28. Chapter 28
Chapter 28
“I’m such a dick,” I muttered, punching the red leather bag again and again. “Such a fucking dick.”
“What’s up, dickface?”
I spun around, black-boxing-glove-clad hands held up and at the ready. Shoving out a long breath, I relaxed my stance and grunted at the owner of the gym. “Shut up, Mike.”
“You said it, not me,” he replied easily, tugging on his own pair of gloves, though his were red.
“I said dick, not dickface,” I clarified, swiping the sweat from my forehead with my arm.
“All the same. Let’s work out whatever’s bugging you in the ring.”
Eyeing him up and down, I nodded. “You look like you could use a good ass kicking tonight.”
He laughed heartily and bounced up and down on his toes a few times, ready for the challenge. Mike Garrity was a former Army Ranger, and at age forty, he was built like he could still go to battle any given moment .
And battle we did. We were both skilled fighters, and almost an hour later, we were drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. My ribs were sore, and Mike’s lip was bleeding.
“I’ve never seen you this aggressive,” he remarked, tossing me a water bottle. “I mean, you always go hard, but goddamn, Hawk.” His tongue darted out to brush against the split I’d put on his lower lip with a particularly nasty right jab.
“I’m always in control.” After that night with the asshole I’d almost killed for trying to rape my sister, I’d honed my anger into a meticulous sharpening of my fighting skills. I didn’t regret what I’d done, and I knew that’s what made me a fucked up sonofabitch.
That’s what my mother had called me anyway, and the mentality had stuck in my brain.
“You were on the edge of that control tonight,” Mike mused. “What crawled up your ass and died?” He sank to a rickety white folding chair and ran a hand through his hair, which was recently beginning to sport a few grays mixed in with the sandy brown. I took the chair opposite him, wincing when it whined at me with a loud creak.
“You need new fucking chairs in here,” I grumped, not for the first time.
“It’ll have to wait. I just bought new towels.”
I leveled him with a flat look. “If you would charge us for using the gym, you could afford both.”
He waved a hand and let out a “bah!” sounding like a grumpy old man. “You know I don’t charge other vets. Plus, you guys installed my security system for free. ”
I shifted on the creaky old chair. “Good thing we did. Wouldn’t want anyone stealing these shitty chairs.”
He laughed good-naturedly and grabbed two small white towels from the rack beside him before throwing one at me. “These babies are nice though, don’t cha think?”
Swiping the copious amounts of sweat from my neck and chest, I said, “Yeah. Very plush. Can’t wait to wipe my sweaty balls on them.”
Mike scowled at me while dabbing at his own soaked chest. “You gonna tell me what’s eating you?”
“This isn’t a therapy session,” I argued.
“This place is one giant therapy session any time we step through the doors. That’s why I opened it, my man.”
Turning my bottle up, I drained half of it with glugging noises before leaning my forearms on my thighs and looking down. “What would you do if someone fucked your… sister?”
“Well, my sister is thirty-five, so…” He allowed that last word to hang in the air like a question, but I didn’t answer it. “Is someone messing with Jennifer? If so, I’m ready to roll at any time. I have a friend with a chopper, and I keep my license current. We could be in North Carolina by dawn.”
Glancing up, I shook my head and tried to hide my smile. Mike had met my sister once when she came to visit, and he’d been clearly enamored. I hadn’t seen him with a woman since his wife had died six years ago, so maybe he had just flirted with Jenn to annoy me.
“Jennifer is fine,” I assured him. “I’m asking for a friend who’s struggling with some things.” Finding it hard to meet his eyes, I looked back down and spoke to the water bottle held loosely between my fingers. “What if a friend of yours slept with your younger sister? Hypothetically speaking.”
“Did this hypothetical friend already do it?”
“No, but he wants to.”
“Is he a good guy?”
My answer was immediate. “No, he’s not.”
“Hmm. Just sex, or are there feelings involved?”
The question made me uncomfortable, and I squeezed my fingers around the neck of the bottle until the threads bit into my flesh. “Just sex,” I said, though the words burned my throat.
“So, risk throwing away a friendship for a fuck that means nothing? I think your friend already knows the answer to his question.”
My anger flared and I looked up at Mike. “I didn’t say it would mean nothing. I… he likes her as a person.”
He was silent for a long moment, and I felt like his green eyes had super x-ray powers and could see directly into my brain. “The question isn’t so hypothetical to me. I’ve slept with my best friend’s sister many times.”
My mouth gaped open at his matter-of-fact pronouncement. “Seriously?”
Mike grinned, but it was a little sad. “Yes, because I was married to her.”
I shook my head to clear it. “Wait, you were friends with Savannah’s brother?”
“Best friends,” he clarified. “Dean and I served together, and since my parents were dead, I would come home with him for any holidays we got off. From the very first time I laid eyes on her… ”
My attention was fully on him, though he was lost in his memories, staring out across the gym.
“She was an awesome lady, Mike,” I told him. “I only met her a handful of times, but I liked her a lot.”
“She was,” he agreed. “A light in an otherwise stormy life.”
“I’m sorry you lost her.” My voice was sincere and reverent.
“Fucking drunk drivers,” he spat. “They have no idea the damage they can cause to a family by being too selfish to call a goddamn cab. It’s like they don’t even think twice about killing someone’s entire world.”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, though the words didn’t seem nearly enough for what he’d gone through.
