"That was just his sense of humor. He likes his girls tall, busty, and brainless. Basically the opposite of everything I am. He'd never be interested in someone like me."

"Zoe." His voice is incredulous. "You seriously think any guy wouldn't trade his left nut for a chance with a girl like you, over some bimbo? You're fucking crazy, darling." He pulls me toward the wall, where it's a bit quieter, and cups his hands around my cheeks. "You're the kind of girl men spend a lifetime looking for. And you're mine. So forgive me if I'm not super fond of watching some random dude who admits to being in love with you run his hands all over your body."

"Don't be jealous." I wrinkle my nose at him. "There's no foundation for it."

"I'm not jealous, babe. I don't do jealous." He leans down and kisses me. "I've told you before - I don't want to make your decisions for you. I have no interest in controlling you." His voice goes soft. "You don't fall in love with a bird and stick her in a cage. You let her fly free and hope like hell she comes back to you."

"You know what?" I ask, kissing him back.

"What?" he murmurs.

"Tinkerbell and Peter Pan both knew how to fly."

He grins as he deepens the kiss.

"Gross!" I hear a familiar female voice yell, interrupting us. "Get a room, you two!"

We break apart to find Phoebe and Gemma glaring at us. Chase and Nate are standing behind them, arms crossed over their chests, looking amused.

"Get over it," Parker tells his sisters.

"When's this shindig starting?" Lila yells, appearing on the fringes of the group with two beers in hand, one of which she passes to me. Shelby and Chrissy both trail in her wake with drinks of their own, waving hello when they join the group.

"Should be any minute now," I call back. "I doubt they can fit another body in here."

"Come on!" Phoebe's eyes are sparkling. "Let's get closer to the stage!"

"It's not a ballet recital, little bird. It's called the octagon." Nate's voice is warm.

She waves away her fiance's words. "Whatever."

I grin and sip my beer as we push our way through the crowd, Parker's heat at my back.

"Who is Blaze fighting, tonight?" Lila leans close so I can hear her.

"Jack Forrester. Really giant dude from Maine. Built like an oak tree. They call him Lumberjack. He has a killer knock-out punch."

Lila swallows. "Doesn't that worry you?"

"Every damn time," I admit. "I pray for the girl who ever falls for Luca. With what he does... you'd never get a good night's sleep so long as he's fighting. And I don't see him stopping anytime soon. There are UFC scouts here, tonight. If he wins..." I glance at her and see thoughts turning over in her eyes. "He's going all the way."

She nods slowly and sips her beer, but says nothing else.

Lila is a conundrum.

On the one hand, she's blunt and bold and funny as hell. On the other... she's a total mystery. Even her closest friends aren't exactly sure what she does for a living or how she spends her free time. I have a feeling there's a lot more lurking behind those glossy brown eyes than she lets on.

When we reach the ring, the girls engage in a heated discussion about which octagon girl has the best outfit as we watch them parade around, hyping up the crowd. (The one in the black leather lace-up bikini is winning by a landslide.) The men adopt carefully blank expressions and refrain from commenting on our debate.

Apparently, they're smarter than I gave them credit for.

Chase, Nate, Parker, Owen, and Theo form a towering wall at our backs, keeping the crowd from pushing in on us as the overhead lights start to flash, a telltale sign that things are about to begin. I'm laughing at something Parker's whispered in my ear when a young guy in a Scythe Gym t-shirt appears in front of me along the inner railing.

"You Zoe?" he asks, his brown eyes nervous.

I feel Parker and Nate both shift into high-alert mode.

"Yeah," I say, eyebrows lifting.

"Blaze wants to see you."

My face screws up in a confused mask. "But he never wants to see me before his matches. He's in his zen mode."

"Apparently he changed his mind tonight." The guy's expression is anxious - it's clear he doesn't want to let down the hulking, two hundred pound wall of pure muscle who sent him out here to get me. "He said he needs to talk to you before he fights. Alone."

Shit.

If Luca wants to see me, he must be more worried about this fight than I thought. I suddenly feel like the worst friend on earth - I didn't even check in with him today.

"I have to go," I say immediately, looking up at Parker. "I'll be right back."

"You're not going anywhere alone." His voice is totally serious.

Nate shakes his head, seconding Parker's statement. "Agreed."

"Guys! I'm not leaving the building. I'll be fifty feet away. Luca never asks to see me before a fight - if he's asking, it must be important."

"I don't like it," Parker growls. "This crowd is ready to combust."

"I'll stay with her," the gym guy assures him. "Bring her right there and straight back. I swear."

"Honey." I reach up and brush my lips against Parker's. "Remember that conversation we just had, about not putting me in a cage?"

His eyes flare with frustration and a muscle jumps in his jaw. "You come straight back. You're not here in my arms in five minutes, I'm coming in after you. I don't care what ginger boy has to say about it."

"Ginger boy?" I snort. "I'm totally telling Luca you said that."

"I don't give a shit what you tell him." His mouth crushes mine in a kiss. "Five minutes."

I nod and pass Lila my beer. "Here. I'm not going to finish this."

She shrugs and takes a sip. "More for me."

