by Riley Ashby
“I’ll behave,” I promised. “I just want you around.”
I leaned toward her, but she dodged me and kissed my cheek. “Kissing is a gateway to sex. Keep it in your pants.”
I’d worried I would be too hyped up to sleep, but the sudden influx of calories gave me a quick high followed by a crash as my body sought to metabolize everything. I was out the moment she turned off the light, not even waking when she shifted during the night. She had to shake me awake the next morning as my alarm blared across the room.
“Today’s the day,” she said and let loose a smile that betrayed her own excitement.
She believed I would win.
I had no choice but to prove her right.
***
“Do you feel ready?”
We were in my tiny locker room, waiting for the undercards to complete. A small TV near the ceiling in one corner showed a couple of heavyweights duking it out in the third round. Both of them were covered in blood. Alonso was kneeling before me, rubbing his hands briskly along my calves. Tori paced from one end of the room to the other, wringing her fingers and bouncing a little as she walked.
“You’re more nervous than I am.”
Stopping, she turned and gave me a sardonic look. “Really?”
I laughed mirthlessly. “No, not really.”
“Come on, let’s get your hands wrapped.” Alonso and Coach both had this strange concentrated energy; even with his crutches and ankle brace, Alonso was still constantly moving.
“You gotta be fast in there tonight. This guy has been training for a lot longer than you, but that means he’s going to be cocky, so you have the opportunity to slip between his defenses.” Alonso rubbed my shoulders while Coach wound the hand wraps around and between my knuckles and fingers. He moved up to my neck, rubbing the muscles and moving my head side to side. Tori sat in a folding chair and watched with a bemused expression. Alonso chuckled lowly behind me.
“Don’t worry, darling, I’m not going to take your man.”
Tori rolled her eyes, and I guessed Alonso had made a suggestive face at her. “I’m used to a good bromance. You should see the guys I live with.”
Coach raised his eyebrows at me. “Your woman lives with other men, huh?”
“I’m not his woman,” she muttered.
At the same time, I said, “She keeps them from getting murdered. Baby,” I cajoled, leaning around Coach to grin at her. “Isn’t it time we took things to the next level?”
She grimaced, but I could see the smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Can we not?”
“I have to cancel the jumbotron proposal then.”
Alonso and Coach laughed, and Tori could barely contain her own amusement when she pulled her phone out of her pocket. She frowned at the screen.
“I have to take this.” She walked into the hall, not bothering to look at me again before slamming the door behind her.
If that was who I thought it was …
“Can you give us a minute, guys?”
Coach scoffed. “Don’t lose your head, Kemp. You need to be single-minded right now. Have out whatever you need, and get your head in the game.”
They left, leaving the door open for Tori, who walked back in with her phone.
“Thank you. Goodbye.” She looked shell-shocked.
“Who was that?”
She lowered the phone slowly, thumb pressing on the screen to end the call before sliding it into her pocket.
“Department of Corrections. My brother is being released early.” Walking back to the couch as if moving through water, she fell heavily next to me. “He had at least ten years left on his sentence. He’ll be released next month.”
Holy shit. The son of a bitch came through. I coughed and shifted my knees toward her. “Did they say why?”
“His parole hearing was coming up. He’s been denied each time, but this year my ex called and talked to them. Said he forgave Aaron for what he did to him, and he thought he’d served his time.” She frowned.
I put my hand on her shoulder. “This is a good thing, right?”
“Yeah.” She dragged her hands down her face. “Yeah, totally.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. This was not the reaction I was expecting. “Tori, you’re not acting like this is a good thing. What’s wrong? Is there a reason you don’t want him out?”
Coming back to herself a little, she shook herself awake. “No, I want him out. I want him back in my life more than anything. I’m just trying to figure out why my ex would have done that. I highly doubt he had some sort of conversion.”
“Does it matter why?”
She chewed her lip. “I guess not. But it’s going to bug me.” She turned to me. Her eyes flicked up and down my body quickly. “Did you do something?”
I opened my mouth, then shut it again. I couldn’t lie. What would be the point? If I lied now, she’d find out later down the line, and things would be even worse. I’d figured we’d need to have this conversation eventually. I just didn’t think it was going to be tonight.
We stared at each other for a long second before she stood in front of me, seething. “What the fuck did you do, Jamie?”
I folded my hands between my knees and tried to remain calm. I did not need this right now. “I talked to him.”
“How did you even find his name?”
No reason to hold back. “I did a search on your brother’s name and found the articles about the incident. From there, it was pretty easy to find him.”
“Fucking hell.”
I reached for her, but she jerked back, walking to the far end of the room. “How could you do that? Did I not make it crystal fucking clear to you that this was a part of my life I wanted to keep private?”
I’d thought she’d be a little upset, but any anger should be eclipsed by the news that her brother would be returned to her. “I would have thought you’d be glad to have your brother back.”
“Not by you digging into my past! I trusted you with that information! There are only two people in this city who even know that backstory, and both of you know exactly why I keep it private. But you went digging into it anyway!”
