Neanderthal by Avery Flynn
Chapter Three
Kinsey
Fifteen minutes later, Kinsey had exhausted every excuse not to move in with Morgan that she could come up with. “Is there a point in arguing with you?”
“Never.” Morgan grinned wide enough to make her dimples sink a mile into her cheeks. “I always win.”
Kinsey had no trouble believing that, or that she’d be moving her meager belongings into Morgan’s apartment after lunch with her brother.
Walking into Vera’s Gym, Kinsey was assaulted by the sensory overload of the place. As if Harbor City wasn’t already enough of a shock to her country-homemade-biscuits-made-with-eight-sticks-of-butter soul, she had to add in a gym that Meemaw would have labeled as not fit for polite company.
“Are you sure it’s okay that we’re here?” she asked, feeling more out of place than she had when she’d walked into her first college chemistry course at fifteen.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Morgan asked, strutting in as if she owned the place and no one would even dare to say boo to her, which they probably wouldn’t.
Kinsey, wide-eyed and sending every silent hey-girl signal she could with her blue eyes, gestured at the scarred-up wooden benches in front of the banged-up metal lockers, the punching bags hanging from chains hooked to the ceiling and patched up with duct tape, and the bald guy with very aggressive fire-engine-red eyebrows chomping on an unlit cigar while eyeballing them as if sizing them up for dinner—to gobble them up, not for a date. Two guys were arguing over no-carbs versus low-carb diets during training. Meanwhile, another was fighting with a mop that kept getting caught in the wringer as he stood in front of what she was really hoping wasn’t a bloodstain on the cement floor.
All of this on top of the echoes of gloves thwumping against flesh and the corresponding grunts of men of all sizes sparring in the huge space, the humidity of sweaty men you couldn’t miss with every breath you took, and the occasional squeak of laced-up boxing boots pivoting on rubber boxing rings.
It was noisy and smelly and an overload of the senses and, although not entirely unpleasant, holy hell it was a lot of testosterone to take in all at once. Kinsey struggled to sort out all the different compounds, break them into discrete elements. It was a habit she’d developed in that first college course as she navigated an unknown adult world as a mere teenager. If you knew what made up the confusion, it wouldn’t be overwhelming. Life was just a giant chemistry set to Kinsey.
Morgan scoffed. “They’re all a bunch of kittens.”
Kinsey looked around at the guys working out by beating the crap out of each other and barely-keeping-it-together punching bags. Kittens? No. Feral barn cats on meth? Quite possibly.
“Which one’s your brother?” she asked.
“That one.” Morgan pointed at the ring in the middle of the room where two guys were going at it while a third stood, forearms resting on the top rope and yelling about keeping hands up and minding footwork.
He was a wiry guy with dark hair a little on the long side, light-brown skin, a nose that obviously had been broken a time or twelve, and more freckles than Meemaw had Thomas Kincade puzzles glued together, framed, and hung on the walls of her house.
Trying to block out the guy who was now cursing as he yanked on the mop handle and the Bickerman twins who’d moved on to who was the best lightweight boxer of all time, all while the back of her neck prickled from the cigar-chomping creeper still watching her from behind the desk, Kinsey squinted, trying to see the family resemblance between the guy pacing outside the ropes and Morgan. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t even a smidgen of resemblance beyond the hair color.
“The dark-haired guy is your brother? You guys don’t look much alike,” she said.
“No, not Eggsy,” Morgan said with a roll of her eyes. “Griff’s in the blue trunks.”
There was only one guy in blue shorts in the middle of the ring. He was wearing one of those padded-headgear things on his head with hair the same shade of dark brown as Morgan’s sticking out from the top and a snarl that could be seen for miles. He had tats going up both arms and covering most of his muscular back, tree-trunk legs, and was definitely tall enough to reach the stuff way back on the top shelf in the grocery store without going up on his tiptoes.
She shot Morgan a questioning look, but the other woman just grinned, showing how much she was loving her big reveal. “Knowing Griff, he’ll be done sparring—or more accurately his partner will be begging to stop—in about ten minutes. Then brunch!”
The sound of a punch landing jerked her attention back to the ring, specifically at the giant in the navy boxing trunks.
