CLAIMED BY THE ALPHA UNDERBOSS

by Candace Ayers

  Two hours later, I see uptight little Claire Donnelly getting pounded into the pavement by her dickweed boyfriend.

  I’m not thinking about Larry when it happens. I’m not even really thinking about Claire. I’m not exactly hero material, and not too bothered by other people’s problems as a general rule.

  No, in that moment, I’m back in the shitty-ass singlewide I’d grown up in, huddled helplessly by the bedroom door with my two brothers, trying unsuccessfully to block out the sound of our drunken dirtbag of a father knocking the shit out of our mom, her sobs barely audible under his screaming.

  The difference is that this time, I’m not helpless. There’s something I can do. So I do it.

  It’s not until I’m sitting across from Claire in the diner, watching her sip daintily at her water and give me her speech about why she can’t leave, that I realize I can kill two birds with one stone.

  Maybe it does pay to do a good deed once in a while.

  Chapter 3 CLAIRE

  “Okay, explain this to me again,” I say, munching on my fries and watching Jett inhale his burger, grease dribbling out the corner of this mouth. Disgusting. “Because from the way it sounds, you want me to marry you because you’re such a jerk that you can’t find a decent girl. Is that it?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “I’ve already got a jerk. Why would I want another one?”

  Jett actually looks hurt for a second. “Because this jerk won’t beat the shit out of you,” his tone gets serious sounding and he sits his burger down. “Plus, this jerk has a bunch of money, a huge house, and a security team that will make sure the other jerk won’t dare to come near you.”

  “I’m not completely destitute,” I tell him defensively. I hate that this is actually starting to sound like a viable option. “I don’t need you to support me. I have a pretty good job.”

  “A job that gives you money you don’t have access to,” Jett clarifies. “And I’m not saying you need me to support you. I’m just saying that, if you agreed to marry me, you could basically have whatever you wanted as part of the deal. All you’d have to do was occasionally go to press events with me and come to some of my games. You like football, don’t you?”

  “It’s okay, I guess.” Am I actually considering this?

  “Well, as my wife, you’d get the best seats, completely free. You’d have money, clothes, jewelry, whatever the hell you want. And Aaron wouldn’t be able to get anywhere near you. Doesn’t that seem better than trying to scrape together enough money to support yourself before your boyfriend kills you?”

  “Aaron wouldn’t kill me,” I say, but my heart lurches in my chest. I know it’s a possibility, I’ve known it for a while. I spend a lot of time in denial, but Jett is right. I can’t trust Aaron with anything at this point, and if this is the first and best chance I have to get away from the dickhead, I’d be a fool not to take it. Even if it means tying myself to another dickhead. At least he’s a total-gorgeous-hot-babe dickhead. And he won’t kill me.

  “Please.” Jett grabs my hand, and I jump, startled. His hand is warm and calloused, but his touch is tender. “I need help, okay? I need help. And it seems like you could use some too.”

  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and sigh. “Tell me what I’d have to do.”

  Jett’s face lights up. He looks like a kid on Christmas morning. “It’s easy. I buy you a ring, we go down to Vegas to get a quickie wedding, we stay married for a year. You live with all the comforts and security that come with being my wife, and then we file for a divorce and you go on your merry way.”

  “And what do I say when people ask me why we’re suddenly married?”

  “I’m sure your friends and family will back you up if you explain things to them.”

  I nibble on my fry, but it suddenly becomes tasteless. “I don’t really have any friends or family. I was talking about the press.”

  “Press is easy. We tell them we were keeping our relationship quiet because you don’t like being in the spotlight, and when we get a divorce, we just cite ‘irreconcilable differences’ and ask them to ‘respect our privacy.’” Jett takes a small, careful bite of his burger, his eyes never leaving my face. “I thought you were pretty close with your mom in college. Wouldn’t she need to know about this?”

  “We were very close.” My throat starts to constrict, and I try to breathe through it. Even after two years, it’s still hard to talk about. “She passed away from cancer right after I started dating Aaron.”

