Grudge Match

by Jessica Gadziala

  Which she promptly insisted I return.

  She wasn't raised to want all that material crap.

  So, instead I spoiled her with loyalty, with my time, with my attention. It wasn't exactly like I had a choice anyway. When she was around, that was all I wanted to focus on. I was pretty sure I didn't notice another woman in all the time we had been together. For me, there was simply her. No one else would ever come close, so there was no reason even to see them.

  But today was the one-year anniversary to the night of events that led to us meeting.

  Maybe most people would celebrate the night they first kissed, first had sex, first said I love you.

  But, for me, that night, the night when my headlights caught sight of a foot, that was the night my entire fucking life changed.

  Was there darkness mixed with the light? Yes. But that was life. That was, especially, my life.

  That night was the first time I even saw a sliver of light.

  It needed to be celebrated.

  "What? Couldn't splurge on one of those designer ones?" Adler asked when I walked into the penthouse.

  There was no use being surprised he was hanging around. I swore that half the time when I got there, he was hanging out, ordering room service, watching TV, taking a fucking bath.

  I looked down into the box as I put it on the coffee table, inspecting the squiggling, butt-wiggling, floppy-eared, multi-colored puppy inside.

  "This one looks like one of the ones she has as a key-topper," I explained.

  "It's a good gift," he agreed, reaching into the box to rub the ears of the whining Bassett Hound puppy I had paid a small fortune for. "I was walking her to the coffee shop last week and she fucking squealed every time she passed a dog, asking if she could pet the damn things."

  She totally did that.

  She squealed.

  It was why I knew that no matter how many hoops I had to jump through, it would be worth it to see her finally get the puppy she always wanted, but was never allowed to have in any of the places she had lived.

  "She's going to be home in twenty," I said a bit pointedly.

  I was happy to have Adler around for a lot, but an anniversary celebration was not one of those situations.

  "Yeah yeah yeah," he said, giving the dog one more scratch before standing up. "Ya need me to leave in case she wants to thank ya naked," he declared, moving toward the door. Where he paused, then turned back, an odd look in his eyes I didn't recognize. "You're a lucky fuck, Ward. We all got out of that basement. But I think you're the only one who is free of it."

  With that, he was gone.

  And I only had ten minutes to think on that before I heard the elevator ding and the jiggling of her keys as she put them in her purse.

  Because the dog was whimpering in the box, there was no way to keep him a secret until she walked over.

  I picked him up, moved a few feet closer to the door, and waited.

  "Oh," she said, shocking back, possibly not expecting me. "You're... oh my God!"

  There it was.

  The squeal.

  She rushed toward me, reaching out to frame his face, murmuring to him about how cute he was, how nice his ears were, what great soulful eyes he had, how much she loved him.

  Her head turned up, eyes glistening.

  "Happy anniversary," I told her, feeling the sensation spreading across my chest, no less strong than it was the very first time.

  Love.

  So much that I swear it felt like my chest was going to burst.

  "You remembered," she said, leaning in, resting her head on my shoulder even as she kept petting the puppy's head.

  "Of course I did."

  "They're not allowed here," she insisted, an edge to her tone, like she couldn't take it if she had to give him up.

  "Everything is allowed here if you are convincing enough."

  She pulled back at that, eyes dancing, lips twitching.

  "You bribed them, didn't you?"

  I wasn't sure about her tone, so I started carefully, "I know you don't like when I spend a lot of money on..."

  "Whatever it was," she cut me off, beaming up at me, "it was worth every penny."

  It sure as fuck was if she was giving me that look.

  "So that's the way around it, huh? I can only spend money on you if it is in the form of a four-legged, fur-covered animal?"

  "That sounds about right," she agreed, smirking.

  "I think I'm gonna need to look into buying a fucking farm."

  Adalind - 2 years

  We never discussed it.

  I guess we were just too wrapped up in ourselves, in our own little slice of heaven, in our little family we had built with my parents, Adler, and long-eared, lazy, adorable, howling Neville.

  There was no rush.

  I was quite a bit younger than Ross.

  I had time.

  If I wanted to go that route.

  And, quite frankly, I was happy either way.

  I was completely fulfilled with what I already had.

  But sometimes life had other plans for you.

  I was happy to take it in stride, consider it just another adventure to take on.

