The guys are going to put a kibosh on a good night for us; I just know it.
No sooner does that thought make its way into my mind, someone from outside section four’s little party decides he wants to get in between the two dancing queens. I hit my mic.
“Paul.” It’s not a question.
“Yeah, I see it,” he radios back to me. Work Paul can be sexy sometimes.
“Let’s not jump the gun just yet. Mike, Duke, and James make your way over to section four, please,” I radio.
They aren’t the closest to the section, but after Paul, they are my go-to guys. Looking out into the crowd, I see my three guys moving calmly towards the table. Paul is close enough, so he doesn’t have to move that much in case something does happen. I stay where I am and survey everything else, making sure nothing happens while this situation gets handled. I make sure they don’t jump the gun either because one of the four guys might just have a clear head on his shoulders and settle this without our involvement.
Nope, there’s the first swing. Dammit.
Everyone not involved has backed away from the rumble-tumble of man bodies in section four. The two dancers have also backed away, crying and screaming. Jesus, I hate it when they scream.
“May,” Paul calls me on his mic.
Leaving my peaceful corner, I make my way through the hordes of people that are watching the show. It’s kind of like a shark in the middle of a school of fish. Finally getting to the edge of the crowd, I start to access the situation, but a hand grabs my wrist and pulls me backward.
“I would stay out of that if I were you, sweetie,” I hear the guy say.
I look down at my wrist, and then shoot my eyes up to meet his. He lets go.
I turn back around again to try to access the situation, and I see a white flash of silver in the lights.
“METAL!” I yell above the music.
Everyone hears me, and I go in. Grabbing the intruder’s right wrist from behind, I pull his arm back as hard as I can, causing him to drop the knife. I cover it with my boot before he can make a play for it, and I slide it over to John, who is standing watch and making sure no one jumps in and gets in a cheap shot. The intruder is not happy about this at all, and when he finally looks at me, he has the balls to stand straight up and smile at me. He stutter steps a little, so now I know I can take him. With my boots on, we are standing at the same height, so there is no disadvantage there. He isn’t muscular by any means, but unless I’m a bodybuilder, which I am not, guys can always out muscle girls.
He lunges at me, and I calmly sidestep his assault, but I make sure that my right knee is up and bent, so I connect with his right rib cage. I’m sure he has a broken rib, maybe two. I hear the air escape his lungs in a rush. This shouldn’t take too much longer. Disarmed and airless, he turns around, and I see that he cannot get a painless breath of air and has his hands balled up into fists.
Don’t do it, man, I say to myself, but he’s already moving towards me.
I block his right with my left and connect my right with the center of his face leaving his nose broken. I’m secretly wishing I was wearing a couple of huge, gaudy rings, but then again, maybe not. That would have hurt me more than him, I think.
With him holding his face, and the other guys rounded up, we all make our way to the door. The tiny dancers follow behind us, bitching the whole time about how their night out is ruined.
Once the whole group is outside, they are all seated on the wooden benches that line the right wall of the building. Jay has handed me the first aid kit, and I put on a pair of latex gloves and go about treating the little cuts on their faces and knuckles.
Some of the people that we have to take out don’t ask for what they get; they don’t go out looking for a fight, and sometimes, they are just collateral damage, so I try to help those I can. As we are waiting for the cops, John walks out with a copy of the surveillance video that caught the whole fight and the knife as well. He hands the knife to me, and I survey just what he was working with. A five-inch blade is not that bad, but the fact that it was serrated is what makes it bad. I take it in my gloved-covered hand and bring it down with everything I have right into the wooden bench between the intruder’s legs and almost too close to his doodle and berries. I bend at the waist and grab his chin to look at me, but his eyes are secured on his own knife between his legs. His mouth hangs open.
“Membership revoked. We will no longer be wanting or needing your business here again . . . are we clear?” I ask him.
He says nothing, just shakes his head yes about ten times in rapid succession.
“Have a great night,” I say with a wink and a smile.
CHAPTER FOUR
When the cops show up after we have everyone outside and situated, the breath in my lungs fails me and escapes my body. The cop stepping out of the squad car is in fact the cop from that god-awful night. Without even knowing it, my hand shoots up to my scar at the exact moment his hand rubs his neck, and our eyes lock together. I found out from another local cop that after a nine-hour surgery, he made it and here he is. Other than seeing him that night, I haven’t seen, talked, or even been introduced to him. Hell, I don’t even know his name. We stand there frozen, staring at each other. Paul looks at me, follows my stare, and now all three of us are standing there frozen. This is too much. Paul has wrapped his hand around my arm to make sure I stay upright.
My feet, as if on their own, start to move towards the cop, and he moves to me as well. When we are about a foot away from each other, we stop. Thinking maybe this situation isn’t happening, my eyes look to his neck while his eyes shoot to my collarbone and shoulder. We slowly walk into each other’s arms. I turn my head, so my lips brush the scar on his neck. He doesn’t tense up, but I can feel his heartbeat pick up just underneath my lips. Then I feel it. His lips lightly dance across my scar as well. We are saying everything we need to say without using words.