  “Shit,” Jett murmurs.

  “Yeah.” I push back the lock of hair that always seems to fall into my eyes. “I was living with her to take care of her, and when she died, I’d spent a lot of my savings on her medical bills. I ended up selling her place and moving in with Aaron. Which - well, you can see how that worked out for me.”

  Jett shakes his head. “Sorry. That’s rough.” He fiddles with his fork. “My mom passed away just before college. That’s not an easy experience.”

  “No,” I agree. “It’s definitely not.” I’m surprised. I didn’t know Jett’s lost his mom.

  To be fair, I was never exactly bosom buddies with the guy. He was a senior when I was a freshman, and we were in entirely different majors, me in chemical engineering, him in exercise science, so we never had any classes together. We never would have met at all if I hadn’t been assigned to tutor him.

  As I watch him scarf down the rest of his fries, I analyze the situation. He needs to look like a decent, relatable guy, so he chooses me, someone who seems desperate, and extra points for getting a girl who isn’t pretty enough to hang off his arm in any other situation. Me being dowdy with my waist-length, limp reddish brown hair, small breasts, and big hips, makes him look like more of a hero for deigning to choose me. Once people see us, they’ll be shocked. I can already hear it. “He must really love her. She must have a great personality.”

  One year. I remind myself.

  Back when I was a stick-thin freshman, he definitely didn’t have an interest in me. For me, the freshman fifteen was a total reversal; I didn’t gain 15 pounds, I lost it. I was so stressed and poor that a bowl of ramen with some frozen veggies was all I ate in a day. When I was saddled with Jett as my “project” in the tutoring center, he took a long, intense look up and down my body, finally meeting my eyes with a smirk, and my pale skin instantly turned beet red. I knew what he saw. I knew he saw a scrawny girl with braces dressed in flimsy, secondhand clothes sewn and resewn together when they fell apart by a too-tired, overworked single mom, and I knew he found me seriously lacking.

  Even though he never said a kind word to me from the moment he met me, I was infatuated with him. To be fair, anyone would have been. He was tall, a bronze god with light brown hair streaked with natural blonde highlights, perfect white teeth, a slightly crooked smile, dimples, and the kind of lean, toned muscles every Hollywood actor strives for. On top of that, in my mind, he was already famous. He was the quarterback of the football team, the single element that had taken our school from a laughingstock to a real contender. He was like something out of a television show, with his easy laugh and sparkling smile. His detached behavior, especially with women, only made girls pursue him more. Everyone wanted to be the one to tame him. Jett Lang, the “bad boy” who was too charming to be legitimately threatening, but distant enough to feel like a rare treasure to be won.

  And I was stuck in a small library cubicle with him for five hours every week.

  Naturally, I immediately developed a crush, and that crush was easily perceived. I was shy in college, moving away from my small town and the few friends I had to swim in a sea of constant competition. I was an excellent tutor - my boss said that I was the best in the center - but I just fell apart when Jett looked at me.

  I would begin reading his papers, making notes and developing talking points, but once I started talking, a smirk would cross his face and I would start to stammer. “See - um - you see, this, uh, this paragraph is a lit
tle… disorganized?” I would say. He would glance up at me from his notebook (where he would be, inevitably, doodling extremely crude, but uncomfortably detailed, pictures of genitalia), and I would wither under his ice-blue gaze. “We can, um, talk about it. Do you - do you want to talk about it?”

  He never did. Any notes that I gave him were met with cold silence, open mockery, and - in some cases - blatant disregard for my existence. At least once a week, he would text his friends or listen to music while I was trying to talk to him.

  The only reason that Jett came to see me was because he was as terrible at academia as he was amazing at football. I knew perfectly well that he was only there because his coach forced him to be. But I always hoped that he was getting something out of our time together. I wanted to make some small, lasting impact on what I believed was the kind of golden life I would never be able to achieve.

