The chance never arrives because I end up slamming on my brakes when the minivan in front of me pulls up short to miss Nate when he decides at the very last second to turn right without bothering to indicate. My heart jumps into my stomach and I tighten my grip on the steering wheel as I mimic his kamikaze movements with my body. I lean to one side and then the next, feeling sick with worry, as Nate peels across the dual lane road in front of the oncoming traffic and forces them all to brake for him as well.
The cars on either side of the road begin to move again, but I’m frozen in one spot, my eyes glued on Nate as he roars up the side street, until the one behind me honks. Placing my foot cautiously on my accelerator I resist the urge to turn around and follow him. Instead, I allow myself to examine the thoughts I’d been refusing to acknowledge and come to the decision I should have made before last night.
Nate is not the man I should have chosen to break my self-imposed drought.
He is reckless and he’s dangerous. I was right in my initial thoughts about him.
Nathan Harvie is trouble with a capital T.
TWENTY-THREE
Nate
I was heading home. I truly was. Then the name on a street sign caught my attention and I found myself cutting off the cars behind me with my abrupt braking so I could turn down Black Street at the last moment. Reinvigorated, the lapse in concentration and flagging energy I felt at The Fitness Hub disappears as soon as I have another scheme to focus on.
Leaving a cacophony of honking and screeching tyres behind me, I grin and gun my engine. I feel like I’m fucking flying—a feeling that remains the entire time I careen through the back streets toward Black Hearts MMA.
A black SUV tears out of the parking lot and fish tails through the traffic seconds before I pull into the almost packed parking lot. Coming to a screeching stop in my usual park, I point my back tyre at the front door and do a quick, smoke-inducing burnout. Satisfied with my effort, I shut off the engine, and swagger inside. I expect to be greeted by a few cheers and a cussing out from Hooligan.
Par for the course—a typical day for me when I’m feeling frisky like this.
Rather than the usual mid-day flurry of activity, I’m greeted with a tense standoff. Following the members stares, I end up finding Jep facing off with Hooligan and Angelo in the locker room. Something big has gone down—I can see it in Jep’s face. He’s not prone to regret, or even basic self-reflection, yet I can see both in his tight expression right now. The fact he got a red mark on the side of his face and is cupping his balls doesn’t bode well for him either.
I think back to the car that left just before I parked and remember that the driver was female. Only one woman trains at Black Hearts MMA. Gabbi. Somehow, she’s managed to get here before me, have a run in with Jep and maybe Hooligan, then leave in a huff.
Wracking my brain I try to remember how many times I changed my mind about heading home and ended up riding somewhere else while I was side-tracked. A look at the clock on the wall of the locker room tells me that I’ve lost over an hour and a half of the day somewhere between leaving The Fitness Hub and arriving here.
Tendrils of worry try to wrap themselves around my brain, but I force myself to concentrate on the situation in front of me. There will be time to remember where else I’ve been this morning once I’ve discovered why two of my favourite people look like they want to kill my best friend.
“What’s happened?”
Three heads swivel to face me. Jep is the first to drop my gaze. Angelo offers a non-committal half-shrug. My uncle is the one who gives me the answer I seek.
“Ask him,” he spits, pointing at Jep. In my uncle’s eyes, I see a disappointment of herculean magnitude. Through tightly pressed lips, he continues, “Seems your buddy took some liberties with Gabbi after you went running back to him with what you saw the other day.”
Holy fuck. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything to my best friend. He’s been a little bit too interested in Gabbi since the start—even after he learned she was only seventeen. That explains his weird advice this morning about Amy. It was more of an information gathering exercise to see if Gabbi was free now I was pursuing Amy and less about his worry for me and my behaviour.
Part of me is relieved. Another part, a much bigger section, is pissed.
There’s only two things that would make Hooligan this upset, and neither of them are good.
