Wreck (Bareknuckle Boxing Brotherhood Book 2)

by Nelson, Cara

  “Goddammit! Goddamn her. I am not dangerous. I’m NOT, goddammit,” he forced out through gritted teeth.

  He was shaking all over, and knew deep down that since he had wanted to hit her—even though he had resisted the urge to throw his phone, to punch the brick wall of JC Penney, the desire to hit and hurt and punish was still there. He was dangerous. The funny thing was, despite all his years of fighting in the ring, he always thought of himself as a laid-back guy, out for a good time. Never someone who would have considered striking a woman who angered him.

  He blinked furiously, fighting back tears, and punched Shea’s number into his phone. She was the only person who knew about Olive and Ashley, so she was the only one he could turn to.

  “Hey, I need you,” he said baldly.

  “What’s wrong? Was the baby mama that nasty?” Shea said.

  “This is real, Shea, don’t joke about it,” he managed.

  “Okay, I’m sorry. Where are you?”

  “I’m still in the parking lot,” he said.

  “I’ll come get you. Wait there.”

  He sat in his car, trying to push down the rage, pulling air into his lungs and forcing it out again, trying to say the alphabet backward to calm himself and drive past the red fury that engulfed him.

  When Shea rapped on his window, Kyle was startled, nearly bumping her with the door in his haste to get it open. Shea hung back diffidently, but Kyle hooked an arm around her hips and pulled her into his arms. She landed awkwardly in his lap with the steering wheel jamming against her hip, but she held on to him tightly. He buried his face in her hair, his hands clenched on the back of her t-shirt. When his ragged breathing slowed, he loosened his grip on her and let her wriggle out of his lap.

  “So, um, what’s up?” Shea said.

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?”

  “Like where? Your car’s pretty private.”

  “Like your place. Or mine,” he said.

  “To talk?” She raised an eyebrow suspiciously.

  “To talk.”

  “Is this naked talk?”

  “I’m not ruling it out,” Kyle said.

  “I’ll drive. You’re not in any shape for driving,” she said, “and I’m a nurse. I know all kinds of shit.”

  “I bet you say that to people in the ER.”

  “Most of my patients are unconscious. I’m a surgical nurse now. But when I worked emergency, they were pretty adamant that I shouldn’t talk to the suicide attempts. Seems I’m not motivational speaker material.” She grinned.

  “I’m not gonna kill myself,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you were. What did she say to you?”

  “Just a bunch of bull about how I’m bad for Olive,”

  “So she feels threatened and she’s insecure.”

  “So she says I’m dangerous and I live in a shit neighborhood and I’d be a bad influence.”

  “I’m thinking that her husband, Meth-Making Monty, might be a bad influence.”

  “Do you seriously think they’re on drugs?”

  “I didn’t get much of a look at her through the car window, and I haven’t, like, been to their house and seen their setup, so no. But I think there’s a chance. I mean, the mom is acting pretty erratic, showing up at your fight, making demands, yelling at you a lot…”

  “Did you smell it on Olive?”

  “I thought maybe a cat had peed on her backpack.”

  “Does ferret pee smell the same?”

  “I have no idea. I’ve never smelled ferret urine. Or any rodents, really. And I’m not sure I have ever had a weirder conversation than this one. If Zoe had told me that I’d be standing around the JC Penney parking lot talking ferret piss with her almost brother-in-law, I’d have said she was nuts. But I used to tell her she was nuts a lot.”

  “Is she?”

  “Not even close. She’s just really sweet and hopeful. I have no idea how we managed to live together.”

  “Friends are always the same. Me and Aaron—we’re pretty different.”

  “Both of you were boxers; now you both teach self-defense. That doesn’t seem all that different to me.”

  “Trust me. He’s a brooder. Ma says he was born with the Irish blues. It’s all tragic and hard. I’m the good son,” he said proudly.

  “So he’s the evil son?”

  “No. He’s just not me.”

  “It’s good to know your ego didn’t suffer too much from Ashley’s hissy fit.”

