The Boys Who Loved Me - Krista Wolf Page 0,80

punch. The move was so big, so telegraphed, it actually made me chuckle. The shout worked though, and Tristan avoided what would’ve been a painful fist to the ear. He countered by grabbing the guy close quarters and pulling him into a headlock. Twisting and flailing, the two of them tumbled sideways to the beer-soaked floor.

Yikes. That’s gonna smell real bad…

“OOFFFF!”

The pirate who’d hit me doubled over, as I drove my knee square into his stomach. I hadn’t even thought about it — I’d just done it. At this point the move was instinctual, and came as easily as breathing. It was just one of the advantages of thousands of hours of practice.

“Stay down.”

The guy with the blacked out teeth looked up at me, gasping for breath, waiting for his wind to come back. The look of rage in his eyes told me he wouldn’t stay down.

Dammit, they never stay down.

I shifted my gaze left, to look after my friends. Tristan was still wrestling on the filthy floor of the Bavarian beer tent. People were scrambling to get out of the way but they were still holding their drinks. The crowd was still roaring. The accordion music still played. In the meantime Lucas was fighting off his own attacker, who’d flipped up his eye-patch and was now assaulting my friend with a sword. Yes. A plastic sword.

This is hilarious.

In all my life I couldn’t have imagined such an amazing fight — pirates vs. Vikings, three on three. All of us dressed to the hilt, spilling beer and upturning benches as the far crowd started realizing there was a much better show going on over at this side of the tent.

“HERE!”

I whirled, and the beer wench — err, Candy rather — was handing my friend his own weapon: a dollar-store Viking axe. Lucas grabbed it and raised it high, blocking the next blow. Both weapons shattered in an explosion of plastic, raining metallic-painted shards down around them.

Fucking WOW.

I was so lost in the moment I didn’t realize my attacker had gotten his wind back. He tried tackling me around the waist, but I shifted easily and redirected him. His own momentum sent him sailing through the floppy opening of the tent’s heavy canvas, to splash out into the pouring rain.

“Stop! STOP!”

Three men in black shirts were on us next; the security team, arriving a little too late. Tristan had his own pirate wrapped in a full nelson. Lucas and his sword-wielding opponent were both staring at each other, still holding the hafts of their broken plastic weapons.

“ENOUGH.”

The voice was gruff and deep, and belonged to someone I recognized. Eric strode over, pushing us all away from each other. Shoving his hands into each of our chests, more for theatrics at this point than for another other reason.

“What the hell’s going on, Soren?” he demanded angrily.

“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Candy jumped in, “these guys started it.” She pointed at the two pirates still in the tent. The third one stumbled back in just then, soaking wet and half-covered in mud.

Eric — one of my old workout partners and now chief of security at Kingsland Point Park — swung his gaze my way. “Is that right?”

I shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, but it wasn’t all them,” I admitted begrudgingly. “We egged them on a little. They’re Miami fans, after all.”

Eric shook his head, unamused. “Seriously? This was a football argument?”

I glanced at Candy and noticed the beautiful beer girl was looking back at me. Her pretty pink lips were curled into a tight smile.

“Partly, yeah.”

Other than being covered in mud and grime, everyone seemed in good shape. My jaw hurt, but nothing was loose. No one even had a bloody nose.

“Think you boys could sit at opposite ends of the tent and not get into more trouble?” Eric asked. “Otherwise I have to ask all six of you to—”

“Sure,” said Tristan. “As long as they’re the ones who have to move.”

The crowd dispersed. The accordion music — which thank fucking God had finally stopped — abruptly started up again.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Eric agreed. He placed a big hand on two of the pirates and guided them away. The rain-soaked one glared back at me as he went, maybe to salvage something of our territorial pissing match. It wasn’t much though.

“Sooo…” I turned to look back at our beer girl’s nametag. “Candace?”

“Candy’s good,” she chuckled. “My mother calls me Candace.”

“Yeah, sorry.”

She nodded, her beautiful face still lit with a rosy-cheeked smile. “You’re