Mess Me Up

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  Rome’s light blue eyes—an unusual color that never failed to captivate me, regardless of whether I saw them in person or in a picture—stared at me.

  He looked like he was trying to take in everything that he could about me—see inside my soul.

  I pulled back and started downstairs, suddenly feeling uncomfortable.

  I didn’t want him to know my secrets—they were dark and debilitating.

  Even I didn’t examine them anymore.

  To acknowledge them gave them power, and nobody would have that power over me ever again—not even me, through my memories.

  “Is this all you do, clean houses?” he asked from behind me.

  I paused with one foot on the stairs, and the other on the top landing, and gave him a look over my shoulder.

  It was the ‘did you just say what I think you just said’ look.

  And it wasn’t a nice one.

  “Yes,” I answered tightly. “This is all I do.”

  He winced.

  “That’s not what I meant.” He blew out a breath. “I was…I was…”

  The fact that he was tongue-tied had my ire calming almost immediately.

  My ex, the second worst man in the world, had said that to me a lot when we’d been together.

  Isadora, is this all that you want out of your life? He’d say. To clean up other peoples’ messes? You’re never going to get any money cleaning houses the way you do. Don’t you want to own a house? A car? Something nice one day?

  “I was just trying to think about what I was going to do over the next couple of days,” he sounded sick to his stomach. “I…Tara is gone.”

  Now that had me turning around to stare at him in astonishment.

  “She’s gone?” I asked. “But…why?”

  Rome swallowed. “Tara says that she couldn’t handle Ty-Ty’s illness anymore. That it hurt too much to see him so sick.”

  It didn’t sound like he believed her excuses, and I wasn’t sure that I did either.

  I’d lost the one and only baby that I’d ever had. She was stillborn, and to this day, years later, it still broke my heart. I just couldn’t understand how any woman could leave their child when that child was fighting for his life. I mean, one day would mean the world to me. If I just had one more day with my baby, my soul would be happy.

  What I wouldn’t give for just one more day…

  But Tara had given him up without a second thought, as though she left him without a care in the world.

  How could she do that?

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized.

  What else was there to say?

  I mean, I didn’t know this man well enough to say anything else without it sounding half-hearted at best.

  Of course, I knew of him. I knew that he was an ex-football player, though many in this town didn’t since he’d grown a beard and had joined a motorcycle club—something you’d never expect a famous ex-football player to do.

  But again, nobody followed his career like I did—compulsively.

  “The reason I asked if it was all that you do was because you know who I am,” he looked at me like he knew what I’d been thinking. “And you know Matias’ situation. I…I need help watching him on the days that I have to work.”

  I gave him a look that clearly said exactly what I was thinking.

  If anybody could afford to watch their kid all day and not work, it was him.

  “Matias doesn’t want me to quit,” he answered my unspoken question. “That was what I was going to do, but he asked me not to.”

  I pursed my lips. “And there are those times that I’m called out on the volunteer fire department.”

  “You’re on the fire department?” I asked in surprise.

  Rome smiled slightly. “Volunteer. Yeah. As of two months ago. I got my peace officer’s license when I started working in the prison. Some of the other guys are on it, too. You’re lucky I haven’t gotten on the bomb squad…yet.”

  I wasn’t touching that comment with a ten-foot pole. Maybe if I didn’t acknowledge it, it wouldn’t happen.

  “Most people, when they’re bored, don’t do dangerous things,” I pointed out. “At least not that dangerous.”

  I felt a flutter of panic hit my chest at the thought of that perfect body of his being burned during a fire he volunteered to help put out.

  Then I immediately cut that thought off at the knees.

  I would not care what happened to him. I would not care what happened to him.

  Caring led to liking…and I didn’t like people.

  At least not anymore.

  But…a certain little boy had slipped under my defenses, and there was no way in hell that I’d tell him no.

  Especially when he’d asked.

  “What days?” I asked carefully.

  Rome swallowed. “You tell me what days you can watch him, and I’ll have my schedule worked around yours.”

  I looked at my watch. I had an hour to finish up the living room and get to the next job—which I sure as hell couldn’t be late for.

  “I can do Mondays, Wednesdays, every other Friday, and Sundays,” I said, sounding snippy.

  Rome looked like he was defeated.

  “That’ll work. I’m going to go part-time, so in all honesty, I should only need you two to three days…as long as there isn’t an emergency,” he explained. “And I have a friend who’ll watch him, too. It shouldn’t be too bad…and if you want, just charge me your cleaning rate, and I’ll pay you at the end of the week. Is that okay?”

  I looked at him. “My cleaning rate is twenty-nine dollars an hour. I’m not going to charge you that much to sit on my butt and watch your cute kid.”

  Rome snorted. “I don’t care what I have to pay. Matias has talked about you on and off since you started cleaning for Tara. I only realized who, exactly, he was talking about just last night.”

  I felt something warm slide through my chest again.

  “Do you want me to start this Friday or wait?” I questioned as I started down the stairs.

