by Kat Ransom
I heard something from an NHL announcer many years ago. If something’s too good to be true, it’s probably a fraud.
Dirtbag DuPont is a fraud. I don’t know what I can possibly do about it, but I’m a fighter. If Lennox is out of fight, I’ll lend him some of mine.
My phone buzzes.
Lennox: Get your ass over here.
There’s my bossy, alpha asshole!
I don’t bother putting real clothes on and rush into the hall in my pajama pants and a tank top, grabbing just my phone and keycard. Movement way down the hallway catches my eye as Lennox’s door opens. Jack and Alessi, one of the drivers from Anora Racing, are about to head into his room. Aha!
“Mallory,” he nods.
“Jack,” I keep a straight face and nod back, both of us busted sneaking into our respective hotel rooms with our inappropriate workplace romances. Lennox pulls me into his room and shuts the door and I finally let out a grin. Good for Jack, Alessi seems like a decent person from what I’ve seen.
“Sorry about earlier,” Lennox takes me in his arms.
“You can apologize for lots of other things, but you don’t owe me an apology for today.”
“What else would I be sorry for?” He asks, dead serious.
“How about trying to get me to quit for the longest time?”
“Mmm, that,” he kisses my neck. “Well, I’m glad you didn’t quit. You’re doing a good job and I want you to stay now.”
Oh god, he’s breaking my heart. My stupid heart that has no business being in this hotel room with him. And now I’m supposed to betray him and not do my job very well.
“Movie?” He asks. He’s still not his normal self or he’d have me pinned up against the wall by now, or bent over the nearest piece of furniture. I’m almost glad, though. Not because I don’t want him, I do. But because he asked me over for company, not just sex.
“Perfect,” I say, grabbing the television remote. I hop on the bed and start scanning through channels.
“Wait, go back,” he says, joining me in bed leaning against the headboard. “That looked like Godzilla.”
Watching campy old monster movies has become a ‘thing’ we do. Godzilla is in Japanese, obviously, but I figure out how to turn subtitles on, he kills the lights and I snuggle between his legs and lean back against his chest. He runs his fingers through my hair absentmindedly and I almost forget the nightmare situation I have compounding itself: Celeritas is messing with my job and my father is trying to sue me.
“What’s wrong?” He asks.
I didn’t realize I must have tensed up. “Nothing,” I lie. I don’t want to pile onto his bad day with my dysfunctional family again.
“Tell me.” He starts kneading my shoulders with those amazing strong hands and I roll my head around moaning.
“Just family stuff.”
“What now?”
“Ugh,” I press my hands into my eyes but Lennox never stops massing my neck. “My dad apparently saw a lawyer today. To sue me for libel.”
“Excuse me?”
“He’s saying by telling him off in public I was reckless and maliciously caused damage to his reputation. Cody doesn’t think he has a case, but…”
“But it’s still bullshit. What kind of parent sues their child?”
“They’re special, aren’t they? I guess this is my punishment for being such a disappointment.” Lennox pauses his magic fingers for a second then resumes, running his thumbs along my spine up and down the base of my neck. “Even if a lawsuit is unsuccessful, it’ll derail my plans for a firm. He’ll keep coming for me until my reputation is shot.”
“What do you need from me? Lawyer or,”
“The only thing I need from you,” I interrupt him, “is to keep doing that with your hands.” We’re both quiet for a spell, Godzilla terrorizing Japan on the television. “Are your parents normal people?”
“My parents sacrificed everything for me,” he answers immediately.
I wish I could meet them one day but I don’t say that aloud because he’s been touchy about his family and, well, I’m not his girlfriend. “Tell me about them, off the record? What’s it like having parents who love you?” I try to joke at the end but there’s a touch of truth to it I try not to think about.
He thinks for moment before he speaks. “Mum worked at a distillery, the oldest on our island. Pop was a marine mechanic. I used to head to his shop after school and help him fix the boat motors. The whole town worked on cod boats, pretty much, so we did a lot of fishing when I was young.”
“Did you ever see Nessie?”
“Aye, all the time I’d spot Nessie while wearing my kilt and playing bagpipes, smartass.”
He can’t see my face but it’s covered in a huge grin. “So your dad worked on boats and your mom worked at a distillery.”
“Aye.”
“And your dad built you a kart when you were three. When did you start racing competitively?”
“Five.”
“FIVE?” I try to turn my head and look at him but he turns it back straight, always having to be in control of everything. “And your brother?”
“Sixteen. Thinks he wants to go into F1,” he sighs.
“You don’t want him to,” I say, knowing the answer and understanding a little more of why now.
“No. Be right back.” He scoots off the bed and disappears into the bathroom. Water is running and I wonder if he’s in the shower, his way of stopping the conversation he might still be uncomfortable with.
A few minutes later the bathroom door opens and Lennox strolls back to me on the bed, stark naked. “Well, hello,” I wag my eyebrows at him. Silently, he lifts me up, one arm under my knees and one under my head, and carries me into the bathroom.
