Extra Bonus #92: Fight Night (Ryke Meadows) - Part Four (Patreon)

 IMPORTANT: Please do not screenshot and post any part of this bonus scene to other sites or share with non-patrons. All of the Patreon content is exclusive to Patreon and for current patron's eyes only.  Thank you!! xoxo Krista & Becca

RESOURCES:  Check out this narrative timeline graphic to visually see when this bonus scene takes place.

MUSIC: We listened to "The Night We Met" by Lord Huron while writing this bonus scene.

READING ORDER for FIGHT NIGHT:

Fight Night (Oscar)

Fight Night - Part One (Daisy Calloway)

Fight Night - Part Two (Daisy Calloway)

Fight Night - Part Three (Ryke Meadows)

We highly recommend to read this after reading Daisy Calloway and Ryke's fight night chapters.

 I LEAVE THE BALCONY and my brother, but I don’t leave my rage. I can’t escape the amassing fury that coils around me. Cool down. I need to cool the fuck down before I even see my daughter. But I’m losing my shit already. 

I scrape a hand across my hardened jaw when I reach the living room, about to chart a hot path toward the indoor basketball court. And then a flurry of carrot-orange hair blazes past me. 

Fucking fantastic. “Audrey!” I shout at my youngest niece. 

I sprint after her as she races for the door—the one which leads to the hotel hallway, which will lead to an elevator, the main lobby, the street, a row of fucking cabs, and I’m sure she’s already plotting her route to the airport. 

I outrun her and block the door with my back. I stare her down, hoping the intensity of my presence will intimidate her enough to turn back around and rethink whatever fucking plot she has in her head. 

It doesn’t work.

She is so Rose and Connor’s child—through and fucking through. She lifts her shoulders and chin. As if I’m an adversary she can battle and bulldoze. 

“It’s fine, Uncle Ryke,” she says with the swat of hair off her shoulder. “I’m meeting Eliot and Tom in the lobby.” 

“Is that fucking right?” I nod a few times, then unpocket my phone from my sweats. 

“Why can’t you believe me?” she pouts, acting hurt, but she’s impatient. She eyes the doorknob. 

“You need to stay here. Your parents said you aren’t fucking leaving the hotel, and so you’re not leaving.” 

“I-I never said I was leaving the hotel. I’m just meeting my brothers in the lobby. It’s imperative, Uncle Ryke.” 

I glance behind her, expecting Lily to come rushing out since she was watching Audrey, but there’s no sign of her. “What’d you tell your aunt?” 

“Whatever do you mean?” Audrey tries to play dumb. 

“Did you tell her you’re meeting Eliot and Tom in the lobby?”

She drums her lips with her fingers, thinking. 

“That’s a fucking no.”

“She wouldn’t let me leave if she knew, so she thinks I’m simply using the bathroom. But you’ll let her know, won’t you? After I’ve gone.” She steps toward the door. 

I extend my arm across the wood, which freezes her, and I tell my niece, “You can talk until you’re blue in the fucking face, there is absolutely nothing you could say to convince me to let you leave tonight.” 

“This is imprisonment,” she retorts. 

Oh my fucking fuck. I need Lo to come out here right now. I can’t handle Connor’s spawn. “Lo!” I shout for my brother. 

“Uncle Ryke, you have to let me leave for just a moment. This is between me and my siblings. It’s imperative.” Her double use of imperative isn't fucking working on me.

“What the hell?” Lo comes rushing over to me, which barely helps unspool the tension in my muscles. 

Audrey huffs as he stands at my side and also barricades the door with me. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” Lo questions. “On a midnight stroll? Get back in the living room.” 

“I can’t, Uncle Loren.”

“She’s meeting Eliot and Tom in the lobby,” I tell him. “Supposedly. I haven’t fucking called them yet to confirm.”

Lo takes out his phone. 

“No need,” Audrey says too quickly.  “I would appreciate trust. Merci.” She waves a hand toward us. “I shall pass now.”

“Over my rotting corpse,” Lo retorts. “And I’m not even close to dead yet.”

According to Vada, Audrey isn’t even aware of what’s going on with Winona. So I don’t fucking understand who’s told her what at this point. So I just ask, “What have you even heard?” 

I can’t see her siblings roping her into this yet. They know she’s with us. They know she’s safe. They would not want her to take a solo mission to the fucking airport to meet them. 

