Page 7 of Uppercut Princess

“Oh right,” I mumble.

“Here.” He thrusts a package at me.

I take a step back, my hands immediately moving up to take the paper plate wrapped with foil. I look up from it, blinking at him.

“My mom likes to welcome the neighbors. She heard someone moved in down the hall.”

Well, shit. I was not expecting that. Everyone else I’ve walked past in this building has either looked the other way or stared me down to prove their dominance while I avert my gaze. “That’s really nice,” I say.

His voice remains curt. “Don’t get too sentimental. She can’t cook worth a shit.”

Okay, then.I see he’s all about the warm and fuzzies.I shrug. “It’s the thought.”

When I look back up at him, I catch him staring at the goose egg above my eye. When he sees me looking, he casually slides his gaze away and looks into the apartment over my shoulders. It would be too obvious if I tried to block his view now.

His eyes burn with questions, but he doesn’t say anything as he easily peruses what he can see behind me. I lift the foil on the plate and find a heap of chocolate chip cookies stuffed inside along with a very distinct burnt smell coming from them. I package it back up and set it on the small table just inside the door.

I peer down the hallway looking for any sign of where Brawler lives. I knew he lived in this building, along with a bunch of other Rawley Heights students and members of the Heights Crew, but I didn’t know he was on the same floor as me. “Should I come thank her?”

“No,” Brawler says definitively.

I widen my eyes at him like I’m a little too innocent.

His face darkens as shadows descend over his gaze. “Look, are your parents around?” he asks. He takes a quick look behind me again. Then, his gaze moves to the door.

“I don’t have parents,” I tell him. It feels good not to lie about this one thing. I even let some of my natural anger about that seep out.

He looks me up and down again. “You look like you have parents.”

“I don’t,” I snap. “I have guardians, and no, they’re not here. Why? Are you planning on coming in here to finish what your classmates started earlier?”

Okay, I was wrong about the shadows before. Now his eyes are truly black. “I don’t hit women.” Anger wafts off him. So much so that it pricks my nerve endings again.

Brawler’s drop dead gorgeous. It has to be the eyes. Blue. But not light or dark, they’re more like turquoise that turn into sapphires when he’s pissed. He’s wearing a wife beater, and a chain of tribal tattoos adorn his upper arms. If I didn’t already know he was a fighter, I’d be able to tell now. His fists clench and unclench, causing his biceps to pull tight, his tattoos rippling with the movement. “The girls take care of their own,” he says finally, flippantly.

“They don’t seem to like me very much.”

He laughs, the sound ricocheting through the barren hallway and temporarily overpowering the screaming baby a few doors down.

He doesn’t follow that up with anything insightful, so I give him a look. “You seem to think that was a given.”

He shakes his head. “You stick out like a virgin in a whorehouse.”

“Um, I think that’s a compliment.”

He twists his head to the side. “To them it’s not, Princess. To them, it’s a threat.”

He shows off a set of white teeth, but his smile isn’t jovial. It’s predatory. Him standing here in his wife beater, his tattoos showing, and that smile make my stomach tumble over itself. The fact that I know he’s a fighter makes it all the better. Yes, I have a type. A definite type, and Brawler ticks all my sweaty, spasming, sheet-twisting boxes.

His jaw ticks the more he stares at me. The smile melts until he’s glaring. “You give other guys that same look, and they won’t walk away like me. Buy an extra lock for your door. Don’t open it when yourguardiansaren’t home. Stay out of trouble.”

With that, he walks away, his giant stride taking him quickly to the stairway door at the end of the hall.

Now that it feels like an entire bucket of ice water has been thrown on me, I step back and slam the door shut. I lock the five locks I have on the door already. Two I installed myself, thank you very much. And then I sit back down in the recliner.

He read me like a damn book.

I spend the next half an hour schooling myself on how to keep my thoughts in check in front of Brawler before I fall asleep for an hour and wake up in time to take the bus to the parking garage where my car is parked. I can’t have anyone knowing I have a car a forty-year-old would drive. Plain, but nice. A tad fancy, but more economical than anything else. It was a gift from my aunt and uncle, but it screams another life. One I can’t show here. I take it to Walmart to grab the lock and bolt cutters, and then I return to the tiny apartment to spend the rest of the evening watching murder mysteries with a bag of frozen vegetables over my forehead.

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