“I’m sorry this happened to us.”
We step away from each other, but we are still not out of the bubble we have created. Our hands rest lightly on each other’s upper arms as if we don’t want to sever the connection.
“May?”
He knows my name?
“May?”
I blink. I realize it is Paul calling my name, trying to pull me back to the present. I blink a couple more times.
“May, we got to go back in now; John has everything to give to the officer . . . can you even hear me?” Paul sounds so far away.
I blink a few more times before I finally snap back.
“Yeah . . . Yeah, I heard you,” I say, still staring.
My gaze slides down his uniform and lands on his name plate.
“Officer Davis,” I whisper.
“And you are May,” he speaks.
I nod. I can’t think of anything else to do because words are becoming harder for me to form.
We break the connection a few moments later, but I let my hands slide all the way down his arms and over his hands. Clearing my throat, I can finally speak.
“John has everything you need to understand what went on. I’ve . . . I’ve got to go back in now.”
“Okay, be safe . . . please,” he says to me as he squats down a little to meet me eye to eye.
“You too,” is all I can say, and I turn to head back inside.
Holy shit, did that just happen?
Walking back into the club with Paul behind me, I can’t help but notice that my heartbeat is drumming almost too fast–damn adrenaline.
Paul walks up closer to me and places his hand on the small of my back while radioing to someone else. I’m still not all the way back until I realize Paul has led me to the middle of the dance floor.
Ah, our ritual.
My arms are still unable to work, but I know Paul will take care of the details. He takes our earpieces out and turns off our radios. Then he reaches up and gently pulls my hair out of its neat bun. He has done it so many times now that I barely
feel it any more. The lights soften, and the blaring, fast-paced music slows and lowers.
90s flashback anyone?
J.T. starts singing about the girl that walked away, and Paul and I have started to move. We start off awkwardly thanks to me still trying to get my bearings back.
“But the truth remains
You’re gone . . .”
He picked the song from our hellish night. Why would he pick this song? Is it because of the interaction with the cop?
“I picked this song because this is what we danced to after you brought me back, and now it’s my turn to bring you back,” he says to me.
“Hm . . .” is all I give him.
We fall into step, and we are full-out dancing at this point, completely in tune with each other and the beat of the song. There is absolutely no space between us; not even a sliver of light can be seen between our bodies. We might as well be one person. My hands are on his upper arms, and his hands rest on my hips. He takes one of my hands, spins me around, and pulls me back against him, not missing a single step.
Lord, help me this man can dance.
My eyes close, and I lean my head back onto his chest at the amazing sensation of being engulfed by this strong man. As my hips sway slowly, he spins me back so our fronts are touching once again. He wraps his arm around the small of my back, and spreads out his other hand on my chest. He’s not copping a feel; it’s above my breasts, but not on my neck. I think that it is the sexiest place to touch a person because it doesn’t get explored enough. He presses lightly on that spot, so that I arch backwards very slowly. As I’m arched backwards, he guides me to the left and then back to the right before he brings me back up. When he does, some of my hair falls into my face. Paul brushes it away and holds his hand against my cheek. I lean into his touch. It is so nice.
I open my eyes, and see Paul staring back into mine.
Are we having a moment? No, we can’t, not us. There’s too much between us, too many years.
When I think I see him make a motion to lean in and kiss me, the lights come back on full blast, and the music returns to full force. It is the change of atmosphere that pulls me out of our spell.
I turn away first and head back to my spot by the bar. Once I’m there, I put my hair back up in its neat bun and put my earpiece in. Switching my radio back on, I’m hit with the staff talking.
“That was some of the sexiest shit I have ever seen,” I hear John say.
“Did you see that . . . That shit was hot!” some other guy says.
Did a couple of guys just say that? It makes me laugh out loud a little.
“That was . . . hands down the closest any two people have come to having sex . . . with their clothes on and in public, anyways,” one of the female bartenders says to me while sliding me a bottled water.
I try to laugh again, but it just comes out as a small smile.
“No, that’s just what we do to kill the adrenaline after a fight . . . kind of wiping the emotional slate clean,” I inform her.
“How? By replacing it with sexual tension?” she counters back to me with eyebrows raised.
“It’s not like that,” I say, looking in Paul’s direction.
“Yeah . . . sure it’s not,” she says as she walks away laughing.
Paul is standing in his normal spot: the edge of the dance floor. His earpiece is back in, his hands are folded in front of him, and his head is bobbing to the music. The only thing that is different is that he has four or five girls grinding on each other about three feet in front of him, dying to get his attention. I look back at Paul, and I can tell that he loves every second of this.
“You’re welcome,” I radio to no one in particular.
“You and I make a pretty envious team, May . . . thanks,” Paul radios back while looking at me and throwing me one hell of a smile.
Oh my.
CHAPTER FIVE
I wake up to what I think is my alarm that I have somehow mistakenly set, but it’s my phone, screaming at me that I have a text message. Looking at the clock, I see that it is 9 a.m. Shit. I just went to bed at five. I grab my phone and unlock it. It’s Kevin.