Her face flames. “Like I said, I'm meeting Eliot and Tom. I need to go. Ben needs us.” 

She knows Ben has left? “You aren’t going,” I say as fucking gently as I can. 

Audrey has a gutted face like I impaled her. It’s a knife to the heart. Her tears brim. “You would do this to me, Uncle Ryke?”

That hurts. 

Lo sends me a glare, like I’m being emotionally manipulated. Are those fake tears? Connor would have a nonreaction. He would be brick-walled, and I have to give it to Cobalt to be able to withstand his daughter’s welling tears and distraught pout because it’s fucking wrecking me. 

“Eliot?” Lo is on the phone with our nephew. 

Audrey’s tears suddenly dry. “I have to be with him,” she pleads into a shrill whine, which does not work quite as fucking well on me. She comes forward. 

“Do not fucking try,” I warn. 

“Tu ne comprends pas!” she shouts like she’s being stabbed. “Tu ne comprends pas!” You don’t understand! 

“Putain oui, je comprends!” I yell back. Yes, I do fucking understand. 

She startles, blue eyes widening. Likely forgetting I know French since I don’t speak it often. “I have to be with him, Uncle Ryke.” She puts two hands to her chest. “I can’t be here. Not while they’re all there. It’s Ben. My closest brother.”

“Please be safe,” Lo says over the phone to Eliot. “Funny. Cute. I’m laughing hysterically on the inside. Okay…Jesus Christ, no. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t…love you. Bye.” 

“They’re waiting for me,” Audrey nods, taking another foot forward. 

She’s inches away from us but stops when Lo pockets his phone and says, “Not so fast, crocodile tears.” 

“Uncle Loren,” Audrey gasps. “My hurt is real.”

“You lied to us. They’re not meeting you in the lobby. So you will wait in the living room with Kinney. That’s the best you’re going to get.”

“They’re waiting for me at the airport,” Audrey protests. “I need to be with my siblings. They’re expecting me.”

“Look, we’re going to call your sister.” I dial Jane now. “She’s going to come get you. That’s the best we fucking have, but you’re not leaving here without her.”

“Can I counter?” Audrey asks. 

“No.” Lo scrunches his face. “Does this look like a negotiation?”

“A hostage negotiation, yes. Because I’m being held hostage.” 

I pinch my eyes. I really cannot fucking deal with this right now. Thankfully Jane answers while Lo reminds Audrey she’s sixteen and that while her parents aren’t here, she has to deal with us. 

“This isn’t a democracy tonight,” he says. “What I say goes.”

The line clicks. “Janie,” I say over the phone. “You need to talk to your sister. You might have to come up here.” 

“Merde,” Jane swears with a sigh. “I knew this was coming. I talked to my mom for a few minutes before she had to go. Tell Audrey to wait for me. I’ll be up in ten with Thatcher. Let me drop Maeve off with Moffy.” 

“Jane is on her way up,” I explain to Audrey after I end the call. 

Her shoulders drop, less on the offensive because all Audrey really wants is to be with her siblings. To be included. Not to be left behind, and she’ll feel better knowing she’s dealing with this fucking crisis alongside Jane. Rose and Connor knew this—it’s why they suggested Jane as a solution. 

“I have to go,” I tell Lo, and he’s nodding me onward—and physically pushing me to leave. He says he has this handled, and I exit into a jog, barreling toward the basketball court. 

When I breach the cavernous room, my soul is ripped out of my body. I’ve never, in my entire fucking life, heard Winona cry this way. It’s an angry, guttural whimper, and to make this more excruciating, it reverberates in the echoing basketball court. Sounding louder, reaching my ears faster. All the while, Daisy has our daughter in her arms while they’re on the floor, and she’s rocking her like she’s a little girl again. 

I almost black out. There is nothing that has ever enraged me more than the maltreatment of women, but knowing my teenage daughter is the one who was harmed by a fucking…I don’t know if I’m breathing. 

All I know is the heavy door thunks closed behind me. Their heads turn slightly at the noise, but Winona isn’t hurrying to hide her emotion from me. She sobs out, “I’m done. I’m so done, Dad.”

I near my wife and daughter. Trying not to tower, I squat down when I reach them. I’m gritting my teeth so hard, my jaw aches. Daisy has silent tears streaming down her cheeks, which she tries to rub away with her shoulder. This is fucking pulverizing me.  

