Someone suddenly grabbed my behind roughly, and I turned around and swung, my fist landing in what felt like iron. “I’d know that bodacious ass anywhere, Princess,” the low baritone of Rex purred in my ear. “Oh my God, Rex, I’m so glad you’re here!” I’d never been so relieved in my life. “Uh huh, you won’t be glad when I spank your ass red-raw later. What the fuck were you thinking!” His eyes were dark, ominous—his jaw set in a hard line—he was pissed. “Be angry, do whatever, but please save Nate. They are cheating! They added a second fighter—look, the new guy is wearing shoes!”
Rex looked around me toward the ring, his face showing no emotion. Nate looked over and saw him, nodded to Rex as the blood from his cheek flowed. Rex nodded back and walked over to the cashier’s window. “What are you doing? Will that guy stop the fight?” I chased after him. “I’m going to place a bet, make a few pesos, baby.” Tears flowed down my cheeks. “You’d bet against Nate?” I couldn’t believe this was the man I thought I loved, betraying the other man I loved.
Rex placed his bet in Spanish and stood by my side, his arm forced around my waist despite my resistance. “I told you, Princess, I don’t rescue people. This isn’t my fault—you two did this. Doesn’t have a fucking thing to do with me.”
He stood there stoically, holding me as I struggled to squirm out of his arms. He repulsed me at the moment—I didn’t know who he was. He ignored me and watched the fight. As I’d feared, Tito stood up.
Nate fought both men, but the tide had changed. He was on fire, unstoppable. “Oh my God! He’s so good!” Rex let a tiny grin creep to the side of his mouth before giving me a quick squeeze. “Like Mark Twain said, ‘It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.’ Nathaniel Slater is fucking full of fight, sweetheart. So are you, so am I. Those two other guys? They’re tired, weak.”
The crowd jeered and eventually sat down in disgust as both of their men were knocked out by Nate. The manager of the gym walked into the ring, lifting Nate’s hand to pronounce him the winner, and handing him a towel to wipe the blood. Nate dressed and walked toward us, his eyes anxiously on Rex. “Man, I–I fucked up,” he said, waving his arms before raking his hands through his hair. “You fucked up big time. Let me collect our winnings, and we’ll go.”
After Rex left the window, shoving a wad of bills in his pocket, the throng of men crept over, angry and ready to start trouble, until Rex held up a gun and spoke to them in Spanish, pointing toward the door. They didn’t move as we left the gym. The minute the door closed, Rex and Nate broke into a run, Rex picking me up when I couldn’t keep up.
We made it to the truck. Rex’s dark van, the one I’d been taken from the airport to the compound in, was parked behind it with Rex’s driver idling the engine. “Get in,” he screamed as the sliding door slid open. Nate and I jumped in, with Rex behind us slamming the door closed. He tapped the glass to tell the driver to go.
“I can’t deal with you two right now—if I do, I’ll fucking strangle you both. I have to get back to the jungle,” he said through gritted teeth, not making eye contact with either of us. I held a towel to Nate’s bleeding face, trying to calm myself down. I knew this was my fault—me and my damn makeup.
“How’d you know?” Nate asked, less afraid of Rex than I was.
Rex didn’t look at him, but eventually answered, “DEA buddy of mine saw you two in town and called me. You’re fucking lucky I had a signal.”
“I could have handled Tito and Deke,” Nate said defiantly.
The van was silent until we pulled into the tall walls of the compound, the security staff at the gate waving us in. Rex knocked on the glass, and the driver lowered it. “Tell them we need a couple of guys to go get the gardener’s truck from town.”
We left the van, Rex telling his driver he needed to leave for the jungle again as soon as he stitched Nate up.
“Wait, stitches?” I shouted to Rex’s back as I followed him inside. “Shouldn’t we go to a hospital, an ER, for that?”
Both men ignored me as we followed Rex through the house. At a far wing, he stopped at a heavy metal door, armed with a keypad and a small screen. He held his hand up to the screen, and when it beeped, he entered a code—his keystrokes shielded by his other hand. The heavy door slid open.
