My Number One: Kasha & Knox by Janice Ross Page A

looking to get shut down . I held my breath, said a prayer, a Hail Mary . . . Absolutely anything that would shift my focus away from kicking open the car door and bashing it on top of the dude’s head. These desires were no longer mine . . . Not the new and improved Knox Jackson. They should no longer be my desires. The urges should have left me ages ago. I was a new person; free to live amongst civilization, so to speak. I’d learned a long time ago to keep myself under wraps. In doing so, I had a habit of allowing things to get tucked inside of me. I was typically good at making predictions on how things would play out, though it had been years. This present circumstance, this was no longer my life and this drama should not have been mine to defend.
    How could I have miscalculated the night this way? If I had remained in the frickin’ seat at the bar, buying rounds for the hell of it and ignoring the bullshit, I wouldn’t now be forced to do something, anything, to rectify the shitty aftermath of a wild screw. As much as I’d fought the inevitable, there was only one way to deal with this here issue. I damn well couldn’t remain inside the car any longer. Taking a deep breath, I held onto the door handle, yanked and swung my feet to rest on the ground.
    “Dude . . .” My voice trailed into the air, even above the fussing that had been going on, on the opposite side of the vehicle. The jackass damn near forgot about Erika and instead rushed over to me.
    The guy’s head barely reached beyond my shoulder. He had a mass of wild black hair that came alive the more he moved around. From several feet away, large lights flooded the lot, shining directly at us. Only moments earlier, it had been dark enough to screw on the hood of the Camaro, now the locale had suddenly become Fight Night Live. I made note of the wide, broadening pupils of the dude. Not that there was an ounce of fear, but rather pity. We tussled briefly; each pushing mightily before backing up to assess the other. My shoulders expanded. His chest puffed up. Though my body was not as wide as the shorter guy sizing me up, I ran different scenarios through my mind; ones that would use my height for the benefit.
    “Bitch!” the guy spat out, spraying saliva up into the air and onto my shirt.
    “The only bitch I see is your short ass,” I fed him, not even moving to pat off the spit. There was absolutely nothing that this punk was capable of doing to knock me off my game. The dude was too hype, too overeager, and too emotional. Those traits would have anyone behaving in an irrational way, and in this case, get his ass beat.
    “You ready for me?” Erika’s man roared. I refused to imagine that a random guy would go through all this trouble. The guy was a sight—a short, stocky goon with an ugly mug. He forced toughness, phony intimidation. He stretched out his neck, then expanded an arm to display a thick tattoo of a snake trailing from one end to the other. I shook my head over the insignificant move.
    The guy lunged for me. His fists tightened at his sides until, within a matter of seconds, he stood a mere two inches away. At this exact moment, a right body punch connected with my lower abdomen. I stumbled backwards and braced on the Camaro. There wasn’t enough time to build back up before another punch flew by my jaw. I felt the breeze more than the blow because of how I’d positioned myself on the metal; in the same spot I’d just taken this guy’s infatuation, Erika. And the entire time, the jackass kept grunting and pulling for air as he jabbed for me.
    “All this over what?” I taunted as the bastard tipped a tight fist against my chin. Taking a few punches was part of the game. I wasn’t the type that ever planned for a fight or drama—never did, but somehow I got sucked into things like this. But that was supposed to be a life of the past.
    “I’m gonna—”
    WHAM!
    I landed a fist dead in the guy’s mouth before he could get another