He’s drawn a bath in the deep two-person soaking tub. He sets me on my feet and looking into my eyes, he pulls my tank off, slides my pajama pants to the floor and helps me into the tub before stepping in to join me on the opposite side. The warm water surrounds me and the bubbles waft up the scent of the hotel’s spicy’s body wash. Neither of us speaks as he gently runs a bar of soap over my whole body.
Something is different in his face, his eyes, but I can’t place it. I study him in silent appreciation.
When he’s washed everything on me, I twirl my fingers asking him to turn around. He spins and I take the soap from him and start on his back, massing as I go, though my hands are nowhere near as strong. The soap drops into the water and my hands run over his back tattoo. I’ve studied it every chance I’ve had. A massive fish is swirling and trying to eat a smaller fish thrashing to get away. Both fish are thick outlines filled with bold Gaelic designs inside, ropes and knots twisting. A' bhiast as mutha ag ithe na beiste as lugha is written, the writing following the curve of the writhing bigger fish. “What does it mean?” I whisper, not wanting to break our silence but needing to know.
“I guess the closest translation would be ‘Big fish eat little fish’.”
I ponder at all the meanings that could have to a man like Lennox and trace the outlines with my fingers.
“The great devour the small. The powerful swallow up the insignificant.” He sighs, his hand trailing up and down my leg next to him.
Boom, mic drop. Take my heart, take it all.
My chest tightens, my heart breaks open and fills with feelings for him I can’t control anymore. Nothing about this man is insignificant. I’ve been made to be the little, insignificant fish my whole life, too. Fuck all of those people who make us feel like this.
Us.
I scoot around to his front and climb into his lap, kneeling over him. I take his face in my palms and stare into his eyes, the green of moss and pine and sage, amazed at the man he really is, the one he lets me see. I kiss him senseless, he reaches for a condom from a toiletry kit on the sink and sheathes himself. I sink down on him in the water. I pull his head into my breasts and he wraps his arms around my waist, helping me raise and lower on his hardness until we
both come apart again in each other’s arms.
Eighteen
“Yes, I know that love is like ghosts. Oh, and the moonlight baby shows you what is real. There ain’t language for the things I feel. And if I can’t have you then no one ever will.” - Lord Huron - Love Like Ghosts
Lennox
Usually, on my recovery day, which is nothing but a fancy way of saying lay around like a bum all day, I take full advantage and sleep for ninety percent of it. I tossed and turned all night and am kicking around my flat at headquarters now somewhere between restless and ruinous.
I didn’t even sleep on the plane. I dragged Mallory next to me on the couch and laid next to her the whole flight while she watched an old vampire movie and slept, daring Matty or Jack to say one word about it. They took one look at my face and knew better.
It should be Celeritas upsetting me, and it is, to an extent. The two hour debrief in which I got reamed out for daring to out-qualify DuPunk pissed me off, sure. The fact that they turned my engine mode down during the race when I toyed with passing him infuriated me. The post-race photos where I had to put my arm around Dingleberry and smile for the cameras, I almost snapped his neck.
But it’s her next door.
All morning I’ve made out bits and pieces of her on the phone with her brother and Aria about her father’s latest threats against her. I can’t wrap my head around it. And for reasons I can’t come to terms with, I need to fix it.
Something has changed. I’m always a bit overbearing but I’m stuck on irrational thoughts of running away from all of this and locking her in my dungeon forever. Primitive, even for me I know, but I just want away from all of this. The absurdity of the situation doesn’t escape me either, the woman sent here by the corporate devil himself, sent to make me toe the line, says words identical to those that slam around inside my skull every day.
It killed me when she called herself a disappointment. Watching her in the same endless pursuit of validation you work your ass off to get just so people can throw up roadblocks to kick you back down. The injustice of it all sickens me.
Pacing around the kitchen, I throw some protein powder and bananas into the blender and mash the buttons. Watching everything get pulverized to bits is hypnotizing and oddly satisfying. Reaching for a glass and turning the blender off, I hear a shaky voice from the hallway, “Don’t touch me. I said stop!”
My brow furrows and my heart rate picks up. But when I throw my door open, my vision narrows and the only thing I see beyond white-hot anger is DuPont with his hands on Mallory, running his filthy fingers up and down her arm.
Before he can even turn around, my body has acted of its own accord and thrown him up against a wall, his head cracking into a brass sconce lighting the hallway. He screams something, I don’t hear the words, as he clutches the back of his head, plaster crumbling to the ground.
I grab the neck of his shirt in my left hand and pull back my right arm with visions of destroying his smarmy face flashing before my eyes when Mallory’s screams register to my brain and she wraps half her body around my right arm.
“Stop it! Stop it!”
It allows half a second for my brain to catch up to my body and allows DuPont time to get a few steps down the hallway backing away and holding his head. He looks up and laughs, his sickening weasel voice, “Perfect, that’s just perfect, Gibbes! You’re done, this time!”
“Stay the fuck away from her,” I bellow and take a step toward him but Mallory is standing in front of me trying to block my path. “Did he hurt you?” I ask her, not looking at her but staring down the oxygen thief slowly backing his way down the hallway toward the exit.
“No!” She yells back at me.