Angelo’s dark eyes light up with a level of glee that seems out of place in this scenario before he clamps his hand on Hooligan’s shoulder and whispers something in my uncle’s ear. With a curt nod to me and studious avoidance of acknowledging Jep, he leaves the locker room. His booming voice bounces back to us when he tells all the onlookers to get back to what they were doing.
My uncle kicks the locker room door shut behind Angelo, then leans against his closed office door with his arms folded across his chest.
“So, tell me,” he addressed both of us, although I feel like most of his ire is directed at me. “What made two grown fucking men believe they could gossip about me behind my back?”
Jep drops to his arse on the wooden bench closest to him. He puts his head in his hands and shakes it from side to side. Hooligan sneers at him, then turns on me.
“What the fuck were you thinking, Nate?” He unfolds his arms and stalks over to me. Pushing me in the chest with both hands, he yells in my face. “Are you that fucking jealous that you think sending your fuck boy of a friend after her will change her mind? She’s seventeen. Stay the fuck away from her or I’ll bar you both from Black Hearts for life. I have no time for immature fuckery, and I have no time for either of you until you sort your shit out. Grow up.”
Instantly, I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. Jep’s managed to drag me into his shit and now I’m being threatened with banishment from the one place in the world where I feel completely at home.
Hooligan glares at both of us, then spins on his heel and enters his office. My heart pounds in my chest; a roaring rush of blood deafening me. Despite his absence, my uncle’s threat hangs in the air like a bad smell—it’s a stench I can’t get out of my nose. Indignant injustice threatens to overwhelm me. I swallow it down.
“What did you do?”
Jep lifts his head. He opens his mouth to answer, then closes it and shakes his head.
I snarl at him, ready to rip shreds off him until I hear something break in Hooligan’s office. With my attention diverted from my selectively-mute friend, I choose to make sure my uncle is okay before I worry about getting answers from Jep.
When I get in there, I find his office empty. The only trace that he was there is the shattered coffee mug on the floor. He must have left through the back exit that leads to storage room and his personal bathroom. Relief floods me. I didn’t know what to say to make up for what I’d done anyhow. Breaking his confidence—even when he hadn’t explicitly demanded it—is tantamount to treason in his eyes. He’s right. Tattling to Jep about catching Hooligan and Gabbi kissing and my uncle’s freak out afterward was immature.
Unfortunately, I can’t give him the real reason for my lapse in judgement. He’d kick my arse if he found out I was off my meds and that’s why I was running at the mouth with as much discrimination as a seagull chasing a chip.
Movement through the wide glass window he had installed to overlook the rings interrupts my internal pity party. I move in front of it, standing with my hands on my hips and surveying the fight centre my uncle has built from the ground up.
From the octagonal rings to the wooden benches and the cold-water fountains, every single piece of this building was built, erected, or installed by either myself, my uncle, or Angelo. It’s taken years—almost a decade—to finish, and it’s still not perfect in Hooligan’s eyes, yet I can’t help the surge of pride I feel every time I stop to take the time to appreciate it.
If only Aunt Mari and Gabe were still here to appreciate it with my uncle; his life would be sweet. From th
e twenty-four-year-old MMA fighter on the cusp of overseas success to the reluctant father figure of his wayward, fifteen-year-old nephew to the man who built his legacy in the gym then lost his will to live when his wife and child’s lives were cruelly ended, he is an inspiration. If I was asked to name my biggest role model, it would my uncle.
Hayden Harvie is the person I want to be when I grow up.
A fit of sentimentality hits me, followed quickly by remorse when I consider the stupid moves I’ve been pulling for the past few days. On top of the hurt I caused my uncle by talking shit about him to Jep, I could have been killed this morning if just one of those drivers wasn’t paying enough attention to brake in time.
Hell, I’ve lost two hours of time somehow.
The noisy, overcrowded feeling in my head that I vaguely remember from before I was diagnosed is beginning to become too loud to ignore. I allow my doubts about the course of action I’ve chosen by signing with Steve free rein in my mind for one second, then I push them away by taking another look at the gym.
