5. Thorn
Chapter five
Thorn
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve apologized for fuck-ups before.
Zero. There have been none.
Technically, I suppose that can’t be counted on anything at all unless your hand is making an O shape.
But this…
This was a straight-up, tremendous, stupendous cock-up of a nut-up of a fuck-up.
“People took photos!” Ephemeral sputters. “Photos last forever!”
I can think of a few ways to make them disappear, but I don’t suppose she’s in any sort of mood for me to be sharing that with her, no matter that it wouldn’t be snarky in the least.
She called it a day, packing up her booth and then writing a short thing online for her fans. Then, she notified the organizers that she needed to leave for a non-cat-related medical emergency. The emergency was my balls, even though I repeatedly assured her I was fine. The fact that I couldn’t stand upright said otherwise, and with some very narrowed eyes and tight lips, she announced I was finished for the day, and that meant so was she, or I’d stubborn it out. And clearly, I needed a hospital.
But I did get her to stand down on that front. She agreed to take me back to her bus so we could talk, emphasis on the ominous. She’s apparently leaving her bus at a campground all this week and cabbing it to the shows and back. She wants to stay plugged in and not run her generator while she’s gone.
Now, I’m sprawled out on the world’s smallest and most uncomfortable homemade bench slash couch thing with a towel-covered bag of ice on my groin, and she’s angrily chopping something on the counter across said bus. She’s about half a foot away, given that the living quarters in here are tighter than a snail’s butt crack—do they even have one of those?
All in all, I can’t believe someone who barely came up to my kneecaps disarmed me and has ball-bagged me straight out of commission.
It’s nice and cold in here, and Peach Lips is lying in her bed which resembles a huge bowl of ramen noodles on the floor at the front of the bus. She doesn’t seem to mind in the least that the show got canceled for her and she gets to nap the rest of the day away.
You know who minds?
Ephemeral.
She’s going to fire me, I can tell.
I’m normally the man of few words type, but I’ve never exchanged so few with someone and yet been able to hear them projecting all their feelings so loudly before. Our agreement is a verbal one. I should have gotten her to write it in blood—metaphorically because that’s juvenile and angsty to the max. I wanted her rules and my requirements—the usual standard shit in black and white for both of us—but she refused. She wasn’t budging on that or the timeframe.
I watch as she picks up her water bottle and chugs back a big swig. That bottle annoyed me all day. Anyone could have slipped something into it at any time. The top is so flimsy.
“The whole world now thinks I’d hire a bodyguard who would taser a child.”
“Anyone who knows anything will believe what you said online. That someone was defacing your booth, I stepped in, and then there was a slight mishap which involved my taser being pulled out and tossed on the floor and then my balls being assaulted. Instead of helping out, people in the crowd decided to stand there and act like complete imbeciles, using their phones to document the whole sordid trainwreck.”
“I did not type any of that when I tried to explain what happened today.”
“No, but you should have.”
“I don’t believe in shaming people, thank you very much.”
That’s the kindest thing she’s said to me. “Thank you.”
Her brows crease, and her eyes get dark. Black. Exceptionally angry. “I was talking about that kid. Not you.”
Now I’m the one getting angry. My balls were nearly punched clean off my body after I did absolutely nothing wrong, and this? This is what the world is going to say about me?
“People are assholes. That’s what happened today. You should try writing that.”
She mutters something under her breath, grabs an apple off the bag on the counter, and starts chopping that wildly too. She should be more careful. At this rate, she’s bound to take off a finger, and then we’d for sure have to go to the hospital, and if there’s anywhere I hate more than that, I’d be hard-pressed to name it.
“While we’re talking about hard truths, you need to start looking after your own safety. Watch your stupid drinks. Anyone could put something into them.”
She turns, a beautiful fire-breathing, apple-chopping dragon with green snapping eyes. “Don’t turn this around. I told you to stand back, and you agreed to the rules. I care about Peach Lips’ fans more than anything, but you just had to interfere. With a child, no less. What were you going to do? Tackle him?”
“He was pissing on your booth.”
“Yes, I do realize what he was doing, but there are mops and such, and no harm would have been done in the end.”
“No harm?” I splutter. “Tell that to my groin.”
“Do you want a family?”
“Never. That’s not the point.”
“You were the one who wouldn’t go to the hospital, so don’t tell me that you’re worried about long-lasting implications.”
“I’m…” Speechless. Just…wow. “Peeing. Kid. Your booth. The others, tearing it apart. What did you expect me to do?”
“Stand there and let me deal with it because little peeing kids are not a security threat to anyone. They’re an annoyance at most.”
For the record, even in my aching nuts state, I barely managed to control myself from knocking heads together of all the people taking photos, pointing, talking, making up stupid shit, and posting videos with ridiculous accusations. I wanted to smash every phone in that group.
“If that’s how the people who supposedly adore Peach Lips treat your cat and you, I’d reevaluate my life plans if I were you.”