  I just wasn't sure that Ross would see it that way.

  I mean, with his childhood, I couldn't blame him if he didn't want to go there, to be a parent, to have to relive his own trauma, try to work through the issues so he didn't create a cycle.

  Though, if his mind was going there, I was going to really need to have a talk with him.

  Because, quite frankly, no matter what happened to him, it had made him into a man who cared and loved more deeply than any other I had ever known.

  Not just me.

  But he also loved Adler.

  My parents.

  He was nothing like his mother.

  He was not the darkness he used to see himself as.

  He had so, so much more to give.

  I was praying he would see it that way.

  "Hey Adalind," Igor greeted me, walking through Hex in a suit I still wasn't used to seeing him in.

  But he was a businessman now.

  His restaurant opened just two weeks before.

  I got a table, just as promised.

  Then proceeded to have about a dozen foodgasms over the course of the meal.

  He looked nice in a suit. It somehow made him look even bigger, if that was possible.

  "Is he with anyone?" I asked, feeling my belly wobble around ominously, making me glad I hadn't eaten anything that morning.

  "Nah, we just finished up. You look really nice today," he told me as he passed, brows drawn together like he couldn't figure out what it was that was different.

  God... was I doing that glowing thing they always talk about?

  I hoped to hell not.

  I didn't want my glow to give it away before my lips could.

  I had been practicing what to say all morning since I took my third test, figuring that not all three could be wrong, and it was time to fill him in.

  "Yeah?" he asked, hearing footsteps from where he was bent over his desk looking at something, clearly not expecting me.

  And why would he?

  I was supposed to be at work.

  And I hardly ever came to Hex unless I wanted to see a fight.

  "Hey," I said, shuffling my feet a bit in the doorway, watching his head snap up, eyes raking over me like it was the first time.

  "Addy?" he asked, brows drawn together, quickly pushing his paperwork aside, and moving his chair backward, inviting me over. "What are you doing here? Is something wrong?"

  "Ah... I'm not sure."

  "You're not sure?" he asked, getting more tense as I crossed over toward him. His hands moved out to my hips, pushing me back so I sat on the desk and he could watch me. "What's going on?" he asked, tone serious. Ross in manly fix-it mode. I usually loved manly fix-it mode. It was hot. It usually led to very rough, very hot sex. But right now, I wasn't so sure if that was the rig
ht mindset for him to be in.

  "I need to tell you something..." I hedged, taking a deep breath.

  "I'm listening," he said when I didn't go on.

  Ross, well, he was a man who liked to take things straight, no mixer, no chaser.

  So that was what I gave him.

  "I'm pregnant."

  The pause after that announcement felt like the longest fifteen seconds of my life.

  I felt like his words weren't just on pause, but the whole world was as well.

  My whole world at least.

  His chair scooted forward, his hands going on my knees, and giving me a little squeeze.

  "Can you fucking imagine Adler with a kid?" he asked, making my heart finally start beating again.

  A big smile pulled at my lips at the very idea.

  "No. Not at all."

  He moved closer still, reaching up to drag me down onto his lap. "This is what you were shuffling your feet nervous to tell me?" he asked, hand moving up to frame my jaw.

  "I just... we've never talked about kids," I told him. "Not even as a concept, let alone a possibility for us."

  "To be honest, it wasn't something I ever really thought about. I had you. I never thought I would even get that. It seemed selfish to want anything more."

  "But now that you know there is going to be more?" I pressed, not wanting to brush it under the rug, wanting to drag it out, and see what was there. Every bit of it.

  His shoulder shrugged slightly. "You're going to be an amazing mother, Addy. You come from a long line of them."

  It was a compliment, but I was pretty sure there was meaning between those words.

  You come from a long line of them.

  But I don't come from a long line of good fathers.

  In fact, he didn't even know his, figuring he was likely a John, and there was no way to know more. Not that he would want to, he had told me, since the kind of man who would go to a prostitute was not exactly the kind of man he wanted anything to do with.

  And the only men he knew in his formative years were scumbags, users, and abusers.

  Of course he wasn't sure he would know what he was doing.

  "Ross, you're going to be an amazing father too," I told him, wrapping my arms around the back of his neck. "I know you're not sure about that, but I am. This baby is going to be so lucky to have you in its life."

