The last was said with a pride that rang false. Whatever front she was trying to put on, my mother wasn’t the best of liars either, and I could tell she was ready to quit herself. Quit what, I didn’t know. But she sounded brittle. At the end of her rope. God, I knew how that felt. The dread that had been dogging me all week since they’d first told me about their financial issues came back, hard.
“Any news on the house? Did something else happen?”
“No,” she said quickly. Too quickly? “Nothing you need to worry about. I just called to check in and see if you made it on the plane.”
I waited for her to tell me to at least come home for the week, but she didn’t. Part of me was relieved. As lonely as I was here, for some reason, I didn’t want to leave right now. Another part of me grew even more suspicious. They were definitely hiding something.
“Well, now you know. I’m still at school, and I’m fine, so don’t worry.” And I’ll see you over Easter weekend, I added silently. Once I’d squared everything away with Andy, I’d be in a better frame of mind to go down to Connecticut and get to the bottom of whatever was happening with my parents. One crisis at a time.
“Okay, well, Dad and I love you and we’ll talk to you soon.”
“Love you too.”
I disconnected and a second later the phone rang again. I answered it quickly, assuming my mom forgot to tell me something. “Yeah?”
“Hey.”
Bash. For real this time. I sank back onto the mattress, my legs suddenly weak. I thought I’d have hours to think of what to say before I talked to him again. Hours to work on witty banter, scintillating conversation, and, yeah, maybe even a few jokes. Now here I was again, at a loss, mouth opening and closing like a trout on a hook.
“Hello?” he said, a little louder this time.
I considered gurgling into the phone and playing the bad connection card, but instead I squared my shoulders and cleared my throat. You can do this. He’s just a guy. “Yep, I’m here. How are you?”
“Good. I was actually calling because I have a few hours free this afternoon and wondered if you still wanted some self-defense lessons.”
“Really?” My heart beat wildly in my chest and I stood because I couldn’t stand to sit for another second. He hadn’t seemed exactly keen when I’d asked him the night before, but something must have changed his mind. Especially if they didn’t even have any classes running and he was offering to teach me one-on-one. Either he was bored, or thought I realllly needed them.
Didn’t matter which. He was right, I did need them. Not for Andy. For myself.
“I’d love that. I can come by at like noon and we c—”
“No.” His tone had gone from warm to cool and clipped in an instant. “Can we do it there? Your dorm has a fitness center or something we can use, right?”
It had been a momentary blip and he seemed casual and friendly again a second later, but clearly he didn’t want me at his gym. Why was that? He’d mentioned he lived in the apartment upstairs. Maybe he had a live-in girlfriend?
The thought hadn’t even occurred to me until now, but once it had, I couldn’t shake it. Still, it would’ve been super weird to counter his friendly offer to help me with some self-defense moves by then asking if he was in a relationship. Like, what did that have to do with anything? Unless, of course, I thought this was a date.
Which I didn’t.
I tugged at the curl that flopped over my eyes and tamped back my irrational jealousy. Bash wasn’t my boyfriend and whether he had a girlfriend or not was none of my business.
“Yeah, here’s fine. We have a really nice gym, so come on over. Nobody’s here anyway, so we’ll have the place to ourselves.”
That hadn’t sounded nearly as suggestive in my head, but now that it was out there, it was all I could do not to fall headlong into a daydream about Bash and me sprawled on one of those soft blue mats—
“Sounds good. I’ll be there around noon.”
Fabulous. Three hours to obsess over what to wear…and work on my witty banter.
***
“Cold enough out there for you?”
I winced even as the words tumbled from my lips. The last time I’d heard that phrase it had come courtesy of my eighty-year-old uncle Ernie. Why my brain had bypassed all those “witty little banters” I had stockpiled and gone for that crusty gem, I’d never know, but Bash took it in stride and gave me a crooked half smile.
“Yeah. Pretty chilly.”
