HIS OBSESSION-To Load

by Beck, J. L.

  Getting hit right in that perfect spot in the gut will take the fight out of you as quickly as almost anything, except a broken nose. But I didn’t actually want to injure Tony; I just wanted to prove to him that I wasn’t fucking around and he’d better make plans to move the hell on.

  Mia was suddenly stepping in front of me, blocking Tony from any more of my attack. The pussy was still gasping on the floor looking like the true bitch he was.

  “Jake! Stop it! He’s had enough! Please…” Mia was pleading with me now.

  Dammit. This had gone straight to hell. Why did I let this happen? Everything was spinning out of control and I really was worrying that I was losing my mind. I had to get out of there. There was no way to salvage this. At least not tonight.

  “Ok,” I said. “Mia, I’m sorry about all of this. But I’m not sorry I told you the truth. I should have done it a long time ago. I am very sorry about that.”

  Mia didn’t say anything. She just turned her head in tears and possibly disgust. Was that disgust I’d seen on her face directed at me?

  I tried to calm myself down by telling myself it was just about the chaos of the moment and the messed up situation that I had created, but I wasn’t sure anymore. I was really starting to feel that Mia was lost to me forever.

  I let the door close behind me without so much as a glance back as I walked across the street towards the Canal Bar. I really needed a few drinks right now. I had to do something to take the edge off the pain I was feeling.

  I’d made up my mind and was looking forward to the soothing effects of alcohol to numb the rage inside my mind and the breaking, sinking feeling in my shattered heart, but as I approached the bar, my feet kept walking right past the door and taking me around the corner towards Mia’s parents place.

  Maybe it was time to make some damn changes.

  Chapter Eleven

  Mia

  “Why aren’t you calling the cops?”

  Tony asked the question for the third time and I still didn’t have an answer. I was still numb from all that had just happened. I hated violence and fighting. It terrified me. I had never been physically abused and though I’d been in a few childhood scuffles myself, I still detested seeing the hatred people could have towards each other and watching it escalate to the level where they totally lost control of themselves and decided to pummel each other’s heads in. I didn’t get it. It was stupid.

  “I just don’t think it’s necessary,” I said.

  “You don’t think it’s necessary?” Tony asked repeating my words. “Jake is out of control. What if there’d been customers here? He could have destroyed your business’s reputation. And he might have hurt you.”

  “He would never hit me,” I said. “He isn’t like that.”

  “Oh, so you know what he’s actually like now? Why because you guys were high school sweethearts four years ago?”

  I ignored the question.

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I’m just fine,” Tony replied.

  I had a feeling he was hurt worse than he was letting on. He hadn’t been able to actually speak for a few minutes after Jake left. It had taken that long for the air to return to his lungs properly. And he had a nice bruise on his face that was going to get dark and nasty looking later on.

  “Are you sure you shouldn’t go see a doctor?” I asked.

  Tony looked at me like I was crazy.

  “No, I’m fine. It was just a gut punch. I don’t think I have any internal injuries or anything, mom.”

  “What the hell? I’m allowed to be concerned about you, right?” I asked. Why was Tony getting so defensive and sarcastic?

  “Yeah, but you are laying it on a bit thick,” Tony replied.

  “Oh, God. Is this one of those macho guy things?” I asked.

  “No,” Tony said with disdain in his voice. “Why are you avoiding the issue? Who knows what Jake is going to do next? He seems to be obsessed with you. It’s really creepy.”

  “I’m dealing with it,” I said.

  “I know you think that, but you aren’t doing a very good job.”

  “Wow, thanks,” I said sarcastically.

  Tony smiled. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just meant that this thing with Jake has spiraled beyond your control and I think you should alert the cops about it. The guy came into your place of business, threatened you, and then picked a fight with me.”

  “What? He did not threaten me,” I said. “And you shoved him first.”

  Tony looked at me sharply.

  “Yeah, I guess I did, but man that guy gets under my skin.”

  “He has that ability,” I replied with a smile.

  Tony looked at me for a moment like there was something serious on his mind.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Do you still have feelings for him?” Tony asked.

  I was flabbergasted at the question. I couldn’t believe I’d even heard him right. Surely his mind was not going there.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Well, it just seems that you do because you are always letting him off the hook, and I’m afraid you are going to get hurt,” Tony said.

  “How am I letting him off the hook?”

  “Well, right now you should be filing charges down at the police station, and before this you should have turned him in for stalking.”

  “He hasn’t been stalking me,” I said. I felt instantly guilty I’d said it to Jake earlier, but Tony hadn’t even arrived yet. So, Tony saw Jake’s behavior as stalking, too? Did I really feel that way or was it something stupid I’d said off the cuff?

  “Come on,” Tony said. “Look at the way he’s acting. He really thinks that you two belong together and that I’m in the way. The only reason I shoved him is because I thought it might scare him out of throwing a punch at me.”

  I laughed.

  “How’d that work out?” I asked.

  Tony did not look amused.

  “Good luck trying to scare Jake Mathews,” I added.

  “There it is again,” Tony said. “It seems like you are proud of him all the time or that you admire things about him.”

