“You want berries in your pancakes?” Evie looks into my eyes. Not cruel. Not mean. Not taunting. “We have blueberries, or…” She steps to the fridge and opens it wide. “Strawberries. Or you can just be like us and drown it in syrup and cream.”
Damn them all. Damn everyone on this planet.
“Turdsky?” Bry whispers in my ear and sends goosebumps right down to my toes. “You want the syrup, don’t you?”
I nod.
Like my agreement is a blanket yes for everything he wants, he presses a kiss to my cheek and looks to Evie. “She wants the syrup.”
Bryan
No Take-Backs
“So…” Mac stares at me and Maddi. “Anyone gonna ask Bry who popped him on the jaw?”
“Yeah.” Evie plates Maddi’s pancakes and slides them across the counter. “Who got you? Is he dead?”
“Jackson Price got me. And no, he lives. But I think Uncle Alex is gonna drop by today to arrest me.”
Evie only snickers. “Uncle Alex is a pussycat, you’re fine. Why’d Jackson hit you?”
“I think I hit him first.” I reach around Maddi and begin cutting our communal breakfast. Fuck it. She’s diving straight into this. Because when a Kincaid knows, he knows. “He hurt Maddi.”
Four sets of eyes turn dangerous and snap to the woman in my lap.
“He thought he’d show off his balls by jumping line in front of me, but while doing it, he almost clipped her with his car.”
“Fuckin’ asshole,” Evie hisses. “He deserved more than a pop in the mouth.”
I grab a small square of pancake, slide it through the pooling syrup, then offer it to Maddi like it’s totally cool for me to feed her.
Her eyes whip to mine, fiery hot, with a tinge of embarrassment. “I can eat on my own.”
“This is much more fun.” I bring the fork closer, and grin when she grudgingly accepts it. “Attagirl.”
Then I look to my family. “Not only did he do that, but then she was talking to him through the window of his car. Like, she was outside, and he was inside. He grabbed her arm, yanked her forward. Next thing I know, I’m outta my car with his blood on my knuckles.”
Mac only laughs. “Bet you don’t remember a single bit of what happened between.”
“He shoved me,” Maddi adds. “Hence, skinned elbows.”
“Fuckin’ prick,” Evie growls. “Hurting chicks is not okay. I’m glad you decked him, Bry.”
Maddi laughs. “Er, no. Bry knocked me down. Not Jackson.”
“Oh.” Her eyes widen. “Oh! Well, I’m sure there was a good reason for it.”
“Blind acceptance,” Maddi shakes her head, but at least she’s still smiling. “You assume Jackson shoved me, and you’re ready to kill him. Turns out Bry shoved me, and suddenly it’s okay.”
Evie drops a stack of pancakes on another plate and slides it to Ben. “That’s because Bryan is a gentleman. He’s rude and crude and lots of other rhyming words, but he’s good.” She presses a hand to her chest, and stares right into Maddi’s eyes. “He’s good in here. So if he shoved you, it was to save you from something worse.”
“Elbow to the face,” Maddi admits on a whisper.
Evie points. “There you go. Skinned elbows are better than getting knocked the fuck out. Trust me.”
“Does it hurt getting punched in the face?”
Our group turns kind of quiet for a moment, contemplative, since all of us have taken fists to the face.
Finally, Evie shrugs. “It doesn’t really hurt at the time, because usually you’re riding the adrenaline. But it hurts later. Especially when you wake up the next day.” She slides the next plate to Mac and begins on her own. “Your elbows kinda sore today?”
Maddi twists her arm and peeks at the dried blood. “Little bit.”
“So it’s like that. But tomorrow, it’ll be better.” She grabs her plate and comes around to sit in Ben’s lap, since we’ve run out of stools.
“We made the announcements for Stacked Deck.” She fills her mouth with pancake, talks around her food. “December twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. We announced the bigger purses, the new sponsors.” She looks to Maddi and grins. “Thanks, Monaco. We got your brand up on the website and shit, and the forms are coming in for fighters.”
“They’re getting better,” Bean adds. “We’re not holding as many hands this year, and Soph made it so they could pay on the website, and submit their medical there, too. It’s streamlining a bunch of shit, rather than us getting hundreds of hand-mailed letters to sort through.”
“That’s good.” I push pancake into my mouth, since I should have eaten already. Hours ago, really. My body knows the routine it knows, but along comes Maddi, and suddenly I’m sleeping in on a Sunday. “What are the numbers so far?”
“A little more than five hundred forms came through in the first twenty-four hours,” Bean says, since Evie has her arm wrapped around Ben’s neck, and ignores the rest of us while they eat each other’s food. “They’re getting better with the medical and shit. They knew the announcement was coming, so most had already been to their doctors and had the form ready. They just have to go again a week out from the tournament, get a last-minute check, submit that form like they did the first, and we’re set.”
“Are…” Maddi swallows her pancake, and looks between me and my family. “Are you all fighting?”
Bean nods. “Uh huh. Of course.”
“But…” She looks to me. “What division?”
“Heavyweight.”
She looks to Mac, so he answers, “Middleweight.”
“Ben’s heavyweight,” Bean adds. “Smalls is middle, I’m light.”
“Iowa next door is middle too,” Mac adds.
“But…” It’s fun watching her try to do the math in her head. “That means Bry and Ben will fight each other?” Then she looks to Mac. “And you and the other middleweight?”
He nods and works through his next pancake. “It’s just the way it is. There can only be one winner, and we all know that, so we do our best, we fight hard, and when it’s over, we eat at the same dining table, and leave the competition at the door.”
“Just like that?”
He nods. “Just like that. Except often, we’ll remind the loser that they lost. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.”
“Jackson Price’s form came through.” Bean tosses pancake into her mouth, and misses the way Maddi completely tenses in my lap. “Heavyweight.”
“Jackson Price is a shitty fuckin’ fighter.” I scowl. “I doubt either Ben or I will even see him in competition. He’ll be knocked out in the first round, because even our shittiest fighters are better than that shit he was putting out last night.”
Finally, Maddi turns in my lap, and brings up a thumb to gently probe my cheekbone. “That shit he was putting out last night still damaged your face, Bryan. He wasn’t knocked out by your first punch, which means he’s not as bad as you assume.”