  “Ah, it took a bruising, but I’ll survive.”

  “Right, Danny Boy. So do you still need to talk or are you better now?”

  “I’d like to talk,” he said.

  “Then we’ll go to my place.”

  “I said ‘talk’, Shea,”

  “I figured that wasn’t exactly what you meant.”

  “It’s what I meant. The more I think about it, the more Ashley’s right. I’m the same punk I was when we hooked up ten years ago. I fight, I live with my brother and his girlfriend, I party and drink and pick up girls, and I’m still in the same shit neighborhood where I grew up. If I was her, I wouldn’t want my kid hanging out with someone like that.”

  “Kyle, that’s not true. Don’t take her too seriously. I’m sure she was emotional and possibly, you know, a meth head, so her opinion doesn’t count for much. I mean, I like you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So come up to my place. Are you calm enough to drive?”

  “Sure, I’ll follow you.”

  Shea kissed his cheek and closed his door, looking at him through his car window for a minute. She set her hand against the window, and after a moment, he pressed his hand against the inside of the glass to match hers. Kyle regarded her through the glass and wondered how in hell he could keep from screwing this up.

  At Shea’s building, he parked and caught up to her on the stairs.

  “Hey, I got you something,” he said.

  Kyle fished the tiny bag out of his pocket and handed it to her. She pulled out the tiny barrette with the silver dragonfly on it.

  “It’s the one you tried on to clip your bangs back when you and Olive were looking at girly stuff,” he said sheepishly.

  “I didn’t even know you were looking,” she said, touching the hairclip reverently, looking from the tiny lavender crystals on the silvery dragonfly to Kyle’s ice blue eyes. “I don’t really know what to say,”

  “Then don’t,” he said, and with a tug on her sleeve, kissed her lightly on her mouth.

  As he kissed her, he inhaled the scent of Shea, a mix of lemons and rubbing alcohol, sharp and tangy. He had meant to make it a friendly kiss, something sweet and unexpected, but her fingers caught at his shoulder. It was all he could do to raise his head and smile instead of parting her lips and taking the kiss deeper.

  Her apartment was cluttered and messy. She tossed her keys into a dish and kicked her shoes off by the door carelessly.

  “Make yourself at home,” she shrugged. “Zoe used to do the tidying up. She moved out.”

  “Six months ago?”

  “Pretty much. I’ve been—busy,” she said.

  Kyle took in the catalogs stacked so high on the coffee table that they threatened to topple over, the unfolded laundry overflowing its basket, the light on her answering machine that flashed twelve messages.

  “Twelve? Somebody must be looking for you.”

  “Nah, everybody that knows me has my cell number. That’s telemarketers and shit. My sister.”

  “Your sister goes in the group with telemarketers?”

  “No, because if I gave them my credit card number, they’d be happy and shut up. My sister couldn’t stop complaining for all the money in the US Defense budget.”

  “She a whiner?”

  “Full-time malcontent. Believe it or not, I’m the sunny one in the family.”

  “She must be scary,” he remarked, “so talk to me.”

  “The idea was that you talk to me. What’s your plan where
Olive is concerned?”

  “I don’t have a plan. I want to be in her life, but I got to thinking, all that shit that Ashley said was true. My life isn’t a fit place for a kid. It’s not safe, it’s not stable.” His jaw clenched. “Maybe she was better off without me.”

  “What’s ‘better off’ even mean? A kid is going to want to know who her dad is and that he cares about her. There isn’t anything better than knowing you’re loved, Kyle. So how could she be better off without you?”

  “That’s nice of you. But I’m not just feeling sorry for myself. When Ashley said no way was her daughter meeting my family and going into my crap neighborhood ever again and all that—part of me was relieved. Like, ‘oh thank God, this kid isn’t going to have to see how I live and what a fucking deadbeat I am. She can go on thinking I’m a regular guy who maybe has a house and a regular job and a girlfriend.’”

  “It’s not like you’re in prison or something, Kyle. You’re not a deadbeat. Granted, I wouldn’t take her to Wreck to check out the fights, but your daughter is better off knowing you than not.”

