by Eden Bradley
He’d hated himself then, too.
“Fuck,” he muttered, sitting up in the bed and running his hands over his head, rubbing the grit out of his eyes. “This is different.”
But was it, ultimately?
He felt twitchy, and he hated feeling twitchy. It only meant one thing.
He got up and found his clothes and came back to the bedroom, intending to tell her he was leaving. But she looked too peaceful to wake—that was what he was telling himself, anyway—one arm thrown over her eyes, her hair spread out on the pillows. He watched her sleeping for several minutes before he turned to leave.
New Orleans was quiet this early on a Monday morning. The quiet was giving him far too much time to think. About everything he could have—should have—been. And he didn’t want to go there. But it was too late, wasn’t it?
His head was pounding, his heart racing, as he turned on some music, loud, head-banging metal, and let it drown out his thoughts as he drove the all-too-familiar route to the club on the Pontchartrain Expressway. He parked and jumped out. The warehouse doors were closed. He pulled and found them locked.
“What the fuck?”
There was always someone at the club. Unless it had been raided over the weekend and he hadn’t heard about it.
He kicked the door with his boot. It hurt, the pain reverberating up his leg, but he did it again, anyway.
“God fucking damn it.”
He needed the club right now. Needed to fight.
He jumped in his truck and gunned the engine, heading for his gym instead.
It didn’t take him long to get there, only minutes to change. The place was mostly empty this early in the morning. The before-work crowd would arrive any time, though. He found Antoine on his back, bench pressing as he came out of the locker room.
“Spar?” he asked him without preamble.
Antoine set the bar back on the stand with a puff of breath. “Sure. You want to warm up first?”
“Not really, but I will,” he muttered, ignoring Antoine’s curious stare.
He did a quick tape job on his hands and worked the speed bag first, really laying into it, working up a quick sweat. It felt good, that burn in his muscles, the impact of the bag against his knuckles. But he needed a challenge. He went to find Antoine, who was still working out with the weights.
“I’m ready,” he said.
Antoine looked up, set the heavy dumbbells down. “Okay. Let’s go.”
They ducked under the ropes and stepped into the ring. Antoine started to move right away—he was always good with the footwork. But Mick felt his brain settle into laser-focus. He threw the first punch, but Antoine ducked. And it pissed him off.
He went after him, managed to land a fist on his chest, a kick to the thigh, then another punch to the body.
“Hey! What the hell is up with you, man?” Antoine yelled.
But he didn’t stop. He couldn’t. His bad leg ached. It only made frustration boil through him. Made him think the words that had haunted him most of his life.
Failure.
He remembered in a flash the doctor coming in after his leg surgery, telling him he’d never be able to pass the physical required to be a firefighter. He remembered the look on his father’s face, the shock and dismay he’d tried to hide. But Mick had seen it. Had felt it every damn day since.
Fuckup.
He remembered all the times he’d come home after curfew. Cut school. Hurt Allie. Hurt his family. Hurt his own chance at the life he should have fucking had.
Antoine fought back, finally taking Mick down to the mat with a roundhouse. He held him down.
“What the fuck, Mick? You gone crazy?”
He was breathing hard, his airway partially constricted by Antoine’s elbow across his throat. “Let me up.”
“Not until you explain yourself.”
“I can’t.”
Antoine was silent for several moments before shoving himself off him. He stood up. “You need to figure your shit out, man. Go take a sauna or something.”
Mick glared at him.
Antoine crossed his arms. “You wanna tell me what you’re trying to prove? Fucking coming after me in a spar, man. If I didn’t know you, I’d think you had some kind of death wish.”
Hadn’t he thought the same thing not that long ago? Mick sat up, then got to his feet. “Nothing. It’s nothing.” He wiped the sweat from his face with the back of one arm. “Sorry I’m being an asshole. Rough morning.”
“Yeah, well go spread that sunshine somewhere else. I don’t need it.” Antoine shook his head and walked away, leaving Mick in the middle of the ring, anger still bubbling like some black cauldron in his belly.
He needed to fight. But the fight he needed wasn’t with Antoine.
He left the ring, left the gym, driving home too fast in the morning traffic.
What he needed was dirty and rough and illegal. He’d make some calls until he found it.
* * *
ALLIE WOKE ALONE. She knew even before getting out of bed that her house was empty, Mick gone, and it weighed on her heart. It wasn’t like him to leave without saying good-bye.
She got up and checked her phone. Nothing.
He’d been so weird the night before. Even the sex had been weird. Strained. Desperate. But she’d had some sense of giving him something he needed. She’d thought it would be enough.
Her body was sore from the workout he’d given her. It would have felt good if she didn’t feel this sense of dread. She got in the shower, blasting the hot water to ease some of the aches, trying to figure out what to do as she washed her hair.
Should she try to call him? Or give him the space that men sometimes needed to clear their heads?
