The Hothead

by Myra Scott

  I was striding briskly across the parking garage, looking around in the near-darkness for my car. Usually I did a pretty good job of making a mental note of where I parked it, just so I could find it more easily at the end of a long day. Sometimes I was smart enough to even take a photo on my phone of the parking spot, with the floor and letter in the background. But I had been running a little late this morning and skipped that crucial step. So now I was faced with a nightmare. I couldn’t even remember which section I had parked in, and the lights down here were flickering dimly, as though they might burn out any second.

  “Ugh,” I muttered. “I just want to go home.”

  I was still squinting around in the dark when I decided to use my phone’s flashlight app. I slid it on and continued my search, scolding myself inwardly for not being more careful this morning. The last thing I needed now was to fumble around in the dark. Finally, I managed to find the section of the parking garage that looked most familiar. Using my cell phone light, I located my little blue compact car just several yards away.

  “Thank god,” I grumbled, turning off the phone light without even having to look at the screen. But as I was walking toward my car, I heard what sounded like the faint scuffing of a shoe on concrete. Like someone hurriedly kneeling down. I grimaced in the dark, stopping in my tracks for a second. Before I could give it a second thought, another, much louder sound made me nearly jump out of my skin. My phone chimed at top volume, informing me that I had just received a text message.

  I looked down at my phone and slid the screen open, my heart skipping a beat as I realized that it was a message from Gage. It contained only one word.

  Wait.

  Just as I was about to reply quickly to the message, a shock of pain rattled up through my body as something long and rigid thwacked against the crooks of my knees. I cried out and fell straight forward, stumbling to my knees as another crack of agony split across my hunched-over back.

  It was all happening so fast that at first I thought I was having some kind of weird aneurysm, until out of the darkness I managed to make out the pale, angry faces of two men. They were both hovering over me, grinning devilishly while their eyes seethed with rage. With revenge. One of the men was holding a baseball bat, which I immediately identified as the weapon that had cracked against my skin. I tried my best to get to my feet and bolt, but the taller man punched me in the jaw and shoved me back down on the cold, dirty concrete.

  “Leave me alone! Help!” I shouted desperately, my hand clapped over my aching jaw.

  “We said you were going to pay, you little rat,” snarled the shorter man. He lifted the baseball bat, preparing to swing it down on my head. I ducked and rolled away just as the bat came down on the ground beside me with a sickening crunch.

  “Ha! It’s like whack-a-mole,” sneered the taller man.

  “Whack-a-rat,” corrected the short guy with the bat. He chuckled grimly. “And you know what they say about snitches…”

  “I think this little bastard is going to need more than stitches when we’re through with him,” quipped the other. He dove forward to yank me up by my arm. I yelled out in terror again, trying my hardest to wiggle out of his grasp, but it was as though his hand was a vice.

  “Help! Please!” I cried out, struggling against my captor. The two men laughed uproariously, the shorter guy swinging his bat with surprisingly deftness.

  “Go ahead, squeal like a stuck pig,” hissed the tall man, leaning forward so that I could feel his hot breath against my ear. “We’ve been hiding out in this parking garage for an hour, and you’re the first and only person to come down here so far.”

  “Nobody is coming to save you,” added the short man. “By the time they find you, there will hardly be anything left of you.”

  The tall man shoved me forward just as the short man reared back to swing the bat against my head again. I instinctively lifted my arms over my head, flinching in preparation of the incoming attack. But to my surprise, it never came.

  Instead, there was a crunching sound, and one of the men let out a gasp of pain. I jumped away, wide-eyed and confused, only to see a third figure had run up to us. This one was taller and leaner than the other two, and instead of attacking me, he had shoved the short guy down on the ground, taken his baseball bat, and was kicking him repeatedly in the ribs.

  “G-Gage?” I spluttered, totally shocked.

  “Run, Devin! Get to your car!” he commanded, pointing back in the direction of my little blue vehicle.

  The short man was still on the ground, curled up in the fetal position and trembling with pain. I had a feeling at least one of his ribs was broken, judging from the sheer force of Gage’s kicks. The taller man had squared up, holding up his fists and preparing to fight Gage. But Gage spun the baseball bat in his hands with such ease and precision that it struck me he must have played baseball at some point in his life. The tall man looked frightened.

  “No!” I shouted back. “I won’t leave you.”

  The tall man reached for me, presumably to use me as a shield against Gage, but I ducked away and stumbled back against a stranger’s SUV, which immediately set off the car alarm.

  “Shit,” swore the tall man, whose angular face was now lit up in the flashing tail lights of the SUV. As the lights momentarily blinded him, Gage swung the bat and hit him squarely in the chest, knocking the wind out of his lungs. He dropped to the ground instantly, curled up in pain next to his agonized partner in crime. Gage let the bat slip out of his hands to clatter on the concrete floor, grabbed my hand, and helped me limp the several yards to my car.

  “Keys!” he demanded, thrusting out his hand.

  With my body trembling with pain and adrenaline, I fished around in my pocket and handed him the key. He pushed me into the passenger seat, slid behind the wheel, and threw the car into gear. We peeled out of the parking garage, leaving my two attackers groaning on the floor. Gage probably broke about ten traffic laws in his haste to get away from the scene.

