Chapter 33
33
JONATHAN
A dam lifts the peas from my cheek. I stare at him.
“Everyone believes the reason I quit wrestling is because of Lloyd’s death and my grief. The truth is I can’t wrestle anymore. When he died… when I lost him... I didn’t stop. In fact, I threw myself into it— I wanted to hurt . While the world thought I was mourning, I was doing my best to fucking kill myself, or externalize my pain, or… I don’t even know. I came unhinged. Nothing mattered anymore. I took any fight I could find, in the streets, in the clubs, in the amateur rings, with a mask and costume like some dumb carnival Batman. And one night, some amateur shit punched too hard. Broke my orbital, gave me whiplash and a concussion. A bad one. I nearly lost my eye. When I was in recovery, they scanned my brain and discovered I nearly lost my life. It took me a while to recover. Months. It’s a bit of a blur but the long and the short of it is that the next concussion I get could be my last. You can’t fuck with the brain. And Geoff knows all this. He was there. He helped spin the whole thing.”
I don’t know what to say. The question that tumbles out of my mouth is, “Why?”
He narrows his gaze. “Why?”
“Why did you need to spin it?”
His mouth hooks into a small, private, smile. “Because that’s what it’s like, being a wrestler. It’s lie after lie after lie, whatever makes the promotion look good. And your star bad guy getting his ass handed to him by a nameless jerk? That doesn’t make you look good. I’m lucky they didn’t sue me for breach of contract.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. It’s all about whatever angle you can sell.” He smirks. “One of the owners told me if I was so intent on dying, the least I could do was do it on pay-per-view.”
“Wow.”
He presses the icy peas to my cheek again and I manage not to pull away at the cold. “Lloyd hated it. Wrestling. It was the one thing we had in common.”
“You hated it?”
He’s silent for a while, contemplating this. Then he says, “I hate what it made me into.”
What must that have been like? Living that lie, being the bad guy for years. What that must do to a person, to be trapped not only in a career you despise, but in a whole identity that you hate? And everyone, even his friends, still call him that name.
“You know,” he says, removing the make-shift ice pack from my numb cheek, “When you said Geoff was teaching you to box, I thought he was trying to seduce you.”
I scoff. “I’m the pathetic beta, remember?”
Adam growls again. Does he have any idea how attractive that sound is? “I thought he was negging you.”
“Negging?”
“Part of the same bullshit pickup artist crap as the beta thing. Putting you down so you want to please him.”
“That’s a thing? I really am clueless about the art of seduction.”
Adam snorts.
“Trust me. Geoff isn’t my type.”
Adam’s eyes lock on mine. “What is your type?”
A thrill races through me. Did he really just ask that? I struggle to find a word that isn’t you.
A wan smile appears beneath his beard. “Let me guess. Well educated, nice clothes, a familiarity with all things aesthetic .” He becomes very focussed on the ice pack.
“No, not that.”
His gaze slides to mine again and my heart skips.
“Jonathan?” A little voice says from the doorway.
Ben.
I duck my head, hiding my face.
Adam moves subtly to help block the view. “What is it, Ben?”
“I… will Jonathan be coming upstairs soon?”
Oh hell, it’s that time already. “Yes, go get ready for bed. I’ll bring you your cocoa in a few minutes.”
Adam’s brow furrows and he shakes his head minutely, before saying, “Uh, no, I’ll be up soon. Jonathan has… something else he has to do tonight.”
“Is everything okay?” Ben asks.
“Everything’s fine,” I assure him. “We’re just talking. I’ll come check on you later.”
“Okay,” he says, still sounding dubious, and I hear his footsteps as he withdraws.
“Is it that bad?”
Adam brushes my cheek with the tips of his fingers. “I’d… suggest checking on them once the lights are out.”
I groan and bury my head in my hands.
“So… cocoa?”
“Yes. And… damn. I’ve been reading to them in Enrique’s room. It gets him to start the night in his own bed.”
“As opposed to?”
“Alisha’s.”
“I see.”
“Maybe I can still do story time if I do it in the dark.”
Adam gives a doubtful hum and waits for me to realize the logic error.
