The Next Thing: Bareknuckles Brotherhood Read online

  Table of Contents

  Author's Note

  Knocked Me Over

  Thick, Gorgeous Head

  Last Chances

  Smooth As Silk

  A Little Bit Crazy

  The Wrong Mouth

  Poses A Real Danger

  Into His Lap

  Over The Girl

  Free Without Breaking

  All Kinds Of Mess

  Fight When You Have To

  Just For Safety

  Come To Devour

  What Kind Of Girl

  All Made Up

  Had This Handled

  So Many Ways

  Epilogue: The Next Thing

  A Special Word From Ellie Bradshaw

  The Next Thing

  By Ellie Bradshaw

  This is a work of fiction. All characters and events reside solely in author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

  © 2017, Ellie Bradshaw. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any way without prior written consent from the author with the exception for a fair use excerpt for review and editorial purposes.

  * * *

  Table of Contents

  Author's Note

  Knocked Me Over

  Thick, Gorgeous Head

  Last Chances

  Smooth As Silk

  A Little Bit Crazy

  The Wrong Mouth

  Poses A Real Danger

  Into His Lap

  Over The Girl

  Free Without Breaking

  All Kinds Of Mess

  Fight When You Have To

  Just For Safety

  Come To Devour

  What Kind Of Girl

  All Made Up

  Had This Handled

  So Many Ways

  Epilogue: The Next Thing

  A Special Word From Ellie Bradshaw

  * * *

  Author's Note

  Hey! Hold on a sec!

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  Just click the link below to join my mailing list. I’ll keep you updated on new books coming your way, and you’ll get an extra chapter from The Next Thing out of the deal!

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  * * *

  Knocked Me Over

  Ryan

  Cold water stung as it sluiced across my knuckles. Most of the abrasions were scabbed over, but there was still enough blood to make the water pink as it pooled in the bottom of my bathroom basin. It didn’t bother me like it once did. I was used to it.

  I shook the excess water from my hands and then poured hydrogen peroxide across the backs of my hands, one at a time. This time I winced as the peroxide bubbled and dug into the broken skin. After a few moments of letting the disinfectant do its work, I rinsed it off, then followed it with a quick douse of rubbing alcohol.

  That was the part I hated worst. It felt as if someone was holding a flame to the backs of my hands.

  “Goddamn!” I wasn’t much for talking to myself, but some conversations are best to have alone.

  I looked into the bathroom mirror. With the damage to my knuckles I’d come to expect some bruising on my face, or maybe a cut above my eye. Sometimes I’d take a shot in the heat of things and not even notice until I got home and found a trickle of blood somewhere.

  Not today, though. Matt “Machine Gun” Arnolds didn’t seem to have managed to sneak a single shot in on me.

  There’s more to fighting than a scary name.

  I pulled my first aid kit from behind the mirror. With the stainless steel scissors, I trimmed away a small flap of skin that clung to my middle knuckle. I grimaced, because I had another fight in three days, and my raw knuckles were going to sting through the whole bout.

  Whatever. It didn’t matter. As soon as the adrenaline kicked in I wouldn’t feel much of anything.

  After I got my hands cleaned up I wrapped gauze around them and secured it with tape. Then I turned back and forth in the mirror, checking for bruises or scrapes I had missed in my initial inspection. Nothing.

  Reggie’s going to have to find me some better opponents.

  After I showered, I walked barefoot back into the living room. My apartment was a small walk-up I rented over a mechanic’s shop. I didn’t need much. Just a place to shower and sleep, for the most part. All the rest of my time was devoted to fighting, or training to fight. Or working my day job. I looked at the clock and realized I needed to head that way pretty soon.

  No rest for the wicked. Or for me, either.

  I dug around in the pocket of my jeans and pulled out a roll of cash. I counted it. I never did this in front of Reggie out of respect. He’d taken care of me in Afghanistan, and I didn’t want him to think I’d lost faith in him now that we’d come back stateside.

  The money was all there, just as I’d known it would be.

  Under the counter in the kitchen was a small stack of cigar boxes. I opened the top one and placed the roll of money in beside the other rolls of money. I reminded myself that I needed to get a more secure place to keep my cash. Maybe a bank. I also reminded myself that I should count it and see just how much there was. Seemed like the kind of thing I should know. If someone asked me how much I had for a down payment on a house, they wouldn’t want to hear, “Oh, about eight cigar boxes full.” I should at least figure out something to buy with it. A house, or a fast car. Something cool. But the simple fact was I didn’t much care about any of that. I kept it simple.

  A job to occupy my time.

  Night fighting to make the real money. To give me something to focus on. To give me an outlet for my rage.

  In three days I’d fight Jimmy Barrett. No scary nickname for that guy. Reggie had shown me the videos of his last two fights. I tried to think about them as I dressed for work. Part of my process. Analyze his fights, break him down in my head. Then break him down in the dirt ring.

  But the video in my head wouldn’t play. Every time I tried to think about Barrett, the image in my head fuzzed out, replaced by other, more pleasant, imagery.

