by Mia Carson
The camera bobbed and jiggled a moment before I saw Neil’s hand place his phone on the table. Ed took it, powered it off, and then sneered. You think you’re so fucking smart, don’t you?
Just tell me why. What do you want?
You cheated me! Ed hissed. You stole my company from me!
What are you talking about?
NeilGibsonFitness.com was my idea! Mine! he snarled as he slapped his chest. I built the site. The workout videos, the Health Minute segments, the recipes, all my ideas!
Yeah, so?
Yeah, so? Ed mocked. So you stole my fucking ideas!
Stole? I bought you out, or did you forget that? Neil asked, his voice harsh. It sounded like Neil was having trouble controlling his anger. That wasn’t good.
You ripped me off! You didn’t pay me anywhere close to what that site was worth!
What the fuck are you talking about? We agreed on a price. You’ve got no cause to bitch about it now.
You cheated me, so I’m going to ruin you. When your name isn’t worth shit, I’ll take the site back, make a big splash about how you’re out, and build it up again. People have short memories. In time they’ll forget, just like with that bicycle guy that got caught doping. All they’ll remember is they’ve heard your name somewhere.
You’re crazy as shit, Ed. Why would I give you my domain?
How are you going to pay your bills, huh? When the site stops generating income, how are you going to pay to keep the content up to date? You going to do that yourself? You don’t know shit about it, but I do. I can run the site myself until it starts making money again.
There was a long moment of silence. So what do you want? I thought we were friends, Neil said softly.
He glanced at me as Ed began ranting on the video. “I was trying to piss him off by pretending I hadn’t heard what he said he wanted.”
I nodded but my focus remained on the video. “Sounds like it worked.”
We were never friends, you arrogant prick. You were always the Olympic Hero, with your expensive car, big, fancy apartment, endorsement deals, television roles, and women throwing themselves at your feet. You were using me. I was doing all the work while you were getting all the credit. I was okay with that, but then you fucked me. NeilGibsonFitness.com is the number two fitness site on the net, and will probably be number one in a year or two, and everyone thinks you did it all on your own. But you didn’t! It was me! I did all the hard work and you cheated me! What do I want? I want to see you burn in hell, but I’ll settle for taking away everything my hard work has given you. I want you to see what’s it like to lose everything. Then I’m going to buy you out, and then I’ll have the expensive cars and the big, fancy apartment. That’s what I want.
Ed sat back, breathing hard.
I’m sorry, Neil said softly.
Take your sorry and shove it up your ass. You don’t know what sorry is until I’m finished dragging you through the same hell you’ve put me through. You’re not nearly as smart as you think you are. Ed smiled, but it was a cold nasty smile. All those women you were fucking? It’s coming back to bite you in the ass now, isn’t? Everyone knew you were a ladies’ man, a player, and now, that reputation is what I’m using to fuck you. I love the irony, don’t you? You can’t prove shit with Vanesa. He waved his hand over the pictures. You’ve got some photos. So the fuck what? It’s her word against mine. I’ll say I was talking about some fictional character, but the stupid bitch thought I meant you in real life. How are you going to prove I wasn’t talking about a television pilot I was thinking about pitching where that was the plot? In case you haven’t noticed, she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer. So take your best shot.
Ed stood abruptly and gave Neil the finger before stomping away. Neil sat for a moment.
Nice seeing you too, Ed, you fuck, he muttered before standing and turning toward the inside portion of the restaurant. Just before the door opened, the video ended.
I glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen. It was too late to do anything with this now. “He’s fucked,” I muttered. “We’ll take this to the magistrate tomorrow and get an injunction to compel him to stop posting the rumors. We’ve also got plenty for an arrest on coercion and extortion. Ed straight up admitted he was the one fucking you over, and if he denies it, we’ve got the proof. Just like I said with April in your fitness center, you’re talking out in the open at a table where people are walking by. Legally he has no expectation of privacy. Also, like April, he can’t hide behind the two-party clause for perjury if he tries to deny admitting to it.” I looked at him. “You did it.”
“I didn’t do it. You did.”
He grabbed me behind the head, pulled me to him, and kissed me thoroughly. We slowly separated. “You remember that promise you made me this morning?” I asked.
He smiled. “Yeah.”
“I think it’s time to pay up.”
He touched my forehead with his own, his hand still at the back of my head. “You’re sure you’re up for it?”
“No pain, no gain, baby,” I muttered. “I’m good,” I clarified to make sure he understood.
He snickered. “You’re not good…you’re fantastic.”
“You think so?” I teased. “Just wait until I get you in my bed.”
Neil
Tanya and I skipped down the steps of the magistrate’s office. I had an injunction that prevented Edward K. Harnette from posting comments related to me on any social media sites. Also, a warrant for him to appear was going to be issued for coercion and extortion. The Sheriff’s department was going to attempt to serve the injunction and warrant, but if Ed decided to go missing, I knew a crack PI that was willing to track the asshole down and make sure justice was served.
I felt better now than I had in months. The shit with the rumors was finally behind me; I had Tanya in my life, and I wasn’t letting her go. Feeling our success last night, she and I had fucked—no, I mentally corrected—not fucked, made love, long into the night. I didn’t fuck her anymore, I made love to her, and there was a difference.
