by Cindi Madsen
Then, along with panicking that our wedding date was approaching so quickly, an ex-girlfriend showed up and announced I was the father of her son. I didn’t handle it very well. The pressure I’d already been feeling had worn me down, and I lost myself as well. I wish I’d have been stronger, and that I would’ve talked things through with my fiancée. I hate that I hurt Dakota. That I made her cry. As she pointed out, the unexpected happens. I think we both lost sight of who we were and what we wanted. Like her, I’ve been working on finding myself these past few months, so I’m writing this letter to take responsibility for my actions.
I screwed up. It’s something I’ll always have to live with. But I’m enjoying my new life, where I’m the father of an amazing son and I’m slowly learning how to own up to my mistakes and become a better person. I hope that this letter will at least make up for some of the pain I put the people I love through. I’m sorry, Dakota, especially to you. Maybe now I can move on, too.
Grant Douglas
Las Vegas, Nevada
“Holy shit,” I said, shaking my head and blinking back a new wave of tears. “I so didn’t expect that. Especially after I pretty much chewed him out last time I saw him.” He’d taken responsibility and laid out his feelings in a way that I knew from experience made you vulnerable and nauseous.
“Yeah, you know I’m not Grant’s biggest fan, but that took balls.” Jillian slowly took the iPad out of my hands—I didn’t realize I’d been gripping it so hard—and set it on the coffee table.
Grant’s letter. Phoebe’s damn column. Whoever Brendan was seen with. Together, it was too much, burying me with doubts and fear and a healthy dose of anger. I felt the past pain of loving Grant and the current pain of loving Brendan.
And I did love Brendan—not just as a friend. I was in love with him. Like crazy, all-consuming, wanted-to-share-everything-with-him love.
Mom was wrong—now it seemed ridiculous that I’d ever worried about it, actually. How we loved didn’t come from genetics. She and I might both fall in love quickly, but I’d never fallen out, not really. Sure, I had relationships that didn’t work out, but it was why I got crushed at the end of every one I’d ever had, even if I’d been the one to end them. I cared. I fell. I loved.
I stood, not knowing where I was going, but knowing I needed to go somewhere. Do something. My life was getting away from me again, control slipping from me, one inch at a time. All the anger and emotions I’d ever repressed—even the ones I thought I’d gotten over—were coming back with a vengeance.
And I needed to get away from them before I broke down and screamed until my throat was as raw as my heart.
Chapter Twenty-Six
I wasn’t sure how I’d ended up in a tattoo parlor, or even made the decision to go there. Brendan had called me once, and while I’d gone back and forth for several seconds over whether to answer it, my heart so tied up in knots it made it hard to breathe, I wasn’t ready to talk to him. As I took in the art on the walls of the parlor, I wondered how many people had gotten tattoos here that they later regretted. How many were wasted at the time. Because seriously, not everything that happens in Vegas stays here.
I was sure plenty of people had come in for well-thought-out tattoos, or even spontaneous ones they loved. I highly doubted any of them had come for the reason I had, though. I strolled up to the front desk.
“Did you have an appointment?” the tattoo-covered girl behind it asked.
“Not exactly.” I hated when people said that. Either you did or you didn’t. Yet here I was saying it anyway. “I’m looking for Wild Bill. Is he in?”
She glanced toward a room with an open door. “He’s in, and his last client just left. He can probably squeeze you in if you know what tattoo you want.”
Just to see her reaction, I wanted to tell her that he was my anger management sponsor. It wasn’t technically true, but if I was going to talk to someone about feeling so frustrated I could scream and never stop, Wild Bill seemed like the type to understand. “Can you just tell him that Dakota Halifax is here to see him?”
She started to stand, but Wild Bill stuck his head out. He did a double take and then a giant grin overtook his face. “Hey! You here for ink?”
“I was hoping to talk, actually.”
He swept a hand toward his open door. “The doctor is in.”
