“Are some of the houses you flip totally rotten? Like nothing can be salvaged?” I asked him as we wrestled a refrigerator away from the wall.

“No, most houses just need cosmetic work. A new bathroom. A new kitchen. Sometimes new flooring.”

“But sometimes the house’s foundations are destroyed?”

“Some homes have termites or mold or stuff and require some structural work, but there are few that can’t be salvaged.”

“But some of them, right, should just be razed to the ground?” I pressed.

“No, Bo, most of them can be salvaged,” Finn said quietly, seriously. “Almost all of them can. They may have been put together by shoddy builders, but they can almost always be saved.”

That was in Finn’s estimation, but I heard what he was trying to say, just as he had accurately interpreted the meaning of my question. Am I salvageable?

Chapter Nine

AM

I RECEIVED ANOTHER NASTY HATE note from Clay and avoided campus for the rest of the week. The commons confrontation left me feeling uncertain and a little afraid, which I absolutely hated. My only solace turned out to be biology. Bo acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. I was still acutely aware of his presence next to me in the classroom, but his broad shoulders acted like a buffer between me and the rest of the students. No whispers reached us. No cutting remarks were cast my way. He waited for me outside the classroom and walked me down to our shared table. After class, he escorted me out.

Never once did he bring up the commons incident and other than his watchfulness before, during, and after class, his treatment of me was quite ordinary. Whatever rumors he’d heard about me, he seemed to be saying silently, mattered not at all.

I could feel myself thawing toward him, yearning for him. I knew it was dangerous, but I needed something sweet in my life. If I didn’t act on my longings then I’d be safe. When he turned to share a smile at me over the nonstop innuendos during the discussion of fertilization and pollination, I felt hot and prickly. During the discussion of common parasites, we both grimaced. Bo whispered that there wasn’t a lot that put him off his feed, but tapeworms in the stomach might be it. He was charming and decent, and I could feel myself weakening with every minute that passed. But he also didn’t flirt with me, smell my hair, or make a suggestive comment, as he had in the past. More than once, I caught him staring hard at the lecture stage as if he were engaged in some internal struggle.

At the end of the week, Ellie met me for lunch at our usual place off campus with breathless news. “You want to see Bo fight?”

My eyes must have gotten as big as saucers because Ellie laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

As we stood in line to order, Ellie whispered the details to me. “I heard there’s a fight tonight in the warehouse district. Someone is supposed to text me directions.”

“Do you have to pay to get in?”

“When Tim and I went, the cover was twenty-five dollars per person and then there are bets made inside. I didn’t bet, but Tim did.”

I whistled. “Wow. That seems steep. No one complains?”

“Not yet, I guess. Who wants to be the person that shuts something like this down? It would be worse than your ordeal.”

“Worse than me?” I grimaced. “Thanks.”

“You know what I mean.” She lightly punched me on the shoulder. I did. No one welcomed that type of treatment. The guys on campus would be particularly rough. I think fight night was responsible for at least fifty percent of them getting laid.

“So I take it Bo said nothing about it in class yesterday?”

“No. We haven’t really talked about anything other than class stuff lately.”

“Like?”

“What’s more gross—tapeworms in the stomach or parasites in the ear?”

Ellie shuddered. “So glad I took Rocks for Jocks.”

“Yeah, that might have been a good decision.”

“So you and Bo, in class?”

“There just isn’t a ton of time to talk. Plus, he’s got more moods than a preteen who just got her period.”

“Really? I would never have guessed that.”

“I’ve decided that flirtatious is Bo’s default mode and his other setting is broody.”

“Still want to go?”

“Hell yeah.” When I was a kid, I’d asked my mom why the moths kept moving in droves toward the light, almost hugging the exterior despite witnessing the death of their fellow insects. Mom said that sometimes temptation was just too great to resist. Zzzzap. That was me. Bo was the light and I was the dumb moth.

Ellie was prattling about the details of the fight she’d gone to with Tim. We had to stick together, she said, because mini fights could break out in the crowd.

“Do you bring something to drink?”

“They don’t sell it, and Tim brought a flask when we went. No one’s doing a bag check there.”

I’M NOT SURE HOW BO SPOTTED Ellie and me in the crowd. People were packed into the space. I had a hard time believing something this well attended could remain a secret, but we were told nothing illegal was going on here. This was private property, and we were all invited to the party. The cover was actually a donation, per the bouncer’s instructions.

A stamp in the form of a clenched fist was slapped on the backs of our hands, but we were warned that if we left, we would have to repay the money if we wanted to come back inside. The point of the stamp was never explained, but I wasn’t going to ask anyone with arms the size of my thighs and no apparent neck why I needed a mark on my hand.

The fight was being held in the basement of a restaurant in the East Village. The owner was a friend of the guy who set up the fight and more than one underground shindig took place here, although never more than once in a month or even once every six months. The fights required some luck and coordination. Or at least that was what I gleaned from listening to the crowd around me.

I didn’t know when Bo was fighting or even if he was fighting. It was only rumor. Even tonight, inside the building, there were just hopeful mutterings. But rumor became reality when he walked in and his name was carried on a wave of whispers from one end of the long narrow room to the other. I saw him almost immediately, the bangs of his messy blond hair peeking out from the front of his sweatshirt hood. The basement was lit by a string of bare lightbulbs strung like hormonally enhanced Christmas lights along the sides of the rock walls. Toward one end, a number of what looked like halogen lights hung from the ceiling, brightly illuminating a single space. That must be the fight ring.

It smelled musty and earthy, as if we were in a cave rather than underneath a ritzy establishment. I wondered what the patrons upstairs, in their pearls and worsted wool, would think if they knew that behind the wine racks and cheese rounds, two guys planned to beat each other bloody. Probably they’d be thrilled. Maybe everyone knew and this was part of the cachet?