  “Well, he isn’t all bad,” I said. “I used to be in love with him for a reason.”

  “Used to be?” Tony asked.

  I was getting angry.

  “Look, you either trust me or you don’t,” I said. “If you think I’m still in love with Jake and that it’s going to affect you and I then just say it.”

  “I don’t know if you are in love with him, but I do think you have feelings for him. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t concern me a little bit.”

  “Well, that’s your problem,” I replied. “Look, I don’t have feelings for Jake, but if you are that insecure then I don’t know what to tell you.”

  Tony stood up just then. He’d been sitting at my desk in my office in the far corner of the kitchen recovering from his brief brawl with Jake.

  “I’m sorry,” He said. “You’re right. If you say that you don’t still want to be with Jake deep down somewhere then I guess I should believe you.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “I really care about you,” Tony said. “And I think what we have is continuing to grow into something special. I don’t want to see Jake ruin this. You know that is what he’s trying to do. I just worry about where his stopping point is with all of it. How far will he take this?”

  I paused a moment before answering.

  “It’s Jake,” I said. “He will take it all the way. He doesn’t know how to quit when he wants something.”

  As I said those words, I knew that it was precisely this that gave Jake so much power over me. His strength, his confidence, and his determination. They were mesmerizing. I was hooked on him and I would never be free of him.

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Tony.

  He kissed me sweetly on the lips and held me closely for a moment.

&
nbsp; “I’m going to take off,” he said. “I need to let you get back to work and I’ve got to finish that project for my deadline.”

  “Ok,” I said.

  A moment later, I heard Tony leave.

  I was alone in my bakery once again. Alone with work and alone with my thoughts. The part time worker I’d hired had become a no show and I was going to have to replace her. I’d had several applications emailed to me, but I hadn’t had the time to go through them. It all seemed like a bunch of clerical junk I just didn’t care about. Besides the past few days had been pretty slow. I hoped that people weren’t getting tired of my delicious baked goods that fast.

  As I tried to get motivated to work again, I started to feel really anxious. Usually work was a great distraction but right then I felt like the whole world was coming down on me. I’d never been in the position of having two men who were crazy about me both doing anything they could to get me interested. It was kind of fun, but my thoughts kept returning to some good points that Tony made.

  I did have strong feelings for Jake. I’d told Tony no. I’d lied straight to his face several times and I felt really guilty about leading him on that way, but was I leading him on? Did I actually see a future with me and Tony? He was such an amazing guy and he really cared for me. But the relationship was still really young. We hadn’t slept together yet and I hadn’t even introduced him to Lola. I had no idea when either of those two relationship milestones was going to happen, but I was in no hurry for either one. True that Tony was a hottie of the highest caliber and I desperately wanted to ride him silly, but I’d be fine if it didn’t happen for a while. Sometimes sex could complicate things. There was always the possibility that Tony would change somehow and just decide that the other parts of the relationship were not working as well for him and we would be one of those couples that only really bonded through sex.

  I knew that I was just being paranoid and making silly excuses, but I couldn’t stop the crazy feelings or weird thoughts that kept popping into my head. As happy as I was with Tony, when it came right down to it---he wasn’t Jake.

  Jake. God, every time I was around him it was becoming harder to resist throwing my arms around his neck and letting him ravaging me every way possible. Even when he was scaring me earlier and yelling those crazy things at me, I wanted to cling to him. I wanted him to protect me and keep me safe, even though he was the one I was scared of.

  And then he let it slip about his involvement in that stabbing. Why hadn’t he told me? I would have understood the way he felt back then if he’d just told me the truth. I probably would have accepted the fact that he had chosen the Army over Jail basically. Picturing Jake behind bars was an unbearable image. I never could have handled seeing him that way. And if he’d gone to prison he probably would have changed for the worse.

  And now he appeared to be becoming unhinged from himself. Was I really doing that to him? Was he right about games? Maybe I was playing with his head unintentionally?

  No, that couldn’t be right. I was just scared. I was so afraid of being hurt again.

  As I sat down in my office chair and fired up the computer to start scanning through resumes, I realized that the thing I was now most scared of was of Jake giving up on me once and for all.

  And then I would have really lost him for good.

  I managed to shake off my obsessive thoughts and actually get some work done going through the applications. Most of them were from high school kids with no previous work experience who just wanted something part time, probably so they could spend money at the Jackson Mall and hang out with their stupid friends. Of course, they didn’t write that; most of them stated emphatically that they were trying to earn money for college.

  I hoped that was actually true, but at any rate it would have been just as effective to decide this as putting the names in a hat and drawing one at random. I knew no other way to determine which of these kids would actually be good, honest employees.

  Of course, all of their relatives were family and friends. But I decided to start calling anyway. Maybe at least one of these references would tell me not to hire somebody.

  I’d just finished my last phone call and was narrowing down my decision when my phone rang. It was Rosy.

  I sighed as I answered. She probably wanted to go out and have a few cocktails with me tonight. After the day I’d had I wanted to do nothing but pick up Lola and relax on the couch. I needed some real rest and relaxation.