I shoved back my embarrassment, swung the door wide, and waved him in. The weather had taken another turn, and they were calling for snow, which at the moment sounded lovely. Maybe it would cool off my flaming cheeks. This really had to stop. Surely I had more game than this? But I still couldn’t quite believe he’d shown up. I half expected him to cancel or blow me off, and here he was, in the flesh. Now what to do with him?
My face got even hotter and I stuck my head outside to let the brisk wind cool it off before closing the door.
Bash turned to face me, waving me on to lead the way. His gaze traveled downward, seeming to linger on the narrow strip of bare skin at my abdomen between my yoga pants and my T-shirt. When he locked eyes with me again, his pupils were dilated and made my insides jiggle a little.
I headed toward the gym, very conscious of the fact that he might possibly be looking at my ass as he followed behind. “I have a couple bottles of water in there already for us,” I said, throwing a glance over my shoulder. Busted. He didn’t snap his head back to try to hide it, either. He just slowly let his baby blues travel the rest of the way back up my body. A thrill shimmered through me, but I made sure to keep my tone loose. “I wasn’t sure what else you might need, but they have a ton of equipment there.”
He patted the beat-up khaki duffel bag I hadn’t noticed on his shoulder and gave a curt nod. “All set.”
We walked the rest of the way in silence, but my brain was buzzing like a bee in a sack. Bash was here to help me learn how to protect myself. That was it. Guys looked at girls’ asses all the time. It meant less than nothing. I needed to stop pretending it was more. Not just because he was totally wrong for me. But because the last thing I needed right now was more. If I could end the week with a few kick-ass moves that gave me some peace of mind, and a new friend of sorts, that would be my best week in months.
With renewed determination, I swiped the key card through the reader and shoved open the gym door.
As I had predicted, like the rest of the building, the room was still uninhabited. There was an RA who was required to stay in the dorm whether school was in session or not, but she only came here to sleep, and I’d yet to see her. We did, indeed, have the place to ourselves.
Bash stepped in and let out a low whistle. “Wow.”
I tried to see the gleaming, high-end machines and ballet barre along with the unattended smoothie bar in the corner through his eyes. It was all so…fussy.
I wrinkled my nose critically. “Too much?”
He laughed and slung his bag on the floor in front of the mirror that ran the length of the west wall. “For what we’re going to be doing? Definitely, but it works.” He was wearing the same coat he had on the other night, and this time, when he took it off, I thought I was totally was prepared.
And then I wasn’t.
The T-shirt had been bad enough, but the black tank top was the stuff of dreams. His shoulders were broad, with a thick cord of muscle running over the top. His biceps were round and defined even in rest, as he bent to lay his jacket on the floor next to the water bottles I’d left.
A dozen totally unwitty banters bubbled to my mouth in a frenzy of panicked nerves, and I swallowed every one.
Progress.
I set my key card and cell phone on the ground next to Bash’s stuff and faced him.
“Let’s start with a few quick stretches,” he said, straightening. He stood a few feet away from me and demonstrated quickly. Somehow, I managed to keep it together as he l
ed me through a three-minute routine of standard toe touches and whatnot.
It wasn’t easy. Every move he made highlighted another section of his body I hadn’t fully admired yet. After the first minute, I decided to keep my gaze locked on the floor until this part was over. Surely once we got to the nitty and the gritty, I’d be too focused to notice the way his chest tapered down to a lean waist that surely led to one of those sexy V’s of muscle that I’d only seen on television.
When we finished, he took a second to dig through the bag and came up with some worn black mitts. “First thing I want to do is make sure you know how to throw a punch. Not because it’s your best defense. It’s not.” He leaned in and held out a clenched fist. “But sometimes it’s a gut reaction, and if you’re going to do it, you should do it right or you can really hurt yourself.”
I held my arm out and mimicked him, squeezing my fingers together to form a tight ball.