  Meanwhile, the adrenaline was wearing off, and the pain was overwhelming me. I clutched my knees to my chest and shivered, trying not to groan with agony. He kept glancing over at me with a worried look on his face.

  “Hospital or home, hospital or home,” he was muttering frantically.

  “Home. Please. No hospital,” I grunted. I hated hospitals.

  It wasn’t a very long drive to Gage’s place, but it felt like forever. By the time we got there, I was feeling dizzy and sick from the pain, and starting to wonder if the hospital might have been a better idea, after all…

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - GAGE

  “Come on, I’ve got some first aid in my bathroom.”

  “It’s really not that bad, I think I’ll be okay.”

  “None of that, I saw how you were getting woozy in the car. Come on. It’s just this way.”

  I led Devin into my house carefully, holding him around the waist and by one hand. The car ride had been thankfully short. I knew how to navigate Vegas traffic fast when I needed to.

  My place was spacious and elegant. I didn’t do that minimalist crap, I liked a stylish French interior with light colors and as much natural light as possible. Walking into my home was like walking through a ray of sunlight, and that was exactly the ambience I wanted to maintain.

  Unfortunately, there was no time to stop and admire anything. Devin didn’t look too badly hurt, but I knew real pain when I saw it, not to mention that the emotional pain of it all was a shock to us both. I’d been in fights before, I knew that just the sudden adrenaline rush could be hell on the system. And most fights I’d been in didn’t entail a baseball bat to the back and knees.

  We made our way to my bedroom where the sight of my massive four-poster bed greeted us. I sat Devin down on the sheets and went to get my first aid kit from my en suite bathroom. Once it was in hand, I came back to him and pull
ed up a stool from my dresser to start playing doctor.

  “How’s your back?” I asked as I started rolling up his pants leg. I couldn’t get them past his calves though. “Wow, you’ve got some muscle down there.”

  “I try to keep in shape,” he said with a pained chuckle. “My back’s…seen better days, but I could walk fine, so I’m good for now. Here,” he said, and he unbuttoned his pants and kicked off his shoes to take his pants off, leaving him in his boxers.

  “Oh, honey,” I said when I saw his knee scrapes. They were bleeding, and they even had some bits of concrete in them from the fall he took. I quickly put some alcohol on a cloth and started cleaning the wound. I slipped my warm hand behind his knee and touched it a bit while he winced.

  “Does the back of your knee hurt?”

  “It’s kind of sore,” he admitted, “but I fell with the blow pretty quickly. I know not to stiffen up.”

  “Have you gone through this before?” I asked incredulously.

  “Not exactly,” he said. “But I’ve been in fights in high school.” He gave a weak grin. “Always the preppy nerd, you know?”

  I flashed a smile back, but I shook my head. “Jesus, Devin.”

  He winced as the cool alcohol touched his injuries, but within minutes, I had his knees cleaned up, and I put bandages and neomycin on them. I then poured four or five ibuprofen tablets into my hand and gave them to Devin with a glass of water.

  “This will help with the swelling and pain,” I said. “Now, let me get a look at your jaw.”

  He turned his face to the side to let me see where he had been hit, and it was my turn to wince. It was going to leave a nasty bruise, that was for sure.

  “Those fucking bastards,” I muttered as I started to put a little more alcohol on the cloth I was using.

  “Thank you, by the way,” he finally said, but the words came out a little uneasily, as if he was hesitant.

  “I wasn’t just going to leave you to get hurt,” I said with a frown. “I mean, Jesus, a baseball bat? In my casino? I never thought I’d see the day. One of the shitty new hires must have let it slip that the security cameras were getting changed out. I can’t believe this.”

  “I don’t think they’re going to be a problem anymore,” Devin said, pulling his head back from me for just a moment. “Hold on, let me take these pills.”

  While he took them—a few at a time, I noticed, because he must have had trouble swallowing too many pills at once—I was left in uncomfortable silence. There was so much that I needed to say, and I had no idea where to start.

  “I’m sorry I let this happen, Devin,” I said at last as he swallowed his last pill. Devin looked at me with wide eyes, and he started to shake his head as he swallowed the water, but I stopped him.

  “If I had listened to you when you were trying to tell me about the threats that those goons had made against you, I might not have let you go down to your car by yourself. None of this might have happened. God, if I hadn’t been there in time…”

  “Don’t think about that,” he said, and I saw his hand twitch to go to my hand, but he stopped himself, and I felt my heart sink. I deserved that, at least. “It’s not like I was expecting to get jumped anyway.”

  “No, but…” I started. “I could have done something,” I said.

  “You did,” he said firmly, and he smiled. “You might have saved my life.”

  “That doesn’t change the fact that you were right,” I said softly, and I stood up enough to sit next to him on the bed as I cleaned his jaw cut. “I was a monster to you, Devin. Everything you said to me up there in the lounge hit me like a truck. I needed that more than you could possibly know.”

  “I shouldn’t have been so harsh,” Devin said quickly. “I’ve never gone off the handle like that in my life.”

