Player (A Secret Baby Sports Romance)(170)

“You look all tense, baby.”

There’s absolutely nothing tense about the way I’m just slumped in the old rusty metal folding chair, deadened by the weight of even being here.

The girl is gorgeous - all sex and desire, pressing her tits against me and letting her hands trail over my biceps. And normally, yeah normally I’d be very down for this, even though you're never supposed to do this kind of thing right before a fight; no sex before you swing, they say. You need that pent up testosterone and aggression as fuel.

Of course now I’ve got Quinn Archer buried deep under my skin like an itch I can’t reach, and the idea of having this girl scratch that is completely turning me off.

“Maybe later,” I mutter, pushing her off of my lap.

She pouts in a way I’m sure she thinks is cute and sexy, but that just looks slutty, and not in a good way; “Well, maybe after you kick that guy’s ass then?”

“Yeah, maybe.”

No.

“Hey there, cabrón!” The man with the dark hair and dark black eyes like those of a shark - the man who’s the singular reason I’m here - steps through the doorway grinning that fucking leering, toothy smile of his; “Hey there’s my buddy!”

I’m not his fucking buddy and he damn well knows it. I’m his captive.

“You ready for this?”

I set my jaw as I stand from the chair and take a step towards Javier Toro, my jaw tightening. I’ve got at least six inches on him, and easily forty pounds of muscle, and I would love nothing more than to just pound that fucking shithead’s face in right now. Hell, even just a shove would be nice.

But I don’t, of course. I’m hotheaded, but not dumb, even if Javier’s completely let himself go physically since we knew each other before, back in the jungles of Ghana.

“You hit like a bitch, you know.” Javier spits in the dirt, his arms up and his body flitting side to side like a dancer as he circles me; “You gotta keep em up, like this. You let that guard down, and you’re gonna get smacked upside the head again.” He jabs suddenly, and I swear as his glove connects with my ear.

“See? Just like that, Irish! I should start charging you for these fuckin lessons!”

He hoots as he signals fight over and yanks his gloves off before coming over and clapping me on the back; “You ain’t so bad, you know. You got a fire inside of you that most guys don’t, Irish. I just gotta figure out what gets it burning and then you’re gonna be one mean son of a bitch in a ring.”

We walk over to the old roadside motel that Blackriver has taken over and repurposed into a sort of barracks in the abandoned village we currently occupy. The fact that we’re the only building for fifty miles in any direction with electricity, let alone running water, satellite television, and the internet only makes this whole thing even more surreal. It’s like some sort of tech-savy version of Marlon Brando’s jungle-fiefdom in “Apocalypse Now”.

If life can get any stranger than playing soldier for hire in a mercenary corporation stuck in the middle of Africa, I’d almost welcome the chance to see it.

Javier pulls two beers out the fridge and hands me one; “My name’s not actually Irish, you know.”

He grins at me; “I figured your mama wasn’t that mean.”

“You’ve clearly never met my mother.”

We both chuckle as we sip on the cold beers, looking out from the porch over the dirt boxing ring and the jungle past it.

“It’s just- you know, I feel like a lotta guys here who signed on with Blackriver come from some pretty hardcore backgrounds.”

“Like you and your two buddies? The drunk and the junkie?”

I grit my teeth at the mention of Hudson and Byrce and shake my head. Hudson’s trying - kind of. But Byrce; shit, Bryce’s addiction is getting worse every day, and the fact that you can literally buy smack for cheaper than a bottle of clean water in this place isn’t exactly helping things.

“Yeah, well, we’ve seen some shit.”

Shit like one too many drone strikes on innocent people; one too many bombs dropped on fucking schools or villages back in Afghanistan. After that last one, where we all almost died, we snapped. I guess we all broke in different ways.

Which is why we’re here, in some God-forsaken part of the world playing soldiers for hire, because there’s just no going back home after you go AWOL from the Marines during active duty.

Javier nods; “Seems like it. I’ve seen some shit too, amigo,” He shakes his head; “But Papi, you got that cold hard cowboy look on your face like I’ve never seen before.”

I force out a laugh and sip the beer; “Well, I guess we all get the shit we carry from wherever we come from.”