  “I wish I could believe that. All those years the priest was up there talking about guilt, and I never really got it ‘til today. I thought I was proud of being a boxer, of what we did for Ma, but I don’t live a safe life. I’m dangerous…” he trailed off.

  “Kyle, I think you’re nine kinds of trouble, but I don’t think you’re dangerous.”

  “Then I think you’re wrong. I wanted to hit her, Shea. I wanted to punch her when she said that shit to me about never seeing Olive again,” he said brokenly, head in his hands.

  “Did you actually hit her? Did you go to her house and beat her up?”

  “No!”

  “Then it doesn’t count.”

  “That’s not true. If you sin in your thoughts, it’s the same as sinning with your body.”

  “Wanting to hit someone and restraining yourself is not the same as punching their face in, no matter how religious you are. That’s like saying because I liked that Lexus in the mall parking lot and wanted to take it for a spin that I’m a thief. There’s a fundamental difference between thoughts and actions. Just like good intentions won’t save you, bad thoughts won’t send you straight to hell, Danny Boy,” Shea said, leaning forward with her hand on his knee for emphasis.

  “Are you Catholic?”

  “I’m not anything, really. I don’t know what I believe. But I believe in you.” Shea faltered, then threw her arms around his neck and held him close.

  Kyle crushed her in his arms and squeezed his eyes tight shut, holding on to her like she was the only thing keeping him on his feet. “I think I should go,” Kyle said suddenly, pulling back from her.

  He had been ten seconds away from peeling her clothes off and knocking over that stack of catalogs in a good cause. He stopped himself. I don’t want to use her, he thought. I don’t want to be the guy who’s only out for a good time. He stood up, trying to look at her shoulder, out the window behind her, or anywhere but at the crestfallen expression on her face.

  “I can’t,” he said. “I mean, I can. But I don’t want to. Not like this,”

  “You don’t want to? Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

  “Maybe I think you deserve better. Maybe you’ll be better off.”

  “What if I don’t want better? What if I want you?” Shea challenged.

  “I’ll call you later, if you want,” he said, suddenly desperate to get out of her apartment and that laser-focused stare that was pinning him down. “I’m trying to be the kind of guy who doesn’t take advantage of nice girls, who doesn’t punch people all the time and get drunk in the middle of the day.”

  “I’m not asking you to reform, Danny Boy. I was hoping for—” She finally stopped. He almost heard the click as she turned off, gave up, shook her head, and wrote him off.

  “Bye,” he said with a halfhearted wave.

  He went down to the fight school and worked out until his mind finally blanked and he could relax. It took a lot of hits to the heavy bag, a lot of pullups, and hours on the used treadmill they’d bought. He went upstairs, dead tired and numb, and went to sleep without even a shower. In his dreams, all he heard was dangerous with every footfall, as he ran down endless white hallways that looped in on themselves with no escape.

  CHAPTER 6—SHEA

  Shea was too miserable even to call Zoe and complain that Kyle had rejected her. The story was too mixed up in the fact that he had a secret daughter and still fought on the sly. It made her feel unspeakably tired just to think of having to tell the story and omit just the right parts to protect his privacy. So she settled for a box of caramel popcorn and a couple of hours of bad reality TV. She fell asleep, sad and sticky, on her couch and woke up when her phone beeped around two in the morning.

  I hate how we left things. RU busy?

  Yeah, SLEEPING. It’s two, she replied.

  Can I buy u a drink?

  Maybe in 18 hr or so. Good nite.

  She dropped the phone back on the table, stretched, and got up to take a shower. She was clean and keyed up, and annoyed that he was out drinking and probably being mobbed by hot blondes who partied at night, instead of gorging on caramel corn and the Real Housewives of Idaho, or whatever she’d been watching. After the way he’d acted that afternoon, he had no right to text her, much less suggest a drink and a booty call, when he’d blown her off just hours ago. Her stomach twisted at the thought of him drunk and alone, falling prey to other, more persistent women.

