Jax by E. M. Moore
8
The next few moments last forever. The Elite Boxing fighter throws the first punch, catching Knuckles square in the jaw. He smiles in return, showing off his missing teeth. While the two fighters go at it, Jax and Finn keep their group away, spending a solid minute containing them while Psycho’s guys sit back and watch because they knew exactly what was about to go down. The crowd grows uneasy when the fight expands, and a semi-circle forms around them. Jax’s jaw could cut glass. They’re running a professional establishment here, not some underground street fighting ring.
It’s a couple of minutes before they can get security over to break up the fight, and in that time, Knuckles has clearly won. He has the “trained” fighter’s back on the cement floor, blood spurting everywhere. Eventually, the security team breaks it up while Psycho stands back, loving every moment of it. The gleam in his eye sends a shiver down my spine.
Nasty insults are flung on both sides, and Jax and Finn look somewhere between stunned and furious as the scene unfolds. While Psycho’s guys are being escorted out, Jax’s gaze meets mine briefly. He does a thorough once over from the top of my head to my shoes as if he’s checking to make sure I’m okay, even though I know it’s ludicrous to think he’s doing that. He probably just reverted to old habits. He couldn’t care fucking less.
Right before Psycho leaves, he whistles and calls out, “Sadie!”
Jax’s gaze snaps upward, meeting my eyes. I walk casually toward the man who owns me, my hackles rising, my skin growing flushed and hot. When I get to him, he grips my chin and gives me a bruising, possessive kiss. He bites my lip as he pulls away, tearing through my skin. Pain pulses underneath my lip as he smirks over my shoulder before leading me outside with his fingers sunk into my ass, pinching to the point of discomfort.
When we’re outside, Psycho’s guys celebrate in the street, high fiving each other. Knuckles wipes blood from his lips and licks it from his fingers, his eyes so wide the whites stick out, making him appear as if he’s been possessed by the devil. The rest of Psycho’s worshippers love it, egging him on, talking about how big of a pussy the other fighters are.
This was all part of the plan, but the guys are laying into it like they believe their own bullshit. Their sense of victory is palpable, even more so when they start banging on cars as we move down the street.
Psycho grins at it all until everyone is in front of us. When we’re separated from the rest of the pack, he turns to me with the same look in his eyes that haunts my nightmares. “What the fuck was that, Sade?”
I school my face. “What?” I ask, trying to make my voice even. I smile at the hooligans in front of us to throw him off because that’s what Psycho’s good little bitch would do. Pretend that everything went exactly as we’d planned.
“Don’t fuck with me.” He grabs my forearms, his nails biting into my skin, squeezing. When I don’t respond, he throws me against the brick building that makes up the Ring. We were led out a back door to an alleyway, and the rest of Psycho’s guys are exiting the mouth right now. “You had one fucking job.”
He grabs me by the throat, squeezing. My pulse throbs underneath his callous palm as he blocks more and more of my air. I stand there, not fighting back because I know it will only get worse for me if I do. “I didn’t have time,” I struggle to say. “The last fight ended and then you guys challenged them. It was good, Psycho,” I plead, trying to make him see reason. We did what we came here to do.
He laughs in my face, putting more pressure on my neck. When he growls his words in my face, spittle dots my lips. “The plan is for you to get close. We had our fun. We made them look bad, but you did nothing but sit back and drool over him.”
I close my eyes, trying to breathe as shallow as possible. I was hoping he wouldn’t get jealous of Jax but it was a slim hope at best. “Maybe you should’ve left me in there then,” I choke out.
His hold tightens. He blocks all air, and my fight or flight kicks in. I grip his wrists and struggle to break free. I use my foot to kick out, hitting him in the groin. It breaks his hold enough to draw in air but it doesn’t last long. He throws me to the ground. My hands and knees hit the dirty pavement, shooting pain drives up my arms until he’s on me again, taking a fistful of my hair and making me look back at him as he spits in my face. “Don’t you ever second guess me. I made you desirable. I made you front and center because you refused to do anything on your own.” He gets in my face, my scalp stinging with his fierce grip. “It can get bad again, Sade. Is that what you want? You can live in that little room again, naked, shivering. You won’t see the sun for months. Do you remember that?”
I whimper, and he takes pleasure in it. His malicious smile grows as he tugs on my hair again. “You’re fucking mine which means you do what I say when I say.”
I nod. My eye level lines up with his hips, and I can see him growing hard under his pants. I cringe, shifting away. The last time he had angry sex with me, I bled from my asshole for days. I couldn’t even sit.
He sees my wariness and cracks me across the face. “You sicken me.”
The pain echoes out from my cheek until a ringing blares in my ears. His mouth moves but I don’t hear it, I only feel another explosion of pain on the side of my head. I spit out blood and look up at him. A warm, sticky substance oozes between my lips and runs down my chin. My eyelids flutter. “Why?” I croak.
The malicious grin I receive in return only reaffirms everything I know about Psycho. He makes his own rules. He’s unhinged. He doesn’t care about anything or anyone but what he feels in the exact moment—and that makes him truly scary.
“Hey!” a voice roars.
Psycho pauses with his fist outstretched again, like he’s seconds away from showing me another reason why I’m better off doing exactly as he says.
I blink, tears obscuring my view until three different forms move into frame. “Get the fuck off her.”
I recognize the voice. I turn my head, obscuring my face from their view. I’m afraid if they know it’s me, they’ll let Psycho continue, even though I know I’ll only be putting off the inevitable. When I have to crawl back to the storage facility, I’ll only get it worse.