It was obvious he didn’t want to discuss how the conversation at his parents’ house had left him feeling. She understood it—as much as she could, anyway. She tried. But his family obviously adored him—they certainly didn’t find him lacking, didn’t treat him any differently. He did it all to himself. Didn’t he have to find some way to deal with it eventually? That’s what she didn’t quite get. Didn’t he want to?
If only he would let her help him.
She shut off the water, stepped out to dry herself and saw her bruises in the mirror—the marks on her thighs and arms and breasts from the ropes. They hadn’t even done any heavy impact play, but he’d used a lot of knots—that was what had marked her. That and his teeth in a few places. Normally she would have gloried in her marks, but this morning she knew they’d come from a place of desperation and pain, and it only made her chest go tight with concern for him. And a little impatience.
Where the hell was he?
She wrapped her hair in a towel and herself in her robe and went into the living room to boot up her laptop and check her email. Sure enough, there was one from Mick.
Allie,
Sorry about my early departure—I woke up and found a message on my phone from one of my clients. I didn’t want to wake you. I’ll be tied up with this job all day. Talk to you later, babe.
Mick
Babe. That’s what he called her when he needed to distance himself. Not baby, like he usually did. Not princess. Not that she needed to see that to know. He’d called her babe last night. Had had sex with her only from behind. Had hardly looked into her eyes since they’d left his parents’ place.
She’d felt his emotions, even though he’d tried to hide them from her. She knew him, and she’d felt it bone deep. And she understood with just as much clarity now that the email was a lie. There was no client. No message. No job. Only his anger and the guilt that had been eating him up for most of his adult life.
And there was nothing she could do.
She’d be thoroughly pissed if she didn’t get how
much he was hurting. It made her hurt.
Tears welled in her eyes. She wiped them away, frustrated. Mick was just going to have to work through this himself. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do for him. Because he wouldn’t let her. She’d have to wait and see if what they had together was reason enough for him to do what he hadn’t done in years. Move on.
* * *
IT WAS ALMOST ten that night when her cell phone rang. She looked at the caller ID before answering.
“Hi, Jamie.”
She wasn’t in the mood to chat—it had been one of those endless, dragging days while she pretended her feelings weren’t hurt, pretended she hadn’t been practically sitting on top of her phone—but maybe he’d talked to Mick.
“Allie, Mick’s hurt.”
“Well just launch right into your agenda without even saying hello, why don’t you? And he’s the one who left this morning without saying a word to me.”
“No. Hurt, Allie. He’s in the emergency room.”
“What?” Shock coursed through her, then panic. “Tell me.”
“He took a pretty hard hit to the head. Lost consciousness for at least a few minutes, apparently. Someone dropped him off here—I don’t even know who. The hospital called me—I’m in his cell phone as his emergency contact.”
“Oh my God. How bad is it?”
“He’s having a CT scan now. But he was awake. Alert enough that he made me promise not to call you.”
“He asked you not to call me? Did he think I wouldn’t find out? Jesus.” She pushed her hair out of her face, blew out a breath. “Okay. Okay. I appreciate you calling. Thank you, Jamie.”
“Of course. I thought you should know.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I don’t think you need to come down here. Mick said—”
“Are you kidding? I’m coming!”
She hung up before he could argue any further. She didn’t care what Mick had told him. They didn’t even know how bad it was, and wouldn’t until they got the scan results. She wasn’t going to just sit at home waiting for the bad news.
She slid into a pair of sandals, remembered to grab a sweater along with her purse and headed out the door.
* * *
WHY WERE HOSPITALS always so white?
She hadn’t had the need to walk into a hospital too many times in her life—once as a kid when she’d sprained her ankle falling off her bike, again in Paris when she’d burned her hand on an oven, the last time to visit a friend who’d been in a mountain bike accident. And of course in high school they had all rushed to the hospital the night Brandon died, everyone huddled together in these same sterile, garishly lit hallways. She got the chills just thinking about that awful night.
But this was where Mick was, and she had to see him. See if he was okay. She didn’t think she could stand it if he wasn’t.
Her jaw clenched as she walked into the emergency room and up to the desk.
“I’m here to see Mick Reid. He was brought in tonight.”
“Are you his wife?” the woman at the desk asked.
“I’m his . . .” But what was she? “Are you going to let me in if I’m not?”
“I’ll have to check.”
She blew out a breath. If he hadn’t wanted Jamie to call, he certainly wasn’t going to invite her back there to see him.
She leaned over the desk and said quietly, “Look. Mick is my boyfriend, for lack of a more grown-up term. He’s been injured. I need to see him. Please. Or find our friend—he called me to come down here.” A small lie, but she didn’t care.
The woman was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Okay. You can go back. He’s in . . .” She tapped a few keys on her computer. “He’s in number four.”
“Thank you.”
She gripped her sweater in her hands as she moved through the heavy automatic doors.
She passed an open curtain, caught a glimpse of an empty gurney. Her stomach knotted.