“Au contraire,” DuPont cackles, “I’ve only come to offer her an alternative, a real man. You remember how that went last time, don’t you Gibbes?”
“You motherfucker,” I start but Mallory screams at the top of her lungs for him to get out, standing in between us like a bloody referee.
DuPont continues his backward walk until he reaches the stairwell, a seedy smug grin on his face, then tears down the stairs and the exterior door slams.
“What is wrong with you!” Mallory roars at me.
“Me?” I cry. “I heard you tell him to leave and he had his hands on you!”
“So what! I can take care of myself! You can’t go around throwing people into walls!”
“You don’t understand,” I start.
“No! You don’t understand! He’s going to get us fired! You’re going to cost me this job acting like a wild animal!”
“He cannot get me fired,” I try and calm her down, even as my chest is still heaving and my fists clench, but she isn’t having it. Her eyes are huge and filled with rage and glass- eyed as tears start filling up inside them.
“That’s great for you, Lennox! What about me? He can have me fired! Then what? Do you ever think about that? What’s going to happen to me when I get fired from this job?”
“That’s all I…,” I pause and suck in a breath, “he won’t.”
She darts back to her flat and opens the door.
“Mal,”
“No, leave me alone,” she says before slamming the door in my face.
Hours pass. Hours of berating myself and listening to Mallory slamming things around in her flat across the hall. All I’ve thought about for days is how not to screw her life up more, how to get both of us out of this vicious circle.
And I’ve made it worse.
Even though Dicksnot had it coming and there will never be a point in my life where murdering him is off the table completely, I made it worse for her. I let him provoke me. None of this is working anymore, my coping mechanism of indifference, the playboy persona I don’t bother to argue with. I’m letting her down, my family down, my fans down.
Digging around a stack of papers and half-unpacked bags on the dining room table, I finally find it, one thing I can do to protect Mallory from the insidious corruption of Celeritas and her father. I make the call and then prepare to grovel.
Lennox: I’m sorry.
Mallory: I’m furious with you.
Lennox: I know. Can we please get out of here?
Mallory: And go where?!
Lennox: Anywhere but here. Please.
Finally, my door opens my door and Mallory walks inside my flat in silence. Her shoulders are slumped and her arms are wrapped around herself. She’s small and vulnerable and I wrap my arms around her, dragging her against me. “I’m sorry,” I whisper into her hair as I kiss her head.
She nods into my chest and wraps her arms around my waist, “I know. I understand.”
She doesn’t understand the half to it, but she’s here and she’s got her arms around me. I can fix anything else.
“Where are we going?” She asks.
“I just want to get out of here, just get in the car and drive.”
“That sounds perfect.”
A few minutes later I throw our jackets into the car and help Mallory get in since the gullwing doors pointing straight up into the air and harness seat belts aren’t the most self-explanatory.
“What the hell is this?” She sinks in and looks at the car suspiciously.
“LaFerrari. Supposed to be a chick magnet, let me know if it’s working.” She smiles as I get in and fire the engine to life. “You want to drive?”
“I will kill us both. I like when you drive, anyway.”
Along the way, Mallory and I return to our normal, whatever that is. I don’t have a definition for it yet. She had me stop to feed her, demanding cheeseburgers and milkshakes, but the extra workout I’ll need to make up for that is probably a better outlet for my frustrations, anyway.
Dusk will be falling soon as I pull up to our destination. I hope she likes this and doesn’t think I’m some kind of creep in addition to knowing what an asshole I am.
“What is this?”
“Highgate Cemetery.” I kill the engine and watch Mallor
y peer around taking in the huge Gothic limestone archways outside covered in moss and ferns and a couple of hundred years of plant overgrowth. “As the legend goes, vampires roam at night. Taste the Blood of Dracula was filmed here.”
“The movie I watched on the plane?”
I nod at her. Her eyes are wide and I think she’s excited, not afraid that I’m an ax murderer or grave robber. “Let me out of this spaceship,” she says as she starts trying to get out of her seat harness and open the car door.
Excited turns out to be an understatement. Mallory’s holding my hand and strolling the ancient resting grounds calling out famous gravesites for Karl Marx and Douglas Adams. The Victorian grandeur, angels resting atop catacombs, concrete lion heads from the 1800s, every section of the cemetery is more exciting than the next for her. When we get to the Tom Sayres gravesite with a life-sized resting dog statue, it’s the first time she takes out her phone to take a photo and she’s contemplative spending more time here than others.
“The dog?” I ask her wondering what it is about this one.
She shakes her head. “Tom Sayres was a bare-knuckle fighter, you don’t know him?”
I shake my head. I wonder how she does know more about this than I do, but I’m more taken with how beautiful she is, how much I just want to spend time with her, just the two of us. Cemetery, flat, hotel, airplane, I don’t even care where we go.
“He was born in a slum, only five foot eight inches tall, only one hundred fifty pounds. He fought men twice his size. In his whole career, he only lost once.”
She runs fingers over the stone mastiff on the grave and her eyes grow glassy. “He was a little insignificant fish, too, Lennox.”