  I chuckled at that. “Really? You should shadow me for a day and see what it’s like. I can’t count the number of times I’ve blown up at people the past few weeks.” My smile faded a little. “I think your approach is a little better, all things said and done.”

  Devin smiled, but he didn’t say anything for a few moments. The silence was tense, and there was no way this conversation wasn’t going to be awkward.

  “I mean that, though,” I said. “You don’t have to say anything else, I just…it showed me exactly how bad of a person I’ve been to you, Devin. You’re a sweet, kind, caring, amazing man, and you’re absolutely right that I was obsessed with Zane. Worse, I was obsessed with someone who wasn’t even Zane, it was just something I was projecting onto the man I knew.”

  “You said ‘was’,” Devin pointed out.

  “Yeah,” I confirmed. “When you said it like that, I…well, it was an eye opener. It was like everything else melted away except for your words. You must have broken a spell or something. I can’t tell you how grateful I am. If I had kept living like that, I can’t imagine how many more people I would have driven away. How does your jaw feel?”

  He was surprised by the sudden question, but he blinked a few times and opened and closed his mouth. “Not bad. The pills will help. It’s just a bruise, nothing to worry about.”

  “Well, too bad, because I’m going to worry about it,” I said, smiling at Devin warmly. I saw the color come to his cheeks, and he looked away with his own smile.

  “So, you’re sure those are the same people who threatened you before?” I asked, looking more seriously at him.

  “Not a doubt in my mind,” Devin said. “I’m not sure how committed they are, but after the beating you gave them, I’d be surprised if they came after me again without thinking twice.”

  “I’ll make sure to have the guards escort you down for the next few weeks,” I said.

  “That’s not necessary,” Devin tried to say, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that he appreciated it. I’d get it done. “But thanks.”

  “It’s happening, so get used to it,” I said with a raised eyebrow and a cocky smile.

  There was a long, uneasy pause between us as Devin looked down at his knees, and I looked at that gorgeous, handsome face of his. I was so enchanted by his face that it surprised me a little when he suddenly turned to look me in the eye.

  “Gage, what were you doing down there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why were you coming down to the garage?” he pressed. “I got your text right before I was attacked.”

  “I was looking for you, Devin,” I said in a soothing voice. I took his hand in mine. “I…I didn’t just feel guilty about everything that you said. I meant it when I said it all really hit home for me in a way I can’t totally explain.” I squeezed his hand and looked away for a moment, and when I looked back to Devin, I saw that he was watching me with intent, anxious eyes. “What you said cleared a lot of things up for me. It made me realize that the feelings I had blowing around in my hurricane of a heart were all real, but…”

  Devin tilted his head to the side, and I leaned in to him.

  “They weren’t for Zane, Devin. The man I’ve really wanted this whole time is you.”

  “Gage…” he breathed, and his face went cherry-red. The way he squirmed nervously was absolutely adorable, and I wanted to press my lips to his right then and there, but it wasn’t the time. Not yet.

  “I’ve loved you for so long, Devin,” I said, “I’ve just been too much of a damn fool to realize it. I want there to be more between us than this…this stupid ‘friends with benefits’ thing we have going on. I want to give you everything you deserve and so much more. You’ve always been there for me, wanting to change me and make me a better person, and you’ve always been sweet and kind and caring and—”

  Devin cut me off by putting his hands on my face and pulling me into a kiss.

  Right there on the bed, half-covered in bandages and still smarting from the fight, Devin kissed me, and th
is time, we melted into each other.

  Our lips were warm and wet, and the taste of Devin’s mouth drove me wild. I felt like there was something awakening in me that I’d kept repressed for so long. It was like I was kissing a man for the very first time, and I could feel our hearts beating as one. Our tongues flicked against each other, I sucked on his lip, and when we finally broke away, the looks in both our eyes said that we couldn’t wait to get right back into it.

  “You’re the most incredible man I’ve ever met in my life, Devin,” I breathed.

  “You’re a stupid, selfish, powder keg of a man,” Devin said with a laugh that brought a smile to my face. “And I haven’t been able to get you out of my mind since the day we first met.”

  “I never should have ignored you all this time,” I confessed. “I thought I felt something for Zane that wasn’t there, but all I was feeling was a lust for the standard that you were setting. I think part of me always thought I wasn’t good enough for you.”

  “Not good enough for me?” Devin said, absolutely stunned. “Statuesque Greek god of a ginger who went to MIT thinks he’s the one who’s not good enough for a dumpy-looking washed out blackjack dealer?”

  “You shut up,” I growled with a smirk, and I unbuttoned his shirt while he gazed at me. “You are a magnificent, caring, empathetic man who deserves so, so much more than life and everyone in it has given you.” I stripped his shirt off him, and as I leaned forward, he fell onto his back on the bed, looking up at me with light dancing in his eyes. I put a hand to his face and felt his stubble and the warmth of his skin. But there, I paused. “But I know I can’t undo the past. I’ve been horrible to you, Devin, there’s no changing that.”

  “I know,” he said, and he put his hand over mine. “You really have.” I felt my heart sinking, and for a moment, I was positive he was going to push my hand away and ask me to take him home.