Technically, it was how they treated me, and yeah, maybe I’m not okay with that. The point is, they were not nice, and those are her fans.
“Stop it.” She holds up a hand, which pushes out her chest. Her dress is already tight there but cut high, so not even a hint of her lovely breasts show. They’re very finely outlined, I’ll give them that. Her waist is so freaking tiny, especially in that dress. “I never asked you to come into my life. This was important to you. You . Not me.”
“First of all, that’s not true. Secondly, this is all my fault then?”
She rolls her eyes. “It’s not about fault. I’m just saying I didn’t ask for this. I had set rules, and you broke them the first chance you got. This isn’t what I signed up for. I didn’t want to sign up, period, but you wouldn’t leave me alone. I’m too nice. That’s my problem. I need to learn how to say no and mean no.”
“You’re firing me then.”
She stands there, silently seething or silently thinking, I’m not sure.
This is another thing I don’t do. Fuck-up 2.0.
First, it was the Senior Cat Burglar Incident, and now it’s Pissgate. Maybe I’m getting old. Slipping. My hip did give out today, but that’s nothing new. It just hasn’t happened in a long time because all the good physio I’ve been doing has made a huge difference. I had no idea what life would be like after special ops, but I thought I had it covered. What if I can’t do this any longer?
That’s a notion so horrible that I can’t even begin to entertain it.
I do realize I should have done some things differently.
I should have listened and stood still, even if it went against all my instincts, instead of assuming my client would be pleased with my proactive, common sense. I researched her, but I should have remembered I’m technically her cat’s bodyguard, which means researching the cat.
I don’t have the first idea whether Peach Lips likes tuna or chicken or the taste of her own cat bottom best. Or that mush from a can. Maybe all of the above? Fresh grass? Ephemeral said the cat likes peach-flavored catnip best. How the hell does it come in flavors? Who is marketing this shit, and where can I get a piece of it? It should not be this painfully easy to get ahead in business and in life, but clearly, someone’s doing it.
That someone is not me.
No, instead of going ahead with our merger, which is still in the works but currently in a slog of legal holdups, and I’m not sure if it’s intentional on the other side of things or not, I’m here, sitting in a tiny little bus and contemplating a sorry ass future that involves busted nuts and a cat who likes to nip out on peach flavored herbs.
Where the actual fuck did I go so wrong?
“Technically, I never hired you. I never did sign anything.” Ephemeral sighs. She looks tired now. So. Freaking. Tired. Which makes me feel doubly like shit.
“Verbal agreements are legally binding in some states.”
“Were you recording me without my consent?” She angles slightly over, and I see it now.
I see the way she’s holding that knife. Not like she’s going to stab me if I aggravate her any further, even though I can practically see her doing a full-body twitch as she’s so pissgate2.0ed off. No, she’s got the knife gripped in her hand with her middle finger just slightly angled over the handle in my direction.
She’s super subtly flipping me off.
I keep my face as perfectly neutral as possible, given that I’m icing my jewels at the moment, and my dignity is as in question as it’s ever going to get.
She stopped angry chopping a few seconds ago, but now she washes her hands in the tiny little RV sink and dries them on a tea towel covered with—you’ve got it—cat faces. She snatches her phone off the counter and stabs angrily at the screen.
“Let’s see if the court of public opinion thinks I should fire you or not.”
“That’s not fair.” I jerk forward, my balls protesting the sudden movement by shaking their little ball fists at me in horror. “The internet never has anything good to say.”
“Hmm.” Her nose wrinkles and scrunches, and her lips purse. I refuse to find it cute, attractive, or strangely seductive. Popping a boner right now with my junk in the state it’s in is not a good idea. “One woman wants to know where I found such a clown. Another would like an explanation on why a child was just about assaulted. A third says no one the size of an ancient brick factory who looks like a hulking brute with his features entirely out of proportion and muscles too big for his britches should be anywhere near someone as sweet and innocent as myself or Peach Lips. She’s worried you might fall on Peach Lips by accident.”
“Ridiculous. Next.”
“Ironic. The next person says you’re the ridiculous one. What security guard worth anything tries to taser a child?”
“That is not what happened. No tasering was ever going to occur. The little shit was the one who drew the thing out.”
She curls her fingers into air quotations. “This is direct. Okay, no. That’s too mean. It’s a little bit of a man-hating comment. I’m not going to read it.” Her face falls the longer she scans her phone, which is for a very long time. When she looks back up at me, her eyes are glistening and watery.
Fuck. She’s going to cry. Because of the shit she just read on her phone, which is probably pouring in by thousands of comments per minute.
“This isn’t good. People don’t like you, which is honestly not my problem, but they’re questioning whether I’m in the right frame of mind to be doing this as of late. First, Peach Lips gets taken by some rando, and now this.”
I need to disarm the situation, and fast, but fuck me if I have any idea how to make this better. Or how to comfort a crying woman. “I know. It’s one fuck-up after another when there are never any fuck-ups. I pride myself on that. I can assure you, there won’t be a third.”
