by Zoe Dawson
I turned and nudged her forward into my arms and marched her over to the mirror. “This is what he did to you. It hurts to see these bruises on your face. I won’t stay here and put you in danger again. When I’m gone, Ray won’t have any leverage. He’ll leave you alone.”
She stared at me in the mirror, tears catching in her lashes and spilling down her cheeks.
Despite all the reservations I had, despite knowing this had been one big mistake as far as I was concerned, I couldn’t let her think this was meaningless. If nothing else, she had tried to put the past to rest, and I owed her for that. Experiencing a sharp, searing pain in my chest, I turned to her.
I touched her undamaged cheek and looked her in the eyes. “Thank you for everything you have done for me. I will never forget you, Lena.”
“Gunner, I can fix this,” she whispered, tears in her voice. “Just give me a day. Just a day. It will be okay.”
“I can’t risk it. It’s my mom and sister all over again. I have to do this. There is no other way. They want me. I’m the common denominator. If I leave, they have no power.”
She started to say something, but I gently covered her mouth. “Don’t, okay? I can only take so much. I don’t want to spend my last minutes with you hashing this out all over again. So let’s just leave it. Say goodbye, babe.”
Making a choking sound, she tightened her arms around me and pressed her face into the curve of my neck, then started to cry. I didn’t say anything, and I didn’t try to stop her. I just hung on to her with all the love and the strength I could muster. And let her tears rip me to shreds from the inside out.
Chapter 18
Helena
I banged on my dad’s door with a frantic beat. It wasn’t long before he pulled it open, dressed in his robe.
“Lena, for the love of God, it’s five in the morn…What the hell happened to your face? What’s wrong?” His eyes were dark with concern.
“Nothing I can’t fix. I need to talk to you.” I slipped into the house, and even with all the turmoil churning inside me, I noticed the difference right away. My father’s somber house had turned into a haven of warmth and color. Cinnamon and coral with deep golds. I would consider it breathtaking if I weren’t preoccupied with saving my world and getting Gunner back.
Nothing was going to stop me from getting him back.
I knew where he was going. I was sure of it.
I stopped just shy of the living room doorway. Keke stood there, her hair in dark disarray around her shoulders, a worried look on her face. She was in this gorgeous silk kimono robe that looked hand painted.
“Keke.”
“Hello, sweetheart,” she said and opened her arms. It was exactly what I needed. I hugged her hard and willed away the thickness in my throat. I’d already cried all the tears I was going to cry. Now it was time for action.
She kept her arm around me as we went into the living room and together sat down on the couch. My dad blustered in and sat across from us. “Who did this to you?”
“Gunner’s gone, and it has everything to do with my face.”
“Talk to me before I lose my temper, Helena.”
“Before I tell you what happened, I have to confess something.”
“Go on.”
“I have been seeing Gunner in secret.”
“Did he do this to you?” he said through clenched teeth, looking ready to go off like a firecracker.
“No, it wasn’t him,” I said quickly to diffuse the anger that my father might be directing at Gunner.
“Helena…”
“It was his father and he’s been arrested and is in jail. He and Ray Canton have been plotting to force Gunner back to hiring Ray as his agent and go back to surfing. He attacked me tonight because I refused to bow out and allow them to leverage me against him. But it’s bad, Dad. Gunner left.” I choked up and he rose and pulled me against him.
“We’ll make this right, sweetheart,” he said in soft tones.
“I’ll quit.” I sobbed. “I’ll do anything to make sure that Gunner succeeds, that Mavrick isn’t compromised. I’ve always wanted to win. It was everything to me. I went to school and got my MBA so that I could be more competitive. I thought that’s all I had to do to be competitive. Then I met Gunner, and he taught me that winning is everything when it means something. His greatest achievement is that his competitive spirit is about substance and staying true to himself. He deserves this. He’s worked so hard and given up so much. Nitor is knocking, Dad, but Gunner walked away for me, sacrificing everything for me. I’ve got to make this right.”