Ellie had found a barrel we could share against the wall. While it was farther away from the center where the fight would take place, the barrel allowed us elevation and a heightened sight line. Or, in simpler terms, we could just see a heck of a lot better by standing on the barrel. I tracked that blond head moving in and out of the crowd until it stopped right before me and the barrel. My legs gave out and I sat down before I fell off.

Bo had on a zipped hoodie with the hood flipped up. The sketchy lighting and hood made his appearance seem nefarious. Maybe that was the point, though. For some reason, I felt compelled to reach up and push his hood off. It was a brazen, forward act. He looked at me with surprise I’m sure was echoed in my own eyes. I’d never initiated any contact with him, I realized, not physical or emotional. I was always reacting to him, and he was always pushing me.

He raised his hand to capture mine, but not because he wanted me to stop pushing off the hood. No, he held my hand in his and used it to draw me down from the barrel. I didn’t see who was with him or how Ellie was reacting. In spite of the crowd, with him only inches away, we seemed cocooned from everyone else.

“I didn’t know you were into this sort of thing,” he murmured. He placed my hand on his chest and leaned toward me, one hand bracing against the top of the barrel right next to my thigh and another against the wall. The vibrations of his words teased me. The heat of his body warmed me. Desire took control of my body and I watched as my fingers clasped his sweatshirt zipper and pulled downward, just a bit. Just enough so that my hand could touch his shirt, so I could feel the flex of his muscular pectorals against my fingers. I ran my fingertips over the ridged cotton of his tank. His muscles flexed and released when I kneaded my fingers against his chest.

“I don’t know if I am into this sort of thing,” I said hoarsely, looking at my hand as it followed the rise and fall of his chest. I was mesmerized, enthralled, by his simple act of breathing. A cough sounded, and I was jolted out of my mini trance. Snatching my hand away, I noticed Ellie staring at me, her mouth forming a comic little O.

I pulled my hands together and clenched them front of me, grateful the darkness hid the heat in my cheeks. Bo leaned down to my ear. His breath was warm and his voice, deep and strong, raised the hair on my neck. “We’ll have to test the hypothesis. I’ll ask again when it’s over.”

As he drew back, it felt like his lips dragged across the top of my lobe, and a shiver shook me from head to toe. He removed himself slowly, one arm pushing upward and off the barrel. I looked at him and bit my lip, trying to suppress any dumb statements. He grinned and brought his thumb up to draw my lower lip out of my teeth and rubbed his thumb over the abused area. My lip plumped up under his ministrations.

I wondered for a breathless, endless second whether he was going to kiss me, here in front of all these people, but he didn’t. Instead, he motioned for Ellie to get down from the barrel. Bo introduced us to his two male friends, whom I’d barely noticed. Finn, whose hair looked black as tar, and Mal, dark and serious, both gave us chin nods of acknowledgment.

Bo pulled me behind him through the crowd. Ellie grabbed the belt loop on my jeans and we proceeded forward like a mini conga line.

Bo’s progress was unimpeded as person after person stepped aside. We reached the makeshift ring that was simply movie theater metal stands at four corners with rope tied between them. The posts were unstable, which was probably why there was a large guy stationed at each one to shove the crowd back. Bo led us over to one corner manned by a bald man with a dark goatee.

The two executed a complicated hand exchange before Bo introduced us. “Phil, this is AnnMarie and Ellie. Okay that they stand here tonight?”

Phil nodded. Bo turned to me. “Stay close to Phil. The crowd can get rowdy. I don’t want you punching anyone out.”

“Ha ha. What about Phil? I could hurt him. Who’ll protect him?”

“Ellie?” Bo looked at my friend. She flung her arm up and around my shoulders.

“Dude, we girls stick together. Phil is toast if this thing goes sideways.”

“Well, Phil, you’re on notice then.” Bo slapped Phil on the back. Phil just grunted, obviously unamused by our banter. Bo and his friends went down to another corner. Finn peeled away from the group and crossed diagonally to speak with two others, one Bo’s opponent. There was nodding, talking, and a shaking of hands.

“What was that about?” Ellie hissed at me.

“I don’t know.” I raised my palms and shrugged. I couldn’t explain what had just happened, neither my actions nor Bo’s.

“Want to bet something?” a person at my elbow asked. I turned and a guy about my height waved a pen at me. He had a wad of cash stacked behind a little notebook. I shook my head, but Ellie pulled a twenty out of her pocket and handed it to the bookie.

“Twenty dollars on Bo Randolph.”

“Three to one odds there. Other guy’s more lucrative.”

Ellie shook her head. “Why bet against the house?”

“Fine. Name?”

“AnnMarie West.”

“What?” I protested, but the bookie was already moving on to the next set of people.

Ellie just grinned and shrugged. Phil looked stoically ahead. I wondered how he, instead of the guy opposite him, got stuck babysitting us. I didn’t have much time to ruminate because the bookie went out into the middle of the ring. For a small guy, he had a booming voice. He twirled around, as if he was emceeing a big Vegas fight. His arms were outspread as he spoke.

“We’re about to begin. Book is closed. There are no rules. Fight until the other taps out.”

As if by practice or rote, the crowd roared back in unison, “There are no tap outs.”

I looked to Ellie for an explanation. “Tapping out means surrender, like the white flag,” she whispered to me.

“So they aren’t allowed to tap out.”

“I think so. I mean, at the fight I went to, the other guy waved his hand or something, and Bo climbed off and the bookie guy announced him the winner. I didn’t see the tap out but I guess someone signaled something.”