by Amity Cross
I knew plenty of people she could learn from, but she now saw me as her savior, and that was the only reason she was asking. I wanted us to be more, but if we were together like that—me teaching her to fight in close proximity—I wouldn’t be able to separate my feelings. She’d made it clear it wasn’t what she wanted.
In hindsight, after the euphoria had worn off in the cold light of day, I wasn’t sure I could give it to her. I was stretched thin as it was.
“I can give you plenty of recommendations,” I said, staring out into the night. “I know a guy who owes me a favor or two, and he’s good.”
“I don’t want anyone else,” she bit out.
The double meaning didn’t go unnoticed, and I didn’t do anything to deter her. My heart began to beat faster, blood thrumming through my veins like I’d just gone another round in the cage.
“Hamish…” She sighed, her hands worrying the strap of her bag. “I was wrong to push you away. I was scared because Storm… He hurt me so bad it made me afraid of it happening again.”
“Lori, please…” I began, my throat feeling thick.
“I don’t know how else to do this,” she went on, her words beginning to run into each other. “Because what would someone like you see in someone like me, right? I’m such a mess. This could be one-sided, but you tried to kiss me, and I pushed you away when I should have let you.” She turned, edging around as far as the seat would allow her. “I want you, Hamish. You make me… You make me want to squash my fears and live again. Fuck the line. I want to cross it and never look back. I want to cross it with you.”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel, and I bowed my head so I didn’t have to look at her.
“I can’t.” The words tasted like poison on my tongue, but it was too late to take them back.
The air was so close there was no way of missing the moment she drew in a sharp hiss of breath. If that was the sound of her heart breaking, I guess I just shattered it.
“What changed?” she asked, her voice full of accusation. “What changed between last night and now?”
“Nothin’.”
“Nothing?” Her voice was full of disbelief. “It didn’t feel like nothing.”
“Do I need to explain it?” I asked, hating myself already. “You said it yourself. You see it every night. Guys like me only want one thing and it isn’t bein’ friends with a woman.”
She scoffed, her mouth opening and closing like she was lost for words.
Finally, she decided to ask, “So this was all a game to see how long it would take until I let you fuck me?”
I began to grind my teeth together because it wasn’t like that at all. I’d come into this with reservations but ultimately good intentions. I’d genuinely wanted to be her friend. I just hadn’t counted on wanting to cross the line when I’d promised not to.
Lori took my silence as an admission of guilt.
“Fuck you, Hamish McBride,” she spat, wrenching the door open and sliding out. “Fuck you to hell and back.”
I winced as the door slammed, and she fled inside, leaving me to sit in my car like a fucking fool.
Why the hell did I just smash the only good and uncomplicated thing in my life? Even as I thought it, I knew it was for the same reason Lori pushed me away last night.
It was because of the fear of being broken again. Fear of loss. Fear of the pain that would follow. It was that simple.
I let the fear of all the things I was on the precipice of losing—my ma and my own life—rule me. I’d already given up before I’d even started.
Maybe it was a good thing I let her go.
Lori had suffered enough, and tonight would be the last time.
16
Lori
“Lori, are you listening to me?”
I blinked hard, turning to face Bel. We were standing in our tiny backyard, which was looking pretty sorry for itself considering neither of us lifted a finger to weed it, while we unpacked Bel’s newest purchase.
A BBQ.
I was mystified as to why she wanted to try her hand at the male dominated sport of chargrilling red meat, but when she said her newest love interest was a chef who specialized in tiny artful portions of steak and lamb loin chops, or whatever it was called, the pieces fell into place. The lengths that girl went to get laid, seriously.
“I’m listening,” I replied hastily.
“No, you’re not. You’re off in la-la land while I struggle with this stupid thing.” She wrestled with the gas bottle, and I stepped forward and grabbed it from her before she blew us up.
“Here. I’ll hook this up. You chop the meat.”
She sighed dramatically and picked up the knife. She’d created a little food preparation area on the outdoor table, which she thankfully scrubbed clean beforehand, and began to line up the steak she’d bought earlier.
“Seriously, Lori,” she said. “You’ve been weird all day. You were weird at BBQ’s Galore. You were weird at the self-service checkout at Coles. You were weird on the drive home. And you’re weird now.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I drawled as I screwed the gas bottle in place.
“Did something happen with the Irish beefcake?”
I cringed, not wanting to be reminded of the fight Hamish and I had right after he saved me from an attempted sexual assault. If I told Bel about that, she’d hit the roof and make me call the cops. Which I couldn’t do, not in a million years.
After Hamish smashed the last piece of my heart that was still intact after Storm’s betrayal, I took the rest of the week off work. There was no way in hell I was going back to The Underground until I was ready to crack skulls.
The day after the incident with Stu, I got a call from the head of The Underground himself, Max Jericho. Stu was gone and would suffer the consequences if he ever came back. I was to tell Max immediately if he harassed me outside of the warehouse. It was an odd feeling having someone so bent on the wrong side of the law and who’d never spoken to me go out of their way to protect my interests. In short, it wouldn’t happen for anyone else, so I gathered it was Hamish’s parting gift.
