Love So Dark: Billionaire Romance Duet

by Stasia Black

  So yeah, I was there smacking the hell out of the standing bag that was almost as big as I was until a soft voice stopped me.

  “Hey, aren’t you in my six-thirty class?”

  “What?” I was in such a haze, releasing my fury on the bag it took me a second to register the petite woman with mocha-colored skin and intelligent hazel eyes.

  “You know,” she said conversationally, “there’s a reason that you’re supposed to wrap your knuckles up before you start slamming the bag like that.”

  She nodded in the direction of my hands. I followed her gaze, only then realizing my knuckles were bloody.

  Holy shit. How long and hard had I been going at it?

  “I… um...” I dropped my hands, only barely fighting the impulse to put them behind my back in a pathetic attempt to hide them.

  “Come with me,” Lydia said decisively. “I’ve got a first-aid kit in my locker.”

  I followed along after her. I was embarrassed, but she seemed assured about what to do and even a quick glance at the mess I’d made of my knuckles told me they’d be hard to patch up on my own.

  Shannon was home after the visit to our parents, but we weren’t on the best of terms right now. She stayed in the apartment only because it would look better to the courts, she believed, if Charlie had two stable adults to come back to if and when the custody grant was repealed. But Shannon barely spoke to me. No matter how much I swore the drug test was a false positive, she was convinced I was lying and it was my fault Charlie’d been taken. Just the thought of my sister made me want to head back out to the heavy bag, bloody knuckles or not.

  “You live around here?” Lydia asked and I was glad for the distraction.

  “Campbell.” Everyone around here was familiar with the neighborhood just south of San Jose.

  She nodded, confirming my thought. “You?” I asked.

  “Just moved into Cambrian Park.”

  “Nice,” I smiled. It was the neighborhood just south of Campbell, but much nicer. “I feel like that’s where everyone in Campbell wishes they lived. Sometimes half a mile makes all the difference in the Bay Area.”

  She nods and laughs. “Don’t I know it. Me and my roommate just moved from a total shithole in Oakland.”

  We walked into the locker room. “Head to the sink. I’ll grab my bag and be there in a sec.”

  I did and she was back beside me in a couple minutes.

  I put my hands underneath the tap and Lydia helped me washed the blood off. I grimaced when I saw the damage underneath.

  “Well that’s pretty,” Lydia acknowledged.

  “Yeah, I’m a real work of art.”

  Lydia looked at me compassionately but she didn’t hold back from liberally pouring the peroxide on both hands. I held my own even though it stung like a bitch.

  Lydia made a noise of approval. “Ooo, I do love the strong, silent types,” she said with a flirty tilt to her head.

  “Oh,” I said, suddenly flustered. I hadn’t realized she was looking at me that way. “Look, I’m into guys. Or well,” I look at the floor, “I was. I mean, at the moment I’m not actually into anyone or anything.” I shuddered. “None of it. At all.” Right, so that came out way too vehemently. Um, and all that shit before it was major foot-in-mouth syndrome too because she probably wasn’t coming on to me at all, and even if she was, I just made it all super-fucking awkward.

  I looked back up at her. At the beginning of my word vomit her eyes were sparkling, but now her mouth was a flat, unamused line.

  Goddammit. The first time someone was nice to me in forever and I went super-freak on them within ten minutes of them talking to me one-on-one. Shit. I was about to grab a paper towel to dry my hands and rush out of there when her voice stopped me.

  “Women come to self-defense classes for all kinds of reasons.” Her voice was quiet in the busy locker room. Women bustled all around us, but at our little corner sink, she spoke loud enough so only I could hear. “Maybe they’ve just moved to the city and want to learn how to protect themselves. Or their friends are doing it so they sign up too. Maybe they see some movie or read a book that scares them or inspires them about women empowering themselves this way. But then there’s another category of people.”

  She paused, her eyes briefly meeting mine in the mirror before she squeezed antibiotic cream onto several large Band-Aids, which she then applied carefully to my knuckles.

