by Hazel Parker
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “So no problems sleeping? Nothing like that?”
“Nope,” my mother said.
“OK, perfect, then I’ll—”
“Are you going back to work?”
I hadn’t thought that far ahead, truth be told. But it was in my nature to want to get to work as soon as I could; work had provided me the distraction from Malcolm when he wasn’t in prison, and it was probably going to have to carry the same sort of weight now.
“Probably, yeah, I can just drop him off at daycare—”
“Oh, heavens no,” my mother said. “You’d trust a daycare more than me?”
Well, put that way, no, I most certainly did not. I was too much of a creature of habit.
“We need to know what it’s like raising a good kid!”
“Marshall Saunders!” my mother said. “We’ll take care of Ryan. He needs to spend more time with his grandparents, anyway. You can come and get him at the end of your workday.”
“OK, thanks, Mom. Just be careful.”
“Same to you, sweetie, OK?”
We shared a quick hug before I got back in the car and made a pit stop at the house so I wouldn’t walk into the office smelling like endless sex with Nick Ferrari. I did make sure that the top that I wore got tossed onto my bed and not into the laundry basket so that I could take him in later, though; if I couldn’t have him with me, inside of me, next to me, I would at least let his scent fill me.
I quickly showered, going through everything in record time, and threw on some work clothes without bothering to put on any makeup. Like, at all. I knew Rachel would say something, but Jordan was the only person I had to answer to.
I got to the office about half an hour after I’d first jumped into the shower, something of a record time for me, and bounded up the stairs. Jordan and Rachel were huddled together, discussing something.
“What are you doing here?” Jordan said, her tone surprised but friendly.
“One day off was enough,” I said, making sure I sounded determined and professional. “I’m not going to let anything else stop me from working.”
“Well, OK,” she said. “I think a group of us are going to go for a jog on our lunch break if you want to come.”
“I—”
I had running clothes in my car. I always brought them just in case something like this arose.
“I will be there.”
But when I got to my desk and started to catch up on work, I realized just how much I had underestimated how quickly work could come through in my job. Even with just taking roughly two-thirds of a full day off, catching up on everything I needed to do felt staggeringly difficult. When Jordan and Rachel joined the others, I told them I’d do my own jog fifteen minutes later. Jordan looked disappointed, but she knew better than to try to persuade me otherwise.
They went around noon. I didn’t leave my desk until half an hour later, and even then, that was only because I knew I’d never get my workout in if I didn’t leave then. Some would say I got my workout this morning. I’m happy to say that!
The thought brought a much-needed smile to my face. Yeah, Nick and I needed another night like that as soon as possible.
I laced up my shoes, put my headphones on—without music, as I needed to stay aware of my surroundings—and headed for the front door. As soon as I got there, though, rather than head for the nearby park where we usually ran, I decided to take a more urban route, jogging through the streets.
The decision made the jog somewhat awkward, in that there was far more stop-and-go than I was used to, but I needed this enormous presence of people in case anything happened. Paranoid? Sure, but one couldn’t be paranoid enough with someone like Malcolm lurking, whether in reality or just in the back of my head.
I made it out about a mile and a half before I decided it was time to head back. Roughly a 5k would suffice for the day, especially considering how tired and wobbly my legs felt from the different kind of workout that morning. I started to head back to the office when a stoplight hit. I paused, jogging in place.
“Fancy seeing you here, Iz.”
Oh no. My gut sank before the sentence had even finished, before the thought had even formed in my head. There was no way. There was just…
There was absolutely a way. I’d thought it for the last twenty-four hours. There would be a way.
“You can ignore me, Iz, but I know you can hear me. I know you don’t listen to jack shit on those headphones.”
The cackling laughter that followed…God, why? Why?
I turned my head to the right enough. I didn’t need the visual to confirm what I already knew to be true.
Malcolm had found me.
“Like I said, fancy running into you here, Iz.”
“Leave me the fuck alone,” I growled. “Didn’t me putting your ass in jail give you any hints?”
“Wow, and good afternoon to you too,” he said.
This time, whether because of morbid curiosity or something else, I turned and looked at him in full. He was still the same cocky asshole as before, but he had hardened some. He’d gotten tattoo sleeves on both arms, and he’d unfortunately added some muscle, though not nearly enough that he would intimidate someone like Nick Ferrari. He’d always shaved his head close, but now, it looked like a military cut.
And fuck, he still had the world’s most punchable smirk. I seriously did not know how anyone just embraced or even felt neutral about him. That smirk was the kind of thing that not even a mother could love.
“I’m just jogging here, in the streets, happen to bump into you, I say hello, and you run me off like that?”
I tried ignoring him, but this wasn’t middle school. Malcolm wasn’t going to be held back by some psychological games. He was too relentless for that.
“Iz? Ohhhhh Iz? Izzzzz—”
“What?” I shrieked.
The light turned green. I had never jogged so fast in my life. I didn’t dare look over my shoulder.
But I didn’t have to. I could hear his feet striking the concrete beneath us, his breath staying with me. I was a good runner, but I was not a great one. There was no massive disparity in athleticism between the two of us.