I sat in a chair in the corner, and within a few minutes I’d spilled my guts. Honestly, the reason I’d chosen him was because I thought all the built-up anger inside me might freak out Jillian, and I didn’t have anyone else to talk to who I thought would truly understand. “Now it’s like all the emotions I kept bottled up for years are coming out at once, and despite the tricks I learned from class, my life’s totally out of control again. And I know I can’t control everything, but I don’t know how to deal anymore. It’s gonna take more than redirecting thoughts and breathing, that’s for damn sure. But at the same time, I don’t want to slip again. Does that make sense?”
“I hear ya, girl,” he said, then leaned in close, like he was about to divulge his greatest secret. “Wanna know what I do when I get that frustrated?”
I nodded.
Wild Bill stood. “Follow me.”
It crossed my mind I should probably ask where we were going, but I didn’t bother. There was a glint in Wild Bill’s eye, and I knew he had a plan. It felt so nice to be focused on something else besides all the anxiety and frustration suffocating me that I went with it.
He pushed out the back of the tattoo studio and we crossed through an alleyway. Total mugging territory, but if a guy chose to mug Wild Bill, I pitied him. He knocked on the back door of a run-down brick building, and I suddenly thought not asking had been a bad move. Add this situation to the list of things that were out of my control in my life. In fact, I was pretty sure Wild Bill was about to ply me with drugs. Maybe that was how he mellowed out, but I needed a more permanent solution.
The dude who answered the door was twice as wide as Wild Bill and looked like his face had been run into a wall repeatedly, until it was flat, his nose crooked to one side.
“Um, Bill?” I took a step back.
He clamped my hand in his massive one and pulled me into the room. There was a boxing ring in the middle, where two guys were sparring, and the rest of the room was filled with a variety of punching bags. The place smelled like a typical gym, a mix of leather, slightly stale air, and sweat.
“We need to get out a little aggression,” Wild Bill said, and the flat-faced guy nodded.
“Take as long as you need,” the owner or worker or whoever he was said, giving Wild Bill’s back a hard pat.
Wild Bill grabbed a pair of boxing gloves out of a locker and led me over to a punching bag. “You ever hit one of these?”
In all the years of sports, from football to baseball to soccer, I’d never done any boxing—not unless I counted a few air punches thrown during circuit-training classes. I shook my head, and Wild Bill put the gloves on my fists. “When I need to get out anger, or I’m frustrated, or I just need a way to clear my head, this is what I do.”
My gaze traveled over his muscular arms. It looked like he did this a lot.
Wild Bill demonstrated how to stand. “Now, pivot with your hips and punch the bag right in the middle. Keep your fist tight.”
I swung, a loud, satisfying smack filling the air.
“Good,” he said. “Who do you want to punch out?”
“No one.”
Wild Bill raised a bushy eyebrow.
“Okay, Phoebe would be a good place to start.”
Wild Bill gestured at the black, cracked-leather bag. “Swing away.”
“But isn’t it bad to imagine this? Aren’t we supposed to not harbor damaging images?”
“What we’re supposed to do is not act on them. This is the best way I’ve found to get it out of my head, though. Now, instead of getting into a fight at the bar, I step away, then come here and pummel the bag. Trust me, it’ll fe
el like just what you need.”
I hit it once, twice, three times.
Wild Bill grabbed the swinging bag and held it in place, stopping the creak of the chain securing it to the ceiling. “Who else? What about that guy who left you at the altar?”
“I’m okay with it. I’ve moved on, and he even wrote an apology in the paper.” For everyone in the city to read.
“Bullshit. Think about all the anger and frustration you’ve ever had with him, and you punch it out. Keep hitting until you can’t swing anymore.”
I sucked in a deep breath and swung. Again and again. My arms burned and my lungs worked harder and harder with every hit. When I couldn’t hit with my fists anymore, I kicked. I kicked away the hit to my self-esteem when Mom left. The frustration over the fact that my finally telling her how I felt only made her leave. The damage Grant had done to my heart. The image of Brendan with the woman from his work—the one who hadn’t even known his name. I kicked and punched until I fell into a pile on the mat, breaths sawing in and out of my mouth, my chest heaving with the effort.