We’d started just after the video finished and didn’t finish until we left her house this morning to see the magistrate. For fifteen hours we’d done nothing but make love and sleep. If we weren’t sleeping, we were making love, and if we weren’t making love, we were sleeping, and it was wonderful. Whichever of us woke up first, woke the other by doing something wonderfully wicked, and then we’d start again. She’d be hard pressed to top me swimming up out of the darkness of sleep with my hard cock deep in her mouth, and I’d returned the favor this morning when I woke up first.
We’d gone hard and fast, and slow and easy, and sometimes both in the same session. She’d dragged me into the shower last night to fulfil one of her fantasies, and we’d made love long, hard, and loud as we competed with the neighbors to see who could make love the longest and loudest. I couldn’t tell if we were the loudest, but we certainly outlasted them, and by a lot.
We’d made love on her bed, in her shower, and once, for a change, against a wall. She’d bound my hands by wrapping the belt from her robe around her bed and ordering me to hold it, before I’d done the same to her, and we’d finished with our hands tangled together in the belt above our heads as she rode me, and herself, to orgasm.
After our tumble this morning, we were both sore, tired, and hungry. We’d missed both dinner and breakfast, but I didn’t care, and I don’t think she did either. We’d napped for an hour or so afterwards this morning before those fucking birds on her phone woke us up again. Even though I could think of nothing I’d rather do than lay in the bed and hold her all day, since I didn’t think I’d be able to do anything else to her for a couple of hours yet, I knew we had to get up and get moving.
We’d showered together, and though she’d tried out of pure mischievousness, I couldn’t keep a hard erection. That had never happened before, but I’d never made love to a woman five times in such quick succession before either.
And
the hell of it was, even after I’d come gallons last night and thought I would be useless for days, after spending three hours with her as she walked me through the legal system, I wanted her again, and I’d have no trouble keeping my end up, so to speak.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m starving! I feel like I haven’t eaten anything in days.” I waited a heartbeat. “Not food anyway.”
She giggled, and the sound made my heart sing. “You know what I’m in the mood for?”
“Same thing I’m in the mood for?” I asked, pitching my voice so she’d know I wasn’t talking about food.
“Well, that, but how about an In-N-Out burger until we can do the other?”
The thought of it made my mouth water. “That sounds great! I haven’t had one of those in a year or more.”
“You poor thing!” she purred.
We found the nearest In-N-Out, where we laughed and talked as we ate our burgers and fries. I couldn’t believe how something as simple as ground beef between to pieces of bread could be so tasty. Sometimes I got so wrapped up in my life I’d forgotten life’s little pleasures. Simple things, like a well-prepared hamburger, or the laugh of the woman I was falling in love with.
The thought hit me like a ton of bricks, my mind supplying the sound of a phonograph needle skidding across a record. Did I just think that?
“Neil?” she asked. “Everything okay?”
“What?” I asked, trying to recover.
I was still reeling from the realization that I was falling in love with Tanya. In my mind, I was furiously rifling through my memories, trying to pick out when it had happened, when I’d started falling for her. It wasn’t last night. No, in hindsight I already had these feelings. I went back farther. The night I first took her to bed? No, they weren’t there then. I examined my feelings more closely. Or were they? Was that why our fucking was so intense? Had the tinder already been in place and the sex had struck the match to set it ablaze?
“Neil, you okay?”
“What?” I asked, shaking myself out of reverie. “Yeah, great. Sorry. I was just lost in thought there for a moment.”
“I’ll say. You were so gone, I’m not sure you were still on Earth.”
“Something just hit me, is all.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you here, but remind me and I’ll tell you tonight.”
She frowned a bit and her eyes narrowed slightly. “Is it bad?”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I think it’s wonderful, but you might have a different opinion. I’ll tell you all about it over dinner tonight. My place. Deal?”
“Okay,” she said slowly.
I took her hand and kissed it gently. “Nothing to worry about, I promise.”
“Then why won’t you tell me now?”
“The time and the place aren’t right.” I could tell she didn’t like that answer. “I’ll make you this promise. If you guess it, I’ll confirm it, but what I have to say, I don’t want to say in a fast food joint, that’s all.” I tugged on her hand and pulled her close. I first kissed her on the lips, a quick public smooch, then I placed my lips close to her ear. “It’s a surprise. I hope you’ll like it.”
She leaned back. “You better tell me at dinner. You know how I am. I hate secrets.”
I snickered. “I’m dying to tell you now, but not here. Tonight at dinner, I promise.”
I felt giddy. I knew now that I’d been right. The month or so that we’d spoken on the phone had primed the flame, but taking her to bed had been the spark that had started the fire, the fire that was consuming me and I never wanted to stop. So this was what love felt like! I wanted to climb up on the table and scream my feelings out for the world to hear, but she deserved to know first, and I needed to know if she felt the same. If she felt anything at all for me.
Keeping my secret from her chilled our meal a bit, but I was resolute. She could wait six hours for me to make the biggest leap of faith in my life. I was, for the first time, going to tell a woman I was falling in love with her and wanted no other.
