by Emilia Finn
I scoff. “I’d hardly say that you discourage her behavior. Whenever we’re arrested, the four of us, it’s always you and her smiling, while Ben and I contact the lawyers and beg Uncle Alex to let us out again.”
“I’m either smiling…” he hedges, “or in an ambulance.”
“Are you purposely trying to avoid my question?”
He grins and flashes those two dimples beneath his bottom lip. “I call you Lucy because no one else does. Because calling you Bean feels…” He searches for the word. “Babyish. And you’re not a baby. You’re a woman, and you have been since the moment we met and you decked me for saying something a little inappropriate about your ass.”
We both laugh at that as the clock beeps and begins a new round.
“You used to be so fucking obnoxious. You were eleven?” I question. “When you first walked through here.”
“Twelve, maybe?” He shrugs. “Somewhere around there. I had a bigger mouth than Smalls, an obnoxious streak that would rival any Bishop we know, and zero fear. I had no family but my mom and grandpa, no one that I wanted to impress or behave for. I was wild and ready to tear the world apart.”
“Then you were brought in here, given a pair of boxing gloves, and thus begun the portion of your life where your friends kept nearly killing you.”
Somehow, miraculously, we’re able to joke about those years without a ball of emotion threatening to kill me.
“My first brush with death was my first day, when I might have mentioned your pancake ass and told you to spar with me.”
“So you could kick it.” I laugh at the memory, and watch our synced movements in the mirrors. “I whooped yours and demanded respect.”
“How was I supposed to know you could fight?” His dimples wink as he grins. “Little girl with her cute-as-fuck piggy tails steps up. Of course I’m gonna assume I can take her. I had a reputation to maintain.”
“Instead, I laid you out and proved to you that girls could fight.”
Smiling, he sets his bar down somewhere around twelve, and stands tall to catch his breath. “Second brush was the gantry crane.” He chuckles. “I was totally showing off for you guys, by the way. Walking that crane and acting like some kind of badass because I could tight rope like a clown.” Bending again when I stop, he picks up his bar and continues on. “Pretty girls were now my friends, of course I was gonna show off.”
“Pretty girls?” I look to him and try to catch his eye. “Evie?”
“Mm.”
That’s all he gives me. A noncommittal nothing that breaks my heart and pisses me off in one.
“Then into the hospital I go, traction, a cast on my leg, crutches. Hospital bills,” he murmurs. “So many fucking bills.”
And that’s when his bitterness began, I muse silently.
He was always the poor kid, the kid with the single mom and an attitude that demanded he prove his place in our group. But once those bills came in, attitude wouldn’t fix that. Bitterness took over where challenge used to be. One was fun to watch, if not a little worrisome. At least challenge meant he believed he deserved better. But the bitterness meant he’d given up on his place at the proverbial table, and would rather be angry about it instead.
“My leg got better, but those pain pills cost a lot. I worked hard at the diner to try help pay my way, but a kid can’t afford that kinda shit. Then I caught a cold,” he continues, “something you would think is just… a non-event, ya know?” He looks into my eyes. “It was just a fucking cold. It’s too bad you weren’t a nurse yet, because then maybe I would have come to you for help, instead of mixing my own remedy.”
“What you did, Mac…” I continue lifting. “It was just an accident. Nobody could have known that sinus meds mixed with pain pills would do what it did to your heart. It was just really bad friggin luck.”
“More medical bills.” He shakes his head. “The massive kind. The kind that will never be paid off for the rest of my life, or the lives of my children.”
My stomach gives a nasty twinge as I whip my eyes to his. “Your children?” I set my bar down on twenty, and rest my hands on my hips. “That’s… new.” I try to tamp down the odd emotion that swirls in my stomach. I try to berate myself, and declare it ridiculous. “You’ve never mentioned wanting kids before.”
“Oh.” He laughs and waves me off. “I don’t. That’s the point; hopefully when I die for real, so does my debt. I’m not passing that shit onto my kids.”
