Chapter 25 Benny
twenty-five
Benny
SNAP. SPAR. SANITIZE?
It had been six months since I’d last seen Harper, and a month since I’d accidentally learned his identity.
Rachel had been watching some boring work conference on her laptop at the table before dinner, and I’d walked past and almost had a heart attack at seeing his perfect face on the screen. Then it all clicked into place.
It had been increasingly difficult not to do anything with that information. I knew where he worked now, and it took an incredible amount of self-restraint not to steal my sister’s security pass, march myself to Lorens Towers, and find him.
I’d likely be escorted off the premises long before I managed to find his office, but still, it was tempting.
It had also been increasingly difficult to hear my sister talk about work—and her boss, the man I’d still not moved on from.
Not even close. Of course, Rachel didn’t know about that, and I tried to be logical with my emotions, but the sadness and grief of losing him had turned into anger that I wasn’t able to do anything about it.
To obsession as I replayed everything in my mind and came up with a hundred different ways I could have handled myself better that day.
I should have chased after him. I should have fought for him.
“He has my team workin’ the whole damn weekend,” Rachel said, far too loudly. My eye twitched. “It’s like he just expects we don’t have a life outside that lab. We’re just part of the company and not actual people. It’s so not fair. Like, sorry you don’t have a life, but I—”
“Is he workin’ too?” I interrupted.
“What?”
“Harper. Is he workin’ too?”
“Well… yeah, he’s always workin’.”
“Then why isn’t it fair? He’s just doin’ his job, and you’d just be doin’ yours. The job, mind you, that you were so excited to get and claim you love. So which is it?”
Rachel blinked at me. Ma blinked at me. The boys stopped shoving each other and looked between us all.
“What the f—heck is your problem? You’re what? Takin’ my boss’s side over mine, Benjamin?”
“I’m just pointin’ out that you’re complainin’ about a job you signed up for.”
“I don’t know who you think you’re talkin’ to, but it couldn’t be me. I suggest you consider what you’re sayin’ very carefully.”
“Okay.” Ma inserted herself into the staring match we’d locked into with each other. “Why don’t we all just take a few deep breaths and talk about somethin’ else?”
“Talk about whatever you want.” I stood abruptly, leaving my dinner half eaten.
“Bear Bear,” Ma called after me.
I didn’t stop. I closed the door a little more forcefully than necessary, repeating it with my car door too. I knew I wasn’t being fair to them, but Rachel got to see him all the time, and she was complaining about it. What I wouldn’t give to be in her place.
I was jealous of my own damn sister because she got to exist in the same space as him and I didn’t.
Music blasted the moment I turned the car on and continued until I shut the engine off in front of the gym. It was closed now, but I had some feelings I needed to get out and only one way I knew how to do it.
I switched on the lights in the area I needed, grabbed my gloves, and beat the shit out of a boxing bag.
It didn’t help. Not even when sweat pooled down my face and back.
There was a reason I’d gone so far as a fighter.
I was strong and ambitious, but I also needed it.
Needed to be able to lock into a fight, where my mind quieted down to basic survival instincts.
Adrenaline instead of anxiety. It was the one space my thoughts were completely silent.
The one space, apart from when I was with him.
I’d lost that too. I’d lost fucking everything.
I grunted as I kicked the bag with everything I had. It swayed but refused to be taken down. I’d feel no sense of accomplishment here, or anywhere.
“Has the bag offended you?”
I jolted as a familiar and unexpected voice came from behind me. My heart should really be used to Rikky sneaking up on me by now.
“How the fuck did you get in here?”
“Back door code is very easy to guess. You should think about changing it.”
He had a point. Ma’s birthday probably wasn’t the most secure passcode.
“How’d you know I was here?”
“Your sister told me you were ‘being a bitch’ and I should ‘come get my man.’” He raised his hands to air quote her words. “Where else would you go?”
“Oh really? Rachel hadn’t complained enough today already? I’m shocked.”
Rikky nodded slowly. “Okay, so do you want to tell me what the problem really is, or do you want to fight something that can fight you back… and then tell me what the problem really is?”
“I’m not fightin’ you, Rikky.”
“Why not? Afraid you’ll lose?”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
He scoffed.
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes, well, I’ve fought worse than you, Forrester, and I’m perfectly fine.”
I didn’t ask for further information on that. I already knew he wouldn’t tell me, and that I was probably better off not knowing even if he would.