“Nope, loosen up a little.” He took my hand and the touch was electric. We both stayed there, frozen for second, but he recovered quickly and tapped my thumb lightly. “Not to the side like that. Cross it over your index and middle fingers.”
I swallowed hard and did as he told me, earning a low grunt of approval.
He let me go, stepping back, and I felt instantly bereft. I didn’t have time to think too hard about it, though, because then it got serious. He tugged on the mitts and patted them together, bending at the knee until he was almost my height. “Don’t punch hard for now. Just try to be accurate and fast, okay?”
I nodded, the nerves kicking up butterflies in my stomach. What if I sucked at it? I took a halfhearted swing, and hit his left mitt with a pathetic thunk.
He stood straight and gave me a deadpan stare before hunkering down again. “Be for real. Snap the arm out, and try to connect with your first two knuckles. They have the most structural and wrist support so you get more power from them, and those bones are also way less likely to break on impact.”
Well, that was an excellent tip, because the last thing I wanted was to punch someone who was trying to hurt me and wind up hurting myself.
I tried as he asked, still feeling self-conscious and tentative. A few minutes later, though, under his soft words of encouragement, I started to let it rip, just whaling away. It was both exhausting and cathartic and I loved every second of it. I would’ve kept going but he straightened and stepped back.
“Good enough. It takes a lot of stamina so don’t overdo it. We’re not trying to make a boxer out of you, although with that kind of speed, you’ve got some great tools for it.”
My already sweat-dampened skin warmed with pleasure at the compliment as he yanked the mitts off and tossed them on the floor.
“What we want to focus most of our attention on is doing exactly enough to get out of a bad situation. You’re small. You’re not built to whoop anybody’s ass, and that’s okay. You just need to disarm them long enough to get the fuck out of there, okay?” His gaze was serious and he seemed unwilling to look away until I answered what I’d thought was a rhetorical question.
“Yeah, got it,” I said and bent at the waist to suck in a breath. Boxing was hard. I couldn’t imagine doing that round after round. Nobody would have to punch me. They’d just need a little patience. After ten minutes, I’d fall to the floor all on my own.
“One of the most important things to remember about basic self-defense is to go for the soft spots. Eyes, neck, or balls, if you’ve got a shot at ‘em.”
He demonstrated several moves. A knee to the groin, eye gouging, and then he showed me how to slam the heel of my hand into someone’s nose.
Bash stood still and let me practice on him. I’d gotten comfortable with several of the moves, and was about to run through them again when he abandoned the statue routine and rushed at me. His hand came up like he was going to strike me and I didn’t have a chance to think. I just acted, covering my face and turning away. A whirlwind second later, I found myself face-first against the mirror with my hands behind my back and Bash’s body pinning me in place.
For the first time since he’d arrived I realized I should probably be afraid. I’d invited a guy I hardly knew to the nearly deserted hall, assuring him in advance that I had no idea how to protect myself, and now here I was, helpless. In hindsight, it seemed like sheer idiocy. But for some reason, even as I stood there, still gasping for air, the fear never came. Somehow I knew with total certainty that Bash would never hurt me.
At least, not physically.
Our gazes locked in the mirror and his jaw flexed before he let me go. His voice sounded think when he finally spoke. “If you come back at me like that, I can use your momentum against you. That can work whether you’re big or small. Want me to show you how to do it?”
I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and nodded. Hell yeah, I did. Plus, it would give me a much needed couple of minutes to collect myself. Being pinned against anything by Bash McDaniels wasn’t something I’d forget anytime soon.
It took a while for him to show me, but I caught on to the mechanics of it relatively fast. Soon, we were going at it. We probably looked like lunatics rushing at each other like a pair of bulls in a pen, but eventually, I got him. Pinned him good, and let out a shout of victory. “Oh, yeah! Whoot!”
He broke free easily and laughed. “Good. But ideally you don’t want to try to hold someone bigger than you. You’d just work with that momentum to try to get them to the ground and then—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know, get the fuck out of there. Got it, coach.”