If I can just push through the craziness in my head. If I can see Amy often enough for her calming presence to give me the focus I need. If I can keep my shit together long enough to apply for an exemption from the medical association that oversees professional MMA fighting, I can build my own legacy. One to rival what Hooligan has built—to carry on his name and take the opportunities he gave up for me.
It’s that final thought which sends me to the chair behind his desk. I take a seat and pull out the first note pad I can find. After hunting for a pencil, I scrawl my apologies for telling Jep, then I plead for his forgiveness because Black Hearts MMA is everything to me. Then I sign it with my full name and underline our shared birthright—our surname Harvie—twice.
My conscience remains heavy. Pushing to my feet, I stalk back into the locker room in search of Jep.
He’s gone.
Without saying goodbye to anyone, I leave the gym and ride home. This time I focus on actually getting home straightaway and manage to make it there using the most direct route and without breaking any road rules or pulling dumbass maneuvres on my bike.
Jep’s bike sits on his side of the driveaway. He’s even left the front door unlocked. When I enter the living room, I find him standing there. He’s waiting for me with his arms at his side and an apology on his face.
Without speaking, I pull my fist back and punch him in the mouth. He takes it. I hit him again, snapping his head back from the impact before I land a strike to his solar plexus. Jep drops to his knees, yet he still keeps his arms down.
“Fight back,” I scream at him.
He shakes his head. “No, I deserve it. I fucked up and hurt you and Hooligan. You’re my only family. You should be exempt from my bullshit. I’m sorry.”
My head is too far gone for his words to properly register. The dissonance between my grasp on logic and the fractured reminders of how it felt when Hooligan threatened to ban me from Black Hearts keeps growing.
Rather than pull back as I intended, I hit Jep again. His nose breaks, bursting like an overripe tomato, then I kick him in the guts and he falls forward.
With my head full of noise that doesn’t make any sense, I leave him face down on the living room floor and head into my bedroom. I don’t bother to close the door behind me or take off my boots, instead I throw myself on my stomach diagonally across my mattress and jam my pillow over my head to block out the rushing thoughts that refuse to die down.
As my eyes finally close and blackness descends behind my eyelids, I concentrate on conjuring mental images of Amy with me in this very bed last night.
Thinking of her centres me. Calms me. Heals me.
I’m not sure how long it takes, but finally, sleep claims me for the first time in almost two days.
TWENTY-FOUR
Amy
“Can you copy this for me, and add it to the schedule for next week?” Steve asks.
Nodding, I take the documents he’s holding out to me and place them on my overflowing in-tray. My thoughts have been scattered since I arrived for work at three because I’ve been mentally counting down the minutes until Nate’s shift starts.
After a good sleep and spending some time with Maxie before I headed to work, I made a choice.
Friends with benefits is not for me—well, not with Nate anyhow. He’s a bit too loose, a bit too young, a bit too everything for me right now. I’ve decided to chalk last night up to a learning experience and return back to my cosy little existence with just Max, Olaf, my sitter, and my mother’s cold shoulder for company.
Sure it’s lonely sometimes, but it’s better than the way I behaved last night. I disrespected myself, my child, and my marriage last night. First by melting down over a motorcycle, then by not making it home before Max woke up.
One night of pleasure had me breaking my number one rule.
Not exactly an auspicious beginning.
Now, I’m waiting for Nate to get to work so I can let him down easy.
“Did you hear a word I just said?” Steve cuts into my mental ramblings with his sharp question. “I swear this is why I wish it was legal to forbid your employees from seeing each other.”
“Huh?” I meet Steve’s narrowed gaze with puzzled eyes.
“This,” he says, waving a hand at me. “You’re distracted because of Nate.”
Sitting up straight in my chair, I frown at him. He recoils a little; the tops of his ears turning red. Prodding the paperwork he handed me with a pointy fingernail, I pin him to the spot with a glare.