She brushes her fingers over the countertop absently, almost like she’s petting it. For an absurd second, I wonder what they’d feel like grazing my skin. That thought is as fantastical as her brightly-colored mythical-inspired cat dresses. She probably has a few caticorns and purrmaids in her repertoire.
I don’t want her hands on my body.
I don’t want her lovely, mesmerizing eyes fixed on me.
I don’t want her smiles, her laughter, her good days and her bad.
I don’t want anything from her because I can’t.
I can’t even get my ass upright at the moment or figure out how to say something in the realm of being comforting. I’m such a #lostcause.
It’s time for the big guns. “I’ll get this figured out. My PR team will be on it. I can have someone from my office touch base with you on how they think you should handle the internet in all shapes and forms moving forward.”
Her eyes flash. “That’s not how I like to do things.” She picks up her phone.
“Stop. Stop reading it.”
She quickly scans it again, paling further. It makes my stomach bottom out. Knowing she’s reading all that shit and mopping up after me without cleaning anything up at all hurts worse than my nuts.
“He looks like he could detach someone’s head from their body, a full spine-ripping ordeal…”
“Don’t.”
“Apparently, his security firm is one of the largest in the US. They’re like…leading this and leading that. He doesn’t look like he’s leading much of anything besides the janitorial brute crew.”
“Isn’t there one good comment?”
She scans her phone, chewing on her lower lip. I find myself holding my breath. Of course I am. I operate one of the largest security companies in the country, and this whole thing has made us look like complete and utterly incompetent fools.
“Someone says you’re ex-special ops.”
What the fuck? Of course, that would be anyone’s first assumption. When I’m in the field, my past isn’t a secret, so I might have used my other alias as the company’s owner. To the world, I’m someone else. Many people who work for me like to keep their real identity to themselves, but there are probably some who get hired and don’t even realize I’m one and the same person. We’re so big that I don’t get to meet many of the new hires in person, and anyone who joins the company has to sign strict NDAs when they start, which have to do with the company’s internal workings and client privacy.
“Many people go into security after doing stuff like that. They want to know what your body count is, and I don’t think they mean how many people you’ve slept with.”
I let out a grunt that sounds more like an ornery bear dug up from his nocturnal emissions—wait, hibernation —than a human and shoot to my feet. I wince because fuck, that’s a nutbag of a mistake, and also? My hip still hurts like a mother. “That is classified information.”
She tucks her phone behind her back as though I’m going to snatch it like a disgruntled child. I glare at her. She glares right back. She gives a much fiercer glare than I ever would have thought, looking like the nymph, fairy, goddess, queen of the crazy cat ladies that she is.
“How many? Jesus goodness, how many is it?”
“Classified,” I mutter, tight-lipped. I’m still pressing the ice to my junk. That is non-negotiable.
“Ermph. Until it’s not classified, consider yourself fired. I can’t believe I didn’t even think of that! Hiring a trained killer! What was I thinking?”
“Zero! It’s zero. What kind of man do you think I am?”
She gives more good glares. Fearlessly. I know grown men who turn into a puddle of Pissgate themselves if they ever have to look me in the eye.
“You’re just saying that to get yourself unfired.”
“If you knew me at all, you’d know I’m the kind of man who doesn’t just say things.”
“No, you’re the kind who likes to try and tackle small children.”
I am so over this. It stops now. “Give me all your social passwords. I’m going to get my people to fix this, and they’ll be the ones managing this for the foreseeable future. You need to take an internet break and chill.”
She’s good at glare, but she’s even better at fire. “I do not need to chill .”
“You do, though. You’re stressed.”
“Because of you.”
“Yes. Give me a chance to fix it,” I say.
“I gave you a chance!”
For the love of my sore nuts, I’m going to have it to use it. The word that so very seldom ever gets uttered from my lips. “Please.”
“Still no. And you’re still fired. Now, will you please leave? I trust you can get back to your motel. If they’re so good at damage control, they can damage control for you . This was a mistake. All of it. Go pick yourself up and put your pieces back together somewhere else. I just…can’t handle it.” All the steam blows out of her, and she wilts. She looks fragile, and her eyes are getting shiny again.
Fuck.
It’s not entirely inexplicable that it makes me feel wild . As in, badly out of control. I don’t want to see her hurting. Who likes to see anyone hurt? I might look tough and mean, but making women, good women, cry isn’t my MO.
Maybe she’s right. I should have taken my own advice.
Enough is enough when it comes to being badly humiliated.
I nod, sparing her further words, and limp off her bus/house. I even give Peach Lips a head tilt goodbye. She tilts her head and blinks her one eye back.
I don’t even know what I was thinking, wanting to fight for my fallen honor like a medieval knight. It was an absurd notion. I should have gone straight back to base and worked on damage control and regrouping where the merger was concerned.
First thing in the morning, that’s what I’ll do, no matter how badly it stings. My head, chest, crotch. None of it feels good right now.
I’ll take myself back and get it together. Damaged pride, bruised junk, and all.