A grudging smile lit his face, even reaching his eyes, before he grew serious again. “Olivia, I know you think you know him, but Andy…” He blew out a sigh and ran a hand through his bristly dark hair. “What happened in that bathroom is going to happen again if you let it. I’ve seen it too many times before. These kinds of things almost never get better. In fact, they usually get worse and worse. And if you think breaking up with him is going to be easy, or safe, think again. You need to be prepared for the worst. Maybe do it somewhere public.”
I padded over to the corner of the room and picked up one of the water bottles. Whether what he was saying was true or not, I didn’t want to hear it. Not yet. Andy had been a friend for years, and the thought that this new side of him was a permanent addition, or that he was going to get physical with me when I tried to leave him, made me want to throw up.
“You don’t know him, Bash.” I took a slug from the water bottle to ease the sudden ache in my throat.
“I know his kind. I lived with his kind.” The words seemed like they were torn from him rather than offered, and that soft mouth turned into a bleak line. “If I’m wasting my time here, let me know now. I have a policy against helping people who don’t want to help themselves. I’m not in that business anymore.”
My own discomfort over his dismissal of Andy as a person was overridden by the solemn tone, which wrapped a fist around my heart and squeezed. I wanted to ask who had let him down. Who had hurt him. But his face was a mask now and I could feel him pulling away.
“I think we’ve done enough for today.”
As he popped a squat to load his duffel bag, the urge to beg him to stay for a while longer was overwhelming. I didn’t want our time together to end this way. For once, I just wanted things to be normal. I’d only turned twenty-one a couple weeks before, but I felt like I’d aged ten years in the past few months. Why couldn’t I be young, and carefree, and the two of us be just two people enjoying each other’s company? And what would it have been like if I’d known him before? Before Andy. And before whatever awful thing had happened to Bash to make him so mistrusting.
Somehow, during all that wishful thinking, my legs had carried me toward him and I had closed the gap between us. When he stood again we were so close that his body brushed against mine.
His hard mask slipped away, leaving behind a pained expression. "What are you doing, Olivia?" His breath was warm against my lips and I ti
pped my face toward him like a flower to the sun.
"I don't know,” I whispered, rocking forward onto my tiptoes. It was like I was on autopilot. “I just need to…"
And then I did it.
I leaned in that last little inch.
I wish I could say I thought it through, but my brain wasn’t part of the process. It was all feels. Like my very soul was straining toward his, and my body was just a shell waiting for direction from somewhere deep inside me. I couldn't have stopped it if I tried.
When our mouths touched what felt like an eternity later, the room seemed to let out a sigh.
Thisss.
This was the thing I’d been waiting to feel. The thing people wrote about in books and sang of in songs. The thing that made the pain of the past few weeks fade away until there was nothing left except me and Bash.
An instant later, the kiss went from sweet to off the rails. A low growl came from deep in his throat and he closed his hands over my hips, thumbs pressing into my flesh in a way that turned my stomach into a pool of taffy. His mouth slanted over mine and teeth and tongues clashed like it was war.
And it was. A war inside me, at least. My brain had popped back into gear and I knew with every fiber of my being that what I was doing was wrong. I needed to stop, but my body was so not on board with that plan. Instead, I pressed closer, mashing my breasts to his chest, moaning into his mouth when the heat of his skin seeped into mine.
More.
He anchored me to him, crowding me backward until I felt the chill of the mirror against my back. Our bodies were flush now, and he speared a hand through my hair.
It was madness. All-consuming madness.
"Olivia?"
He'd pulled back a scant inch to mutter my name before dipping back in to nip my bottom lip hard. I gasped, stunned at the sensation. It stung, but sent a bolt of need slamming through me so hard, my knees trembled.
"Liv?" he tried again, before tracing my bottom lip with the tip of his tongue.
Fix You, Bash and Olivia Book One Page 5