I still couldn’t believe he was gone.
It was no use trying to brush Bel off, so I said, “I did what you said. I told him I wanted more, and he cut me loose.”
“The fuck?” she exclaimed. “Really? What a jerk.”
I shrugged. What was I meant to say? I put my feelings on the line, and he told me I meant shit to him.
“Did you kiss him? Fuck him against a wall?” Bel went on.
I shook my head. Standing, I surveyed the BBQ to make sure it wouldn’t fall apart and set the house on fire the moment I turned it on.
“Lori…”
“What?” I asked a little too forcibly.
She raised her eyebrows and went back to slicing the steak.
“He told me I was just a game,” I said, my shoulders sagging.
Bel looked me over in that sixth sense way of hers. “You really liked him, didn’t you?”
I nodded, my eyes beginning to sting with all the tears I hadn’t cried over Hamish McBride. “I can’t make him like me back.”
“No, that’s the problem. Just because you want someone, doesn’t automatically mean they want you back.” She rolled her eyes. “Stupid free will.” She paused, then declared, “He said you were a game? Like, he actually said he’d been playing you to get into your knickers?”
I cringed. “Pretty much.”
Bel shook her head as she stabbed the knife into the meat and began hacking. “What an ass. I don’t get it, Lori. He didn’t look the type. I mean, he’s hot as fuck, but he didn’t want a bar of me. He wanted you. I would’ve sworn my life on it.”
“Maybe it was all part of the game,” I mused. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I knew I was playing with fire the moment I opened myself up to another fighter.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” she cried. “Don’t take the blame for Hamish’s shitty behavi
or. He was the asshole in this story, Lori. Not you.”
If only it was that simple. I thought about all the things Hamish had done for me since the night I gave him my number at the bar, and I wasn’t so sure his explanation was adding up. Or maybe he was that good. If I was right about that, he should become an actor because that performance would bag him an Oscar.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!” Bel shrieked, holding her hand against her chest. The knife clattered on the table and bounced onto the ground, the stainless steel ringing against the concrete.
I saw the blood running down her fingers and dripping onto the table, and without a second thought, I grabbed the tea towel next to her. “Here, wrap it in this.” As she offered her hand to me, I saw the knife had sliced deep through the pointer and middle fingers of her left hand. “Shit,” I said, wrapping her up tightly in terry toweling. “I think we’d better go to the ER and get you looked at. You might need some stitches.” I didn’t want to add that she might’ve sliced through her tendons—that was better coming from a doctor’s mouth than mine.
“Oh fuck,” Bel said again. “I feel sick. Blood makes me want to throw up. Did I cut my fingers off?” She began to look as white as a sheet, and thank God, she was sitting down. “Lori, I think I’m going to blow.”
As soon as she said it, she bent over the side of the chair, and I jumped out of the way as the contents of her stomach splattered on the ground.
Rubbing her back, I said, “C’mon. Let’s get you to the hospital.”
Hospital waiting rooms were the worst.
They were full of all kinds of life forms, from the elderly all the way to children, and all of them were sick in one way or another. A baby started to wail, the sound piercing my eardrums, and I sank back into the plastic seat next to Bel.
The triage nurse told us it wouldn’t be long considering it was an open wound, but since the blood had clotted and wasn’t flowing anymore, it wasn’t a rush job.
“Why haven’t you been working?” Bel asked out of the blue.
“What do you mean? I took some holidays.”
“You never take holidays. You’re all ‘I need to save money, so let me work my ass into the ground,’ so it doesn’t add up. Did something happen?”
I drew in a deep breath, my lungs filling to the brim with air, and I let it all out in a dramatic sigh. “A lot of things have happened.”
“Like what?”
I glanced at her with a raised eyebrow.
“We’ve got time, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Knowing I’d only be delaying the inevitable if I got out of her questioning now, I said, “Well, for one, Storm’s back.”
“What?”
I cringed as a few people turned to stare at us. “Not so loud, Bel.”
“Why? I mean, he went to America to fight. I thought we’d gotten rid of that piece of shit for good.”
“Apparently, he got kicked out of the UFC because he abused a ring girl. Hit her in places she could cover up and choked her to the point she almost passed out.”
Her mouth fell open, and her eyes went so wide I thought they were going to pop right out of her head. “Holy fuck, Lori! How did you find out?”
“He came looking for me at work,” I explained. “Harassed me a little. I told him to piss off, and he’s stayed away so far.”
“Good for you. How did you find out about the…” She made a choking gesture with her free hand. Sometimes, Bel was so forthright it bordered on inappropriate.
“Hamish,” I replied.
“Hamish? The guy who broke your heart?”
“He didn’t break my heart,” I complained.
“Yeah, he did.”
“I didn’t love him, Bel. You have to love someone for them to break your heart.”
She snorted. “If you say so, but love’s got nothing to do with it.”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, grabbing a dog-eared magazine from the table next to us for something to hold on to.
“Hamish was looking out for you,” Bel went on, “so I don’t believe it when he said he was playing you. Those are epic lengths to go to for a lay. I wouldn’t even drag it out that long.”