He looked into my face and said, “Do you love him?”
I closed my eyes to keep my composure. “Yes. I do, Daddy.”
“All right. Then we need to get busy and figure out what to do. Tell me everything.”
Chapter 19
Gunner
I pulled onto I-15, glad that Lena was no longer a forlorn figure in my rearview, still dying a little more with every mile I put between us. Dying inside anyway. I didn’t regret one moment I spent with my McHotstuff. She had been true to her word, but with the double threat hanging over her head, I couldn’t stay and still face myself in a mirror. Giving everything else up. That was the easy part. Giving Lena up, that opened up a hollow ache inside me I didn’t think could ever be filled again.
I hit some leftover LA rush-hour traffic that slowed me down but forced me to focus on the road and less on myself. I blew through Barstow, left California, and crossed over into the bottom tip of Nevada before noon, tearing up the miles. The weather was sunny and clear when I rolled past Vegas, and I was thankful for that. I didn’t want to think too deeply about what I was doing. It was a snap decision and something I had wanted to do for years. I wasn’t going to second-guess myself.
When I hit Utah, my stopping point, Cedar City, at just a smidge less than halfway to Denver, it was getting dark. I got a motel room, grabbed a shower, and went to get a meal. Afterward, I went to bed, but instead of sleeping, I looked at the ceiling.
Hurting like a son of a bitch, I thought how strong Lena had been. Telling me with such conviction she could fix it. One more thing to love about her. I felt like a jerk for not telling her how I felt about her, and my gut clenched, knowing that she had every reason to believe what had happened between us was nothing more than an affair.
But it wasn’t. It had been more than that. One hell of a lot more. More than I expected it to ever be. More than I deserved?
Feeling like an even bigger jerk for hauling my butt out of there without giving her a chance to show me she could handle it surged through me. But how could I risk her and Mavrick after all they had done for me?
She had held nothing back, and her passion and her dedication had all been genuine. She had my back every step of the way; there was no doubt about that. But it was the look on her face when she saw the bag and knew I was leaving. That look would haunt me for a long time to come. I didn’t know if it was guilt or regret, but my throat closed up every time that image took shape in my mind, and the hollow feeling in my chest expanded a little more.
Lena and goodbye just didn’t fit. The minute I had set eyes on her, it had been like quicksand—once I was in, there was no damned way I could get out.
I wasn’t sure what woke me up—maybe it was because the room had turned cold, maybe it was the sound of rain tapping on the roof. Or maybe it was the fact that I was missing the warmth of her beside me. It was dark, but the clock told me it was predawn.
It was the kind of wakefulness that was sharp and clear, with no blurred edges from a deep sleep or half-forgotten dreams. I got up then, desperate to get my mind off the fact I was putting distance between me and what mattered most in my life.
I tried to turn off my mind as I cranked up the radio and zoomed through Beaver and Cove Fort. I pulled off and gassed up for the next one-hundred-mile stretch where there was no gas and no phone service. As I hit I-70 in the early afternoon and cruised through
an area with some amazing rock formations, I could only think how barren this area was and now, how barren my life was.
As soon as I hit civilization again, I stopped at a diner and ate listlessly. After almost two days of driving, I was stiff and thought I would ride for a bit, just to clear my head. I got my board out of the car and, since there wasn’t much to this small town, did some flat ground kicks and flips.
I didn’t realize I had an audience until I came down on the board after a 360 hardflip and people were clapping. A teenager approached me, grinning. “That’s some great riding, bro. You should go pro.”
There was an explosion inside of me, and I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I stared at the kid, but said nothing as I backed up and jumped back in the car, driving like I was being chased by demons. I was breathing hard, too hard. I pulled over to the side of the road. I dropped my head to the wheel, trying to get my breathing even again.
As I sat there, the anger came rumbling back. Part of it—the surface level of it—was from having to leave Lena.