Psycho steps back, hands raised. I watch his dirty shoes retreat with a deep-seated wariness. I gaze up at him to find him smirking. Then, he peeks back at me and winks. At the mouth of the alleyway, our group calls for him, and he ambles away like he didn’t just beat the shit out of me.
As soon as he’s far enough away, Leenie crouches next to me. She keeps trying to pull my hair out of my face, but I shrug it back. All I need is for Psycho to leave, Jax not to see me like this, and then I can crawl back to the storage facility on my own terms.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Jax states, a softer hint to his tone. All three of them are next to me now, and my stomach drops. “Do you want us to get the police?”
I shudder at that. The police have never done anything for me.
“Do you know who that guy was?” Leenie asks.
Finn huffs. “It’s the same fucker who started the fight inside.”
“Really?” She blows out a breath. “Damn.” She attempts to move my hair away again, but I cringe back. It’s the only thing helping me hide.
“Come on.” Jax’s rich voice drifts away with his warm palm on my shoulder. A tear runs down my face, and I finally peer up at him. He flinches back when he recognizes me, pulling his hand away like he’s about to get burned.
“Christ,” Finn swears from behind him.
“Shit,” Leenie echoes their sentiments. She’s the only one who stays kneeling next to me in the dirty alley after that.
I watch as Jax gets to his feet, turning to run his fingers through his cropped black hair. “Fuck!” he bellows. The growl reverberates around the alley, bouncing off the buildings all the way down the end of the street. I flinch, shaking. The anger in his voice is so potent that it rings in my ears like a warning siren.
I struggle to my feet, my knees quaking. Leenie stays with me, making sure I can stand on my own. “Thanks,” I whisper, keeping one eye on Jax and trying to make my escape at the same time. “For stopping him.”
Jax whirls, murder in his gaze. “Who the fuck was that? Jesus Christ, Sadie, he was fucking beating you.”
I press my fingertips to my lips gingerly and pull away. They’re bloody. “Thanks. I hadn’t noticed.”
“Is that who you’re hanging out with now?”
The accusation is clear in his eyes. Like he can’t believe that I’m dumb enough to stay with someone who physically abuses me. “I haven’t been as fortunate as you,” I retort.
A growl grows from deep in his stomach, and I admit, that was a pretty shitty thing to say. He’s definitely had his struggles because of me.
“Don’t worry about it,” I say and attempt to walk away again. My knees give out, and Leenie shoots her hand out to steady me.
“Okay, okay,” she says like she’s trying to think. She darts her gaze between Jax and me.
“I’m fine,” I say, pulling my arm from her grip. I stumble with the momentum and end up against the brick wall of the building again. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d given me a concussion.
“Yeah, you’re fucking fine alright,” Jax spits.
The ire in his voice hurts worse than Psycho’s physical blows. I lean my head against the wall as tears stream down my face. Jax seeing me at one of my worst moments is overwhelming. I’m fragile, scared. When I imagined seeing him again, it was far better than this. Sure, I had to stretch my imagination to not make him hate me so much, but I dreamed I was stronger. A fighter like him. I imagined I’d come in confidently, purely, wholly, telling him how badly I fucked up but that I was better now.
None of that is true. I’m still broken. I’m still being used. And I’m still here to make his life a living hell.
“We can’t leave her like this,” Leenie hedges.
The three of them are fractured as I look through tear-filled eyes but I see a mix of disgust and sorrow. They feel bad for me which only makes it worse.
“I can handle him,” I say. “It’s nothing.”
“Says every abused woman,” Finn snarls.
I recoil from his words and hit my head on the brick again. “Fuck,” I groan, rubbing my hand over my sensitive scalp where I wouldn’t be surprised if Psycho literally tore chunks of my hair out.
Jax used to love running his hands through my long blond strands. Especially in the morning when the sun would stream through the windows. My hair would look like spun gold as he’d weave his fingers through it.
I cringe again, and Leenie moves forward. “Here, let’s get you covered up.” She takes off the hoodie she’s wearing and wraps it around my shoulders.
“I’m really fine,” I protest. “I’ll go somewhere to get cleaned up, and then I’ll head back when he’s simmered down.” I stare at my shoes. I hadn’t meant to share so much with them—with him—but it’s hard turning that switch off when you’ve literally never felt more comfortable than you do with that one person. Old habits are hard to repress.
“You should probably go to a hospital to get checked out,” Leenie suggests.
I scoff. “It’s just a little—”
“Beat down?” Jax seethes.
I open my mouth to tell him to fuck off when he lunges forward, picks me up, and throws me over his shoulder. My head swims, and I groan.
“Well, you probably could have done that better,” Finn says unhelpfully.
Once I get the floor to stop moving, I grind out, “You know you don’t want to help me, Jax. Put me down.”
“You’re right. I don’t fucking want to help you.”
Still, he marches on. At the end of the street, he whistles, calling a taxi over. He finally settles me on my feet and then moves out of the way for Leenie to help me into the seat. Finn and Jax share a conversation while I wait, and finally, Jax strides away without looking back.
“The hospital,” Leenie tells the driver.
“No,” I cry out, my voice somewhere between firm and a banshee wail. Watching Jax’s form walk away from the car breaks my heart. I peer after him, chest ripping down the center. “Actually, I’m leaving.”
Jax roars, and I jump. He spins, marches back while glaring at me, and then opens the passenger door of the taxi. As he gets in, he barks out instructions to the driver to take us all to the hospital before slamming the door behind him.
I don’t contradict him. Either I’m too tired or it’s the growing warmth in my stomach that hopes he does still care.
Throughout the whole trip, I watch the popping vein in Jax’s neck, the coiling and tightening of his muscles. In fact, having him next to me is so soothing that before I know it, I’m asleep.