  I shook my head. It wouldn’t do to get distracted. In Afghanistan, distractions got you killed. In the ring, they got the shit knocked out of you. Neither was good.

  Watch his left, I heard Reggie say. That hook’ll blind you, set you up for a hard right.

  The image started rolling again, Barrett bobbing, weaving, launching that killer hook…

  But that was replaced, again, by another image. Red hair spread across my pillow. Creamy olive skin reflecting the moonlight through my window. Miriam’s moans and soft cries more vivid in my ears than the chanting of the crowd when I walked to the ring.

  I lost myself momentarily in the reverie. Her smile, the way her lips tasted like chocolate and peppermint. Her body moving against mine.

  She was the first woman I had been with since before I’d gone off to war.

  That had been a week ago. And of course now she wouldn’t give me the time of day.

  She’d knocked me senseless, and then knocked me over.

  Left hook. Hard right. Effortless KO.

  Honestly, I wasn’t sure what had gone wrong. It was pretty standard first date stuff. I took her to a fairly nice dinner. Then for a fairly nice cup of coffee. And then we came back to my place.

  It had been a while for me, but I was fairly certain I hadn’t completely lost my touch in bed. She seemed to have a good time.

  Maybe it moved too fast for her.

  I finished dressing. I hadn’t slept yet, but
I was still jazzed from the fight, so I didn’t think work would be a problem. Not until around noon, and then fatigue would catch up with me.

  The sun was brilliant when I opened the door, and the air was cool. One of those rare, perfect Fort Worth days when it wasn’t blistering hot or colder than a well-digger’s ass. The kind of day when you know you’re going to have good luck.

  I climbed into my beat up old Ford and kicked the motor over. As I pulled out of the gravel driveway, I decided I’d drop into The Lazy Spoon before work. Have some breakfast. Ask Miriam out one last time. If she said yes, great. If not, I was going to let the whole thing drop.

  I’ve got my fuckin pride, after all.

  * * *

  Thick, Gorgeous Head

  Miriam / Emma

  Honestly, I wasn’t supposed to have to mop the floor at the beginning of my shift. It was the night server’s job to do that at the end of his shift, but Paul (Lazy Paulie of The Lazy Spoon, as I like to think of him) had done a shit job. Not his usual shit job, but the kind of bad work that made me think that he really wanted to leave the place in even worse condition than he had found it.

  It was obvious he had mopped. Ordinary mud just lays in glops and goobers and crusts over. But this floor…it looked like he had used mud as his mop water and just smeared it all over the cheap tile. Wall to wall, the place was streaked and spattered with dried mud.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn Lazy Paulie didn’t like me.

  So I ran hot—and clean!—water into the mop bucket and got started swabbing up the mess from the night before. Yes, it was menial. No, there wasn’t a great deal of personal satisfaction in it (I’m a job-well-done kinda girl, but mopping wasn’t the kind of job that fired my engines). But it was easy and didn’t take much mental energy.

  The mopping became a lulling rhythm in my hands. As the soapy water scrubbed the grime from the floor, my mind began to wander.

  Of course, that was a mistake. As soon as there was nothing pressing for it to do, my traitorous brain—again!—started pasting images of Ryan Calder in my mind’s eye. His sexy, wicked grin. That curly hair that I wanted to run my fingers through again. Those blue eyes that simultaneously looked so vulnerable and so dangerous.

  The thought of touching the lean, hard muscles of his arms and chest again gave me goosebumps. The thought of what he could do with that nimble, hot tongue made me tingle in ways that I should not be tingling as I mopped the floor. If there was one thing that did not seem appropriate, it was getting hot and bothered in the dining room of The Lazy Spoon.

  I tried to put thoughts of Ryan and his muscles and his mouth out of my mind, but he seemed to be stuck in there.

  So be it, I thought. If there is nothing else I take away from all this, at least I have that. One thing that was worthwhile from this whole mess.

  It was supposed to just be a fling. A one-night stand to blow off some tension. It had been a while for me, and living this way was more stressful than they tell you when they put you on the plane. And he had been so charming and sexy. Plus, he had that vibe. The one that suggested that under the smiles and flirtatious words lurked a predator waiting for just the right moment, just the right person. He was dangerous, and that made me feel something I hadn’t felt in a long time.

  Safe.

  At least for those moments I was with him.

  But he had served my purpose, and I was pretty sure I had served his, and that was all and it was done.

  Why couldn’t he get that through his thick, gorgeous head?

  And why couldn’t I get it through mine? Every morning for the last week he came to the diner to ask me to see him again, and every morning it got harder to say no. And every night I lay in my bed and pictured him beside me.

  Or on top of me.

  I had to admit, Ryan Calder had gotten under my skin.

  And into my pants. I shivered again.

  Looking around, I realized that I had finished mopping the floor without even knowing it. Just daydreamed my way right through the job. Nothing like a nice sexual fantasy to make short work of work.

  The diner gleamed now. Chrome chair legs sparkled. The counter-top and bar were shiny. The floor was spotless. I took it all in. I made myself take it all in. This was my life now. This diner. My small, nondescript car. My small, nondescript duplex. My new, nondescript life.

