If that fuckface called, he called. Whatever happened, I could handle it.
Chances were, he’d change his mind and keep up his disappearing act, and I could continue to live my life the exact same way I had been.
I was going to work out, maybe hop on a bike so I didn’t aggravate my shoulder more. I was going to fucking calm down. Regardless of whatever else happened, if I was going to have to kill anyone, I had people to help. There was no way for me to stop anything from happening, but I could and would deal with it.
Jonah Collins had no idea what he was going to be walking into, if he did. If, if, if.
If he even walked into anything in the first place.
Chapter 3
“It’s me. Again. Lenny. I went by your apartment. Akira told me they haven’t heard from you either. Look, a ruptured Achilles isn’t the end of the world, even though it feels that way, okay? And I’m sure your face will be fine once the swelling goes down. Don’t be all vain and shit. At least text me back.”
I knew that I wasn’t even trying to hide my bad mood when the second person in less than an hour walked into the office, looked at me, and then turned around and walked right back out, not saying a word.
It was that shitty.
Never, ever had I been the kind of person who bottled shit up and let it fester in the first place. For as long as I could remember, Grandpa Gus had made me talk things out to get whatever out of my system. If that didn’t work, then there were other things I could do to calm down again. To reel back. To center. Pressure makes everything pop, he said.
But despite being fully aware that meditation helped me relax and focus—some days it helped me not think, and other days it helped me think about things that were bothering me but without raging—I didn’t do it. I hadn’t woken up and hopped on the stationary bike either to get out of my head. I knew better.
I had tossed and turned the entire night, staring up at the ceiling and then listening to a true crime podcast because I hadn’t wanted to turn on the television or go downstairs because I didn’t want to risk running into Grandpa Gus, having him see that something—someone—was up my ass and wondering about it. Because he always knew when something was up. Always.
And I wasn’t ready to tell him the things he needed to know.
Not yet. Not while I wasn’t completely convinced I could be rational. So I was going to blame keeping things from him as the reason for my crappy mood the next day. That and a night of sleeping like shit, mixed with the anticipation, anger, and hurt, made this uncomfortable stone that didn’t want to pass through my system.
Picking up my cell phone, I ignored the spreadsheet on my desktop screen and sent a text message I should have the day before. If I couldn’t tell Grandpa, there was someone else I needed to have a conversation with. Someone younger, less hairy, and a hell of a lot nicer.
Me: You busy today?
It took ten minutes to get a response.
Luna: Nope. :] What’s going on?
I shook my foot beneath the desk, thinking about what I needed to tell my best friend of the last eleven years.
Me: Nothing bad, but I need to tell you something, and it’ll be easier in person.
That time there was only a one-minute delay in getting a reply.
Luna: Tell me now please.
Me: I didn’t pee myself again, if that’s what you’re about to ask.
I only partially regretted telling her that I’d peed myself a month ago because I’d sneezed too hard after holding it in too long.
Only thirty seconds passed before I got another text.
Luna: I thought for sure that’s what it was going to be!
Me: WTF is that exclamation mark for, bish? Don’t sound so disappointed.
Luna: It’s been a long day. A girl can dream.
Luna: I can come over tonight.
Me: [middle finger emoji]
Me: You okay?
Luna: [laughing emoji] I’ll text you when Rip gets home so he can stay with my shortcake. I’m taking her to the doctor in an hour. She’s been pulling at her ear and crying. I feel so guilty she’s feeling bad is all.
The fact that we were talking about her baby, planning around a little thing named Ava, was just another reminder of how quickly life could change. Just two years ago, everything had been normal. Or at least what normal had been for us at that point. She’d had a guy in her life—not that her now-husband was a guy; he was a big hunk of a man—but things had changed.
Once upon a time, I had been a nineteen-year-old with maybe two friends who were girls, and Luna had been an eighteen-year-old who had smiled her way through a self-defense class that I had taught at Maio House for a little extra cash. I had asked her out to eat because I had liked how nice she had been to the other women in the class. I didn’t like judgy-ass people, and that was why I had invited her. I was competitive enough, but I didn’t give a fuck what other people did or didn’t do, and Luna hadn’t given me a single vibe that said she was anything but easygoing. And, as I learned, she really was about as laidback as you could get.
I fell in love with her within a month. She was kind, patient, optimistic, and was so chill, it relaxed me. Luna was a whole lot of shit that I wasn’t. We spent the next eight years navigating through life together. Two girls with a lot in common but at the same time nothing in common, trying to survive and grow up. Then she got a boyfriend—and again, not that there was any boy in him—and right around that time, everything changed.
The next thing I knew, I was thirty-one years old, and the only thing in my life that was the same was my grandfather and Peter existing in it. Even my relationship with Luna had changed a little. I no longer knew who the hell this new person in my body and in my mind was. Not that it was bad or that I didn’t like myself, but… I was just different. Everything was different. Circumstances had changed. I had changed. Everything about life had too. Like when you lose weight or gain it and aren’t sure how you fit in your own skin anymore.