  “Do you want to know about this last category?”

  I didn’t say anything, barely even dared to breathe.

  “It’s mostly women,” she went on calmly, her eyes on the task of bandaging up my hands, “but not always. This group comes to the class because they’re scared. Or angry. They are in pain for sure. They’ve been hurt in the past. They’ve been abused, sometimes in the worst ways possible.”

  My stomach sank and I felt sweat on the back of my neck that had nothing to do with the forty-five-minute session at the bag. God, how did she know? Was what they did written all over my face? Would every stranger know my worst secrets within three minutes of meeting me, without me ever saying a word?

  That I’m defiled. Wrong. Filth. Disgusting. I looked beyond Lydia to the shower stalls that line the walls. If she wasn’t holding my hands to bandage them, I’d be scratching at my skin. It’s there again, that sense of dirt that goes down to my bones.

  She finishes applying the last Band-Aid.

  “But you want to know something else about these people?”

  I didn’t nod or shake my head. I didn’t meet her eyes in the mirror anymore either.

  She grasped my uninjured fingers in her hands and squeezed. “These are the strongest, most resilient and amazing people I’ve ever met.” Her voice was still a whisper, but the strength in it felt like that of a preacher giving a sermon.

  “The fact that you are coming to my class, making a stand against your abuser and saying no!” She shouted the last word like she taught us to do in class on the first day—no matter that we were in a locker room with other strangers milling around. She shouted it so loud it echoed off the concrete walls.

  For good measure, she shouted again, “No! We say no! To ever being abused again,” her voice then went back to a whisper.

  “Amen!” called out several women, including an aging elderly woman with sagging breasts, walking around with a towel wrapped only around her waist who raised her fist in solidarity. Okay, that was an image I didn’t necessarily need, but yay sisterhood and all that.

  My attention re-directed to Lydia when she continued, “That would be difficult enough for normal people. But for people like us?”

  That was when I saw it. She didn’t look at me and automatically know what I’d been through because it was somehow rubber-stamped on my forehead. No, she saw it because like recognizes like. She’d known abuse firsthand. She’d known powerlessness while animals stole control of her body.

  I couldn’t even blink, couldn’t process what it meant to meet someone like her. Someone like me. To be able to talk to someone else who understood. Not just that, but to meet someone who had obviously survived and was managing it a hell of a lot better than me.

  “For people like us, taking a stand like this is like conquering Everest. No,” she shook her head. “It’s more than that. Climbing a mountain is something that normal people set out to do. That’s a goal they set their minds and discipline their bodies for.

  “But us?” Her brows scrunched together in pain. “We don’t get a choice. Whether we want to or not, we’re dragged back to hell on a regular basis, forced to face our demons.” She tilted her head down, eyes direct. “Only way out is to jump into the hottest pot of brimstone and burn those fuckers alive, no matter that it burns us up right along with ‘em. That’s the trick—if you can be reborn stronger through the process. Some make it. Some don’t.

  She moved her grip from my fingers to my upper arms and kept her eyes locked on mine. “But hon, you will. I see it in you. You will make it
through.”

  Then she hugged me. Here was this woman who was all but a stranger to me, saying the exact words I hadn’t known I needed to hear. Emotion churned in the dark lake, and it took several hiccupping breaths to keep the tide back. I couldn’t afford it. I wouldn’t let it all loose simply because I’d found a kindred spirit. I just couldn’t.

  When I pulled back from Lydia, head nodding hard, jaw clenched, her smile was compassionate, as if she understood exactly what I was trying to do. If it had been any other person, I think I would’ve resented it. But she knew. It was a knowing I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But there it was, something neither of us could change. A tie of battered bodies and spilt blood that made us sisters more than blood ties ever could.

  “Callie,” Lydia’s sharp voice calls me back to the present. “You’re up!”

  I blink and realize the whole class is looking expectantly at me. Right. I hurry and jog up to the front of the class. The padded ‘attacker’ is much more intimidating up close than he was when Lydia was so easily tossing him around a moment ago.