“Oh.” And that’s why I shouldn’t have asked. “That’s a little… I dunno. Sad, I guess. You’re so amazing with your sisters. You’re such a cool big brother for Lauren and Gigi. And then there’s Squeak. You met her when she was, what? Three months old? You met that tiny baby, decided you’re gonna keep her, and that was that. Nobody could talk you out of it.”
“She’s not a baby anymore,” he pants past a tightening diaphragm. His chest lifts and drops as he tries to fill his lungs, but he’s a panicker now. He gets himself worked up so much that he’s going to pass out someday and knock himself out when he lands on a barbell. “Shit, Luce.”
I step away from my bar and stop in front of him the way I have a million times in the past. We tend to keep our distance, as though the electricity that passes through his fingertips into my skin hurts him the way it invigorates me, but when he begins to hyperventilate, I go to him, press one hand to his ribs, and the other to his solar plexus. “Breathe to the right,” I coach. “Feel my hand on your side?” I suck my bottom lip between my teeth as sweat beads on his brow and begins rolling when he gives a jerky nod. “Feel me here, try to fill my hand.” I slide my fingertips over his taut ribs to try to draw his attention where I want it. “Fill my hand, control your breathing.”
“It feels like I’m dying every time.” His eyes wheel around, feral and seeking. “I swear,” he draws in a rattling breath, “my lungs seize up, they sting so that I can’t breathe, and only two missed breaths later, my brain turns fuzzy.”
“Fill my hand. Here.” I grab his and place it over his stomach. “Let go of your abdominal muscles. Just let them go and show me a potbelly.” I step around to his side, place one hand on the small of his sweaty back, and the other on his opposite ribs. If I took one single step forward, I could lay my cheek on his shoulder and pretend he won’t toss me away if I hug him. “Is that better?”
He draws in a heaving breath, fills his chest, and lets it out again. Closing his eyes, he licks his lips and nods. “It’s getting better.”
“The sting is going away?”
He swallows. Nods again. “They never taught me this one at the hospital,” he chokes out. “Swear, I ask them for tips on how to breathe easier, but they must save this for the nurses. Not the patients.”
“I didn’t learn this through school,” I murmur. “It’s actually a dance thing. Open your diaphragm, let it relax, fill it up. The sting goes away once you get a full breath in there, then it gets easier.” I fold my neck back when he turns, and stare into his green eyes that look like a pasture in spring. So green, so sparkly and bright. His hair is a sweaty mess, and a bead of sweat sits on the very edge of his chiseled jaw. It sits amongst the slight stubble he always wears, sits, then finally drops to his chest so my eyes follow the splash.
“Um…” He clears his throat, lets a brand-new tension fill the air between us.
I don’t take my hands off his body. He’s going to have to make me, because I refuse to step away when all I truly want to do is lay my face on his chest and prove that if he’d just try, we could fit.
“Thanks,” he croaks out. When the pain leaves his face and his chest doesn’t shudder or hitch, he steps away, snatches up the towel, and presses it to his face to hide.
Because he’s a fucking coward.
“Three more sets,” I say dispassionately. “Then we’re moving onto ring rows and muscle ups. Breathe now and make sure it’s all loosened up.”
Mac
Tinman, or the Cowardly Lion?
Weeks of the same pass me by, where Lucy spends more time at college than she does in her own gym. Sleep, limp, pills, work, train, home, and start it all over again. As I tend do a few times a week, I pass through the Checkmate office to chat, hang out, catch the gossip on what’s happening in the tech world where it applies to the Bishop brothers.
But one day, on my way toward the garage to leave, Eric – my mom’s husband when we’re at home, but here, in this building, he’s kind of my boss – stops me with a lift of his square jaw.
He tosses a stack of paperwork to his desk, and sits back until his boots slam to the top. He brings his hands to the back of his head like he has absolutely nowhere else he needs to be today. “Got a new one for you, if you want the pocket money.”
“Yeah?” I change direction and turn back into the office. “How much?”
