by N. Alleman
She wheels the suitcase to the center of the room. “Olive is already there. She picked up Lark from day care and went right to the airport after work.”
“The flight takes off in two hours. And we’re,” she checks her phone absent-mindedly, “leaving now.”
“I don’t have a ticket.”
Like that would stop me.
“Actually.” She flips through her phone again, revealing it to me to show me an airline site. “There were some last-minute passengers canceling their flights. And a certain boxer who needs a ride …”
I laugh and give her a big hug, lifting her off her feet. “Thanks, Selena. I never expected you to …”
“Neither did I. In fact, you owe me eighteen hundred dollars,” she says, hefting her bag. “And you’re going to carry this. Let’s go.”
I’m too stunned to object. I take her bag as she leads me outside and we get in a cab.
“Airport,” she tells the driver.
After a quick stop to my place to get my passport and for me to throw some stuff in a bag we’re on our way to my precious Olive and sweet baby girl Lark.
Being in airports all the time doesn’t mean you get used to how fucking annoying the lines can be, especially when you’re looking for someone.
Show us your ID. Check.
Any metal or weapons on you? Nope.
Show us your ID again. Blah, blah, blah.
None of the heads in these rows around me belong to Olive. I would recognize the slope of her neck anywhere, and none of these people are her.
Fuck. The rest of these saps need to move.
“Calm down,” Selena is next to me, poking me with her finger. I guess I’m visibly angry, but I don’t give a fuck. “She got here a little before us. She’ll just be on the other side.”
The airport is large and divided in two sections: pre-check in and safety shit, and where you wait to get on your flight. Selena drags me with her, and I don’t object. She’s the best friend with the plan.
She knows where to find Olive and Lark, I remind myself.
When we finally find Olive, she’s sitting on a pile of too much luggage.
She is so fucking stunning. And she is so mad.
Her eyes shoot daggers at me, and I swear I can feel her heat on my skin—and not in a sexual way. I’ve thought of her skin on mine hundreds of times. But this time, it’s like she wants to slap me again.
I’m kinda surprised she didn’t when I tried to kiss her at the church.
The fact that she didn’t only made me want to do it again, harder. Longer. Deeper. Made me want to do more.
She stands, and I’m convinced she can read my mind and is coming to tell me I should be ashamed of myself. To be honest, she’s probably right.
But I refuse to apologize for how I feel about Olive. She’s the type of girl you think about naked. And here she is, walking toward me.
Her eyes rise above and past my shoulder. She is looking at something behind me. I don’t care what it is. I only want to stare at her.
“What the f—” She catches herself mid-curse. Lark is behind her, resting on the luggage. I give her a small wave, and Lark waves back with a shy smile.
Next thing I know, Olive slaps my hand away, and she glares at me.
She is a loving mother.
Becky would be a horrible one.
I fucking wish I could tell Olive that. Wait … Becky. Why do I hear her high-pitched, annoying voice?
I whip around to find she’s behind me.
“Hello, Olive,” she says, bitchy as usual. She’s missing her usual clones I notice.
Then she runs a hand down the muscles on one of my arms and her voice takes on a sultry tone. “And Axel.”
“Fuck off, Rebecca,” I practically spit. Olive looks to see if Lark heard my language, but the little girl is nodding off on top of the luggage. She’ll never know.
“You were always one to make bad decisions. I don’t know what anyone ever saw in you, actually.” Becky backs away from me, and it’s not until then that we see …
“Jason.” Olive’s voice is cold. She’s trying to pass herself off as indifferent. She’s better at it than she was at that party in high school, but I can see she’s trembling. “What are you doing here?”
“Going to Greece.” Jason smirks. “You left me with a plane ticket, remember? And there were some last minute cancellations, so my new girl is coming with me.”
Jason puffs his chest triumphantly. Becky is staring at us with glee. And Olive is turning pale.
I know she doesn’t need me to defend her. I just want to.
Even though it was just about a week ago it feels like it’s been a long time since my last fight, and I haven’t had Olive in so long, all the anger and tension in my body has built up into a filthy rage. I raise my fist like I’m against an opponent in the ring, but this douche isn’t expecting it and he has no way of defending himself.
I clock him, and my fist crashes right against Jason’s chin. He falls to the floor and passes out cold.
The bastard has probably never gotten into a fight in his life.
Sliding an arm around Olive’s shoulder protectively, I stare at Becky, making sure she understands that Olive is my girl. And that I would choose her any day and every day.
But Becky isn’t looking at us. She’s kneeling over Jason’s worthless body. He’s not dead, of course, which might be the only thing I’m regretting right now.
“Well.” Selena drags me away from Jason, like she’s scared I’m going to hit him again. “I guess we should get going. The flight’s in a few minutes anyway.”
“Then we’re going to hop on a cruise to get the rest of the way to Greece?”
She nods. I grin, turning my eyes to Olive, daring her to argue with me. “I’m coming too.”
To my surprise, she doesn’t argue.
“After the way you hit Jason, you probably shouldn’t stay here,” she concedes. She goes to pick up Lark and her luggage, but I grab her bags first, the way I always wished she’d let me carry her books back in high school. And she lets me do it, so the only remaining challenge is getting to gate forty-two before security arrives.
