Page 179 of The Villain We Tempt

I laugh so loudly that I choke on the last of my hard seltzer.

Bella grins, then furrows her brow as I keep wheezing.

“You gonna live?” she asks.

I nod, still catching my breath. “Yeah,” I sputter, glancing at the beer in her hand and nodding at it with my chin. “But…do you mind…?”

“Oh…” Her face scrunches up. “Sorry! I would, but I just put drugs in this one.”

I finally manage to clear my throat as I arch a sharp brow.

Bella winces. “Fuck, that came out wrong,” she snickers. “I meant myprescriptionmedicine. It has to dissolve in a liquid, and beer works, so…”

I laugh and shake my head. “No prob. I think I’m fine now.”

Bella tells me more horror stories of having to “open up” to creepy Trevor in their interview project as we head over to the makeshift boxing ring. The crowd has gotten really thick, and when I see who’s fighting next, I understand why.

“Adrik Volkov versus Damiano Barone?” I murmur, whistling. Yeah, it would make sense that almost the entire party is over here watching the muscular, brooding and tattooed heads of The Reckless and The Order fight each other.

I glance across the ring and wave with a smile when I see Arianna standing with Lucia, Aaron, and Chris. Lucia is obviously here to root for Damiano, since they're cousins. I’m still amazed Ari is watching at all, but she also seems to be on team Damiano, and is looking at Adrik with this weird frown on her face.

Damiano stands at his side of the ring, rolling his muscled shoulders and flexing his taped-up hands. He runs one of themover his buzzed hair, his dark eyes glinting as he sizes up his opponent.

One of the organizers—a sophomore in The Reckless I recognize from my biology class—announces a five-minute countdown to the start of the fight. The crowd shifts as people rush off to get drinks from the bar or make some final bets on the outcome. Bella and I end up making our way around the ring until we’re right behind where Damiano is warming up.

He takes a big slug of his beer before he turns and slams it down on the top of the plywood wall around the ring.

“So…” I grin as I swivel my gaze to Bella. “Who are you rooting for?”

To the average person, the easy answer is that Bella is on team Adrik, since he’s the president of The Reckless, which she’s in. But theaverage persondoesn’t know about my locker room mission the other day, where she had me placing a wrapped present intoDamiano’spsychotically neat locker.

Bella gives nothing away. She just puts her beer bottle down on the wooden wall right next to Damiano’s before glancing at me and raising her shoulders. “Question. Has there ever been a boxing match where the two fighters knocked each other out at the exact same time?”

I grin. “I haven’t the slightest idea?”

“Well…” She winks at me. “Maybe there’s a first time for everything!”

She picks up her beer and takes a sip, her lips pulled into a grin.

I wince.

“Ooo, Bella, I think you grabbed the wrong one.”

She looks at me curiously. “What?”

“The beer…” I nod at the bottle in her hand, which is the same brand as the one Damiano was just drinking. “I think you grabbed Dame’s by mistake.”

Her brow furrows. “Uh…no?”

“I…” I shake my head. “I really think you did, sorry.”

She chuckles lightly. “Galina, I swear, I didn’t.” She takes another sip and then nods decisively. “Yup, that’s mine! The meds make it a little sweet.”

I laugh as I roll my eyes at myself. “My bad. Ignore me,” I laugh.

“No worries!” She winks at me and takes another sip.

In the ring, Damiano is talking closely with his younger brother, Vincenzo. He nods his head, pats his brother on the shoulder, then turns to grab his beer off the wall. His gaze drifts to Bella and lingers for a second, but she’s looking away.