“Why are you running away from me?” he said with such false innocence. “I thought you’d want to know what I’ve been up to. I know what you’ve been up to. Since you can’t keep your gold-digging hands off of famous baseball players—”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” I said, but my exasperated tone said it all.
Malcolm just laughed at me, taunting me with that fucking awful shrill yip of his.
“You don’t know what I’m talking about? And you work in marketing? Wow, I always knew you were dumb and got jobs on your looks, but I didn’t know that was still a thing.”
He’s full of shit. You know you’re better than that. Do not let him get to you, Izzy. Unfortunately, such self-talk might have worked if I had to cross the street. It did not work when I had over ten minutes' worth of jogging left to do.
“Izzy, Izzy, Izzy. You keep going for these assholes, but really—”
I couldn’t take it anymore. I stopped jogging and turned and got right in his face. Aggressive, sure. But even Malcolm wasn’t stupid enough to hit me in public, in full view of a multitude of cars. I hope.
“You come up here, you stalk our son, you stalk me, you little fucking asshole,” I said. “You lost the right to tell either of us how to be when you hit me. I threw your ass in jail once; I’ll get you arrested again. You hear me? Stay the fuck away from Ryan and me.”
It was, unfortunately, entirely predictable that Malcolm acted like I was the criminal here. He put his hands back, made a face of mock shock, and pretended to tremble.
“Oh no, Daddy can’t go see his son because Mommy is a fucking cunt,” he said, starting to laugh in between his fake trembles. “Whatever is Daddy to do? I know! Daddy can tell Mommy the truth, which is that he hasn’t seen his son i
n two fucking years and still hasn’t seen him and would like to!”
“Maybe you should have thought of that before you—”
“Before I what, Izzy?” he said. “Would you like me to show you what I did?”
I wanted to vomit at the thought. It really wasn’t above Malcolm to strike me here, was it? He was that fucking crazy and deranged that he was willing to hit me, out here, in front of the entire Sacramento area, just because he was that insane.
I bit my lip. I could feel my eyes starting to well. Before I could so much as say another word, I spun around and took off sprinting to my office. Malcolm cackled behind me, laughing.
“Run, run, run away, little Izzy; it makes no difference! I found you here, and I’ll find you again!”
He laughed some more. Tears started to fall. Why? Why?
Why, after moving all the way from Los Angeles up to here, had the worst part of my past followed me? Why, a mere twenty-four hours after that photo was leaked, had he managed to find me? Why was he lying about looking at Ryan in the daycare?
What the fuck had I done to deserve this?
All I knew was I needed to get back to the office, now. I kicked it into an extra gear that I had never hit in my life. I didn’t even care about time; my survival depended on getting back to that office space. I checked my watch. I’d run three miles in about twenty minutes.
Fucking fast. But my life almost literally depended on it.
I looked over my shoulder. Malcolm was nowhere to be seen. I let my gaze linger for several seconds just in case he thought he was outsmarting me by hiding. But nope. It looked like I really had left Malcolm in the dust.
For now. He’d be back. And I didn’t know that I’d have the good fortune of being able to escape him again in public when next time came.
With some time to spare, I decided to head to the showers. I wouldn’t get a complete rinse off, but I’d get enough of one to be presentable at my desk. I locked the door behind me, making sure that only female employees with a key fob could get into the bathroom, and then headed to the very back to the shower. I really wished that said showers had their own locks, but the key fob one did enough.
I turned the water to steaming hot and took off my workout clothes. When I got under the water, I finally let it out.
There was no fucking escape. There was no getting around the fact that Malcolm would follow me forever. I wasn’t going to be the one who ruined what I had with Nick. Malcolm would. I could control my actions, but I could not control Malcolm.
And because of that, I was destined to be hunted forever, never free until he was in jail for good or dead.
I cried like I hadn’t cried in ages. The stress was unbearable. He was probably going to kill me without ever laying a finger on me; just the chronic beatdown from the possibility of getting hurt was too much.
I let myself sob for a few minutes before I pulled myself together. I didn’t have time right now to be a pity case. After work, I’d head straight to my parents’ house and spend some time there. Maybe I’d go to Nick’s later. I definitely didn’t feel safe going back to my home.
Through the shaking and the sobbing, I washed myself down as best as I could with my limited time. I heard someone else enter and froze, but when I heard the sound of a toilet stall slamming shut, I relaxed a bit. Malcolm wasn’t going to go so far as to create a ruse like that. And when the sound of a flush, a running sink, and the door swinging back open came, I felt as safe as one reasonably could.
I turned the shower off and sighed. I felt terribly, miserably cold, even though I had just taken a shower so hot that it steamed up the entire cube of space. I had a feeling I’d just have to get used to living this way.
I brushed open the curtain. I walked toward my bag. I heard another shower curtain open.
There was the sound of a sneaker dropping onto the shower floor, a moment of fear, and then—
Chapter 15: Nick
My phone rang. Feeling no sense of urgency to answer, I strolled over to the kitchen counter, grabbed it, and looked. It was my agent, Scott. I wasn’t exactly in a mood to chatter about business, but it was my agent, not some random CMO of some company whose products I didn’t use anyway.