You aren’t who you used to be.
And you aren’t totally sure how it happened or when it happened, but it did.
And that was supposed to be okay. At least that was my grandpa’s sage-ass advice. God knows he made up shit all the time, but it made sense… in a way. Like how, by the time every seven years rolls around, every cell in your body has been replaced by new ones. You’re different. You’re supposed to be. It’s inevitable. It’s natural.
Life keeps evolving whether you want it to or not.
And I wasn’t about to whine about it.
Me: Okay. I’ll text you when I get home, but it should be at the same time. Hope my goddaughter feels better, and chill out. It’s not your fault she’s sick.
I pushed all those thoughts aside: about needing to tell her the truth, about being different, about my worries, about my fucking regrets too, and cast one last look at the frame sitting on my desk. I focused back on the spreadsheet I needed to go through so I could send it off to the gym’s accountant by the end of the week.
Jonah Collins was going to call, or he wasn’t. He was going to come here, or he wasn’t. There was nothing I could do to stop it other than calling someone in immigration and claiming he was smuggling drugs in his butthole. So….
I glanced at the picture on my desk then got back to work, turning the playlist on my phone on, which pushed it through a small Bluetooth speaker. Somewhere in the background, I heard the sound of voices coming back into the gym. Heard the sound of bodies colliding. I thought about whether I should go out on the floor and take advantage of Peter working on Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills today since my shoulder wasn’t aching more than normal, unlike the day before. It had been at least a couple weeks since the last time I’d gotten on the mats with anyone, and even then, that had only been for about fifteen minutes to show one of the new girls how to do a submission choke she had been struggling with.
Meh.
Or maybe I’d just hop on an elliptical later and get a
few miles of HIIT—high-intensity interval training—in to get my heart rate nice and elevated and burn some calories. Yeah, that sounded like a better idea.
I got back to work on cataloging expenses. Everything familiar and usual, or at least that was what I thought. I had my head full of numbers as I copied some expenses into the computer and was just lightly mumbling along to my 90s playlist when I heard the knock, knock on my opened door. Two lazy, light knocks.
Nothing special. Nothing to warn me.
“Come in,” I called out, trying to hold back a sigh because, to be fair, it was nobody’s fault I was in a shitty mood other than my own.
So when the footsteps treaded across the floor, I was still trying to tell myself to snap the hell out of it. Maybe I didn’t need to be in a good mood, but I didn’t need to be in a bad one either. Nobody deserved me being a bitch today. Not even my own body deserved that kind of stress.
Things were going to happen, or they weren’t. It was that simple, and I knew it. I just couldn’t convince the rest of me that that was the case.
So when the footsteps stopped and a throat was cleared, I took my sweet time looking away from my computer screen to take in the poor idiot who was being brave by coming into the office.
And that’s when everything went to fucking shit.
At least that was what it felt like.
Like someone saw me living my life, minding my own business, trying my goddamn best, then decided to pick it up and throw it into a fire, just to watch it go up in flames.
I wasn’t ready for the wide shoulders taking up the width of the hallway that separated the office from the rest of this part of the gym. I wasn’t ready for the long, strong legs, that had led up to a body wrapped in nothing but layers of muscle, in my space. That body that out of so, so, so many I had seen over the years had done something to my internal organs—including my heart, if I was going to be honest.
I had seen so many half-naked men in my life that I had become desensitized to six-packs, ripped arms, and good-looking faces. I had never put any weight into physical beauty, honestly. I remember once, when I had been about fifteen or sixteen, telling Peter that I was worried about how much I didn’t really care about boys. Or girls. I knew that some guys were attractive, but it didn’t do anything to me. I hadn’t found myself wishing for a fucking boyfriend. Most people I knew wanted to be in relationships, and I just hadn’t given a fuck. Peter, though, had told me that there was nothing wrong with me.
You’re perfect the way you are, he had said, like it was no big deal.
It hadn’t been like I was lonely. I had friends. I had things to keep me busy. I had been a healthy teenager who got curious one night, put my hand over my underwear, and discovered that I really enjoyed masturbating. And that’s what I did, frequently. But I’d never felt the urge back then to have someone else make me orgasm when I could do it myself pretty damn well.
I had enough nonsexual physical interactions with other people that it wasn’t like I missed affection or any shit like that. When I usually thought about guys, I thought about how bad they smelled when their deodorants wore off and how bitchy they got when things went wrong, but that I enjoyed working with them because they were stronger than I was and helped me better prepare to compete against other females who weren’t.
And if there had been a short period in there where I’d thought I might have had feelings for my friend, that was one thing, but I’d come to terms with that real quick, and I’d moved on from that idea just as fast.
As I got older, I hadn’t been hoping to meet anyone. It wasn’t something I thought about period. Not even for sex because I doubted anything could compare to my vibrators or my hand or my toss pillow that I kept hidden on a shelf in my closet.