  “Hey, Rosy,” I answered trying to inflect some cheer in my tired voice.

  “Mia, something terrible has happened!” Rosy blurted out. Her voice sounded strained and she was almost out of breath.

  Panic gripped me tightly.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “It’s about Tony,” Rosy said. “I just heard over the police scanner that he’s been in an accident.”

  “What?” I felt like the walls were pushing in on me pressing all of the oxygen out of my body.

  “I called my cousin who works for dispatch and even though she wasn’t allowed to say, she texted me a confirmation,” Rosy said.

  “Oh, my God!” I cried. “Is he ok?”

  “I don’t know,” Rosy said. “But they took him by ambulance to the hospital. I don’t know how hurt he is.”

  I leapt out of my chair and quickly checked everything in the kitchen to make sure it was shut off. Then I headed out the door, locking it behind me.

  Rosy was talking in my ear the entire time.

  “I’m going to the hospital now,” she was saying.

  “I’m on my way, too,” I said.

  “I’ll meet you there, and baby I’m praying for him,” Rosy said.

  I disconnected the call and headed out on the road towards Jackson Hospital which was about twelve miles away. My heart was in my throat and I felt intense pressure around my throat, almost like some invisible hand wrapped tightly over me. It was squeezing me so hard that I felt like I wasn’t getting enough air. I thought I might have to pull over and see if it lifted before I passed out behind the wheel.

  But I wanted to get to Tony. I was going to rough through it. It was a panic attack, I was sure. It had been a long time since I’d had one this severely but I didn’t have the luxury of waiting on it to recover. I just wanted to get to my boyfriend now. I wanted to hold him in my arms and tell him that how much I cared about him.

  Love? Was it love?

  “Fuck! I don’t know!” I screamed at myself.

  Love or not I needed to know that he was all right. My mind was racing with thoughts of doctors working on him and performing emergency surgery trying to save his life. The sound of a flat line droned over the rush of voices and the scrambling team trying to save his life. It was like the most gut wrenching scenes of every major medical drama I’d ever seen, and it was in my head on a constant repeating loop.

  He had to be ok. He had to be alright.

  How could this have happened? How?

  If they transported him by ambulance, it had to be serious. God, he might even be dead.

  I wiped tears from my eyes vigorously as I concentrated on driving and keeping a slow, steady breath. I was flying way over the speed limit but being pulled over by highway patrol for speeding was the last thing I was concerned with. Hell, if they tried to pull me over I probably wouldn’t have stopped.

  I reached the hospital safely my mind rolling into some kind of a strange daze. To this day I don’t remember most of that drive.

  But suddenly, I was parking in front of the Emergency Room and running into the hospital yelling for assistance.

  “Tony Morris!” I said practically screaming at the receptionist at the front counter. “Where is he?”

  “Miss, you need to calm down so I can help you,” the receptionist replied. She was an older woman who looked as if she had been having an only slightly less awful day than I was and she was in no mood for crazy hysterics.

  I tried to calm myself down and breathe deeply,
but the room was spinning around me and my hyperventilation was getting worse. I wouldn’t get over this until I could see Tony and make sure that he was all right. It dawned on me then that you often didn’t know how much you cared about someone until you thought you were going to lose them.

  I couldn’t take the thought of Tony dying in some tragic accident. We hadn’t been together that long, but I did care deeply for him. He couldn’t die, he just couldn’t.

  “Yes, my boyfriend Tony Morris was in a car accident. They brought him here in an ambulance.” The words came out in small clumps between heavy gasps.

  “Ok,” the receptionist said. “He is in exam room three,” she said. “You can go on back.”

  But I was already gone by the time I heard the words “exam room three”.

  I rounded the corner of the room and ran full blast almost running into the edge of the bed. The ER exam rooms were very small. My panic attack was so bad that I could not stop gasping and sobbing.

  “Mia!”

  Tony’s voice warmed inside of my ears as I steadied myself from my near collision and tried to keep food from jumping out of my queasy stomach. My belly was in knots and in addition to my hyperventilation and blurry vision I was feeling very nauseous.

  Then my eyes fell on Tony’s sweet face.

  He was sitting in a bed with a bandage on his head, his arm in a sling, and a neck brace. He also had several bad bruises and cuts on his face. One long cut on the side of his face running vertically in front of his left ear was adorned with several large looking stitches.

  “Oh, Tony…” I managed before bursting into tears.

  “Hey, it’s ok,” Tony said.

  I slung my arms around his midsection trying my best to remember to be gentle but I was so excited to see him alive that I could not contain myself. I’d been so horror stricken the entire ride over here and now that I was seeing Tony safe and sound a tidal wave of relief washed over me followed by wave after long wave of nausea and a pounding in my head. I needed to calm down. I felt utterly sick with grief.

  “Hey, it’s ok. I’m alright,” Tony said.

  “What happened?”

  “My brakes went out in my truck. I pressed them hard to the floor and nothing happened. I almost collided head on with an oncoming car at that intersection and so I swerved out of the way, but I was going so fast I barely missed them and collided with that big tree.”