“Hello.”
“Nick, I just want to say, don’t be late for this meeting,” Scott said. “I know you usually aren’t, but the big guns are coming in.”
“So like, what, the GM?”
“Not just. Your manager and the owner as well.”
Holy fucking shitballs. Say what?
“Are you going to tell me what this is about, Scott?” I said, playing the part of a paranoid player. “You better not tell me I’m getting cut!”
“You’re kidding, right?” Scott asked, genuinely sounding unsure. “Would the Yankees cut Babe Ruth?”
“Of course I’m kidding,” I said. “What’s it about?”
“I think it’s best if you see for yourself,” Scott said.
I didn’t want to believe it because I felt like it would somehow be jinxing myself. But between his excited tone, the fact that I was due for a possible extension, and how the Giants liked to conduct business…
Was I about to get the raise of a lifetime here?
Again, I tried not to think about it too much. It could have been an insultingly lowball offer; it could have been an offer for me to partake in some community service or some sponsorships. Scott had a way of trying to sell what he was doing to me as he did selling me to the team, a tic of sorts that I had never quite managed to get him to shake. But what else could it be? If the manager, the general manager, and the team owner, for fuck’s sake, were all there…
“Oh, almost forgot the most important thing,” Scott said with a laugh. “We’re pushing the meeting back to two so the owner can make it. Hope that’s not a big deal.”
“Aw, Scott, you’re cutting into my lunch break; no, of course that’s fine. Head to Giants’ headquarters then?”
“You got it, bud. See you then.”
I placed the phone back on the kitchen counter with an overwhelmingly positive feeling that I was trying my best to combat. I…
There was a very significant chance this was about to be the nine-figure contract so often discussed on SportsCenter, online, and in coffee shops. I was about to get richer than even my father and grandfather had become with Ferrari Wines.
I couldn’t let myself get carried away. There were many other things this could be, things that by themselves were unlikely but together were a possibility. I’d already had enough good things happen with Izzy and me that I didn’t really need to have a contract to make me happy.
But holy fuck, could life get any better? I was in my athletic prime. I’d met the woman of my dreams, and we’d just had one of the best nights and mornings of sex ever. She had some things she had to worry about, sure, but if she stuck by me, I’d make sure those problems didn’t ever get serious. She would be safe with me.
The only real problem, as I saw it, was that now I had an extra hour of time to kill before I headed over to the meeting.
I wound up deciding to make a pit stop at Ferrari Wines, given that it was between my home and the Giants’ headquarters, to pay a visit to Brett and Layla. Layla, apparently, was flying out somewhere and had already left, but Brett, as his usual role as the family sommelier, was kicking back at the vineyard, content to relax until the day began.
“What in the world do they pay you to do? Look hot?” I asked as I approached.
“Yes?” he asked. “What in the world do all your sponsors pay you to do? Look like a meathead?”
“Touché. Funny you should say that, though. I just got off the phone with Scott. Says he wants me to come to headquarters around two to meet with, get this, the fucking owner and GM.”
“Fuck, for real?” Brett said, dropping all façade. “You know what this means, right? You’re about to get traded or you’re about to get paid, but either way, you’re about to be on ESPN’s front page all
day today!”
I chuckled.
“I wouldn’t know, I try not to go—”
“Bullshit,” Brett said with an eye roll. “You can say you don’t read the press, but your reaction to the TMZ shit told me everything I need to know.”
The letters “TMZ” did nothing to help my blood pressure, but in fairness to my brother, he was right. So I let that one go for the time being.
“Anyway, any word from your girl?”
“My girl?” I said, even though I absolutely loved the way that rolled off the tongue. “We talked a little bit last night. It’s good. I think we’re moving in the right direction.”
“Uh-huh,” Brett said dryly. “And by ‘talked a little bit last night,’ do you mean you screwed the fuck out of each other?”
“Christ, Brett, have some decency!”
“Yes, because you always do,” he said with a laugh. “Look, man, I’m happy for you. There’s no need to hide the truth from me. You know I’m not the pap.”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s fine. We’ll see what happens.”
I swore I wasn’t superstitious.
“Oh, got your voicemail last night. Everything all good on that end?”
“Seems that way,” Brett said. “Dad’s on a flight home now. When I pressed him, he just said things were settled.”
A brief pause followed before Brett chuckled.
“You know, I know you and Layla think the rumors are bullshit, but I think there’s some truth to them. You know this isn’t the first time Dad has suddenly had to run off to Vegas.”
“For work.”
Brett frowned at me and then rapped his knuckles on my forehead as if knocking on a door.
“Hello, Nick? Do you have a brain in there? It’s sounding kind of hollow right now. Look, I got no proof, and for all I know, I could be the stupid one for believing this nonsense. I just think of it as a good thing, right? If we got mafia connections, man, we can do anything.”
“And we can be beholden to certain people,” I warned.
“Well, duh, but it’s nice to have people in your back pocket who could help in a spot like this.”