“Easy two grand if you’re willing to work Rhino’s tonight. It’s the weekend, their bouncers are out, and since they’re still getting to grips with their newly pumping business, they don’t have a backup. Owner was pleased with what you did for that other girl, so she called up an hour or so ago and said to name the price.”
“Shit,” I laugh. “You shoulda said five grand.”
He rolls his eyes and reaches across his desk for a half-empty cup of coffee. “Regular dudes would make a couple hundred bucks. Maybe five hundred if they’re lucky. I named two grand thinking she’d laugh it off. Turns out she really wants you there.”
“Place like that,” I wander toward his desk, “turns over a fuck ton of money a night. Two grand sounds like small change compared to the money they’d lose if shit goes down and they have to clear the place out.”
“Exactly. I’d say it’s fair for both parties. You get to add two-k to your bank, and Rhino’s stays open all night. Someone else here can do it if you don’t want to, but she specifically mentioned you. You did good with Nicole, plus you’re the target age group. I guess she wants you to belong.”
“You were always too old for this life.” Smirking, I snatch up the documents he tossed down and scan the contract. “One night, six hours, clock in at eight, knock off at two.”
“Late night,” he inserts.
I shrug. “Two grand and a night of good music. I’ll do it.”
“Good deal.” He drops his feet to the floor and snatches the paperwork from my hands with a speedy swing of his arm. He drops it back onto his desk, signs along the dotted line, and glances back up with a smug grin. “If you call me old again, I’m gonna whip the shit out of you. Watch your back, Blair.”
“Oh please.” I turn away and continue in the direction I was going in the first place. “You don’t scare me, DeWhit. You’re a little bitch that can’t make a decision about which cereal to eat in the morning without my mom babying you. You got soft.”
“It’s not that I can’t make a decision,” he shoots back. “Mostly it’s because your momma always sits on my lap once she pours that cereal.” He flashes a wicked grin that sets my blood on fire. “My cereal in her mouth tastes awfully yummy.”
“Motherfucker!”
I turn to run at him, only to find my feet lifted straight off the floor when Spence, our seven-foot Ranger friend, wraps a beefy arm around my throat. He doesn’t lock it in, he doesn’t choke off my air. But the threat is there. “Slow it down, crazy.”
“He said…” I can’t decide if I want to scream or laugh. “He said naughty things about my mom.”
He scoffs. “We’ve all thought naughty things about your mom at one point or another.”
“Dude!”
He barks out a laugh when my anger turns toward him. He releases me, lifts his hands to fight me, rather than grab at the Glock nestled in his thigh holster. “I’m a married man now, Blair. And fuck knows, I’m happy about it. But before that, back when the beautiful Katrina used to feed us on the daily, it’s not like I didn’t imagine smacking her ass.” He makes crude shapes with his hands. “Nice and round and plump.”
“Hey now!” Eric finally loses his smug grin. “Watch your mouth, Spencer.”
“Used to,” Spence repeats on a laugh. “I used to think about her ass. Now I got my own to smack.”
“Spencer Serrano.” Abigail, Spence’s tiny wife slams her dainty fist into his ribs, achieving… well, nothing. Because she can’t hit for shit. “Stop being such a dang pig.”
“Priss.” He sweeps her up with a giggling – she’s giggling, not him – hug and feasts on her neck. “I’m all wrapped up in you now. I was just making a point with the kid.”
“Mmhm.” She sounds unimpressed, but her fingers dig into his shirt, scrunching it tight, and hold him close. “You need to leave that poor boy alone.”
“The kid’s gotta know his mom is the object of a man’s affections,” he presses. “Lots of men. It’s just the way it is.”
“I’ll kill you.” I grit my teeth. “Stop looking at my mom’s ass.” Then I turn to Eric. “And you can pour your own fuckin’ cereal from now on. Stop doing… that.”
I push out of the room, and the only reason I don’t shoulder barge Spence on the way past is because I don’t dare knock over his sweet wife.
“Kid!” Spence’s voice follows me along the hall. “Get back here. We weren’t done teasing.”