Goldilocks sits patiently beside them.

My blood is burning at a temperature that will not allow me to rest my ass on this fucking floor right now. 

“I’m done,” Winona cries to me. “I’m not going back.” 

I nod once, my neck on fire. 

She peels out of Daisy’s arms, but she doesn’t go far. She crosses her ankles and brings her knees to her chest. “I thought I could handle it…but I’m just done.” Her voice rattles into another cry. “I dread being there every…every day, knowing I might run into him.”

“Him?” I manage to unlock my jaw to speak. “Who?”

Winona looks to her mom, unable to say his name. 

“Tate from the neighborhood,” Daisy says, her voice softer and quieter. 

It’s exactly what I fucking thought then. My nose flares. “Were you sexually assaulted?” The words come out coarse and rough.

Winona shakes her head profusely, and I intake the sharpest breath into my lungs. Daisy isn’t as relieved. I don’t understand her dark expression. I don’t understand why she still looks like Winona was…

I blink, a harsh fucking blink. “Are you lying?”

“No,” Winona cries, hurt contorting her delicate face. Her eyes are puffy and so red, so bloodshot. “But…” She looks to Dais again. 

Daisy shifts onto her knees. “Nona was drugged at school—”

“I think I was drugged,” Winona clarifies in a short breath. She presses her forehead to her knees. “I want it to not be true. It’s why I didn’t let Vada…or Easton call anyone. I just…I thought I could forget about it, but he’s still there…he’s always there.” 

I’m going to fucking kill him. 

I shoot to a stance. 

“Ryke,” Daisy warns. “She needs you to sit down.”

“Please,” Winona pleads shakily, tearfully. “Just stay here, Dad. Please.” 

Yeah, that does it, and I manage to take a seat beside Winona. I wrap my arm around her back while she sniffs loudly.

“She called Vada, and she found Nona in enough time,” Daisy explains to me. “Before she passed out.”  

“I wasn’t…I wasn’t out for long.” Her chin quakes as her broken, angry gaze rises to mine. “I hate him so much, Dad. I…I hate that he’s still there. I hate that I couldn’t handle it on my own…I hate that even leaving feels like he wins.”

“I can fucking assure you, he’s not getting away with this.” 

“There’s no evidence, Dad.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter.” He won’t be living in our fucking neighborhood after this. Even if I have to resort to the Jonathan Hale method of dealing with rich, entitled bastards. I’ll rip open my father’s handbook that I’ve kept shut.

Winona stares off at the basketball hoop, her eyes filling with tears. “It was never like this when Ben was there.” She’s unblinking. “At Dalton. Every day was easier, happier, lighter.” Her breath comes sharp again. “Without him, it’s unbearable.” 

I share a pained look with Dais. I hate that her friendship with Ben is strained. I hate that he doesn’t come around our house anymore. I hate that he’s on a commercial flight and likely about to go do something he might seriously fucking regret. 

“I miss him,” Winona cries, wiping her tears. “But I don’t want to…it’s probably for the best.”

Daisy scoots closer and brushes Nona’s hair out of her eyes, tucks the strands back. It soothes Winona enough for her breath to ease. 

“What’s for the best?” I ask her. 

“He’s in college, and I’m not.” She rests her chin on her knee, looking more like Sulli. “…I can’t even contemplate college when I don’t even want to go back to high school right now.” She rubs angrily at her eyes. “I don’t want to be there.” 

“You don’t fucking have to be.”

She picks at the old, frayed twine around her ankle. I’m almost positive it’s from Ben. “I’m really worried about him.” Her voice cracks. “Dad, can you check on him? Please.”

I nod strongly and rise to my feet. 

Someone is going to need to pull him off Tate. Someone is going to have to fucking stop him from beating him unconscious. Connor and Rose aren’t going to make it in enough time. 

And I’m too fucking far away. 

 It's finally here! The conclusion to the multi-saga Fight Night. This has been so much fun to get to showcase more POVs during this night. And it's a monumental moment in Ben Cobalt's life, so it is a great read before jumping into Burn Bright if you like ALL the backstory.

We hope you all enjoyed this one! Again, thank you so very much for your patience. This concludes March content. Next month, we'll most likely be returning back to Frog & Quinn so you can expect more chapters from them!

xoxo Krista & Becca

 “Fight Night (Ryke Meadows) - Part Four," Copyright © 2025 by K.B. Ritchie