Kevin: Morning, darlin’. How does me coming to visit this weekend sound?
I bolt right up and read the message again to make sure that I am reading it right.
Me: Are you serious?
Kevin: Yeah, darlin’, what do you say?
Me: I say HELL YEAH! What time are you going to be getting here?
Kevin: Going to leave here around eleven, so that should put me there around six or seven.
Me: Awesome. I’ll see you then.
Kevin: See you soon, darlin’ . . . xoxo
Me: See you soon . . . xoxo
Flopping back onto the bed, I let out a “whoa” from my mouth, and my mind, as well as my heart, begins to race.
I don’t have a fight this week. I’m just not ready, and Paul agrees with me on that too. Calling out of work was no problem. It has been two weeks. That’s about all the time we spend at an establishment, so when I said I wasn’t feeling well, it wasn’t a big deal.
So here it is, Saturday night, and I’m sitting at home. I cannot remember the last time I took off of work.
Holy Shit! Am I nervous? Uh, yup. I’m nervous!
<>
It’s a quarter to eight at night, and it hits me–he’s not coming.
I feel like such an asshole. Here I am showered, shaved, and dressed to kill–just kidding. Dressed to kill, my ass. I am wearing my favorite jeans and my favorite shirt with a giant, green four-leaf clover on it because I was going to need all the luck I could get. I dressed comfortably to meet the man that I am falling in love with.
My phone rings.
I grab it off the coffee table as I down the rest of my Bud Light. When I look at the screen, I immediately hold my breath–Kevin.
Me: Hello?
Kevin: Hey, darlin’.
Me: You aren’t coming, are you?
Kevin: Of course I am. I’m hoping that I am outside the right house.
My heart is in my throat.
Me: Okay? Hang on; I’ll check.
The walk to the window was one of the longest ones of my life. As I reach the window, I push the curtains aside and pull down one of the slides of the blinds. I drop the phone on the couch.
I go to the door and open it as fast as my shaking hands will let me.
He’s here.
I open the screen door and step out onto the porch absolutely unable to speak.
There he is, leaning against the back of his pickup truck. I always pictured him as a pickup man, my kind of man. His legs are crossed at the ankles, and his arms are crossed over his chest. He’s looking at me, and he has one of the sexiest, hottest smiles I have ever seen. Jesus, even my thoughts run together as if I was a fifteen year old again. He’s wearing a black Guinness t-shirt, a pair of faded-in-all-the-right-places jeans, and brown boots. He oozes charisma.
I step off the porch, not even worrying about putting my flip flops on, and make my way across the lawn. My stomach is filled with floating butterflies, and my heart is still in my throat.
“Kevin?” I ask, but I mean to say it.
“Man, that is a long drive,” he says, stretching his arms above his head and then settling back, all the while taking me in, as I’m taking him in.
“Hi,” I say to him. What else do you say?
“Hi, darlin’,” he answers softly and sweetly.
There go my knees. I cover it up by stepping into his space and wrapping my arms around his neck. It’s all I can think to do. Every conversation we have ever had comes shooting back to me as if now that he is here physically, they really, truly existed. We were just two people on opposite sides of the state, getting to know each other, not knowing if we would ever meet. But now he is right here in my arms. I tighten my arms a little at the thought and turn my face into his neck, and we extend the hug longer.
When we pull away, we still mainta
in a point of contact, not wanting to let go.
“It’s nice to meet you, Kevin.”
Jesus, really? That’s what you say to the man that you’ve talked to about everything under the sun for the past three months? Nice, May, nice.
“It’s nice to meet you too, darlin’,” he says with a smile that I hope it is just for me.
And I’m melting.
“So, what do you want to do? Hang out here, get something to eat, head to the bar . . . It’s your choice . . . whatever you want to do.” I ask, a little too eagerly.
“Yeah, all that sounds great. We’ll do that,” he says.
“Okay, let me just get my stuff, lock up, and we will go grab something to eat,” I say, walking sideways back to the house. Jeez, May get it together.
“Sounds good to me, darlin’.”
I’m in trouble.
He has bad night vision, so I drive to the restaurant. Might as well because he has never been here before, so it’s just easier for me to drive. Because it’s eight-thirty on a Saturday night, we almost don’t manage to get two seats together at the bar, but my friend Julie, the bartender, owes me a solid, actually a couple, and we don’t wait long for two chairs to open up. People are crowding us, but I don’t see or feel them. Sitting next to him makes me feel like there is no one else around. The only thing that is joining us is our calves under our barstools. When they rested against each other, it was an accident, I think, but neither one of us pulled away. Fine with me.
We don’t really say much to each other because people are talking all around us and I think we both are kind of getting over the shock of meeting. We make the occasional comment about something on ESPN, which is on behind the bar, but other than that, we just enjoy each other’s company.
I down the rest of my shot and take another drink from my beer, trying to muster up the courage to ask the question that will either make this night perfect or destroy me completely.
Need You, Need Me (The Need Series Book 1) Page 3