  Which means that, when he asked me to go on a date with him after one of our tutoring sessions, I was so stunned and so thrilled that, naturally, I agreed before the words were even completely out of his mouth. I thought, maybe, that he’d been secretly shy all along too. If a boy’s mean to you, it’s because he likes you, I remembered countless adults telling me as a child.

  I feel my jaw clench as I watch Jett eat in the diner, thinking about the night of our “date.” I had been so excited. I could still see myself, as if floating outside of my body, waiting in my awkward, baggy dress and the cardigan that my mother had told me was cute. My roommate, an equally shy wallflower, had done my makeup, and I was feeling exceptionally proud, standing on the sidewalk in front of my dorm. I - awkward, mousy Claire Donnelly - was about to go on a date with the most beloved man on campus. I was shivering with excitement.

  I saw Jett’s old, ragged Cadillac coming down the street just on time, and my heart skipped a beat. I took a deep breath and put on a winning smile.

  That’s when the first egg hit.

  It exploded against my shoulder, and I gasped from the impact. For a second, I didn’t know what had happened. Then, I saw two more cars following Jett’s, and I understood.

  Eggs came at me from all directions, cracking against every inch of my dress, a dress that I loved so much, the one I saved for special occasions only, shells sliding through my hair. Balloons joined the eggs, hard and full of paint. They stung when they popped against my skin, and at least a few were thrown so hard at my stomach they knocked the wind out of me. I stood, motionless and stunned, and heard wild laughter. “Looking good, Titless Wonder!” I heard Jett shout, and the laughter only increased.

  I stood and watched them drive away. The humiliation was so deep and sudden that I couldn’t even cry. Instead, I slowly turned around, looking up at my building. I saw several lights come on in previously darkened room, heads popping out of windows, and I could hear a chorus of poorly-stifled giggles from every corner of the street. After a minute, I slowly - painfully - uprooted my feet and walked, stiff-legged, back to my dorm room. My roommate was horrified and immediately offered to help, but there was nothing she could do. I walked straight into the bathroom and into the shower, and avoided looking into the mirror until every scrap of egg and paint was cleaned off my skin. Later, I found a piece of eggshell in my braces when I brushed my teeth.

  The rest of the year had been an awful continuation of that night. It became a legendary story around campus, and everywhere I went, I was followed by shouts of “Titless Wonder!” Pictures of me standing dumbfounded somehow made their way around campus. The lack of respect Jett had for me during our tutoring sessions turned into open contempt.

  In short, Jett Lang fucking ruined college for me.

  Here I sit, six years later, in a diner watching the jackass shovel food into the gaping hole that he’d used to scream mocking insults at me.

  “What’ll it be?” he asks thickly through a mouthful of beef.

  Stay with a guy who beats the hell out of me for the next year or so until I get enough money to leave or he murders me, or marry Jett Lang.

  “Well?” he prompts.

  “Give me a minute,” I say. “I’m still thinking about it.”

  Chapter 4 JETT

  I don’t think I’ve ever been more relieved than I am when Claire agrees to marry me. I promise her she won’t regret it, which she snorts at- actually snorts, and call Larry before the check even arrives.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Larry breathes. I picture him gesturing a sign of a cross, “This woman is a saint. She’s an angel. Hell, I want to marry her now.”

  “Hey, marrying me is a pretty good bargain,” I argue.

  “Sure. You keep telling yourself that.”

  “Fuck you.” I pause. “You still my agent?”

  “As long as this girl doesn’t come to her senses before she’s wearing your ring,” Larry says. “I’m getting you both a flight to Vegas now. You can use the manager’s private jet. Get your ass to his place in thirty minutes. And Jett… Don’t screw this up.”

  “How can I screw it up?”

  “By being you.” I hear the dial tone in my ear and hang up, rolling my eyes. The guy is being a real ass, but at least he’s an ass who will keep me as his client. That’s probably more than I have a right to expect. I know I’ve put him through some shit.

  I turn to Claire and smile. “Alright, let’s get going!”