I didn’t have my first kiss until I was twenty. Only had sex at the same age because kissing had been all right and I was curious if sex was worth all the hype. I’d done it with a friend from college who had been a year younger than me and had been a virgin too. Sex had been like the time I took up rock climbing out of curiosity for a few months. Done and never repeated after those few times.
And then, I’d met him.
If I closed my eyes, I was 99 percent positive I could still picture those massive shoulders capped with rounded muscles. The biceps bigger than my head. The forearms that made my calves look puny. I’d never be able to forget how solid his pectorals had been in profile, or how perfect his flatly muscled abs were as they sloped into a waist that was so trim, most people would have a hard time believing just how much food it could pack away.
Most importantly though, there had been that damn smile. That had done it.
That dipshit… that fucker… had been an awakening that hit me out of nowhere the first time I saw him. Like those kids in videos who get hearing aids and can hear for the first time, and you get to witness their life changing. Or color-blind people who get glasses and can finally totally see all the fucking colors you take for granted because you can’t appreciate having something that seems so natural.
That’s what it had been like to look at him for the first time.
And if that wasn’t enough, that two-hundred-and-fifty-pound body was connected to the face that had had me doing a double take. A forehead dotted with countless tiny scars on it, a nose that was still in great shape considering he had told me that it had been broken multiple times. Then there was the tanned skin stretched tight over high cheekbones, the lightest honey-colored eyes that were almost almond-shaped, and a mouth that was almost fake from how pink its lips were.
A year ago, when I’d been having a really bad night, I’d looked Jonah Ho-bag Collins up online, and in the process, found a list of the twenty-two sexiest rugby players in the world.
Of course, he’d been on it.
Maybe I hadn’t known who he was when we met, but I’d been an exception. There had been no reason for me to recognize him. And as I took him in right then, in that moment, it struck me just how familiar his face seemed to me now. How familiar those features, especially those eyes and skin color, were. I had to hold my breath for a second it hit me so hard.
But this was a face that I hadn’t seen in seventeen months. That mix of rugged yet handsome bones and bright eyes had disappeared on me. That mouth had never called me back.
The face looking back at me in my office hadn’t liked me back as much as I had thought it did.
This face was on a person who had made me cry in fucking fury and disappointment. This face that was the second one to ever make me feel used and fucking stupid. I’d dreamed, literally dreamed, about punching the fucking face looking at me.
Stop.
I knew what was important. I knew what mattered. I knew what I had told myself I would do, even if it were hard as hell.
Most importantly though, I was no weak bitch.
It took a second, but I did it.
I focused, and I clung to it, but I accepted and processed the truth: this stupid face had given me joy… and love—and not a little bit, but a lot. So much that I wasn’t going to instantly chuck my stapler at him like I really wanted to or scream “stranger danger” so someone else could beat him up for me.
I had gotten over the bone structure facing me. I didn’t give a flying shit over the clear, honey-colored eyes that were set into those sockets below heavy, dark eyebrows. I felt nothing good for the man suddenly standing in my office in fitted jeans and an olive-green hoodie that hugged every part of an upper body that hadn’t lost a single pound of muscle since the last time I had seen it.
I wasn’t going to get mad. I wasn’t going to cuss him out or do any other stupid shit. I was going to handle this.
I had promised myself that if this day ever came, I would do what I had to do. With some honor. With some pride.
But that didn’t mean I had to be nice.
And it was because I didn’t feel shit anymore for this specific person—because hating his guts didn’t really count—that I didn’t ev
en raise my eyebrows at his random appearance after seventeen fucking months, even as some part of my brain freaked out at the fact that Peter had literally just told me about him yesterday. Yesterday. The same day I had just read about him not signing his contract.
He was here, in Houston of all places, when he had told me before he’d only been to the United States twice and both times had been for work.
God, I couldn’t believe this fucker actually had the balls to be here.
I took a breath in through my nose and let it right back out. Seventeen months. It has been seventeen months since the last time I’ve seen him, I reminded myself.
I had this.
“Jonah.” I let that sense of I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you flow over my arms and up into my throat, making it easier to say his name. To look at him.
There was nothing he could do that I couldn’t fight. There was nothing he could say that would possibly hurt me. I had prepared for this. I’d warned myself it might happen… one day maybe ten years from now, when, hopefully, I might be hot as hell and living my best life, so I could rub it in his face that I was better than ever. That I hadn’t missed or needed his ass for a second.
This asshole with those honey-colored eyes had the nerve to stand there, watching me, with all those muscles and that face and that green hoodie and those jeans and that closely cropped hair and smoothly shaved jaw, and say, all soft and almost shyly, and in that fucking accent that had been the second thing to catch my attention, “Hi, Lenny.”
Hi, Lenny.
He’d Hi, Lenny-d me.
This fucking long and he was going to go with “Hi, Lenny” like we had seen each other a week ago at the grocery store?
I can do this, I repeated to myself.
If I could have reached my stress ball, I would have, but I couldn’t, at least not without him noticing, and I wasn’t going to give him the gift of seeing me squeezing my ball to keep my shit together in his presence.
The Best Thing Page 3
