Read Fix You: Bash and Olivia, Book 3 for Free Online

texted me earlier,” he said, pausing mid-step. “He won his fight.”
    “Excellent.”
    A surge of pride ran through me. That was awesome news. Matty was supposed to have been with him in New York for this match, but had to come home early when Mickey’s boys broke into the gym and trashed the place. I hated that all this shit had resulted in Reid’s having to fight without one of us in his corner, so the fact that he’d pulled out the W anyway went a long way to making me feel better.
    Now if Mickey would call tomorrow and work with me to get this whole matter settled for good, we’d be in business. Slow and steady, getting back on track, all of us.
    Including Liv. She was eyeing me now, like she knew what I was about with the stall tactics, and I called out a quick good-night to Matty before facing her.
    “Look, I know I fucked up.” Best to get it right out there in the open. Maybe she’d appreciate my humility and let me off easy.
    She stood and pulled her hand from mine to glare down at me. “Damn straight you did.”
    And then again, maybe not. I opened my mouth to explain, but she shut me down with a finger to my lips.
    “Never again, Bash. That’s all I want to hear from you right now, is that you will never lie to me about something like this again.” Her cornflower eyes were full of fire. “We’re either a team or we’re not. It’s your decision, but I’m not going to be pushed into a corner like a child every time things get tough. If you can’t handle that, then let me go now.”
    Even the words made my stomach clench. The thought of letting her go again was unfathomable. But that meant I’d have to change my ways, and I knew it wouldn’t be easy.
    I took her by the wrist and pulled her gently down onto my lap in spite of my aching muscles. She was stiff at first, but I rubbed her back until she settled against me as I tried to put my feelings into words. Explaining how I got to be this way didn’t absolve me of my sins, but maybe it would help her understand why I was the way I was.
    “My dad died of an overdose when I was ten.” She shifted in my arms, trying to face me, but I couldn’t get it all out with her looking at me…seeing the pity on her face. I held her in place until she took the hint and stilled again. “Even before that, he was a shell of a person. My mother was in charge of the house. Of us. Of him.”
    Memories of days past ran through my mind on a loop, none of them good. How to explain Sherri McDaniels to a person who had never seen something like that in real life?
    “When I was five, I spilled a glass of milk on the living room rug. She beat me with the cord from an iron and then locked me in the closet overnight.”
    I said it like I was reading from the back of a cereal box, hoping the matter-of-fact delivery would lessen the shock of hearing it, but Olivia’s whole body went stiff. I pressed on, desperate to get it over with so we could move forward and never have to talk about it again. “Matty sneaked down in the middle of the night to bring me a peanut butter sandwich, and she caught him. So she went into his bedroom and made him watch while she cracked his pet turtle open with a hammer, and then she threw him in the closet with me.”
    “Jesus, Bash,” she whispered and turned, despite my efforts, until she was cradled in my lap and could wrap her arms around my neck. “I’m so sorry that happened to you guys. God, I’m so, so sorry.”
    I could hear the tears clogging her throat and I rocked her slowly. She was seeing the little boy I had been, but I was a man now, and I’d long since gotten past feeling sad over my mother. All I felt now was disgust.
    The harsh laugh that broke past my lips sounded anything but funny. “The weird part is , that rug was disgusting. It hadn’t been vacuumed in a year or more. It was like she looked for excuses to rage. That’s how she let off steam, I think. Then, every so often, when she knew she was on the cusp