I sat back in my chair and munched on my burger. I felt like an idiot, but I couldn’t wipe the damned smile off my face to save my life. It was all because of this incredible woman sitting beside me, eyeing me with a mixture of equal parts amusement, suspicion, annoyance, and trepidation, and damned if I didn’t love her for it.
On the way to her place to get my clothes and a change of clothes for her, we played twenty questions. She seemed obsessed with her doing something wrong and upsetting me, and I kept telling her she’d done nothing wrong, but in fact, had done everything right. She wasn’t even close to guessing my secret, which made the thought of telling her even that much more exciting.
She finally gave up after we left her house. I could tell my refusal to tell her was bugging her, but after I told her, she’d understand. I was coming down off my high. What if she didn’t love me? The idea didn’t bother me much. I would wait on her. But what if she didn’t love me, and she didn’t think she ever would? That thought was a little scary.
I shook off my doubt. It didn’t matter. I’d promised her I’d tell her at dinner, and I would. I wouldn’t lie to her. If she didn’t love me, and never would, better to know that now before I got in any deeper. It would be hard, maybe the hardest thing I’d ever done, but if she felt nothing for me and only wanted me for sex and a little companionship, I could treat her as I treated Megan until she grew tired of me. I wouldn’t try to hold her. If she didn’t want me, I wanted her to find someone she did want.
“Neil?”
“Yeah?” I asked, looking at her.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“A half hour ago you were practically bouncing off the walls and now you look like your dog just died. What’s going on?”
“Dinner. I swear, it’ll all make sense after dinner. Just…bear with me, okay?”
She looked at me a long time. “We’re having an early dinner even if I have to go out and buy takeout.”
Her teasing lifted my mood slightly. “An early dinner it is.”
-oOo-
Tanya and I were working in the kitchen. We weren’t practiced yet, so we sometimes got in each other’s way, but it still felt so natural and right. I’d been up and down all afternoon. Thinking about her and how I felt, I’d soar so close to the sun I thought I’d go blind, and in the next minute, I’d sink into the depths of despair at the thought that she might never feel the same way.
It was maddening. I’d almost told her several times, just so I’d know and could end the uncertainty, but I hadn’t. I was also a guy, so I kept it bottled up inside. She could tell something was going on with me, but she’d stopped prying, and when I would start sinking, she always seemed to sense it and would come to me. She’d take me in her arms, and I’d take her in mine, and within moments, the sun would come out again.
We were getting close to having dinner ready when someone knocked at my door. “Would you mind?” I asked as I flipped the chicken and vegetables in the pan.
“Neil?” she called from the door.
There was a Santa Ana police officer standing in my door. I couldn’t think of a single situation where that was a good thing. I set dinner aside so it wouldn’t burn and went to the door.
“Mr. Neil Gibson?” the young officer asked.
“Yes?”
“May I come in? I have a few questions I’d like to ask.”
“In regards to what?” Tanya asked.
“You are?”
“Tanya Jacobs, his girlfriend.”
“May I come in?” the officer asked again.
“If you’ll answer her question,” I said, following Tanya’s lead.
“Do you know a Vanesa Pierce?”
“Yes.”
“She was assaulted last night and badly beaten.”
Tanya and I looked at each other. I stepped back. “Come in.”
“Thank you. How do you know Ms. Pierce?�
�
“I don’t, not really. She accused me of sexually assaulting her, but it turned out to be a scam.”
“You’ve never met Ms. Pierce?”
“No, why?”
“Any idea why she would name you as her attacker?”
“What?” Tanya and I cried at the same time.
“She’s pretty busted up. Her jaw is wired shut, and she can’t talk, but muttered your name when we asked if she knew who’d attacked her.”
“It damn sure wasn’t me!”
“Can you account for your whereabouts last night between the hours of nine and midnight?”
“He was with me at my place,” Tanya said quickly.
The officer looked at her. “You’re certain it was between those hours?”
“Positive.”
“Can anyone corroborate that?”
“Absolutely. My neighbors. They heard us screwing out brains out in the shower. Their names are Rachel and Demetri.” She gave the officer her addresses. “They’re in apartment A.”
“And Mr. Gibson was with you the entire night? He didn’t leave and return at any point?”
“No. We were…busy…all night.”
“And you have no idea why she would name you as her attacker?”
I shook my head. “None.”
The officer glanced back and forth between us and nodded. “Thank you. Sorry to bother you.”
“Where is Ms. Pierce now?” Tanya asked as the officer turned to leave.
“Orange County Global.”
I closed the door behind the officer as he left. “What the hell?” I muttered.
Her face hardened. “I think we need to pay Ms. Vanesa Pierce a visit. Looks like dinner is going to have to wait.”
Tanya and I stopped for flowers on the way, and I added a small teddy bear. “It has to be Ed,” Tanya claimed as we waited for the elevator to take us to her room.
“So why would she say it was me?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”
Vanesa was sharing the room with another patient, but at least she was on the window side. We stood close to her bed, and Tanya pulled the privacy curtain around. I grimaced. Vanesa was one big bruise, her face was swollen, and her left arm was in a cast.