  Lydia grins at me when I join her side. “You got this.”

  She sounds so confident.

  I stretch my neck and shake out my hands. I got this. I got this. I glance up again at the volunteer. Mike, was that what she said his name was at the start of class?

  He’s smiling in what I can only assume he feels is a non-threatening manner. But all I can feel is the prickling sensation that he is way the fuck too close to me.

  “All right, Callie. What are the steps to take if he grabs you?” Lydia asks.

  For a second, my mind is a complete blank. Hands. Men grabbing me. Sweaty hands holding me down. Goddammit. One, two, three, four, five, six—

  “Remember the steps,” Lydia’s voice breaks in.

  I take a deep breath in and let it out slowly through my teeth. The steps. Remember the steps. “Vocalize. Disengage. Run.”

  “Excellent.”

  We’ve practiced the moves involved in different attacker holds so many times they’re supposed to ingrain themselves in muscle memory. That way if an attack actually happens, my body should take over without thinking. Then again, I’ve only been at this for three weeks. How much muscle memory can I have really built up in three weeks?

  “Are you ready for Mike?”

  I take another breath to center myself and then nod. I know in a real-life scenario I wouldn’t have time to prepare for an attacker, but Lydia is adamant that class feel like a safe space for every student. The whole idea of this is to prepare us. And that means working at our own pace. Some of the more advanced students allow surprise attacks, but I’m not there yet.

  Mike doesn’t move until I drop my hand in the prearranged signal.

  And even though I know it’s coming, God, I’m expecting it, that’s the whole point of this—there’s still a moment when his arms drop in a hold around my neck that my body just absolutely shuts down.

  I’m back there. I’m fucking back there. I can’t breathe. Oh God, I can’t breathe. Say you’re hungry for my cock. It’s the nightmare, but the nightmare is real. There’s a man’s body at my back. His heavy arms around my body.

  Oh God, no—

  No, no, no—

  “NO!”

  Someone is shouting in my ear. Lydia. It’s Lydia. I open my eyes and see my friend. And then my whole class. They’re all shouting no. Lydia’s eyes are on me, eyebrows raised in encouragement.

  “NO!” she shouts again and this time I join her.

  “NO!” I shriek. When the word rings through my vocal chords and echoes off the walls of the room, I feel the power of it. The attacker has his arm around my neck in what would be a chokehold if he were pressing any harder, but in a sudden rush of adrenaline, I realize I know what to do.

  I turn my neck to the side so my throat won’t be crushed and I can take full breaths again. Then I raise my elbow and jam it as hard as I can into the attacker’s stomach. I hit the soft padding of the safety suit, but I’m too in the zone to care.

  Get him off me! Get him off. That’s all I can think or care about. Get his fucking hands off my body. I lift my foot and slam it down on his instep. Again, the stupid protective padding stops it from doing any real damage.

  So then I go for the move I know this lesson is all about. God, I don’t know if I can do it, but I’ll try, because I know it will get me free of his hold. I could call stop and the exercise would be over. In this room stop means stop—but damn it, what if this was real life?

  Because I know that outside this room, words don’t stop anyone. Instead of paralyzing like it normally might, the thought only propels me.

  I scream, “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” then reach behind me, grab the top of the attacker’s safety suit at the collar, lever him at my hip, and flip him over my body.

  I barely even register it, but he’s spun and on the mat at my feet. Just like that. His weight wasn’t even an issue. I don’t get how. But it worked. It fucking worked.

  I start laughing as the class claps. Lydia puts her fingers between her lips and lets out an appreciative whistle like we’re at a ballgame or something. I take several steps away from the man groaning on the floor, a little disbelieving. For the first time since all those weeks ago when Lydia grabbed my arms and told me I was going to make it through this stronger than ever, I believe her.