“You want this copied and added to next week’s schedule,” I snap at him. “Is that correct?”
“Yes,” my boss replies quickly. “But—”
“I heard you. I’m not distracted by Nate or anything else. I’m here. I’m doing my job. What I do in my own time has no effect on how I perform at work.”
I’m not sure why I’m defending myself since I’ve already decided that last night was a one-off thing. All I know is Steve’s allegation has me fired up in a way that makes me wish it was legal for me to slap him for being impertinent. Yes, I have been a bit scattered on the inside, but I know I’m professional enough to hold it together externally.
Steve clears his throat and I straighten my shoulders in anticipation of his upcoming apology.
“You’re correct,” he states in a flat voice. Rubbing the back of his neck, he gives me an apologetic look as he continues, “But I asked you to hand it back to me so I could check something and you sat there staring at me with this look on your face that just screamed to me that you were off with the fairies. When I asked you a second time, you didn’t even blink.”
Crap. Apparently, I’m not as with it as I thought.
“Okay, you may be right,” I concede.
Pausing, I search my brain for the right words to say next.
“It’s all right,” Steve interrupts me. He looks at his watch. “I’ve got a family dinner to get to. Can you hold down the fort for me? I’m probably not going to make it back tonight so leave a list of anything I need to know on my desk for the morning.”
“Of course, I’ll do that.”
“Ring me if there’s anything urgent, otherwise I’ll talk to your tomorrow afternoon.”
I wave at him as he leaves, then slump in my chair when the coast is clear and I’m the only one left in the office area. Having Steve call me out just compounds my belief in the decision I made this afternoon.
On top of making me break my rules, Nate is stealing my concentration. In the two and a half years that I’ve worked here, Steve has never had to pull me up for inattentiveness. If anything, he brags about my efficiency to anyone who’ll listen.
When I pick up the paperwork he handed me, I realise that, after all the angst, I never did give it back to him for him to check whatever it was that he needed to look at. My chair rolls away behind me when I launch myself upright and hustle after him.
I haven’t made it to the d
oor before it’s reopened, and I’m forced to stop abruptly so it doesn’t hit me in the face.
“Now, who’s distracted?” I crow with humour lacing my words.
“Oh, I’m distracted all right,” Nate replies with a smirk that lights up his green eyes and illuminates his handsome face. He flicks the lock on the door and advances on me. “I’ve been distracted by thoughts of your tight pussy and your beautiful body since you left me in the parking garage with a hard dick and no way to satisfy it this morning.”
His crude words shouldn’t make me wet. They also shouldn’t be responsible for me clenching my thighs together at the mental images they conjure.
Backing away from him, I hold Steve’s documents in front of me like a shield. They flutter as if caught in a strong breeze because the hunger in Nate’s eyes when he eyes me like a lion is enough to send all of my objections fling out of my head.
My body is at odds with my mind.
Nate takes hold of my hips with his strong hands and he uses his grip to move me until my back is against the wall next to the door. A ripple of desire pulses through me, increasing to waves of need when he hikes my skirt up under my breast, frees his cock from his gym shorts, and lifts me in the air until my entrance is lined up with the head of his hard length.
“Have I been distracting you?” Nate’s voice is raspy.
“Yes,” I admit without hesitation. He lowers my body over his, pushing his way inside of me, one deliberate inch at a time. I feel my body stretching to accommodate his cock, the burn of his entry giving way to something excruciatingly pleasurable as I become needier. “You’ve been distracting me all day.”
“Good.” Nate breathes against my neck when he lowers his face into the crevice. “Let me distract you some more.”
With a definite air of delight hanging around him, he begins to move within me. In and out, thrust and withdraw, pump and groan. I’m his willing victim, trapped as I am between his warm body and the cold wall at my back.
Conflict (Black Hearts MMA, #2) Page 12
