulders from behind. “Let him take care of it so it doesn’t get infected.”

Matt thought about fighting, decided he didn’t want to puke again, and just laid back and closed his eyes. Doc finished cleaning the gash and Matt sighed in relief when the man briefly stepped back. Next time he approached, Matt stiffened. The jab of a syringe in his cheek was quickly followed by a numbing sensation that extended to his mouth. He breathed deeply through his nostrils and tasted the astringent bite of the anesthetic. At least the pain receded and his headache turned into a dull throb that he timed with his pulse.

“Hey.”

Matt opened his good eye and saw the clear thread looping past. Curtis stood above him at the head of the couch.

“Yeah?” Matt croaked.

“For what it’s worth, you did good. Better than many.”

Matt laughed, but it cost him and he winced.

Doc glared. “Hold still.”

“Sorry.” Swallowing an odd bout of hysteria, Matt kept one jaundiced eye on the so-called physician.

The guy was in his mid-thirties maybe judging by the amount of salt and pepper sprinkled throughout his short, dark hair. Icy blue eyes remained steadfastly on his task, lending support to the idea Doc just might hold a medical license. In the minus column, tats crawled up the man’s neck, barbed wire that appeared to slice into flesh on one side, a snake in greens and golds slithering up the other. Matt seriously hoped the man wore turtlenecks if he had a private practice, because no one was going to submit to a prostate exam from a guy who looked like that.

Doc held out a hand and Reed gave him a pair of surgical scissors. Metal flashed and the thread was cut. A pen light clicked on. Matt winced, but Doc’s fingers were there to hold his eyes open, one at a time, against the blinding intrusion. His stomach flopped dangerously.

Matt jerked to the side, out of Doc’s grasp. “Why don’t you just punch me in the face again?”

The light clicked off. Doc gave him a look that said he’d seriously thought about it, before straightening and stuffing his tools of torture back into a black medical satchel.

“He’ll live.” Doc made the pronouncement to Curtis, who still stood near Matt’s head.

“You going downstairs?” Curtis asked.

“Yes.”

“Tell Law for me he didn’t kill him?”

Doc stopped, framed in the doorway, to snap off his neoprene gloves. “He already left. Said something about movers coming for his stuff tomorrow.”

Reed approached again with the bag of peas and Matt took it with a grateful look, but the bartender didn’t meet his gaze. “Law’s moving in?”

Curtis shrugged.

Matt pressed the peas to his face and only half listened to the rest of the conversation about how everyone had expected it to take longer before Lawson moved into the loft apartment occupying the same floor as the one Matt had been sharing with Curtis for the past two days. Up until now, he hadn’t seen Lawson around much. When he’d showed up today at the bar, Matt had stared, like he always seemed to when the man made an appearance. Which Curtis, of course, had noticed, and casually brought up one of the other ways Matt could pay his debt.

“I’m glad he’ll be around more often.” Reed worried his bottom lip, then shook his head. “He’s been brooding too long.”

“Don’t let him hear you speculating about him like that.”

Doc’s admonishment was nearly lost in the buzz that had overtaken Matt’s already hazy brain. He was going to have to see Lawson downstairs, probably tomorrow. And every day after that. Relive the humiliation of that fight over and over again.

“Hey. Let’s get you home.”

At first, Matt thought he imagined Curtis’s comment. He let the peas slide off his face and focused muzzily on the man he was coming to think of as his jailer. The guy held a set of car keys in one hand. Reed was sitting in a chair in the corner, tying on a pair of red Keds that reminded Matt of blood.

“What?”