  He followed behind me, his silent steps like a hunting cat’s as he ghosted quietly down the stairs. In comparison, I sounded like a herd of buffalo running from that hunting cat.

  “Not tomorrow, no,” he said. “I have a few days off still. I’ll get the new schedule set up on Monday after I talk to my boss.”

  “That won’t be a problem?” I inquired.

  I was practically my own boss, and even I didn’t make changes like that to my schedule without first consulting a few people.

  “My boss is the warden of the prison.” He paused. “And he’s also the Bear Bottoms MC president. I’m fairly sure Bayou won’t care.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that. I knew who Bayou was. I also saw him every Wednesday during visiting hours—though he likely didn’t know who I was. But everyone knew Bayou—it was hard not to know who Bayou was.

  He was a very distinctive man.

  Big, burly, hard inside and out, and he had curly brown hair that didn’t detract from his scariness in the least. He wasn’t huge or anything, just a little over six foot two or three, but he had this air about him that clearly said ‘don’t fuck with me.’ And no one did.

  I guess he’d have to be that way if he was a prison warden—a prison that housed some of the worst criminals in Texas.

  The man in front of me trumped Bayou in size, but when you put the two side-by-side, I could still see the goodness in Rome. But Bayou? Well, I wasn’t sure he even had a soul.

  I honestly didn’t think he’d give Rome a break on his schedule. He didn’t seem like a nice man at all.

  But I didn’t want to get into that subject with him, because if I did, then he’d ask why I knew Bayou as well as I knew him, and then I’d have to tell him other stuff…and, well, that was a vicious cycle I didn’t want to start with him.

  It was better just to leave it be and hope that he
never broached the subject with me.

  I honestly liked that little boy, and I liked this job. I’d rather not lose it.

  If my parents knew that I still visited that prison every week… I shuddered internally at the thought of what I’d lose.

  And I didn’t just mean my job, but my family and my heart all at the same time.

  “Anyway, I should be able to get it all worked out on Monday. If any of it changes, though, I’ll call you…if you give me your number, that is.” Rome’s eyes were on me, and he was making me feel like I was a deer in his headlights.

  I felt those eyes of his piercing right through me.

  I walked over to my purse and pulled out a business card. Grabbing a pen next, I scratched out the number—which was my mom’s because God forbid if every single booking didn’t go through her first—and wrote my cell phone number down.

  Handing it to him, I dropped the pen back in my purse.

  “If those numbers are bad, you should get new cards,” he commented.

  I shrugged. “They’re business cards, and they go to the business phones—which are my mother’s. Plus, I don’t see the point in giving people my direct number since I don’t know from one day to the next what my schedule will be.”

  His brows rose. “Then how are you…”

  I waved him off. “I’ll fix it. Don’t worry,” I hesitated. “I’ll come here, but you can’t expect me to drive him anywhere.”

  His brows rose at that. “I’ll be taking him to his appointments. Other than that, he can’t go anywhere anyway because of his immune system. Which brings me to the next point, if you’re sick…you’re going to have to let me know so I can find other accommodations. I can’t have him being around that.”

  I nodded. “What about if I’m around someone sick?”

  He shrugged. “Do the best you can. If you think you’ve been exposed to something or you’re starting to feel off yourself, then call and let me know. I’m not God, though. We can only do the best we can.”

  That was true enough.

  “Alright,” I said as I picked up the spray bottle as I turned to tackle the windows in the living room. “Sounds good.”

  With that, I went back to work, and when I left later that afternoon, walking down the street with my big bag of cleaning supplies over my shoulder, I had the distinct feeling that I had no clue what I was getting myself into.

  ***

  RP’s Biggest Fan,

  Let’s start over.

  I hope you didn’t take offense to my last letter.

  I think you caught me on a bad day, and I’d never want you to think that I was mad about anything you said.

  Are you happy with your life?

  Other than a few problems here and there, I’m happy with my life—ish.

  There are definitely things I would change, but through that change, I might not have my son. So, it’s definitely a catch-22.

  One day, I hope to fix the things that I’ve broken.

  One day, I hope you fix your broken, too.

  Life’s too short to be unhappy.

  At least that’s what my grandmother always said to me.

  Hope you have a good day.

  Rome.

  P.S. If you could change one thing, what would it be?

  Chapter 3

  There is no quiet anymore. There is only How to Train Your Dragon. This is your life now.

  -Things Rome says to himself every morning

  Rome

  I’m not sure how the hell I ended up actually writing a goddamn letter to one of my fans, but I’ll be damned if that letter didn’t change my life.

  This woman—a woman I didn’t know in real life—knew everything there was to know about me.

  She knew my secrets, my fears, my woes and my doubts. She knew about my best friend, Tyler. She knew about Tara and Matias.

  Hell, she even knew that I didn’t like blueberries.

  It’d all started out fairly innocent. Just a fan letter that my publicist, who usually handled my fan mail, thought I’d like to read.

