Page 26 of Tell Me You Love Me

“Jesus.” Ollie clings to the outside of the cage, gritting his teeth while Chris heaves for fresh oxygen, and I, being the prick I am, use his moment of weakness to drag his arm and head between my legs, trapping him in my lock and choking him with his own damn arm.

“Dude!” Ollie rattles the cage. “This ain’t the world title.”

“Tap.” I tighten my hold and slap my brother’s forehead. “You’re gonna tap, asshole.”

“Fuck I am.” Red in the face, he walks his feet along the cage, lifting his hips from the floor. “I don’t tap.”

“You will.” I squeeze my knees closer together and watch him turn from a standard red to something verging on purple. “I’m not playing today, Christian. Give me this one.”

Instead, he bridges his hips, bouncing them off the floor and stealing back an inch of freedom.

“As your treating physician, I suggest you idiots stop.” Oliver stalks theperimeter of the octagon and shoves through the door. “It’s my professional opinion you need oxygen to live.”

“Don’t fucking touch him.” My arms burn, and my legs scream, and still, Chris breaks the steely grip of my hold and inches around. Not free yet. But he’s damn near close. “Get out of the fucking cage unless you’re volunteering to spar, Doc.”

Chris twists just enough to get his knees underneath him—and risks a broken neck in the process. But he’s a fighter through and through, and we’ve been doing this shit since the womb. He draws his free arm back, then barrels it forward and slams an unforgiving fist against my ribs.

I swear, he relocates the fucking bones, probably piercing an organ I’ll need later. And when I still don’t release his head, he hits again. Then again. And a third time, until my lungs refuse the abuse and my legs fall open.

Instead of scrambling to my hands and knees and chasing after him, I simply fall flat, melting against the canvas and sweating myself dead. “I had you, asshole.” I watch him from the corner of my eyes, in case he gets a sudden urge toWatkinsand pile drive an elbow into my gut, but I don’t bother rolling away. “You’d rather kill yourself than tap out.” I wheeze for fresh air. “You could break your neck pulling that shit while I’ve got you locked up. But you’d rather squirm like an idiot than admit you were bested.”

“I wasn’t bested.” He stands over me, grinning past his mouth guard and doing nothing about the sweat that drops from the edge of his chin and lands on my chest. “If I was bested, I’d be asleep right now.”

Amused, Oliver chuckles and paces the edge of the octagon. Though I can’t help but notice how he makes damn sure to stay out of reach.

“Both of you have untreated rage you need to talk to a professional about.” He scratches his jaw. “One would rather kill his brother than admit he’s in a bad mood, and the other would rather die than admit he lost a fight.”

“I wouldn’t have killed him,” I grumble.

“I didn’t lose the fight,” Chris adds.

“How do you claim to be teaching the next generation with this family-friendly bullshit, all thatKumbaya, don’t hit, walk away from the fight, when right here in the fucking cage, the Watkins boys have lost their damn minds?”

“You’re overthinking it.” I draw a long, chest-filling breath and roll lazily to the side. One arm, then the other. Then, twisting my hips, I make a damn good impersonation of a caterpillar after a big night out at the localbar. “The kids enjoy watching us whale on each other. It gives them their fix of bloodlust and keeps them from hurting someone else.”

“Er… no.” Eliza wanders forward, platinum blonde hair tied in a high ponytail and the ends tickling her bare shoulders. Unlike her older brother and sister, who chose the academic track after school, Eliza chose the gym, which means she can wear a tight crop top and itty bitty shorts and have the confidence to flash a perfect eight-pack and a body most of the guys in town want a piece of.

Not me. And not Chris. And especially not Oliver, since they’re family and all that.

But everyone else, including the married kind, thinks the sun shines out of Eliza Darling’s asshole.

“The kids constantly ask to try the ‘Tommy Watkins Smasher’ move,” she drawls. We’re not her brothers like Oliver is, but I reckon she thinks of us the way she thinks of him. “They’re also known to ask about the ‘Chris Watkins Life Destroyer’ and the ‘Twin Turbo Twister Upper’.” She sets her hands on her hips and burns us with a glare. “You’re bad influences! Both of you. Supposed to be mature, grown-ass men. Business owners. Mentors to growing minds. Your average six-year-old student has more common sense than the both of you. Combined!”

I fall back to the canvas, my cheek smooshed against the floor and coated in, I loathe to admit, someone else’s sweat. “You’re being mean. Why do you insist on hurting our feelings?”

“Because—” She jabs a finger in her brother’s direction. “The resident doctor is telling you to cool your shit or risk a fricken aneurysm. And word travels fast around Plainview now that Bitsy’s out of the hospital. She was up at Bingo last night spouting out some real interesting tidbits of information.”

Fuck. Me.

“Don’t say it.”

“Don’t say what?” Oliver stands over me, scowling. “What’s Bitsy yammering about?”

“Oh, you don’t know?” Eliza taunts. “I heard fromfourdifferent sources that Alana Page is back in town.”

“What?” His voice cracks despite being thirty-two years old. “Alana’s back? Since when?”

“She’s back, alright. And oh, look at this coincidence.” Eliza pins me with a sneer. “Tommy Watkins is out here fighting like he doesn’t care if he breaks a bone beforeVegas.”

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