  After all these months, it was easy to imagine that I would be here forever.

  The thought made me want to scream.

  Instead, I bit my lip and blinked back the stinging in my eyes. For everything that you do, there is a next thing. You get up in the morning, and next you brush your teeth. You put on your pants, and next you put on your shoes. And it goes like that, over and over, until you die. I had mopped the floor, next I would take the chairs of the tables, next I would wipe the bar again, next I would eat breakfast.

  And over and over again.

  I hope it didn't go like that until I die.

  "John," I called.

  John, the short order cook, mumbled something from the kitchen. I couldn't be sure what he said. It might have been, "Fuck you."

  "Make me two scrambled eggs and a piece of toast."

  He mumbled something else. I'm pretty sure this time it really was, "Fuck you."

  I got on with the next thing.

  * * *

  Last Chances

  Ryan

  The Lazy Spoon was just down the block from where I worked. That was convenient, because anytime I wanted a meal or piece of pie, all I had to do was walk fifty-seven steps from the door of The Exchange to the door of the diner. It was also convenient because anytime I wanted to see Miriam, it was exactly fifty-seven steps from the door of my job to the door of hers. That also made it very inconvenient and possibly troubling, because I found myself wanting to make the excuse to go see her all the time, and it's difficult to talk yourself out of taking only fifty-seven easy steps that get you to where you want to go. And if she turned me down again this morning, those fifty-seven steps would forever be a painfully near distance, and an infinite chasm of melodramatic longing.

  Plus, I’d have to find somewhere new to eat breakfast.

  I didn't even bother unlocking the door to my work. I hopped out of my truck, still in a fantastic mood from the great weather and the win the night before. I practically skipped the fifty-seven steps down the block. The sunshine and cool breeze cheered me on. I had a good feeling about this.

  There wasn’t much traffic on the street this time of day. Most folks had either already gotten to work already or were sleeping off whatever they had done to themselves the night before. The appliance store across the street had a couple cars parked in front. An empty bag of potato chips flapped in the gutter. Just another day in paradise.

  The bell over the door jingled as I walked into The Lazy Spoon. Miriam sat at the bar, her back to me. Even though she was eating, she still had on her blue server's apron. Her red hair was pulled back into a ponytail. My heart beat a little faster.

  Without turning away from her food, Miriam said, "We’re not open yet."

  I slid onto the stool next to her. "Door was unlocked. Figured that meant you were open." Her shoulders slumped and she shook her head. "Nice to see you, too," I said. I plastered a smile on my face, but her reaction hit me like a hard shot to the gut. I felt the wind in my sails slowly dying away.

  Around a mouthful of eggs, she said, "So are you gonna order food today, or just sit around here being a pain in the ass again?"

  That stung, but I didn't want to show it. "Guess I'll order." I nodded at her plate. "Go ahead and finish your—"

  But she spun off her stool with her food half finished, snatched her plate off the counter, and stalked around the end of the bar and into the kitchen. I heard a dish clang in the stainless steel sink back there, and an aggravated curse from the cook. I felt a brief certainty that the best thing to do was to call this fight, give up and take my ass out the door.


  Tuck tail.

  Run.

  But that wasn’t in my nature.

  A moment later she reappeared, her notepad and pen in hand.

  "What are you having?" Her voice was cold, and she stared intently at her pad. She gripped her pen so tightly her knuckles were white.

  "Are you mad at me or something?" I hadn't intended to ask this. It just sort of popped out. "Did I do something to you? I mean, you know, besides —"

  Tapping her pen on her pad now, she looked up at me. Her brown eyes bored into me. Hot and angry. They reminded me of the intense, expectant way she had looked up at me from my bed. God, she was gorgeous.

  She glanced down at my hands, and her brow wrinkled. “Why are your hands all bandaged like that? Are you hurt?”

  I made a show of looking at my bandages. Thankfully, no blood spots had seeped through. “Nah,” I said. “Just cut myself shaving.”

  She arched an eyebrow at me. “You’ve been fighting. I’ve seen that kind of thing before.”

  I was intrigued. I knew next to nothing about her, except that I liked her laugh (when she actually did laugh), and her sense of humor. And her lack of inhibitions in the bedroom. This revelation was a new thing.

  “Are you kidding?” I pointed at my face. “You think I’d risk this gorgeous mug in a fight?”

  She seemed to consider a retort, but then she shrugged, effectively dropping the subject. "Are you going to order, or not?"

  I've never had a problem with rejection. It happens to everybody. You're interested, they're not interested, it's a natural dynamic. I don't take it personally. But I had never been met with such blatant, overt hostility. Especially from someone I had thought liked me. I suddenly felt awkward sitting on the barstool, as if I might just slip off and fall on my ass. I realized that I clutched the counter-top with one hand as if to prevent just that.

  "Well?"

  "I'll have eggs, I guess. Three fried eggs. And a waffle. Hash browns." I paused. "Biscuits and gravy." As I called off my order, my stomach started grumbling.