“Who is this man, Mommy?” Lark asks Olive.
Olive is at a total loss for words, so I jump in, smiling my trademark grin at the little girl who might just be my daughter. “I’m a friend of the family. Name’s Axel. What’s your name, little girl?”
“Lark,” she says, sticking four fingers up at me. “I’m not little. I’m almost this many.”
I grin at her. “Almost four? Well, you’re practically an adult.”
“Yes,” she replies, looking pleased with me as she turns to her mother. “Okay, he can come.”
Olive looks at me, exasperated, but I smile the same shit-eating grin at her, pick up the luggage, and follow the three ladies heading for our gate.
13
Olive
The flight goes by faster than I expected, but I stress out the whole time. I still don’t know how I feel about Axel being back again, or what this could mean for us. There’s something different between us now, though. I just don’t know what.
He’s sitting in the seat beside me. Lark is in my lap. She’s the excuse I use—I’m just checking to make sure she’s comfy and nothing might be poking against her, or anything—every time I turn my head to the right of me to look at Axel.
Sometimes I swear he’s looking back.
We haven’t talked yet, not really. He tries a few times, but I cut him off.
Maybe I shouldn’t do that, especially because when I do he uses it as an opportunity to chat up Lark instead, and she’s busy talking away with him.
I’m about to say something to him when a voice comes over the speakers. There haven’t been too many announcements during this flight, and by the time I process the flight attendant’s words, the plane is descending.
I glance over at Axel again. He stares back, his eyes meeting mine. I don’t
want to look away, but I can’t help it, and I feel his eyes still burning into my skin. What is he’s thinking?
After the plane lands, everyone stands to remove their bags from the overhead bins, and then we get off. We’ll take a car to get to the cruise. I didn’t plan for Axel to come with us so I’m not sure there will be enough seats. I blush, wondering if this means I’ll wind up sitting in his lap.
It will take us about two hours to drive to where we will catch the boat. The cruise will last five days, touring Italy and a bunch of islands on its way to Greece.
In the end, it turns out either me or Selena has to double up and sit on Axel’s lap. I surprise both Axel and myself by volunteering.
At least the car ride doesn’t include Jason and Becky. They will be there for every other leg of the trip, though. And it’s ruining everything. I can see them just ahead of me as we board the ship, and I’m about to go up to them and say something when I feel a strong hand touch on the small of my back and pull me away.
“Don’t.” Axel smiles down at me comfortingly. It’s funny, since he was the one who hit Jason at the airport.
Not that I’m defending Jason, but this is the same thing. I wrench myself away from him, knowing that with the difference in our sizes and strength the only reason I got away from Axel is that he chose to let go of me.
I scowl at him.
“You. Are. A. Hypocrite.” I punctuate the words with a finger pointing to his chest, and it only infuriates me more when he laughs. Just a day ago, these roles were reversed.
Why had I let him come on this trip again?
I know why, but I don’t even want to think about it.
Right now I don’t want to think about anything besides the way he crosses his arms over his muscular chest, which makes his biceps press against the sleeves of his cotton T-shirt that’s so sexy I have to swallow hard.
I groan, and he knows he won.
“Come on,” he says, returning his hand to the small of my back. He’s carrying our bags in his other hand, but soon one of the ship’s employees takes those from him.
Axel’s free hand finds Lark’s, and he guides her aboard the ship. I’m in awe watching them. Lark’s blabbering away, busy telling some story to the man she has no idea is her father.
But I’m too annoyed to think about that, watching my least two favorite people in the world ahead of us.
I groan again, looking at Jason and Becky, wondering if they’ve even noticed us.
They haven’t.
They’re too engrossed in something. Becky leans over to look at something while Jason stands behind her, his arms around her the way he used to hold me.
Axel turns my body again, steering me away from them and onto the ship. It’s beautiful, just like I expected from the photos I saw on the site when I booked the trip with.
“Stop it.” Axel narrows his eyes at me, telling me with his silence that he knows exactly what I’m thinking and that I need to “cut the shit.” I wasn’t even going to think of Jason and Becky, or how they will be cuddling just a deck’s length away. I just didn’t expect Jason to have the same idea as me, and to bring her along with him.
“I said stop it.” Axel’s tone is deeper, more authoritative than it usually is, and it jars me, makes me want to obey. “Don’t make me punish you, Olive.”
The words send chills up my spine, and I wonder exactly what he means by that. I don’t think he means it sexually, but maybe knowing Axel it will be …
“Look.” He’s still talking and I fade back into the conversation, wondering if he knew exactly just where I disappeared to.
He winks at me. He totally knows.
“Let’s do dinner,” he says, and I agree. Soon we’re in my room together, sharing the meal Axel brings back from a buffet he saw on the way in. Somehow, he’s found apples, a knife to cut them with, a loaf of bread, ham, grapes, and some cheese. It’s not much, but at the same time, it’s everything.
I’m suddenly so tired I can only smile up at him. He cuts everything for Lark first, I notice, and with the way he’s looking at her makes me think I should tell him he’s her father.