She winced when he landed a hard right jab followed by an equally ferocious uppercut that sent the guy he was sparring with back a few steps. There was a beauty to the violence, an elegance of movement that she’d never linked to boxing before, despite the fact that Meemaw never missed a televised fight night.
It was as if the whole world shrank down into the give and take of the two men in the ring. It was something to soak in, to study as if it were a chain of peptides—which was exactly why the continuing background racket had her ready to snap. She couldn’t concentrate on dissecting the two boxers’ moves with the distractions behind her. Didn’t they realize she needed to focus?
Like they’d heard her, the two arguing men grew silent for a beat, and Kinsey sighed. Excellent. Blue Trunks sent another jab-jab-punch combo, weight on his left leg, pivot, dodge, jab-jab. It was almost like a ballet, and Kinsey couldn’t get enough of watching.
But then Humpty and Dumpty moved on to debating the best Great British Bake Off hosts, the guy with the mop gave the metal bucket a loud kick, and Cigar Man rounded the front desk and started right for her, a leer on his face that he probably thought looked debonair.
And she knew she had to quiet the noise or she was going to miss the rest of the sparring match.
“You two,” she said, pointing at the gym’s two-person debate team. “First, carbs are necessary for your body to function, so don’t skip them. Second, Roberto Durán was the best even before he beat Sugar Ray, and no one has come close since. Third, there is absolutely no doubt that Mel and Sue get the cake stand when it comes to GBBO hosts.”
She marched over to the mop bucket, jiggled the wringer handle. “Apply less force and the spring will adjust more easily.” And then she handed the now-free mop to the man, whose eyes were as wide as his jaw agape.
Then she whirled around and glared at Cigar Man. “And you—you need to learn that women are not what’s for dinner, so stop eyeballing us like perfectly cooked steak before I put a fork in you and call you done.”
She glanced around at the four men with their jaws hanging open and said, “Can’t you all see I’m trying to watch a boxing match?” She let out a deep breath, feeling every bit like an Instant Pot after the steam vent switch had been flipped.
“Hey, Griff!” Morgan called out, grinning at her. “I brought Kinsey by.”
“She’s got a lot to say,” he said, his voice garbled a bit by his mouth guard as he continued to jab-jab and dance around the ring.
He was shiny with sweat and had a red mark on his right cheek that promised a bruise sometime real soon. She didn’t know whether to smile or wave hi or pray the floor would open up and swallow her whole for her own safety because she could do things with that man. Bad things. Good bad things. The best good bad things.
“Well, I’m right. There’s just no way anyone can beat Mel and Sue.” The words flowed out, even as Kinsey tried to stop them—but when she was on a roll, they just didn’t. “I mean, sure, change is constant, but if you look at the joke per aired minute—not to mention the quality of the preshow skits—versus the heartwarming moments that make the show, there’s no comparison.”
Heat flushed her cheeks because everyone but Morgan—and her brother’s opponent—was staring at her as if she’d grown a second head, but the words kept coming.
“Mel and Sue were a stronger heartbeat for the show. That’s just all there is. Plus, if you quantify the awkward cringe factor for the bakers when they interact with the current hosts, it’s much higher until at least the fourth episode than it ever was with Mel and Sue.”
Finally out of breath, Kinsey had to pause just as Morgan’s brother turned his head.
His gaze paused on his sister long enough for him to lift his chin in acknowledgment before moving on and landing on her.
Ho-lee sheeeeet.
The sizzle in his blue-eyed look zinged right through her with such heat that she lost her grip on her purse strap slung over her shoulder as if she’d been burned.
Griff started to lower his gloved hands, his intense focus on her, and took a step toward the ropes.
While he was in the ring.
With another fighter.
And the bell hadn’t been rung.
What would happen next all unfolded in her mind in rapid flashes of understanding. “Watch out!”
Her mouth was slower than Griff’s sparring partner’s right hook, though. It landed with a hard thump against Griff’s jaw. The bottom half of his mouth went one direction while the rest of his head stayed still. He stumbled back on his heels, gloves still chest high instead of blocking his head from another punch. It came on the next breath. A vicious shot to the head that knocked Griff off-balance and down to the mat.
Oh. Shit.