“Says the girl who just sliced her hand open trying to impress a fancy chef she wants to fuck.”
“Shut up,” she hissed. “This is about you. If you ask me, I think the beefcake is hiding something, and you got too close. It’s got all the markers.”
I frowned as I let her words sink into my addled brain. Was Hamish hiding something from me? If Bel was right, it could be a million things. He’d never talked about his family or his home life, and he’d never gotten too personal with me. Off the top of my head, I could count at least five or six times where he’d abruptly changed topic or said as little as possible to try to satisfy me. Thinking back to the first night we’d hung out, I remember he said he’d been going through a lot of things, and he was tired. I’d let it slide until he was ready to talk about it because that’s what friends did. I’d let it slide so much I’d forgotten about it. Storm reappearing and Stu almost, you know, had pushed it to the back of my mind even further.
Hamish was hiding something…or I was just clutching at straws trying to justify his awful behavior toward me.
“The other night,” I began and shook my head. Did Bel really want to hear this?
“The other night…” she prompted.
“After Hamish and I fought, the next night at work, he acted like I didn’t exist. It hurt, like seriously hurt. I worked myself up so much I had a panic attack and…” I took a deep breath. “I went outside to calm myself down, and that’s when… That’s when…”
“When what?” Bel asked. “Lori, you’re kinda scaring me a little.”
“The bar manager came outside and cornered me…”
Her mouth fell open. “The douche who keeps trying to crack onto you? He didn’t…”
I shook my head, not game enough to look up at the world around us in the waiting room. “No. Hamish saved me.”
“Hamish? Then he told you your relationship was a game?”
I nodded. “Pretty much.”
“All this happened on the same night?”
“Yeah.”
“Pfft,” she scoffed. “Something’s wrong with that man.”
“Belinda Andrews?”
We glanced up at the doctor who was calling Bel’s name, and we rose to our feet.
“Will you be okay for a bit?” I asked, kind of glad for the break in conversation. “I’m just going out to make a call.”
“You’d better not be crawling back to that Irish beefcake,” she replied. “I don’t care if he saved you from that slimeball, he still played you.”
“No,” I said, as I moved toward the exit. “I wouldn’t dare.”
Truthfully, it was an excuse to go out for some breathing space. For the last week, I’d been holed up at home not dealing and spewing forth all that explanation to Bel had drained me to the point I wanted to cry the river I’d dammed up inside me.
Outside, the sun was still out. The rain Melbourne had endured for the past two weeks straight had cleared for an unseasonable day. The city was notorious for its unpredictable weather changes, so I wouldn’t put it past Mother Nature to dump a boatload of wind and hail on us by the end of the day.
It was pretty much on par for what I was feeling in the wake of Hamish McBride. Disappointed had nothing on it. Confused, hurt, wounded, ashamed, embarrassed… I’m sure there were plenty of other choice words, but stupid bitch pretty much summed it up.
Watching the comings and goings from the main entrance to St Vincent’s hospital, I gave myself a silent reprimand. There were people out there going through far worse shit than my stupid, little, broken heart. People were inside dying right now, and I was trying not to cry over a guy. Wow.
About three-quarters of the way through my silent self-depreciation, I caught sight of a familiar face in the stream of people.
Tall
, tattooed, rusty-brown hair, the same commanding presence in broad daylight as he had in the cage five nights a week…I’d recognize those broad shoulders anywhere.
Hamish.
He had a bag of lollies in one hand and some flowers in the other, two items I never thought I’d see him with at the same time in a million years.
I leaned against the wall by the entrance to the ER, just out of sight on the off chance he might have turned around, but he didn’t look back once. The automatic doors slid open, and he disappeared into the belly of the hospital.
A dangerous idea popped into my mind like an explosion, and my feet carried me forward, shadowing his path. Who was he visiting? A sister who was sick or had a baby? No, he’d never mentioned siblings in any of our all-night conversations. Oh fuck, he had a secret girlfriend, didn’t he? A secret girlfriend who was in hospital dying from some horrible disease.
My heart pounded in my chest as I followed him at a distance, feeling like a creepy stalker. I weaved through the halls in his wake until he disappeared into a room at the end of a wide, open space that was full of patients and their families. I didn’t stop to look harder, not wanting to lose sight of him.
Lingering by the door he’d gone through, I surveyed the room beyond. Inside, was a row of recliners and medical equipment. A few were occupied with patients, but I only had eyes for Hamish as he approached the chair at the far end of the room where a lady sat, her eyes closed. As he pulled a chair up beside her, she raised her head and smiled.
The woman was older, maybe in her fifties or sixties, her graying hair styled into a long braid that hung over her left shoulder. She had a kind face lined with wrinkles that suggested she’d laughed a lot in her life…and she was looking at Hamish with so much pride and joy it made my heart melt.
Running my gaze over the room, I realized she was there to get some kind of treatment. An IV was hooked into her arm, administering a clear liquid into her body. Instantly, I recognized it as intravenous chemotherapy. The nurses in the room were wearing disposable gloves and protective clothing, and Hamish had donned a cover for his clothes, as well.