Wild Bill sat next to me. “Feel better?”
I wiped my forearm across my sweaty forehead. My anger was indeed gone, and while not much had changed since I came in, I felt like I could take on anything. “Yeah.”
“If you want a membership here, I could talk to Dan.”
I glanced around at all the equipment, along with the guys using it. “I’d like that.”
Wild Bill gave a sharp nod. I pushed myself to my knees and hugged him. “Thanks.”
“Anytime, darlin’.”
Hugging a grizzled tattoo artist I’d met in mandatory anger management class, exhausted to the point my lungs were on fire, I found what I needed. I felt in control—not of everything going on, ’cause whoa, my life was a total soap opera lately—but of myself.
More importantly, I was ready to tackle the issue that I’d been avoiding for way too long.
…
Brendan was in the kitchen when I got back to the house. “What the hell, Deej? I tell you I need to talk, and you just fall off the face of the earth. I was starting to get worried.”
His voice made my heart hitch, and I tried not to think about how it’d shatter into a million little pieces if this all went wrong. “I am sorry about that. And I’m ready to talk.” I took a deep breath, preparing for the hard stuff. “Did you know you’ve been in the social column this past week?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”
I braced for his words, telling myself I could handle anything. I was strong. I’d been abandoned by my mom, left at the altar, and had my humiliation and love life printed for thousands to read, and I was still fighting.
Brendan moved around the counter, and his eyes bored into me. Despite how strong I was, the thought of losing him sent a sharp pang through my chest. If there were even an ounce of him that still wanted me, I’d fight like hell to keep him.
“Am I just ‘the one for right now’? Is that how you really see me?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. I did tell Phoebe that, though. She was crying and she asked about you and me, and I was trying to be civil—I have no idea why, because she obviously isn’t. I realize it sounds like an insult to you, especially in print.”
“Yeah, I’ll admit it sucked to read that. I was surprised at how hard it hit me, actually.”
“Is that why you were ‘canoodling’ with that woman from your work at Terra?”
Brendan’s eyebrows drew together. “What?”
“That’s what Phoebe’s column said today. I assumed it was the girl who called you Brandon. I hope she at least knows your name now,” I muttered and then bit my lip, forcing myself to meet his gaze. “Or was it someone else? Just tell me the truth so I can try to deal with it.”
“I did meet Sheila at Terra—she called me and said she needed to talk. I tried to blow it off, but she insisted, and you were out with your mom, so…”
Lead filled my chest, leaving it heavy and cold. I gripped the counter for support, sure my knees were about to buckle.
“She showed me the paper. The part that said you thought I was the one for now. Said she thought I should know.”
I pictured the raven-haired woman and the way she’d flirted with him. “I’m sure she did.” As jealousy and anger rose up, I took a deep breath, focusing on what was important. “So you…took solace in her arms?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Of course not. She hugged me when she saw how upset I was and told me that I deserved better. I was so stunned at first, my mind going a hundred miles a minute as I tried to deal with feeling like I’d been punched in the gut. But when she hugged me tighter and suggested we go to her place, I pushed her away and told her I was still with you. I thought there had to be a good explanation, and I’ve been trying to figure out where we stand since. Last night you were clearly too out of it to talk when you came home, and then this morning you just left. I was starting to think you were gonna dump me—or that you already had and I just didn’t know it yet.”
A relieved laugh bubbled from my lips.
