“What does my father have to do with this?”
Knox looked to his brother for help.
Nash looked at his feet. “Why don’t we go get ourselves another round? Save ourselves the trouble,” he suggested.
“Not until you tell me why you make each other bleed on a weekly basis but you’re acting like I’m some delicate flower.” Using Sloane’s exact words made me miss the taste of her even more.
“Gettin’ hit doesn’t mean the same thing to us as it does you,” Knox said finally. “If I punch my pain-in-the-ass brother in the mouth, it’s because I love him and he pissed me off.”
“Expound,” I demanded.
“Fuck,” Nash muttered.
“Finish it,” I ordered, growing impatient.
“We don’t hit you because you got hit at home. Your dad wailing on you was all kinds of fucked up. Maybe we didn’t know exactly what was going on, but we weren’t stupid. Least not that stupid,” Knox amended.
“You two don’t fight with me because you think I don’t know the difference? That I can’t handle it?”
They glanced at each other, then shrugged. “Basically.” Nash said.
“Yup,” Knox agreed. “Besides, you’re more likely to throw some fancy lawyer than a punch.”
I took off my jacket and draped it over the tailgate of the nearest pickup.
Knox hooted. The side door of the bar opened, and Stef and Jeremiah stepped outside, holding their drinks.
“Told you we didn’t want to miss this,” Jeremiah said.
“Can’t we just have one night that doesn’t end in someone getting punched in the face?” Nash grumbled.
“Not tonight,” I decided.
“You sure about this?” Stef called to me. “There’s two of them and one of you.”
“You’re here,” I pointed out as I rolled up one sleeve.
“I am. But in this case, I’m Team Sloane. You dicked over a great girl—for reasons that probably made sense to you at the time but in reality are total shit. I gotta cast my vote with the Morgans here.”
His morals annoyed me.
“Same here,” Jeremiah agreed.
I turned my attention to my other sleeve, unbuttoning the cuff and beginning to roll it up. “I hate all of you. What the hell are you doing?”
Knox was pacing back and forth, rolling his neck and taking turns stretching each arm across his chest.
“Clearly this guy hasn’t been in a fight over the age of thirty,” Knox said conversationally to his brother.
“You gotta warm up,” Nash instructed, dropping into a squat.
Knox rolled his neck again and started performing shoulder circles.
“What happened to the days of sucker punching some unsuspecting asshole in a bar?” I asked.
“Throw a punch and pull a muscle in your back so bad you can’t wipe your own ass, then we’ll talk,” Nash advised, circling his arms backward, then forward.
“This is more anticlimactic than I thought,” I complained.
A fist shot out and rammed into my jaw, snapping my head back.
“That’s what happened to sucker punching, unsuspecting asshole,” Knox said cheerily as my head rang like the inside of a church bell. “Do better. Don’t treat women like shit. Especially not Sloane.”
“Christ.” I bent at the waist, rubbing my jaw and biding my time. “I didn’t treat her like shit. We agreed it was nothing, and then we ended the nothing.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it. Besides, you can’t be done already. Nash didn’t even get a shot yet,” Knox insisted, slapping me on the shoulder.
“Let’s go back in and drink,” Nash suggested, sounding disappointed.
“You didn’t get to hit him yet. It’s pretty fuckin’ satisfying,” Knox said.
“Guess I’ll just insult him and call him names for being a coward who’s afraid of a little blond librarian,” Nash said.
That little blond librarian was more terrifying than any of us, and we all knew it.
Knox was half turned to look at his brother and didn’t see me coming. My fist plowed into the side of his face with satisfying force. He stumbled sideways before recovering with a grin. “Now that’s more like it.”
“My turn,” Nash said, moving into position. “You don’t get to treat Sloane like she’s some one-night fuck. Doesn’t matter what went down between you two or how things end, you treat her with respect.”