“Oh. Right.”
He stands, placing a warm hand on my shoulder. “I’ll tell them you’re getting a boxing lesson. Prepare them a little. It won’t be so bad in the morning.”
“But Enrique?—”
“You’ve got your place marked, right?”
Warmth surges through me. “Yes, yes I do.”
Geoff is gone before we get up the next morning. The children are unsettled. It doesn’t take much to put together what happened, no matter how many times I assure them my bruised face and his absence are unrelated.
“He had work in New York,” I say. “He decided it was better to work from there, where he had proper connectivity.”
They don’t buy it. It’s not that they were ever overly fond of him, but he was a part of this place and now he’s gone. I worry that this will bring back those old abandonment anxieties, that I’ll have to reassure them that The Beast doesn’t intend to get rid of them overnight.
Instead, during cocoa time, I get asked by a very frank Ben, “Is Adam your boyfriend?”
I nearly choke on my own drink.
“It’s quite obvious,” Mal says, sitting cross legged on the bed, hugging his poop emoji. “Why else would Geoff punch you?”
Ben nods, sagely. “Geoff likes Adam, everyone knows that.”
I’m too flustered to say anything, my face burning.
“It’s okay if you want to keep it private,” Alisha assures me.
“I’m not keeping it— there’s nothing to keep— I, uh, no he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Aww.” Ben frowns and kicks at a pillow.
I wrap up cocoa time as quickly as I can after that.
When I head back to my room, Adam’s waiting for me outside. He’s leaning against the wall, arms folded, biceps bulging and his smile is warm and genuine.
“How’s it going?” he asks, voice extra low so as not to wake anyone. I feel that voice deep in my belly.
“Fine. Everything’s fine!” My voice, in contrast, is high-pitched and strangled.
His eyebrows shoot up, but I refuse to elaborate.
“I have something for you,” he says and he pulls an oblong box out of his pocket.
I know that shape, but… surely it’s not possible? It’s only been three days. I accept the box and pop it open.
There, on a bed of velvet, is a new pair of glasses, exactly like my old ones. “How in god’s name… how did you manage this?”
Usually getting new specs means a visit to the optometrist, re-testing and then waiting a week for them to be manufactured.
Adam shrugs. “Gave Zane a call. He managed to find the details for your optometrist. I got in touch. Nice lady. She didn’t even mind that it was a weekend. She gave me all the details so I could order a new pair.”
My head’s spinning. “You spoke to Zane? What did you tell him?”
“That you fell in a storm. Just as well I didn’t give him more context. He sounded about ready to murder me for letting you get into danger as it was.”
I try on the glasses. The world pops into fantastic focus. “This is amazing. I don’t know how you got them made so quickly.”
“Celeb status comes in handy once in a while.” He winks and I feel the blush bloom in my cheeks again.
He steps forward and touches my burning cheek and I feel like I’m going to explode, but he asks, soft and entirely calm, “How’s your face feeling?”
Hot. Burning. I fight the urge to press into his touch again. “Meredith gave me a Panadol.”
He withdraws. “You should put more ice on it. It will reduce blood flow to the area, reduce the swelling.” A self-deprecating smile. “Apparently a career of getting hit also comes in handy once in a while.”
I cover my own cheeks. The thing that would really help reduce blood flow to the area would be if I could stop blushing. “I’ll give that a try.”
“Oh, and, I was serious about the boxing lessons,” he says. “If it’s something you want to learn, I’m happy to teach you. Without hurting you. We can start tomorrow night after dinner.”
Lessons. Alone with Adam. I have no love of boxing and no particular desire to learn, but I find myself saying, “I’d like that. But I must warn you I’m not very good. I’ve never been good at anything… physical.”
“Really?” The word carries weight, as if he’s talking about something completely different from boxing. “I’d very much like to put that to the test.”
Oh my god. My face heats even further and my stomach is at once a mess of butterflies.
He clears his throat, drops his gaze down to his feet.
Say something. Use your excellent command of the English language to think of something that’s playful and smart and...
“I… I would enjoy that too.”
Adam’s expressive eyes widen a fraction at that and he smiles.