The rest of it was a dark shadow in me, shimmering deep below the surface. I stared straight ahead. I had vowed I would never let it get away from me, and he’d pushed me too far. He had finally seen what I was capable of, knew what it felt like to let the anger have control.
Was that what I was running from?
I got out of the car and sat on the hood, folding my arms over my chest. I was a moron. An idiot.
I couldn’t outrun myself or the hollow feeling in my gut.
It was my biggest fear, and I had lost it that night in front of Lena. I had let the beast out, and then I had panicked, thinking I wouldn’t be able to get it back into its cage. But that’s not what I had to do. Corralling that anger and resentment all these years my dad blackmailed me when all of it needed to be freed. It needed that outlet to purge me of its effects so that I could move forward in my life.
Being a skater meant living life differently, in pursuit of something elusive. It meant searching for something within myself every time I stepped on my board. Skating was about something my dad could never, never understand. There was an infinite variety of possible maneuvers, but there weren’t any rules that said who had to do what trick when, or that anybody had to do them at all. There were ways of expressing oneself on a skateboard that weren’t possible in other sports, a confrontation with physical and mental limitations that led to gracefulness and style and transcendental moments.
This was my transcendental moment. I was standing on the edge of it right now. My heart beat in rhythm with the knowledge of taking back my life for real. Not just playing at it. Not just saying I would do it and then cracking at the first big contest. Because Lena had taken a direct hit physically and that had destroyed me.
Violence, something that I had avoided for so long, had taken over when I’d beaten my dad for hurting her. I thought it had broken me.
But I was the one with the power, and all I had to do was believe in that power. Believe in the woman who had cared for nothing more than seeing me succeed, seeing me happy and fulfilled. That was her only goal, and I had thrown it in her face, let my dad kill me and trample over my corpse. But I held my own destiny in my hands, and I wanted to take it all the way.
I had sacrificed myself to protect my mom and sister. At the time, I had no choice. I was a child and couldn’t make the decisions that would save me from what my dad wanted of me.
But I wasn’t a kid anymore. I was a man. I was my own man, and running wasn’t an option, hiding wasn’t an option. Standing up and fighting. That was my choice. Whatever it took. I was crossing over that line of fear and fucking getting to the other side.
Because everything…everything I wanted was there. My career, my self-respect, my strength, my courage, and…my love. The fucking love of my life.
I realized that I had turned to skateboarding because it was inherently in conflict with authority. It didn’t spawn my rebellious behavior. It nurtured it. The solitary challenges of skill and technique that make skating resistant to regulation and an element of total participant control cannot be judged or quantified—and neither could I. No matter how much acceptance it had gained or how much it got exploited, skating had stayed true to its rebellious roots—and on many levels always would.
Just as I had many levels to be true to myself.
Riding high, falling hard, again and again, but with a tenacity and desire to get up again and again—nicks, cuts, and scrapes, aches and pain, the scars knit together to make me tougher. Tough enough to get up and do it all over, not to get it right, but just because doing it was right.
I wasn’t afraid anymore. Skating made me indomitable, and I could apply that to my life.
I got into the car with a renewed purpose and flew through the last miles to reach a beautiful turn-of-the-century house on a quiet, tree-lined street.
When I pulled up, I noticed a sold sign in the yard and a moving van in the driveway. My heart lurched because I was so close to missing them.
I got out of the car and started up the drive. A middle-aged woman came out of the house, and my heart stopped. Her black hair was long, in a loose braid down her back. Her brown eyes matched mine, right down to the green flecks. She looked up and saw me, stopping dead in her tracks, her eyes widening with shock, and the look that swept across her face left me feeling so damned cherished, it hurt to breathe.
“Mom,” I said, my voice breaking and gruff.
She stared at me, then she covered her eyes with her hand, and I saw her chest heave. She exploded into movement, dropping the box and running toward me. I think I ran, too. I just knew it seemed to take an eternity to get to her.