  I wrap my arms around myself and laugh. I look to the ceiling and think of my son, of how my lawyers have worked it so tomorrow I go in for a new drug screening. It’s a much more accurate follicle test this time which can prove I haven’t done drugs over the past ninety days. In addition to retesting the original urine sample at a lab that can discern street drugs from other substances that can cause false positives.

  What does all this mean?

  I’m going to survive what was done to me.

  I’m going to get my son back.

  Life is a shit storm. Still, it’s one I’m going to make it through. I might come out beaten, battered, and more than a little bit bruised.

  But no fucking way am I broken.

  Want to read a FREE bonus epilogue from Jackson’s point of view?

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  Break So Soft

  One

  CALLIE

  The bass of the club beat vibrates through my feet and up to my ribcage. I close my eyes and everything tight in me loosens as my hips start to sway with the beat.

  There’s that delicious electricity in the air. Bodies are thick on the dark, crowded dance floor. The music is so loud it drowns out every other thought. I could deep swaying and lose myself out here on the dance floor and I’m tempted.

  My eyes snap open again. Because no, I’m not here to lose myself. I’ve done enough of that over the last four months. For most of June and July, I barely left the house except for work.

  Then I went out, very reluctantly, with some coworkers for happy hour one night and discovered something amazing. It’s the same thing that’s drawn me out tonight.

  I’m here to fucking feel alive again. Or as alive as I can with the most vital part of myself amputated from my life—my son.

  Not thinking about that right now. Not thinking about any of it.

  Several people enter the club behind me and I finally move forward. The stiletto heels I’m wearing force me to walk in a certain way. Back straight. Hips swaying. If I’m honest, I’m fucking strutting.

  I own it. This is my catwalk. The club’s so crowded, I doubt anyone’s looking at me particularly, but I imagine they are. I’m commanding every eye in this place. They are all at my fucking beck and call. I revel in it, the power I have in this moment.

  It’s not all in my head, either. When I sit at the bar and cross my legs, casually fluffing the wild shoulder-length red hair of the wig I splurged on last month, I don’t just feel like a queen on her throne. The people in the sphere around me respond to me as if I am one.

  A couple of women look do
wn at their own dresses self-consciously. The man sitting beside me immediately angles his body toward me and away from the woman he was flirting with moments before.

  I hide a smile as the bartender, also a man, notices me among several people vying for his attention. He leans in as he asks what I’d like to drink.

  “Vodka tonic, please.”

  “Put it on my tab,” says the guy sitting beside me.

  I only spare a cursory glance in his direction. He looks to be in his mid-thirties. Far from old but a little out of place for this particular club scene in his business shirt with his tie loose and askew. Yeah, it’s a Thursday night, but it’s eleven o’clock. He couldn’t change into something a little more club appropriate?

  I smile at him charmingly but shake my head with a strong no. Number one, it’s my firm policy never to accept drinks from men. I’ll never be indebted to any guy in any way, shape or form. And number two, he’s just a little too eager for me.

  “I got it,” I say to the bartender and slide some cash over the bar. “Keep the tip.”

  The bartender grins at me, bright white teeth against ebony skin. I perk up. Now he on the other hand could be a possibility. I’m a sucker for a great smile.

  He grabs a mid-shelf vodka and pours some in my glass. I lean in, elbows on the bar top, cleavage unabashedly on display in the form-hugging electric blue dress that I’m wearing.

  “How’s your night going, handsome?” I ask, elevating my voice to be heard over the noise.

  His grin widens, though I wouldn’t have thought that possible a moment ago. My eyes zero in on his lips. They’re so inviting and thick, luscious is the only word that comes to mind. Immediately, my mind pictures his big body underneath mine, those lips sucking on my nipple.

  “Better and better since you walked up to my bar.”

  Oh yeah. This guy is looking like a more attractive candidate every moment. I toss him a flirty smile along as well as an eye roll as he presses the spout to fill up the rest of my glass with soda.

  “You know what, I don’t even care how often you’ve used that line,” I laugh, then take a sip of the vodka tonic. It’s a perfect mix. I nod at him approvingly. “You’re cute enough to pull it off.”