“D.J., you’re kind of killing me here. You’ve been acting so strange lately, so if there’s something you need to tell me…”
I flung my arms around him. It took him a moment to reciprocate, but all the pieces inside me that’d felt broken came together. There were still a few gaps, but they didn’t hurt as badly anymore. “I’m sorry, I’m just so happy that it was all blown out of proportion.” For a moment I hung on, but then I knew it was time to talk it out before anything else happened—no more being scared or having to wonder. Reluctantly, I pulled back. “Look, the reason I said what I did to Phoebe was because I didn’t want to say anything that’d make you run. I know you’re not crazy about serious relationships. And I know I made it sound like I wasn’t either, and that I didn’t even like weddings anymore, but I was in a bad place that night, and the fact of the matter is, I do care about those things.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“But…”
Brendan swept my hair off my face and rested his hand on my neck. “Any time the topic comes up or you talk about the weddings you’re planning, I see it. You’ve got the worst poker face ever, and I’m good at spotting tells.” His thumb moved over my pulse point, making it beat even faster.
“Look, there’s nothing wrong with just remaining friends. We could still pull it off now, but if we go much longer…” My heart pounded against my rib cage, like it was trying to escape my chest and run away before it had the chance to get hurt again. Then there was his thumb still pressed to my skin, making it hard to think about actually being only friends. “I don’t want to ruin everything we already have. It’d kill me to lose you again.”
“You won’t ever lose me.” His quiet but firm words caressed my skin and helped ease the fears battling it out inside of me. “I don’t want to ruin our friendship, but I also don’t want to regret not taking a chance on being with the most amazing woman I’ve ever met.” He leaned in and softly kissed my lips.
I blinked through forming tears, wanting that to be enough, but needing to make sure I was 100 percent clear, no more having to wonder. “So you’re okay with you and me being in a committed relationship, that someday in the future—but maybe not the way, way future—could head in an even more serious direction?”
He inhaled a breath and I held mine. Then he looked me in the eye. “I’m more than okay with that. I want you to know that I plan on sticking around. I’m not leaving Vegas again, and I’m not giving up on what we have, even if it gets rough. I’m all in.”
“Me too.” Hope rose up and my cheeks started to hurt from smiling. All the crappy stuff was almost out of the way. I wanted to ignore it, but I didn’t want it to bite me later. “Um, speaking of rough, and in the spirit of full disclosure and all, Phoebe’s column made it sound like I was single and carefree at the dance club, so the entire city pretty much thinks we’re
done already. Not a big deal, because it’s clearly not true, but I wanted you to hear it from me this time. And then…well, Grant sorta wrote a letter to the editor to apologize for standing me up at the altar.”
Brendan tensed, a muscle flicking in his jaw.
I put my hand on his chest. “Actually, it was nice—the closure we both needed, I suppose. The fact is, because of how things ended with him, I’ve been holding back. But I’m done being afraid. I don’t want to scare you, but I also want to be honest with you. I like being in relationships, and I tend to fall in love fast.” I shrugged, as if the statement didn’t weigh a thousand pounds. “It’s who I am.”
“Well, I’ve never liked relationships much, and I don’t fall fast,” Brendan said.
I tried to swallow but couldn’t.
He dragged his fingers down my neck and across my collarbone. “This time is different, though. I’m in love with you already, D.J.”
My heart morphed into tingly butterflies, and comforting warmth filled me from the inside out. “I love you, too,” I said.
Brendan drew me to him and crushed his lips over mine, placing kiss after kiss on them. As they grew in urgency and intensity, the heat building between us firing hotter and higher, I pulled back.
He made a pouty sort of groan noise that made me laugh. I wrapped my arms tightly around him to show I wasn’t going anywhere and pressed a kiss to his neck. “I just have to tell you one more thing.” I dragged my lips to his ear and gently bit at his lobe.
“Yes,” he said, his voice husky. “Whatever you say, I agree.”
I smiled against his skin, exhaling a hot breath over where I’d placed the kiss, and slipped my hands under the back of his shirt, grinning when his muscles twitched under my fingertips. It was like playing sex chicken again, but this time, we were both going to win. For a moment I forgot what was so important, but then it slowly came back to me. “I just want you to know that this time is different. Yes, I’ve loved other guys before, but it’s never consumed me like this. I’ve never experienced this kind of passion and security, all rolled into one. And because of that, this time is different for me, too. So…yeah.”