“Where are the gloves?” he asked, and I gestured my head to the tub of gloves and mitts.
He kicked off his shoes, pulled his shirt off and black grappling gloves on, and climbed into the octagonal cage in the center of the gym.
I knew it was a bad idea. I knew I wasn’t in the right headspace to spar. If I got into that cage, it was going to be a real fight.
“If you don’t get in here, I will take it as a confession that you’ve gone soft since your retirement,” he called out to me. When I didn’t respond or make any move to join him, he continued. “You know, Rachel is right. You have been a bitch lately.”
“Like you’d know. You haven’t even been here,” I snapped back.
I was used to Rikky occasionally disappearing for days or weeks at a time. He’d always told me he was just helping his dad with something important. He wouldn’t answer any of my questions about it, and I’d eventually stopped asking. But these last few months he’d been around even less.
“Is that the problem, then? You missed me?”
“’Course I missed you, asshole.”
“You are no fun to tease.”
“Get out of there, Rikky.”
“Come and make me, coward.”
I shook my head. Fine, he could stay in there, then, but I was leaving. I was peeling my gloves off and halfway to the door when he shouted after me.
“It’s not my fault you got dumped!”
I stopped. Turned to face him. A grin spread across his face.
“That’s it, isn’t it? Your mystery man from the club dumped you.”
My jaw ticked. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“What did you do?”
My teeth ached as I clamped them together.
“You did do something.”
How was it that even my fucking silence was giving him answers? “I’m not talkin’ about it.”
“Well, I am. Unless you come in here and give me something else to focus on.”
My chest was rising and falling with my deep breaths.
Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Calm down.
“Were you too clingy?”
That was it. My pulse thumped in my ears as I stormed toward him. He grinned.
I yanked myself up into the cage, and he raised his fists, beckoning me closer.
“No face hits,” I huffed. I was pissed but not entirely fucking reckless. “You don’t have a mouth guard.”
“You are so boring.”
I refastened my gloves and raised my fists. Then we were circling each other, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
“Clingy,” he whispered.
I threw the first punch.
It had been a long time since I’d sparred with Rikky, before I made it pro, when we were mostly just messing around. I’d gotten much better since then, but so had he.
The first hit I landed, I still held back.
The first hit he landed, he definitely didn’t. His punch connected like a sledgehammer to my ribs, a familiar jolt into a recent past I’d lost. A past where I’d been something, until I’d lost it. Lost everything.
I grunted as I hit him back, this time giving him everything I had, all the rage, all the sadness compressed in my core like a furnace. It powered my body, threatening to combust if I didn’t relieve the pressure with my fists.
Rikky didn’t even guard himself. He took the hits and chuckled as he pulled in an unwilling breath.
I didn’t let up. Heat radiated from my fists, traveled up my tense forearms, higher.
It scorched my neck and shoulders from the inside, until it made its way up to my eyes and I could hardly see.
I was untethered. Unmoored. Unhinged. The furnace was overheating. Explosive. It wanted destruction. Pain.
Everything I’d bottled up and tamped down inside me was bursting out and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t want to.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
Leather on skin.
He wasn’t fighting back now, just letting himself absorb my rage.
“Hit me.” I spoke between clenched teeth.
Smack. Smack.
He didn’t listen.
“HIT ME!” I screamed.
An arm like a steel bar collided with my chest. A leg hooked behind mine. My back slammed against the mats. He was on me.
The heavy thuds of large bodies rattling padded wooden boards echoed throughout the silent gym. I was burning up. Burning out.
Rikky had inhuman strength. Whenever I had him in a hold, he’d flip the both of us again.
Again. Until his legs locked around my waist and his arms locked around my neck.
I couldn’t break free. I refused to submit, until darkness danced in the corners of my vision.
I tried to swing my arms behind me to hit him. He didn’t budge.
Shadows swallowed me. I tapped out. Rikky let me go.
I gulped in air. My chest heaved. My lungs burned.
I stared at the too bright ceiling light as the shadows eased off. Vision blurred from lack of oxygen. Cleared. Then blurred again as my eyes burned with sweat and tears. I was choking again, this time on my sobs.
A wall had broken, and everything was bleeding out. Emotional pain converted to physical. Grief and rage replaced by bruises, transformed so they could escape me in a form I understood. One I could deal with and process.