Read Fix You: Bash and Olivia for Free Online

was anything but tired. My mind whirred, going over every detail of the night. I grabbed my phone from the bedside table and hit my list of contacts. It took a second to find him because it filed under his last name.
    McDaniels.
    Bash McDaniels. Good name for a fighter.
    I set the phone back down and let my eyes drift shut, visions of him shadowboxing in his little gym dancing through my head.

Chapter Four
    Bash
    “Get your head out of your ass, bro, or I’m going to bust it clean open.”
    The threat was quiet, but menacing enough to catch my attention, and I managed to dip just in time to avoid a ham-sized fist coming straight at my grill courtesy of my older brother, Matthias.
    He nodded approvingly. “Nice. Glad to see whoever she is didn’t totally ruin you for the night.” Matty bounced back on his heels and shuffled away to eyeball me hard, fists up defensively, ready to continue our sparring match. “So, you gonna spill it or do I have to beat it out of you?”
    We both knew that couldn’t happen, even on his best day. I was a light heavyweight and he fought middle when he was younger, but his hands were too slow to take him to the big time. He was finding some success in the MMA arena, but this was boxing. A whole different animal.
    Still, usually me and Matty had an understanding. He was the older brother, and it was my duty to play like I was still afraid of him the way I was when we were kids. This time, though, I wasn’t playing along. He obviously knew something was up when I tried to skip training. I was notoriously driven. No one knew it more than my brothers. Matty and Reid still told the story about me in high school running five miles in the middle of winter with the flu. Granted, the tale ended with me almost dying of pneumonia, so nobody was patting me on the back for it, but there it was.
    So when I tried to sneak into the apartment an hour earlier without doing my workout, I knew he was going to grill me. With a breakout fight just a few months away, I couldn't afford to slack. But all I wanted to do was lie in bed and stare at the ceiling until the air spit out some wisdom about what the hell was going on with me the past two days.
    I'd been an early bloomer, and in a neighborhood full of dirt-poor girls with Daddy issues, I had no shortage of “friends” to chill with. We’d sleep together when the mood hit, or when one of us needed to feel a warm body lying beside them for a while when the nights felt especially cold. Some of them had even stuck around for a while and became short-term girlfriends. But in all that time, no one ever had me strung up like this girl.
    Olivia Beckett.
    I didn't even realize I said it out loud until Matty repeated me. As much as I didn't want to hear one of his speeches, I also knew there was no point in trying to pretend I didn't know what he was talking about. The only thing more determined than a pit bull with a bone was Matty when he thought somebody was hiding something from him. Probably a leftover from dealing with our father dying of an overdose when we hadn’t even known he had a problem, and our mother leaving us in the care of the state six months later out of the blue. I guess it stood to reason that would turn out at least one kid who would grow up to detest secrets.
    I lowered my fists and backed up to the ropes. Then I clenched my teeth around the loose tape at my wrist to unravel, buying some time while I decided how much to tell him.
    "Olivia who? I get the feeling you’re hiding something serious from me. Why's that, Bash?"
    The tone was already threading its way into his voice. The worried, cautious sound that made him seem so much older than his twenty-two years.
    I’d planned to tell him about what happened after I found a replacement job, knowing he would only tell me not to bother if I didn’t. That he could carry us both for a few months until I went to Vegas for the big fight. But now not knowing was going to give him more stress