Page 27 of Rent a Bad Boy

“I told you⁠—”

“You told me it was from hitting the bag too hard. That was days ago, but it looks worse now instead of better. And last night. That guy at the party. He said you hit him with a left hook, and his ears were still ringing.” She goes from looking at my hands to staring me straight in the eye. “I’m not stupid, Everett.”

“I never said you were.”

“Then stop lying to me.”

There it is. The edge she sometimes gets. It doesn’t match the rest of her. Otherwise, she’s a shy girl who cries at Taylor Swift songs. But underneath it, there’s a core of steel. It shows up at the worst possible times. Like right now, when I’m lying in bed with a stiff neck and a girl who’s decided this is the right time to interrogate me about my injuries.

“I’m not lying,” I tell her.

“Then what are you doing? Because something is going on, and you keep brushing me off every time I ask about it, and I don’t—” She stops and swallows. “I don’t want secrets. Not with you. I’ve had enough people in my life who kept things from me. I can’t do that again.”

The smart move would be to deflect. Change the subject. Maybe kiss her until she forgets what she was asking about. It’s worked before with other people.

Isla isn’t other people, though. She’s the kind of person who would pull away mid-kiss and say, “You still haven’t answered my question.”

So instead, I grunt, “Drop it.”

“No.”

“I said drop it,” I grunt.

“And I said no.” Dammit, she doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t break eye contact or move away from me, or go quiet, or do any of the things other people do when I use that voice. All she does is sit cross-legged on my bed in one of my T-shirts. She’s still holding my bruised hand and still refusing to back down.

I can’t lie. It throws me. People don’t push back on me. That’s sort of the whole foundation of my existence. I’m the guy nobody pushes. Coaches tiptoe around me. Teammates give me space. Random strangers cross the street, for fuck’s sake. Since I was fourteen years old, the whole world has been treating me like something dangerous.

And now there’s this girl who weighs maybe a hundred pounds, sitting here telling me no like it’s nothing.

Like I’m nothing to be afraid of.

I don’t know what to do with it. So I do the only thing I can think of, which is tell her the truth. “I fight,” I admit. “On the side. For money.”

She doesn’t say anything right away. She just watches me and waits for more.

“It’s not boxing,” I continue. “Not MMA or anything like that. It’s nothing official or sanctioned. There are no refs or rules or any of that shit. Underground fights. We do it in warehouses, basements, parking garages. Wherever they set it up that night.” I pull my hand out of hers, not because I’m mad but because I don’t want to be holding her hand when I tell her the rest. “It’s bare-knuckle. It can get kind of brutal, but it pays cash. That’s why I do it.”

“How long?”

“Since freshman year. Almost two years now.”

“And the bruises? The ones you keep saying are from the gym?”

“From fights, obviously.”

She nods slowly. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“For one thing, it’s illegal. If the school finds out, I’ll lose my scholarship. If my coach finds out, I’m done. And because...”

I run a hand over my face and look up at the ceiling. “My scholarship only covers tuition and books. That’s it. There’s no housing or meal plan. No spending money. Nothing. My parents are...”

The word I want to use is “worthless,” but even that feels like it gives them too much credit. They’re just two people who had a kid they didn’t want and spent the next eighteen years making sure he knew it.

“My dad took off when I was twelve,” I explain. “Mom was checked out a long time before that. Once he left, she stopped pretending. I basically got through high school on my own. The coaches looked out for me. They let me shower in the locker room and drove me to school when I didn’t have a ride. When the scholarship came through, I thought that was it. Problem solved. But it turns out tuition and books don’t keep the lights on or put food in the fridge.”

I sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bed. “Fighting does. One or two fights a week, and I can cover the house, my expenses, and everything else. It’s the only thing I’m good at besides football, and football doesn’t pay me yet.”

The room goes quiet. I’m used to it—I don’t usually have guests around here. This is a different kind of silence, though. Heavier. Uncomfortable.