  I did that on occasion, but I hadn’t read any fan mail since I’d left the game because there wasn’t any. Everyone was pissed at me.

  The last day that I was still technically an NFL player, I got tons of fan mail. At least fifty letters, if not more, a day.

  Then after suddenly announcing my retirement—without really giving a reason—that fan mail had turned to hate mail in the blink of an eye.

  But the letter my publicist sent me didn’t have any hate in it at all.

  I carried that letter around with me everywhere I went, and when I got down or felt discouraged, I’d read it to remind myself that my life wasn’t as bad as it could be.

  Pausing in the middle of the letter I was writing, I pulled it out and started at the beginning—admiring the way my name was spelled in pretty cursive writing.

  Rome,

  I know that you’re probably not going to read this, but I had to try.

  Everyone hates that you left the game…I applaud you.

  Though it hurts that you won’t be out there playing anymore, I know that you had to have had an important reason for leaving. Probably something much bigger than the excuse that your publicist gave about a recurring injury that everyone—including someone like me who only watches football when you’re playing—knows you’ve played through before.

  Anyway, long story short, I wanted to tell you about me.

  I wanted you to know that despite cutting your career short, you gave me hope just knowing that there were kind men out there. You changed the way that I thought about life.

  You made me believe.

  When I was twelve, my father beat the absolute crap out of me because I dared to look at a boy. I suffered a fractured orbital socket and a dislocated jaw, along with a new understanding when it came to boys.

  They were no good—not my father, and not any of those boys who I had crushes on.

  At age sixteen, I got pregnant. At seventeen, I delivered my baby stillborn.

  At seventeen, two days after I delivered my baby, I was thrown out of my house and forced to move into a halfway house for teens until my eighteenth birthday.

  At age eighteen, I graduated from high school, joined the army, and then was medically discharged a year into my service because I’d suffered pelvic stress fractures after a male officer threw me off an obstacle course climb.

  At nineteen, I was back home and forced to work for my parents because I had no experience doing anything but cleaning, and they offered for me to move in with them to recuperate as long as I agreed to work for them for three years.

  During year two of my indentured servitude to my parents, I met a man who I thought was my everything.

  When I was twenty, my brother went to jail for killing the man that killed his partner—he’s a police officer. His partner also happened to be his girlfriend whom he couldn’t bring around our parents because they’re so freakin’ biased in their opinions about what they would consider proper women for their sons—and white American girls weren’t it.

  At twenty-three, two years after meeting the man I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with, I left him at the altar and tried to run.

  I got far enough away that nobody would hear me scream, but not far enough to escape him. Needless to say, he showed me what he thought about me running away, and I realized that I’d almost married my father reincarnated.

  While he was beating me, you were on the screen.

  Your face, and those eyes, were all I could see, and I was staring at you while he kicked me repeatedly in the head, stomach, and ribs—anywhere he could get to.

  You got me through, and you didn’t even know it.

  After…well, after I was healthy once again, I continued to watch your career. Your eyes haunted my dreams, waking and asleep. I realized, the more I watched interviews and saw you playing the game, that you were
one of the good ones. A man with eyes so gentle looking would never treat a woman poorly.

  You got me through my all-time low, and then you got me through some highs.

  I just wanted you to know that you impacted my life.

  Regards,

  RP’s Biggest Fan

  The letter still made my heart ache whenever I read it.

  I hadn’t been able to stop myself from writing her back.

  Surprisingly, she’d written me back, too.

  And that was how the weird pen pal relationship that we now had started.

  She knew my hopes and dreams, my fears. Everything there was to know, she knew it.

  I hadn’t spared a single detail from her. I wanted her to know that she wasn’t the only one out there with a shitty life.

  “Daddy?”

  I looked down at my son, whose head was resting on my thigh. We were vegging out on the couch, and I had a pad and pencil resting on the arm of the couch.

  “Yeah, buddy?” I asked.

  “Is Uncle Tyler coming over tomorrow?” he questioned.

  I felt my stomach warm. “Yeah, he said he was. He’s bringing Reagan, too. They’re going to sit with you for a couple of hours while I go get groceries.”

  Matias smiled. “Will you get me some of Izzy’s cookies?”

  I thought about that. “I can try. I’m not sure I know where to get them, though. She said something about a bakery her grandmother owns, but I have no idea where it is. If I can find out from her, and they’re open tomorrow when I go out, of course I will.”

  I’d do anything for you.

  “Cool,” Matias breathed. “Do you think Hiccup is a good name? I want to get a box tortoise and name him that. Or maybe a dog. What do you think?”

  I thought that dogs were a pain in the ass, and I really, really didn’t want one.

  “Uhh,” I hesitated. “Box tortoises are okay, but I read at the pet store when we went last year that they live for like a hundred and fifty years. That’s going to be a lot longer than both you and I combined…”

  “You can give it to your grandbabies,” he said. “You can leave him to the nicest one in your will.”

  I felt my heart palpitate at the knowledge that my baby still had such hope even when I did not. “I think they’d probably like that.”