Mike was lost in his thoughts again, and I listened quietly. “That first Thanksgiving dinner, we couldn’t keep our eyes off each other. Dean was poking fun at me because I was dumping gravy on my green beans, but it was because I was too busy sneaking looks at his little sister to watch what I was doing.”
He stood and turned away from me, hands on his back as he stretched out his soreness. “The next time I came home with him, Savvy and I… got together. I ended up moving here from Kentucky. I told Dean it was because I didn’t have a family there anymore, but what I really wanted was to be close to her.”
He strolled absently, drifting his fingers across the ropes of the fighting ring. “We were together every time we could manage it, and when I was gone, I would call her and write her these long, sappy letters. I’m not gonna lie; the sex was explosive, but it was so much more than the other girls I’d been with. She was more.”
Turning, Mike leaned back against the ring and crossed his arms over his bare chest, a smile barely tipping his lips up. “It wasn’t just the sex though. Outside the bedroom, Savvy was easy to be with. We could sit together for hours and never get tired of each other. Though she did love to bust my balls. Did it every chance she’d get.”
“I remember,” I said with a chuckle. “She had spunk, that was for sure.” Another pretty face with a brilliant smile popped into my head. Someone who liked to bust my balls.
No, this is different , I told myself. I’m not like Mike.
“She fucking owned me before I even knew what was happening. I tried to resist at first, but she kept pulling me in. I felt guilty every time we were together, but there was no way I could stay away from her.”
“Did Dean catch you with his sister?”
“Not in the literal sense.” Mike’s eyes fogged over, and he cracked his neck with a sharp twist of his head. “We were deployed, and there was a firefight. Dean was hit multiple times.”
“Fuck,” I muttered at the direction this story had turned.
“Yeah. I dragged him between two burned out buildings to try and find some cover and get him some medical attention, but his body was like fucking swiss cheese. Dean was a tough bastard, but he and I both knew he wasn’t going to last.”
I stayed silent as Mike walked back to the fridge and pulled out a bottle of water before draining it in one long gulp. He tossed the empty bottle in the metal trash can.
“Anyway, he told me he knew what was going on between me and Savvy, and that scared me more than the bullets that were flying around us. I was so afraid he was going to use his last breath to curse me.”
“But he didn’t?”
Mike shook his head with a rueful smile. “No, he called me a dumbass for trying to be all sneaky and shit, but he wasn’t mad. He asked me to take care of her.”
My friend’s lips formed a slashing line across his lower face before his voice dropped to almost a whisper. “And then he died.” With his eyes on the ceiling, Mike was silent for a long while before speaking again. “Those were the last words he spoke. ‘You’re the best thing for her, Mike. Take care of her for me.’”
“And you did,” I told him. “You treated Savvy like a queen.”
“She was a queen,” he said fondly before pushing away from the ring and crossing to me. “Sorry to bend your ear with all my shit, but I thought it might give your friend some perspective. Tell him if he’s just looking for a warm place to stick his dick, I’m sure he can find plenty of willing women. Breaking up a friendship for nothing more than a piece of tail would be a mistake. Friends are the family we choose, and that means a lot in my book.”
“Agreed,” I said, feeling more dejected by his words than I should have.
Then he added, “Unless this friend of yours actually has feelings for the woman. Tell him to look inside himself. He might be surprised at what he finds.”
Mike patted me on the shoulder and headed toward the short hall that led to his office. Just before turning the corner, he said, “One more thing. If your friend is struggling this much about it, maybe he isn’t as much of a dickface as he thinks.”
I returned home late to find Mallori sleeping on the couch. She was beautiful even with puffy eyes that appeared to have been crying. Because of me. Fuck.
A small white furball rounded the couch and looked up at me with accusing eyes that seemed to say, See? You’re no good for her.
“I know, Nut,” I told her, stroking her fur from head to tail as she elongated her body into a stretch. Then I picked up Mal and cradled her to my chest. She made a little smacking noise with her lips and then settled her head against my shoulder. I liked her head there. I liked when she leaned into me on the couch, using me like her own personal pillow.
After placing her on her bed and pulling the covers up around her, I stood in the darkness and stared at her, trying to do what Mike had suggested. I searched within myself.
Did I have feelings for Mal? My mind was a blur. I simply didn’t have the capacity to process feelings like other people could. That night all those years ago had changed me, shined a huge fucking spotlight on the darkness inside me.
All I knew for sure was that Cam would never accept me. He was aware of how I was. He knew my fucked up soul.
Mallori made a snorty little noise and turned onto her side, a thick lock of blonde hair flopping over her face. I was careful not to wake her as I brushed it away. Though I knew I should just go to my room, I sat on the edge of her bed and stroked her hair, adoring the sensation of silk between my fingers .
Okay, fuck it. I like her , I admitted to myself. I want to sleep with her, but I also enjoy her company.
It felt good to admit those simple words, even if they were only inside my head. But I also knew you couldn’t build any kind of relationship based on sex and Chuck Norris movies.
And Mallori deserved a man that could give her a real relationship and all the things I wasn’t capable of providing.
The furball interrupted my thoughts with a nudge against my ankle, and I picked her up and placed her near the sleeping woman. Mal reached instinctively for her and pulled the kitten against her face.
Standing, I watched as Coconut’s eyes grew dreamy and then closed. The two of them looked so content together, so I turned to leave. As I reached the threshold of the door, I stalled and looked over my shoulder one more time.
“Sweet dreams, my Little Bee.”