Parker doesn't look happy about it, but he lifts me up over the railing with a nod to the bouncers. I wave goodbye to my friends as the attendant leads me around the ring toward the doors where the fighters are waiting in their separate locker rooms, getting geared up. Just before the crowd swallows us, I look back... straight into Parker's eyes.

I see the worry there, in their depths. But also trust. And maybe, if I look a little deeper, I see love, too.

He loves me.

I hang onto that feeling as I hurry after the Scythe guy, cutting a path up the fenced-off walkway toward the back rooms and trying to ignore the screaming crowd. We leave behind the mass of fans and step into a secluded hallway, the heavy doors swinging shut behind us with a bang, blocking out the roar.

"Damn, that was loud," I mutter, ears still ringing. I shake my head to clear them as I follow the man down the hallway. "How do you stand working here, on fight nights? Aren't you worried you'll go deaf?" I joke.

The man doesn't answer; he just keeps walking down the deserted hall.

I'm starting to feel uneasy about this.

"...Or maybe you're already deaf," I murmur, eyeing the space around me. There are no locker rooms back here. I stop walking.

"Where's Luca?" I ask, my pulse picking up speed.

The man turns to me, and I see the remorse on his face a second before I see his fist swinging out to clip me across my temple.

"I'm sorry," he tells me, a second before his blow makes contact and everything goes black. "I didn't have a choice. He's got my family."

When I wake up, my wrists are bound with a zip-tie and my head feels like someone used it as the ball in a game of ping pong. There's also the fact that I'm being carried like a sack of flour over the shoulder of the guy who bashed my brains in.

I'm not sure if it's the blow to the head or the fact that he's holding me upside down, but I think I might vomit down his back. Which, seriously, would serve him right. I try to struggle, but none of my limbs are cooperating. The most I can manage is a weak kick against his shins as he hauls me from the backseat of his car across a parking lot. I see cracked asphalt passing beneath his feet and wonder vaguely if there's a chance this man kidnapped me by accident.

Maybe he was looking for another Zoe.

I've never even seen this guy before. Who would possibly arrange for me to be accosted and abducted?

Lancaster.

The thought creeps into the back of my mind and lodges there, until it's unshakably entrenched.

But he's in jail, a voice of reason reminds me. There's no way he's behind this.

My foggy theories don't matter, because we're suddenly moving up a set of dilapidated stairs and into what looks like an old office building, judging by the stained beige carpet. My head jostles roughly as he carries me through the space, and nausea stirs to life in my gut again.

I'm definitely going to puke.

Unfortunately, before I manage to vomit on him, my captor bends forward and deposits me on a stainless steel table, the kind you find bolted to the floor in a crappy doctor's clinic. Grunting in pain as he drops me, I fall to my side on the cold table, unable to keep myself upright with my head spinning.

He hit me really fucking hard, the bastard.

"Why are you doing this?" I moan as the man stares at me, both hands fisted in his hair. He looks more distressed than I feel, which is really saying something.

"I didn't have a choice." The man swallows nervously. "I'm just a part-time worker at Scythe. I don't even usually work on fight nights. But this guy... he showed up in my fucking house last night." He swallows again, Adam's apple bobbing nervously. "I have a wife. I have a three-year-old son. He said if I didn't help him..."

I try to breathe. "Who? Who are you talking about?"

"I don't know his name, okay? All I know is, he said I had to go to the fight, somehow get you away from the crowd, and bring you here." He leans back against the opposite wall. "And if I did that, he'd let my family go."

"Call the police," I hiss, struggling into an upright position.

"I'm not putting my family in danger." He runs his hands through his hair, breathing heavily. The whites of his eyes flash as he looks around the run-down doctor's office. It's clear he's spiraling quickly into panic. The guilt and the worry are eating away at him. He's probably not a bad guy, under normal circumstances.

Considering nothing about this circumstance is normal, it's safe to say he's not exactly my favorite human on earth, right now.

"What's your name?" I ask.

He glances at me, wild-eyed. "Steve."

"Untie me, Steve," I beg. "You've got the wrong girl. I don't know who the hell would want you to bring me here. I don't have anything to do with this... this... whatever this is."

He freezes. "You're Zoe Bloom, right? He said you'd be near the front, surrounded by those big guys. Blonde. Petite. You fit the description perfectly."

My forehead wrinkles. I lean back against the wall, feeling dizzy again. "This doesn't make sense," I whisper, more to myself than to him. "I didn't do anything."

"Oh, but you did." The man's voice slithers in from the doorway like a snake, dripping venom.

I go still as my eyes move to take him in... and gasp when I realize exactly who brought me here.

Doctor Charles Birkin.

20.

The Junkie

He's more disheveled than his picture in the Lancaster Consolidated staff directory - gone is his tie, his crisp white physician's coat. His hair looks dirty and overgrown. His clothes are stained and ill-fitting, as though he's lost weight too rapidly to replace them.

It's clear even before he enters the room that he's on drugs. Junkies have a particular look - flushed, fidgety, covered in a faint sheen of sweat. Their eyes are always a little too wide, their moments a little too jagged.

"Zoe Bloom!" Birkin claps his hands as he steps toward me. "Let's have a round of applause, shall we?" He looks at Steve. "Why aren't you clapping?"