Papa being taken away on the big metal bed, his face covered. Why did they have to cover his face? He couldn’t breathe right if they covered his face.
Except he hadn’t needed to breathe.
Her heart hammered, a fast, staccato beat. She walked faster, found curtain number four. She took a breath, pulled it aside and stepped through.
Mick lay on the hospital bed, his eyes closed, his face white as a sheet except for the dark bruise forming on his temple.
God, please no . . .
Papa being loaded onto the white bed on wheels, his head bruised where it must have hit the piano when he’d . . .
Mick opened his eyes.
“Allie? What are you doing here?”
She shook her head, unable to speak as fear and love and anger suffused her, forming a cold, nearly incomprehensible ball of emotion.
“What am I doing here? What are you doing here?”
“I guess . . . you can probably guess.”
“How badly are you hurt?” she asked.
“It’s just an MTBI.”
“A what?”
“A concussion. The scan looked fine. No blood clots or anything. I’ll be fine. It’s fine.”
“Jesus, Mick. This is not fine! What happened?”
“Someone got the better of me. I was . . . distracted. It’s bound to happen once in a while.”
“This happened because you were fighting. On purpose.”
He didn’t even have the decency to look ashamed. The anger boiled over.
“It’s only bound to happen when you put yourself in stupid situations. Illegal fights. Come on, Mick—this isn’t Fight Club.”
He blinked, seemed to be thinking for several moments. “Except that it is. That’s why I do it. It’s what I need.”
“That’s what you need?” she demanded. “What about me, Mick? What about what I need, huh? How about I need a man who doesn’t think punching something or getting the shit kicked out of him is the way to solve a problem? A man who doesn’t lie to me and push me away after showing me how amazing we could be together? A man who isn’t going to die on me.”
Tears made her throat tight. She used the rage simmering in her system to swallow them down.
“Seriously, Allie? I’m not going to—”
“You might! You’re the one determined to keep punishing yourself for every kitten you didn’t rescue from a tree instead of seeing what you have right in front of you. You’re the one fighting without gloves, without rules, without letting anyone know where you are in case something happens to you, for God’s sake. How fucking stupid do you have to be?”
His face went even paler, his lips tightening into a thin line, and she knew instantly she’d said the absolutely wrong thing. But she couldn’t stop now.
“Mick . . .” The damn tears again. She blinked hard, but they welled in her eyes. “I can’t watch you do this to yourself. I can’t watch you do this to me. If something happened to you . . . and it will if you won’t stop doing this.”
“You don’t understand.”
“You’re right. I don’t. I’m never going to. You could have died, Mick. Just like my dad.”
“Allie. Baby. He died of an aneurism.”
“So could you if you keep taking hits to the head. There were no blood clots this time, but what about the next time? Or the time after that?”
“Come on, Allie. That’s not going to happen. We can talk about this when I get out of here.”
She stared at him, her vision being swallowed up by the bruise. By the cold expanding in her chest.
“We could talk about it—the fighting, the emotional masochism—but you’d have to actually want to listen.” She shook her head again, taking a step back. “I can’t. I can’t do this, Mick. I ju
st . . . can’t.”
She turned and hurried away, pushed her way through the big doors—and ran into Jamie. The paper cup of coffee he’d been carrying splashed to the floor.
“Fuck. Jamie, I’m sorry.”
“Where are you going? You okay?”
“No. I’m not okay. I have to go.”
“Allie, wait.”
But she was already moving past him, walking as fast as she dared until she got out to the parking lot. She ran the rest of the way to her car, dug in her purse for her keys.
“Come on, damn it,” she muttered.
She finally found them, unlocked the car, yanked open the door and got in. She started the engine and put it in reverse just as a sob surged into her throat, choking her on its way out.
She clamped a hand over her mouth, but another one came, then another. Blindly, she put the car back into park, leaned her head on the wheel and gave herself over to the tears.
There was no conscious thought in her mind as she cried—just emotions too big to name. Too long held to make sense any longer. Tears she’d been holding since she was ten years old. Since she was sixteen. Since she was twenty. All the old pain, the tears she’d refused to cry since then, thinking she’d just get over it—all the events that had left her feeling devastated. But she never had. She never had.
She knew she never could if something happened to Mick. Better to stay away from him, the way she had for most of her life. If he wasn’t right in front of her, he couldn’t hurt her. If she didn’t love him . . .
Except she did.
God, she loved him.
Another sob broke through but she caught it halfway, swallowed it down, the hard edge of the steering wheel digging into her hands.
“No. No more.”
She pulled in a deep breath, blew it out. Shifted the car and drove away, hoping to leave some of the pain behind in the white, white hospital that spoke to her of death.
* * *
“JAMIE, WHAT THE fuck?”
Mick was trying to sit up, but his friend held him down on the bed.
“You have to stay put until they release you.”
“The fuck I do! You’re as bad as Allie.”
“What did you say to her? She ran out of here like a bat out of hell.”