Inside, there was a brightly lit, windowless medical room. There were two gurneys, and the walls were lined with locked cabinets and medical equipment. “Welcome to the emergency room on King Rex Island,” he said sarcastically. Nate hopped up onto one of the tables as if he’d been in this room many times before. Rex ignored me, walking over to a sink to scrub his hands. “It’s on his face—should we get a plastic surgeon?” I once had a similar cut from a gymnastics fall and my parents went berserk about scarring. “What the fuck planet do you live on, Penelope? Go play with your makeup while the men get shit done,” Rex said as he pulled on latex gloves. His words stung—I understood his anger at me, but I didn’t know how to make it better. I slumped into a chair in the corner. Nate looked over at me and mouthed the words, “It’s okay.” I suspected he’d dealt with a much-angrier Rex before.
“Okay, dude, this isn’t going to feel great, but once it’s numb, I’ll sew you up. I’m going to give Penny only enough codeine to get you through until I get back.”
“No meds, no numbing.”
“Nate, I appreciate that, I do.” Rex’s voice was soft, loving again. “The shot is just some lidocaine, it’s not addictive. You can do over the counter Motrin after if you’d rather not risk opiates.”
“Just the numbing shot, then, if you think it’s okay—if not, I’ll take the pain. But nothing after, no pills.”
Rex nodded as he swabbed Nate’s cheek with an alcohol swab, Nate grimacing from the sting. “I’d rather have you still when I sew—I’d hate to mar that pretty-boy skin,” Rex said as he raised the needle. Nate showed no sign of pain as Rex gave the injection.
After Nate was numb, it took only minutes for Rex to have him sewed up. “Keep it clean and dry, and use this ointment. Your face will be fine—the rest of you maybe not so much when I get back from the jungle.” He pulled off the gloves, tossed them in a stainless steel garbage bin, and gestured for us to leave.
We stood in the main living room waiting for Rex. He eventually emerged from the medical room and walked past us without a word. With a slam of the front door, he was gone. I looked to Nate, battered, bruised, and stitched. “He’s so mad—he’s never going to forgive me,” I cried to Nate, who held me as we walked back to his bedroom. “He gets that way—believe me, Pen, I’ve done far worse things to make him much madder than this. It’ll pass, just weather the storm.”
Later that evening, with no word from Rex, I sat out by the pool having dinner with Nate. “How’s the face?” I asked, sipping a glass of chilled white wine as Maria cleared the dishes. “Hurts, but my whole body aches. The sign of a great fight.”
I shook my head at him. “I don’t get it—that didn’t seem like sport to me. When they added that second guy to the ring…”
“Oh, that group always fights dirty. That’s their thing—I knew it was coming. I wanted to play them. The gym manager, Chewy, would have stopped it otherwise. I placed a bet on myself with him before the fight.”
“Going there was careless, I have to side with Rex on this one. I was an idiot for not listening to you when you said no to going to town, and you were an idiot for taking me,” I admitted.
He took a small sip of his glass of wine. Despite battles with drug addiction, Nate wasn’t much of a drinker. “Well, Penny, I don’t have the best judgment. I’m rash, impulsive. Rex is good for me in that regard. He’s taught me to slow down, strategize, think. And most importantly, when you fuck up, you pull yourself back together and start again. Never stop fighting. Today was a set-back, nothing more.” I leaned back into my chair, the stars dancing overhead as the warm, wet air wrapped around me like a hug.
“You met Rex when you took his course?” He nodded. “My dad talked to me into it—but he’s a whole other story. I’d just come out of yet another ninety-day rehab and was looking for something different. I showed up, pampered and arrogant, and ended up leaving Rex’s ‘let’s eat wild animals’ shit after the first day. I managed to hitch my way to Medellin, where it was easy to score plenty of cocaine by just signing my name. Well, it was for a day or so. When I couldn’t pay—all of my stuff was back in Rex’s airport storage—the dealers got pissed. In the back of a dank warehouse, I was given two options: pay my hefty drug bill, or they’d slowly cut me into pieces. Starting there,” he pointed grimly to his groin.
“Oh my God,” I gasped. “What did you do?”