“Oh my God, Gunner. My baby.” She pushed back. “Let me look at you. Oh God, so handsome. So grown up. I have missed you so much.” She was crying.
“I missed you, too, Mom.”
There was a shout of pleasure, then I heard, “Gunner!” and a beautiful, slender ball of energy with caramel-brown hair slammed into us, knocking us right over onto the grass.
She peppered my face with kisses, and both my mom and I started laughing. I clutched them both to me. “I’m glad to see you, too, Maddy.”
“She told us you were coming, and we could hardly believe it. I’m so happy to see you. You almost missed us. We’re moving to San Diego. We’re going back to be near you.”
Hope was like a live thing inside me. “She?”
It was then I saw the sun bounce off deep auburn hair, and my heart stopped for the second time, then started beating double time, so full I could barely absorb it all.
Lena stood on my mom’s porch with a huge smile on her face and tears in her eyes.
I got up, untangling myself from my sister and my mom. I walked toward her. I made it up the stairs, and when I reached her, I was sure what I would see in her eyes.
“Gunner,” she said, her voice husky, taking my hand and lacing her fingers through mine. “I love you. I’m here because I’m ready to go wherever it is you want to go. All I want is you. Nothing else matters. Nothing. I would consider that a total win. You mean everything to me.”
“Lena, I love you, too.” I tightened my hold on her hand, taking the step over that line to everything I wanted. “I want to be with you, too. I should never have left. I should have believed in you. I know that now.” I took a cleansing breath and brought her hand up to my mouth, kissing her palm. Her expression softened, and she leaned in and kissed my bruised knuckles. “My dad abused me with his words and his fists until I didn’t know who I was anymore. I never had any say or autonomy.”
“Gunner—”
Her tone said that I didn’t have to explain, but I wanted to. “I need to tell you this.”
She nodded. “All right. I’m listening.”
I pulled her against me and the instant our bodies connected she turned her face into my chest and grabbed the back of my shirt, a sigh of contentment going through her. My lungs suddenly tight, I gave her a
hard squeeze. “I sacrificed everything for my mom and sister, and I guess I didn’t know how to get back from that. Until you. You brought me back. You believed in me when I was at the lowest point in my life. You stuck by me even though your job and your company were on the line.” I dragged open the door and led her inside, trying to let go of her, but there was something about the way she was gripping my hand that got to me. Really got to me. I couldn’t let go, not when she was holding on so tight.
“You went against the rules and opened up to me. My dad threatened you, and he hurt you…but you never gave up on me. Still. On the drive here I realized that skateboarding is not just freedom to me. It’s mine. It’s always been mine, and there’s nothing that can take that away. I’ve made the decision to compete, Lena, not just for you or for Max, but for me. I’m not going to let the fear of the unknown or what my father has done in the past deter me from following through on this amazing opportunity you’ve given me. So that’s why I’m going back with you.”
I tried to smile as I stroked her bruised cheek with my thumb.
She stared at me for an instant, then she closed her eyes and settled back against me. Closing my own eyes, I held on to her with all the love and strength I had in me.
She released a shaky sigh. “I’m so happy about that because you deserve this, Gunner. Everything is going to be all right. I told my dad everything, and we’ve been working on a solution. After you kiss me, I’ll lay everything out. Then we’ll get a good night’s sleep and head back to San Diego.”
Shaking my head, I pressed my thumb against her mouth. “I should have known you’d have a plan. McHotstuff is on the job,” I said.
“That’s right. Don’t you forget it. Now kiss me, Skater Boy.”
I would never forget it again. She was mine, and I was going to ramrod my way into my future like a fully loaded battalion of Marines, guns blazing. “I won’t.” I cupped her face. “This is a win/win situation,” I said, dropping my mouth down on hers for the sweetest kiss I’d ever gotten in my life.