This reaction was completely unwarranted, but I could take a little more anger. At the very least, it would work me up before going into the octagon. My fists clenched tightly in the wraps, feeling the fabric strain across my knuckles. “I was focused on trying to do something nice for you by getting Aaron out a little earlier.”
“You should have focused on what I fucking told you. That was a part of my life I only share with a few people. And now—” She choked a little and paused to swallow before continuing. “Now you know his name. A name I have tried to erase from my memory every day for the past decade.” The venom in her words was clear as she walked further from me. “I can’t believe you did this to us.”
I rose slowly. “‘To us? What the hell do you mean by that?”
“I trusted you, Jamie. I let you do things to me that I haven’t let anyone do for years because of Jas—my ex. And then you turned around and did this.” When she looked at me, there were no tears in her eyes, only violent rage. “How can I trust you after this?”
I took a step forward but stopped when she held up her hand. All this time, I’d worked on getting close, and now she was holding me back because I’d tried to do something nice for her. “Are you breaking up with me over this?”
“We’re not breaking up,” she spat. I knew what she would say next. “We were never together.”
I couldn’t stop myself from walking to her then. “So this is what you were waiting for. An excuse to end this, whatever it was we had going on. You didn’t want to define or commit to anything because you knew the first chance you got, you’d end it all. And you can pretend it’s easier or that it doesn’t matter as much if we were never officially a couple.” She pushed me away from her, but I stood still, crowding her space. “That’s the truth, isn’t it? You’ve been hoping every day for me to
do something you could find fault in. Some real reason to end it all.”
“Get away from me, Jamie. Now.”
For an interminable moment, the air between us was so thick I could feel it on my skin. I thought about doing the opposite, pushing her against the wall and forcing her to talk this out. Admit why she was really this angry. I could understand some of her ire, sure, but not this much. Not enough to tear down everything we’d been building over the past few weeks.
But if I did that, everything really would be ruined.
I took a step back. Her exhale was the only sound in the room.
“If you leave now,” I said, “you’re giving up on more than just us. You’re giving up on yourself.”
She raised her lips in a snarl. “You’ve never owned me, and you won’t now.” Grabbing her bag from the floor, she turned on one heel and stormed out.
I kicked the wall so hard I left a dent. When Alonso and Coach came back into the room, I was pacing, bouncing on my toes. Maybe this was where Alonso got all his energy from. Endless anger.
“All well in here, Kemp?”
“Never fucking better,” I said, landing a few blows on the punching bag hanging from the wall. “Let’s go fuck this guy up.”
The walk through the hotel was a haze of cigarette smoke and the smell of liquor. No one approached me as I stormed past shops, slot machines, bachelorette parties taking selfies with their free drinks in the middle of the casino. Back in my room, I attacked the mini bar with abandon; if Ellery wouldn’t pay for it, he could take it out of my salary. Now that every semblance of a “personal life” had been blown out of the water, I had no intention of letting the new guy take my place permanently. Some man I barely knew was here with the family on a trial run, but no matter how good he did, he was going to have to take a hike. I wasn’t leaving.
I should have known my place.
There was a reason I never spoke about what had happened to me. I didn’t want people to know that I had once been a victim, but I also didn’t want to remember it myself. Every memory was a painful lance through my heart. Sometimes I would walk by a man who wore his same deodorant and have to spend the next hour in the bathroom trying not to retch. Ellery found me once, when I abandoned him at a restaurant, and left only to get me a stiff drink. He locked the door to the bathroom and sat with me as I recovered my senses, helped me fix my makeup from my tears, and promised under threat of death not to tell a soul what he’d witnessed.
And now, Jamie had brought him back into my life.
“Airplane bottles, what a joke.” I threw back a bottle of vodka, then rum, chasing the burn with a soda. A group of excited girls walked by my door, laughing loudly, on their way to the fight no doubt. I threw the empty plastic bottles at the door. They landed halfway. “Shut UP!” I screamed. There was silence for a beat. Then they burst out laughing and continued down the hall.
Fuck. There was not enough booze in this fridge to get me adequately drunk. No fucking way I was going to the bar; they’d have the fight on down there. Room service vodka? I grabbed for the menu by the phone.
I rolled my eyes at the knock on my door. “Fuck off,” I muttered under my breath. Another knock. “Jamie,” I screamed as I stalked toward the door, “if you don’t fucking leaving me alone—”
Sophie stood on the other side of the door looking decidedly unhappy. “Jamie doesn’t know I’m here.”
“Yeah, right. I don’t want to hear it,” I said, shutting the door, but she held it open even as I pushed. She was surprisingly strong.
“Have you already been drinking?” She wrinkled her nose as she pushed past me into the room, kicking aside the empty bottles and closing the mini bar I had left open. “You are a mess.”
My anger flared anew. I forgot that this was the woman I was supposed to protect with my life, seeing instead another judgmental enemy who wanted to invade my personal space. “Who do you think you are? I never said I wanted your fucking opinion.”
“Tori, sit the fuck down and listen to me before I kick your ass.”
