Wild Side (Rose Hill, #3)(69)

“I’ve been away for a few weeks, and I’ve missed you. But I’ve been busy.” The odd hoot sounds out, but Rhys carries on. “Busy preparing to take back what that spoiled goof in a suit has been playing with. What I’ve let a lesser man—if you can even call him that—borrow while I’ve been recovering. He may have knocked me down…but not. Hard. Enough.”

He turns to look into the main camera and points, my eyes snagging on the flash of his wedding ring. “That’s right, Will. You should have hit me so hard that I couldn’t get back up. You should have finished the goddamn job. That was your first mistake, because now I’m back—in my house, with my people—where you’ve been living comfortably for far too long. If you’d finished the job, I wouldn’t be here. Back for blood. Because everything you thought was yours? By the time Pure Pandemonium rolls around, it’s going to be mine.”

The crowd surges again, partly due to the message, and partly due to the two men who’ve popped up behind him.

One takes a cheap shot while the other one circles. Rhys folds under the blow, hitting the mat with a heavy thud as the mic goes flying. But he’s not down for long. He pops back up in an agile kip-up that a man his size should not be able to execute so gracefully.

He turns to the man who kicked him without missing a beat, lifting him into a chokeslam. The move takes the man high and curves him into a rainbow shape over Rhys’s body, his signature move that has everyone chanting, “Over! The! Mountain!”

When the guy hits the mat, he rolls from the ring, writhing and holding his neck.

The second goon has the good sense to look concerned. He’s overacting his response, but that doesn’t bother me one bit. It adds a dose of humor, a dose of drama that has me internally cheering even harder for Wild Side.

Rhys doesn’t hesitate like him though. He turns fluidly into a high kick aimed at the other man’s head that drops him on the spot.

I lean closer, trying to see where he holds back. He’s masterful. Where some wrestlers are obvious with the space they leave to prevent injuring their opponent, Rhys is not. He’s a technician. It’s seamless, believable, and I’d say he’s so good that he makes the other two guys look a hell of a lot better than they are.

One is on all fours outside of the ring, pretending to cough and crawl away, while the other lies prone on the mat. Rhys climbs the ropes at the turnbuckle, and with his back to the man he just kicked, he circles a finger over his head in a let’s fucking go motion. Then he does a massive backflip off the top rope that has me shooting to standing, sandwich and cucumbers flying across the floor.

“Oh shit!” My hand flies to my chest as he lands on the man, lifting his hips ever so slightly, letting his elbows and knees take the brunt while the announcer screams about him having the best moonsault in the company.

But the celebration is short-lived when guy number two pops back up and kicks Rhys right in his very sizable penis. He doubles over with great theatrics, and I have to remind myself that he’s probably okay.

The guy is readying his attack when a flash of blond hair flies into the ring with a metal chair in her hand. She winds up and slams it into the face of Rhys’s attacker. I know I’m not supposed to like this storyline with Elle, but the anxious part of me is relieved someone came to help him. Because watching him throw himself around and take hits doesn’t feel fake at all. In fact, I’m more stressed by it than ever before.

The two of them make quick work of their foes, and once they’re both sprawled on the mat, she turns to grin at Rhys. He doesn’t return the gesture. Instead, he scowls, failing spectacularly at acting like she’s his partner.

And because I know him well enough to recognize the glare, I find it oddly…amusing? Reassuring?

But she doesn’t back down. She reaches for his hand and hefts it high in the air, pointing at him and mouthing, “That’s my man,” over and over again.

I twist my wedding band on my finger, relieved he’s leaving the ring unscathed.

And jealous because she’s holding his hand.

But I refuse to indulge that emotion. I’m not the jealous type, and I don’t want to start now. Plus, I truly have no reason to be jealous. What he’s doing in the arena is for show. Fake.

However, my budding feelings for him are not. Which is why I fire off a text message that even two weeks ago I would never have sent. Rhys and I are similar in a lot of ways, and I know what he needs to hear tonight.

Tabby: I’m proud of you.

Then I go to bed without eating. My appetite is gone anyway.





CHAPTER 31


Tabitha





I BOOKED MYSELF TODAY OFF. MY PLAN WAS TO UNPLUG AND relax, try to enjoy having a clean, quiet house all to myself. But I went into the restaurant anyway. My staff mocked me mercilessly and called me a workaholic, so I hid in my office. I did some paperwork—that was in no way pressing—and flipped them all the finger on the way out.

Then I came home and cleaned my house from top to bottom like I planned. Not having Milo here to make an instant mess in my wake seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up.

Then I went to Gwen’s yoga class—something Trixie thought might be good for stilling my mind. It was lovely, but I’m not so sure it worked, since I’m sitting in the cool backyard with my mind spinning.