  This was way too complicated and frustrating to be the fling she’d hoped for when she went to that first class. She’d wanted to lick his tattoo, straddle him, and ride to oblivion, then part as friends and go on with her life, fully satisfied and completely free. She never wanted to know his secrets or help him navigate the troubles of new fatherhood and a vengeful ex. It was too real to be fun. If she could just get in his pants and get him out of her system, she could disentangle herself from this messy involvement and move on. She knew she should forget him, that he was more trouble than she needed, and he’d made his lack of interest clear when he was sober. She couldn’t let him go. It was as ugly and simple as that—she wanted him, and she couldn’t stop until she had him.

  The fact that she was very inconveniently in love with him would just have to go on the backburner for now. She’d deal with the broken heart after she’d shagged him and said goodbye. Closure! she thought triumphantly. Screwing Kyle will give me closure, and then I can get over him! With that strange rationalization, she went happily back to sleep.

  After slogging through a twelve-hour shift with back to back appendectomies and an emergency ruptured spleen, she took two showers before getting dressed and dragging home. It had been one of those days that left her feeling lifeless and sad. The last patient had died on the table. It didn’t happen very often at all, but this one was a young man, younger than her, and she had gone out into the waiting room with the surgeon to tell his wife what happened. Shea was usually pretty stoic, the sensible one, but she had sat beside that woman and cried with her until she was completely spent.

  At her apartment, it had taken her trembling hands three tries to get the key in the lock. She sank onto the couch and shut her eyes, trying not to think of the man who’d died, of his wife going home alone, of Kyle. She had been hit so hard with the idea—what if it had been Kyle’s spleen? What if she herself had sat in the waiting area with an old Us Weekly waiting to hear he was out of surgery, only to be told he was gone? The unwelcome surge of empathy had left her sad and grouchy.

  Her phone rang, and she saw his number, partly with relief because he was okay and partly with annoyance because he wasn’t hers, and she was in no mood for a booty call.

  “Hi,” she said flatly.

  “I remembered you were getting off work at seven, and I still want to buy you a drink.”

  “How about you buy me a sandwich?”

  “Hungry? I can fix that,” he sa
id.

  I bet you could, but you rejected me! she thought.

  “Okay. Pick me up in ten?”

  “Fifteen,” he said, and hung up.

  Shea bolted into the bathroom and layered on more eye makeup than she’d worn since the last time she was a bridesmaid. She found her push-up bra and wrestled into it, risking death by underwire puncture in the process. She pulled Zoe’s hot-girl boots out of her closet, offering up a silent prayer that Zoe would forget she had them, and pulled them on with what her friend had called the Easy Dress. It was electric blue and shorter than short, with loose cold-shoulder sleeves that made it seem slightly less revealing than it was, with its deep v-neck and high thigh hem. It was probably designed to be a shirt, she thought with a laugh as she tugged the snug fabric down over her hips. She slipped on long silver earrings and waited.

  He showed up late. It was only a couple of minutes, but long enough to make her panic that he wasn’t coming at all. When he knocked, she let out a whoosh of breath she hadn’t realized she was holding in and opened the door.

  “You’re a knockout, lass,” he said appreciatively, sweeping her with his eyes.

  “Thanks,” she said, snagging her keys and following him out.

  “Nice boots.”

  “Thanks, they’re stolen.”

  “Shoplifter?”

  “Nah, they’re Zoe’s. So where are we going?”

  “This bar I know with really good burgers.”

  “You really know how to spoil a girl,” Shea said, exasperated.

  “Too good to share a burger with me?”

  “I want my own burger. I like to eat.”

  “Then I think you’ll like this place,” he said.

  In the car, he told her about getting a text from his daughter, about messaging with her online and finding out that she liked ‘old’ bands like the Backstreet Boys.

  “Have you told Aaron yet?”

  “No.”

  “When are you going to?”

  “I don’t know. I kind of thought I’d have a burger, Shea,” he said, trying to joke with her.