I was aware that my jaw was hanging open, but I couldn’t help it.
Her hands dropped from her hips, and she lost the tough expression. “What?”
“You cursed. Twice.”
She rolled her eyes and sighed. “I curse all the time.”
“In bed with Ellery, maybe. Not in front of me.”
That made her blush deeply, but when she pointed at the chair in the corner, I sat obediently. She meant business, and I knew she wasn’t drunk. Ellery had spoken of her intermittent bravado, but I hadn’t ever believed it until now.
She folded her arms and adopted one of Ellery’s power stances. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You don’t know what he did, Sophie. Please don’t insert yourself in this situation.”
“He told me enough.” She narrowed her eyes at me. It was hard to take her seriously with her pregnant belly, but I suddenly had a very clear vision of what she’d be like with a misbehaving child. I cowered a little as she continued. “This is not a relationship-ending offense.”
“It wasn’t—”
“A relationship, I know. He only took you on dates, gave you multiple orgasms, let you keep clothes at his place, and brought you flowers. I’m guessing on the orgasms part, but judging by your face, I’m right about that too.”
I huffed. “We never made anything official.”
“That’s irrelevant, Tori, because to everyone looking in, you guys were on the path to marriage and babies. Or dogs, or whatever little creatures you want to have running around when you’re old. And he tried to do something nice for you, because he’s your boyfriend, and in response, you broke up with him hours before his big break. I know he messed up, but that’s what happens in relationships. Do you remember how Ellery tried to give me away to a sex trafficker? We. Made. It. Work.” She slapped the back of one hand against her opposite palm to emphasize her words.
The memory made me cringe. “I mean, when you put it like that, I start to worry about your choice in partners.”
“I can’t with you.” She threw her hands in the air as she turned around and walked toward the door. “You let this slip through your fingers, Tori, and you’re never going to be happy. Because if you can’t make it work with the nicest fucking guy on the planet, no one will ever be good enough for you.” She looked at me as she grasped the handle, and all anger was gone. She just looked sad. “I’m not saying you have to forgive him right now, or that you can move on past this like nothing happened. But he deserves better. And so do you.”
She waited a heartbeat for me to speak, but I had nothing to say. I stared at my feet. The door opened, letting in the sounds of other guests heading downstairs for the main event, then shut me in once more.
The room suddenly felt like a tomb.
I’d never been particularly open with people. I wasn’t one for hugs or sleepovers with my girlfriends. And after everything with my ex, that had seemed like the best approach to the rest of my life. I’d opened up to him, and he betrayed me. Jamie had done the same thing. It was proof that my worldview was correct.
His intentions were different.
Intentions didn’t matter when someone was harmed.
Were you harmed?
He shouldn’t have dug into my past. He knew it was private for me.
Does him knowing Jason’s name undo having your brother back?
My heart raced, beating too loud in the empty room. No one was in the hallway now. I was no longer part of the festivities, just a heartbroken woman getting drunk along in her hotel room. Was this what my Saturday nights were destined to be for my entire life? Could no one possibly live up to the standard of being better than my ex, simply because I put every violation on the same level as the worst ones?
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket slowly, wondering if it was too late. Maybe they wouldn’t even let him take the call.
I dialed anyway.
&nbs
p; The phone rang and then stopped.
When Aaron’s voice said my name, I broke down. I couldn’t even say hello.
“Tor, it’s okay. Stop crying.” He sounded almost amused.
“Are you really getting out?” I wasn’t even sure he could understand me with how hard I was crying. There was no stopping the tears now. The guilt I’d harbored for years at letting my brother go to jail for defending me because I hadn’t been able to leave Jason on my own. And now … he might be free. Because of Jamie.
Aaron took a deep breath as if suppressing his own tears. “Yeah. It’ll take a while to do the paperwork and set a date, but they approved my release. I’ll be on parole in a few months.”
“Oh, my God.” I clapped a hand over my mouth to stifle my sobs. He spoke to me soothingly, then tried to make me laugh. How was he so calm while I was falling apart? Finally, I could speak again without sobbing. “How did this happen?”
“You should thank your boyfriend. I’m not sure exactly what he said to Jason, but it worked.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I muttered.
“Are you engaged now? We owe him something fierce, Tor. He’s a keeper.”
Another sob escaped me. “I broke up with him, Aaron. I told him about Jason in confidence, and he searched your name in order to track him down.”
He was quiet for a moment. “We don’t have a lot of time, so I’m going to be quick. I understand why that feels like a violation to you. You’re a private person, and he should have respected that. But I think you should reconsider ending it. A guy doesn’t do something like this for a woman unless he’s in love. And thanks to him, I have so many more years in front of me. Time to find my own love. Time to have a family, like I always wanted. We always said we wouldn’t let what happened with Jason ruin our lives, but we knew it was a lie with me being put away for so long. But now, it hasn’t. Jamie helped give me a second chance at life.”
A tone sounded in my ear to announce we were at the end of our time.
“Call me tomorrow, Tori, and let me know what happens when you go talk to him.”