  “What?” she frowns. “You mean - now?”

  “You know what they say. There’s no time like the present.” I throw a hundred down on the table. “Come on. My agent says we’ve got half an hour to get to the plane, and he gets annoyed if I’m too late.”

  Claire gapes at me. “But… now?”

  “What?” I ask. “Were you hoping to swing by your abusive boyfriend’s place and ask him if it’s cool if you run off to Vegas and marry me, maybe pack a bag while you’re there?”

  Claire sighs and rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t argue, just picks up her purse, throws it over her shoulder, and follows me to the door.

  “I don’t have anything to wear,” she mutters.

  “We’re going to Vegas, Claire. We’ll buy you new clothes. Maybe you can get some of those burlesque outfits.”

  Claire just sneers at me and pushes past. She climbs into the passenger seat of my Lexus and folds her arms in front of her.

  Although I’d been joking about the burlesque outfits, the mental picture sticks with me. I have a hard time keeping my eyes on the road as I drive. In spite of the bruises starting to bloom on her arms and her cheek, she is a beautiful woman. There had always been something slightly adorable about her in college, her bird-bone structure just as fragile as her ego. Her vulnerability, though, had annoyed me at the time. We met right after…. well, my mom had just passed and I was going through some shit. Angry at the world, and angry at women in general. She seemed to worship the ground I walked on. Her slavish devotion bothered me. In her big brown eyes, I saw the kind of admiration that my mother always seemed to have for my father, and a part of me was disgusted. No amount of lukewarm adorability could save her after that.

  I’ve always been ashamed of the way I treated her back then, though. I’m not a guy who harbors many regrets, but, well, how I behaved to Claire, that’s maybe my biggest one. She didn’t deserve it.

  She keeps her face turned away from me, staring out the window. She’s grown into quite a woman I observe admiringly– strong, independent, not to mention a woman willing to do something completely crazy to better her life and her situation rather than fawning over some drunken asshole who beats the fuck out of her the way my mother did. Her choice is not to die at the hands of some dirtbag monster who claims to love her, but whose love comes with bruises and broken bones, and she isn’t going to leave children behind to mourn her and deal with the aftermath of her senseless death.

  I look over at her again and she pretends not to notice. Her awkward cuteness has turned into elegant beauty. She’s filled out a bit, and it looks good. She’s got a full round ass an
d sloping hips. Her tits are still small, but they’d always looked good on her; they suit her. Now that her braces are gone, her teeth are perfectly straight and white, occasionally peeking out from behind her plump lips.

  I vaguely wonder if there’s any chance that a phony marriage to Claire Donnelly might become something a little more.

  *

  When we get to the Vegas strip, Claire stands and stares with her jaw hanging open, looking around at the bright lights and gaudy buildings like she’s never seen anything like it. She probably hasn’t, I realize, and I remember what that felt like. For a second, I’m lost in her wonderment.

  Then I remember that we have a wedding to get to.

  “Hey, you can stare at the pretty lights later,” I say, taking her hand. “We still need to get you a dress.”

  “A dress? Can’t I just get married like this?” she, gestures to her dirty clothes. There are small tears in them, dirt stains on the back, and even a few spots of blood.

  “No, yeah, sure,” I say sarcastically. “That’ll look beautiful in pictures. Someday when we’re showing our wedding pictures to our kids, we can explain that mommy got the shit beat out of her like two hours before our wedding. It will be very romantic.”

  She glares. “Okay, one,” she holds up her index finger, “none of this is romantic. You’re literally paying me to marry you to get me away from my shitbag boyfriend. And two, what kids are you referring to? Because you can’t mean kids that you put in my body. Our genes will stay plenty far away from each other.”

  “You say that now, but just wait,” I smirk. “I’m irresistable. One of these nights, you’ll be laying in a cold bed, thinking about how lonely you are, and you’ll come down the hall and slip into my king-size bed -”

  “Yeah… NO.” She sticks her chin out.

  I pout. “You’re no fun.”