  He moved forward, burying his face in my neck, taking a deep breath. "We'll see."

  Ward - 3 years

  "She just left it here with ya?" Adler asked, leaning over the crib, looking at the baby like it might jump out and try to eat his face.

  When I mused about seeing him with a kid in my office that day when Addy told me she was pregnant, yeah, the shit I imagined wasn't half as funny as the reality.

  The fuck? He'd asked when I first handed him the bundled burrito that was our son in the hospital a few months before. It's foaming at its mouth or some shit.

  He had shoved him back at me.

  Addy had almost died laughing.

  Then cursed him in very colorful ways - especially for her usual lack of cursing - for making her laugh which made her stomach hurt.

  "Well, I am the father," I told Adler with a smirk. "And he's a he who has a name. You can stop calling him 'it,'" I added with a smirk.

  "Yeah yeah yeah, ya little monster," he said instead as Jax opened his eyes that were just like his mother's, and looked right at his godfather. "Someday, we'll have something else in common other than liking a nice set of tits."

  "Nice language," I said, shaking my head.

  "What? Ain't like he understands anything yet. When he's five and starts throwing out 'shits' and 'fucks' and 'pussies,' then ya can yell at me." He reached down, finding the pacifier, and pressing it into Jax's mouth even though he wasn't crying. "What?" he asked at my raised brow. "Preventative measure," he told me, shrugging.

  He was still terrified of the idea of whining.

  He looked back down at Jax, taking a deep breath, then turning to me.

  "You're a lucky fuck, man," he told me, clamping a hand on my shoulder for a second, then moving off.

  I was a lucky fuck.

  No one knew that better than me.

  Someday, he would be a lucky fuck too.

  He would find his own flashlight in the darkness.

  As for me, yeah, I was pretty sure the world was nothing but brightness anymore.

  It started with Adalind. Her patience, her understanding, her willingness not only to accept, but love all the dark parts of me. It put cracks in my walls, allowing the light to filter through. Every single day with her simply brought more and more cracks, more and more light.

  And then there was Jax.

  All of six pounds when he was born, small, fat, squishy, wet, completely foreign to me.

  But the second Addy put him in my arms, it was like a bulldozer slammed through what was left of my walls, sending them crumbling, shedding light into every dark corner left, until there was simply no place for it to hide anymore.

  I knew then that there would be no cycles, no history on repeat.

  I was not my no-name father.

  Addy was nothing like my messed-up mother.

  And Jax would never know an ounce of the hardship that I had been raised up in. Come hell or fucking high water.

  "What was Adler mumbling about tits and preventative measures for?" Addy asked, coming up beside me, wrapping her arms around me as my arm pulled her close.

  "He says the only thing he and Jax have in common now is a love of tits and that we should keep the pacifier in his mouth just for preventative measures," I told her as Jax spit it out then gave us both a gummy smile.

  "We have to make him babysit sometime, then go hang out in the lobby, watching him on the security camera," she told me, and I liked her devious little plan. "Can you imagine the shit he would come up with when he thinks no one can hear him?"

  "Well, we do have an anniversary coming up in two days," I reminded her, leaning down to kiss her temple.

  "Am I getting my traditional present?" she asked and, as if on cue, Neville and Cedric came in the room to see what we were up to, Neville doing so at the glacial pace his breed was known for, Cedric charging in, tags jingling like a typical terrier mix.

  "You want a million fucking dogs, you can have them," I told her, giving her a squeeze.

  I didn't tell her yet about the house.

  With four bedrooms.

  And six acres.

  I figured that would be a nice surprise for our anniversary date.

  You know, along with the puppy who was sitting in Adler's apartment just waiting to come home.

  Light.

  So much fucking light.

  And nothing but more of it to look forward to.

  I was finally, finally free.

  XX

  DON'T FORGET

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for taking time out of your life to read this book. If you loved this book, I would really appreciate it if you could hop onto Goodreads or Amazon and tell me your favorite parts. You can also spread the word by recommending the book to friends or sending digital copies that can be received via kindle or kindle app on any device.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jessica Gadziala is a full-time writer, parrot enthusiast, and coffee drinker from New Jersey. She enjoys short rides to the book store, sad songs, and cold weather.

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