Chapter 7

“I said…” Curtis bent down to put one arm under Matt’s shoulders and hauled him upward with a gentleness that Matt wouldn’t have credited a few hours ago. “Let’s get you home.”

If lying down had been painful, sitting up was a new kind of hell. Matt breathed through the pain. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had the shit kicked out of him before, except in those other instances there had been someone actually refereeing, and any schoolyard brawls he’d had were won handily after he’d started training.

“C’mon.” Curtis held out his clothes, and Matt stood to dress.

They made it down the back stairs without seeing anyone. After that, the first few minutes in the car were the worst. Reed gave Matt the passenger seat and took the back. Matt reclined his seat at Curtis’s insistence. If he’d had his eyes open at all he’d have been able to verify his suspicions, but he could almost swear Curtis didn’t go above thirty-five all the way to West Anniston Falls.

“Take a right here.” Reed gave the direction and Matt felt the familiar thump as the pavement changed.

Two minutes later, they pulled up in front of the one-story bungalow Matt had rented. The house had only two bedrooms, but that suited Matt’s budget just fine. Besides, a smaller place meant he could afford to live in a vaguely nice part of town.

Curtis jammed the gear shift into neutral and put on the parking brake. “Looks like your friends are here.”

Matt opened his eyes and blinked. There was a souped-up car in his driveway. Not his. Definitely not Garet’s.

Oh, shit.

Curtis reached across him and popped open the door. An implicit invitation for Matt to exit the vehicle.

“I—” Matt glanced to the house and back to Curtis. “I’m sorry about everything with Garet. I haven’t been around as much as I should and…”

Brown eyes narrowed. “Don’t ask me to let you out of our arrangement, because I won’t.”

Matt blew out a breath, realizing that was precisely what he had been about to ask.

“Take a few days,” Curtis nodded toward the house. “Clean out the trash. Heal. Then come back. Same hours, same shitty pay.”

Which was to say, zero point zero dollars an hour.

“I have a job to go to. I can’t be your beck and call boy.”

It was one thing to clean up a bar and a few thousand dollars of damage. Ten thousand though? That was Matt’s own personal Everest. There was no way he’d ever have that kind of cash.

“Not my fault.” Curtis looped his arm around the back of Matt’s headrest and faced him fully. “I was willing to let you work it off. You challenged Law and lost. I couldn’t forgive the new debt if I wanted to—rules are rules.”

“You were the one who suggested I—”

“Uh-uh.” Curtis wagged a finger at him. “I told you that there was a way to pay back your debt if you really needed to get back to your job. I didn’t tell you to do it.”

Reed made a strangled sound in the backseat. Curtis reached back and whacked him lightly upside the head without turning around.

“How do I know you didn’t just dangle that option in front of me to get more free slave labor?” Matt shot back.

Curtis grinned slowly. Infuriatingly. “If you were my slave? You’d know it.”

Reed barked a laugh, visibly killing Curtis’s humor. “Remember that twink we had who thought he wanted to be a service sub? Followed you around with a shoe shine brush until Noah—”

“Zip it.” Curtis shot Reed a look that had the guy settling back into the seat.

“Go.” Curtis inclined his head toward the house, meeting Matt’s gaze. “We’ll see you Tuesday, bright and early.”

Matt shoved out of the car with a frustrated growl. He’d think of something between now and Tuesday, because he couldn’t lose his job. Curtis was being unreasonable and they all knew it.

His walkway wasn’t long, but it seemed to take forever to make his way up the pavement. He sensed Curtis’s eyes on him the whole way. Knowing that he and Reed were watching him made him see the yard and house in a way he hadn’t before. Peeling paint and a lopsided railing that he should have called the landlord to tend to a long time ago. Grass gone brown from lack of water and a flower bed overgrown with weeds. For sure the neighbors were going to bitch. It wasn’t all Matt’s fault though. The spring had been a dry one, and there was still no promise of rain in the cloudless twilight sky. Even the air smelled dusty.

After stumbling up the three chipped concrete steps, Matt dug his keys out of his pocket. He paused at the sound of voices.

“And I told you, you owe us for being a chicken shit.” One of The Ravagers members was near the door, his voice loud and clear.

“How do you call getting my ass arrested protecting you for something I was smart enough not to do ‘chicken shit’?”

Matt frowned and cocked his head. That was Garet.

“I don’t give a flying fuck if you had wasted ten of those fags, you didn’t take part, which means you didn’t complete your initiation. Which means you’re gonna do it again.”

Oh, hell no.

Key shoved into the lock, Matt winced as his bruised shoulder met the door that always seemed to stick. His entry brought the three gang members around. One held a knife, but the other two appeared to be unarmed. His vision went fuzzy and he swayed on his feet.

“Shit bro, what the hell happened to your face?”

Matt ignored Garet’s stunned question. At least everyone’s focus was on him and not his brother. If Garet was smart, he’d use the initiative to bash the nearest guy over the head with something heavy as soon as things got heated.

Speaking of which…

Matt swept the unwelcome guests with his glare. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

A moment of silence erupted into hoots of laughter, followed by, “Or what? You gonna bleed on us?”

One of the thugs, an oily haired teen who might have been handsome if he had chosen to bathe once in a while, cracked his knuckles. “Zeke, you and Ike take him and I’ll remind Garet here why you don’t pussy out on your brothers.”

“You’re not his fucking brother.” Matt stepped into the room, intent on reaching Garet and getting him to safety.

Except, the guy with the knife got to Matt first.

The blade flashed. He brought up his forearm in a defensive maneuver, but a blur of motion knocked the knife from the ringleader’s hand and it clatter across the floor. It took him a moment to realize it hadn’t been his own block. Rather, as he slumped against the wall, the same two men who had made his life a living hell over the past forty-eight hours did the one thing Matt never would have expected.

They came to his rescue.