“And stop calling me kid! Assholes.” I push into the garage at the back of the building and study the fleet of shiny black cars that has come to be the standard for most Checkmate employees. Not me, because one, I don’t actually work here. Two, I can’t afford to buy shit. And three, even if I could, I still love my ‘Cuda.
She needs love and a tender hand, not to be replaced.
I pull the squeaking, faded purple door open and slide onto the torn seat, and sitting for a moment, since the garage is climate-controlled, and my car definitely is not, I run a hand over the cracking dash and breathe out a sigh of… I don’t know. Exhaustion? Frustration? A deep, fiery, desperate hunger for the one woman whose hands are like salve on a burn?
Lucy holds me, body and soul, brings me back from the brink of a panic attack time and time again, she whispers the words I need, she helps me find my equilibrium, and afterwards, not once does she mention it again, because she knows I’m proud. She’s knows I loathe my weakness.
If anyone ever asks how our training session went, she never mentions my breathing difficulties. If they ask how my body is holding up against the rigors of an almost full-time training regime for a tournament that, if I won just once, could pay off the debt I loathe, she zips her lips and helps me maintain my dignity.
I just need one year, one title, and the money I win from that could fix my life. After that, I could maybe consider asking the beautiful girl out to dinner.
Truth be told, I probably still wouldn’t ask her. Because debt or not, I still have the janky heart and tendency to die at inconvenient times. Debt or not, I refuse to saddle her with the guy she has to care for and fear losing every three minutes.
But knowing these things doesn’t stop me from wishing. From wanting.
So I sit in my fucking car, mentally prepare for a night sitting outside a smoke-filled club, and I think of Lucy Kincaid. I run my hands over the curved dash, and wonder what it would be like to run my hands over her hips instead. I sit back against the comfortable seat, and I wonder what it would be like to have her in here with me, sitting on my lap, straddling my thighs, and allowing me to feast on the world’s most delicious tits.
I can’t know for sure how they taste, but my imagination has never suffered in the past. And my imagination, the passionate, wonderful, colorful beast that it is, assures me she’ll taste like a fucking miracle.
My cock pulses in my jeans, a constant, painful, cruel, and never-fucking-ending reminder of what I so desperately want, but can never have.
“Kid?” Spence pushes through the building doorway with that annoying smirk of his and playfulness in his eyes that says he’s not done teasing.
Fantasy ruined
, I switch my ignition on with a muttered “No,” and back out of the garage the very second the doors have opened enough to let me through.
I pretend I don’t see him, I pretend I’m too cool to spare him a glance, but he knows I’m bluffing. I grit my teeth and back into the street while he stands at the doorway and laughs so loud that I hear it over my radio.
Since I’m scheduled to work at the club at eight, and it’s a little past noon now, I drive home, rather than to the gym like I’d prefer. Not because I want to work out, but because that’s where I would find her. She’s my most constant in my life, and I know, just one look, one single breath of the same oxygen she breathes, would make it so my lungs stop stinging.
But that’s not for me. Not today.
I head back to my apartment across town and pull into the parking spaces out front. Collecting my keys and sliding out, I walk across the footpath and study the square box of apartments that I grew up in.
My mom and I moved out of here not so long after my transplant. Mom and Eric bought a nice house together a dozen or so streets from here, where I finished out high school and learned to stop testing the universe and landing myself back in the hospital. I stayed with them in that sweet house until a year or so ago, but when you walk in on your mom and stepdad fucking a time too many, a guy knows it’s time to move along.
More than that, when a guy walks in on his mom, stepdad, and sweet baby sister enjoying some quality family time on the living room floor, giggling while baby-Lauren does something amazingly adorable, and you feel a little on the outside, you know it’s time to find your own space and let them enjoy theirs.
I’m not bitter about their happiness. In fact, it’s the one thing I’m absolutely not bitter about, because my mom’s happiness has been my goal my entire life. I didn’t harbor resentment as I packed my things and moved out. And I don’t sit alone in my living room, watching TV, and feeling bitterness roll through my heart because they’re there, and I’m here.