I should have, a long time ago. He needs to know.
But now isn’t the time. So I just watch—the slices he cuts for us are thick and chopped down like you’d expect them to be, but Lark’s are cut into small little squares so she doesn’t choke. The care he shows for her plasters a smile on my face, especially when Lark giggles up at him as he keeps the loaf of bread from her.
“You’ve got to reach it first,” he says. Is he really this good with children? I didn’t expect it from Axel Reign, of all people.
Earlier, I’d seen him angry at Jason and Becky, but now he was playing peacemaker.
And father.
He keeps the bread loaf just out of reach of her little arms as she goes for it, and he shakes his head at her. “Like this,” he says, and he puts the loaf just far down enough for her to reach it. Her little teeth dig into the dough and she squeals with excitement.
She doesn’t even eat bread. She’s so picky.
Lark tries to take a huge bite out of it before he takes it from her, and pulls it into little pieces.
And then he passes me the small, messy sandwiches he made for me just a second ago, and we all eat together. I barely notice as we leave port. I feel the boat rock as it moves through the gentle waves, but my attention is on Lark and Axel.
“I need to check something,” Axel says, and I wonder if I should be concerned, but I’m not. He smiles at me, a tender smile, not one of his flashy grins, but just as lovely. I nod, letting him go. “I’ll be right back.”
And it doesn’t occur to me to be concerned until I hear the shouts just outside our door.
14
Axel
You notice things about people you hate. I’ve never been on a cruise before, and I should be enjoying the scenery, the beautiful blue water surrounding us … all that shit. But I can’t, because the fuckwad who hurt Olive is here, outside Olive’s cabin, and now the paparazzi is too.
I managed to avoid them for the past few days, not thinking about my boxing career. I’m young, they should leave me the fuck alone to explore adulthood, or some shit. But instead I just gave them more ammo.
Cameras flash, but I ignore them. Who the fuck has the time to go stalk someone on a cruise to take photos? And how did they even know I was here?
Not wanting an audience, Jason retreats down the hall, which pisses me off more.
I knew what he was doing, coming up to Olive’s cabin to try and talk to her.
Never mind that he’s here with the woman he cheated on her with; that he’s the world’s biggest prick.
But of course, as soon as he saw me in there with Olive and then the paparazzi, he backed off.
Fucking coward.
“Hey!” I shout at him. He stops for a second, but doesn’t look back. He keeps walking after that, so I shout at him again, “Hey, motherfucker, I said stop.”
I know I sound like a dick, but I don’t care.
He yells something back at me, and it surprises me. But I can’t hear him, and I don’t care what he’s saying. The words are meaningless.
A crowd is growing around us now, and cameras are clicking. Guess there are a few more boxing fans on this cruise than I expected.
Jason stops a few feet from me and turns to spout some garbage at me, but I hear people in the crowd buzzing about me.
“Is that Axel Reign?”
And just like that, I can’t make the distinction between a swanky cruise ship and the ring. I feel the crowd around me, and I can’t make them out from the sweating, screaming hordes in the seats below the ring.
I don’t need a fucking ref for this.
I step forward into my boxing stance and raise my hands. I throw my body weight toward the asshole in front of me, extend my arm until …
Fist hits skin.
Jab, cross, jab, cross.
He tries to hi
t back, but his flailing punch misses my face by a mile.
This fuck doesn’t even know how to throw a punch. Now he’s resorting to kicking at me, and I just want to hurt him.
He’s way outclassed. My advantage over him is enormous, but I don’t think about that. All I can think about is how this guy has hurt my Olive.
I punch him in the gut then hit him square in the nose I probably broke earlier. He falls to the ground, and I’m about to jump on him and keep punching when I hear Olive’s voice.
“Axel! Stop!”
I don’t know when she left the room, and I don’t know if Lark is with her, but I come to my senses immediately. There’s something different about honorably fighting in a ring and beating the shit out of some shithead on the deck of a cruise ship.
Slowly I unclench my fists and gasp for air.
As much as I want to hit him again, I back away.
“I’m sorry, I just … I can’t forget what he did,” I tell Olive, my eyes darting back to the cabin. “Is Lark okay?”
Olive nods, crossing her arms in front of her body. “Selena’s with her.”
I nod, glad for that at least.
And then I realize those cameras never stopped clicking. I turn to look at them and I see a flash of hair and short shorts as Becky runs across the deck, picking up Jason and dragging him away.
We’ll have to deal with being in a confined space with each other. But that doesn’t mean we have to see each other. And if Becky does her job right, I won’t have to deal with Jason, and he won’t have to get his face fucking broken again.
My breathing returns to normal, and I take Olive in my arms. Her head fits perfectly under my chin like it always has, and I love how small she is, and how it feels like I can protect her from anything.
But I can’t convince myself that attacking Jason isn’t as much for her as it is for me. I sigh into her hair, about to close my eyes when the first fan pipes up and asks for my autograph.
Another camera clicks, and I imagine how it looks, me holding Olive in my arms and breathing calmer than I have in ages. She feels right. I’ll have to figure out who that person is and ask for that photo later, but there’s only so much shit I can deal with right now.
