Against the Ropes (25 page)

“Oo-rah,” Graham added, toasting them.

“Somehow, I doubt Reagan will be impressed with the caveman act.”

“Then you're doing it wrong.” Graham put his feet up on his coffee table.

“Or it's not something that appeals to her.” Greg surged to his feet, setting the bottle down with a clink. “But you're right about busting down the wall. Charge the front lines. Take no prisoners. Leave no stone unturned.”

“Leave no cliché untouched,” Brad added dryly. “Just go. Fix this with your lady friend, be careful, and stop moping around.”

“Aye, aye, Lieutenant Cranky Pants.” With a salute that had Brad throwing a pillow at his back, he darted for the door. He halted when Graham yelled his name. “What?”

“You okay to drive?”

Greg looked at his still half-full beer. “That's all I had. You wanna insult me some more?”

“Look, I'm not in the mood to disrupt my training to stand up with any of you jack wagons in court on a DUI charge, so sue me for checking.”

He gave another salute and closed the door behind him.

That was the last closed door he hoped to see for a while.

25

I
f the carpet hadn't already shown several worn spots, Reagan was sure it would now.

She'd been pacing her apartment for two hours now, and there was only one conclusion she'd managed to make in that whole time.

She did absolutely no good thinking while pacing.

Huffing, she dropped down onto the sofa and rubbed at one aching calf muscle. Maybe other people relied on the blood flow they got from the cardio workout of walking in a circle, but she preferred to do her thinking in a more civilized manner: in bed, lying on her back, with a spoonful of peanut butter.

Five minutes later, that's exactly where she was. She used the spoon to trace the water marks on the ceiling, one eye closed. It was sort of like picking images out of clouds. “That one looks like a bunny, that one's a train . . .”

“I've lost it,” Reagan said to nobody. “I'm talking to myself, picking shapes out of water marks and eating peanut
butter from the jar. I'm seven cats away from being the crazy cat lady.”

The apartment didn't answer.

After speaking to her supervisor one more time, she knew what she had to do. She needed to get ahead of the story before whoever found Greg's records went public. She just wasn't sure how much of a fan of the plan he would be. He hadn't even told his girlfriend about his childhood.

And what a knife to the heart that was. She'd bared her own shame about her background. Growing up poor, being ashamed of their financial status, being ashamed of her shame, the guilt she felt . . . the ugliness of herself, she'd shared that with him. And he hadn't reciprocated. Hadn't even tried.

The kinder, gentler side of her debated, maybe he would have, eventually, given more time.

When? After a year? On their wedding night? On their twentieth anniversary? He'd had weeks, and ample opportunity. It wasn't a stretch to think he'd hoped he could get away with keeping that part of himself quiet forever. He'd started fresh the day he jumped on the bus to basic. He'd said so himself. He wanted everyone else to believe so, too.

And that list of charges . . . She shuddered. Reagan was a mature enough woman to be able to pick out her own flaws. She knew, without a doubt, it was a horrible thing to feel, but it didn't change the instant recoil she'd done when she thought about who Greg had been as a teen.

What led a man like Greg into those situations? Into those actions?

She might have known . . . except he wouldn't freaking tell her.

The pounding on her door almost had her dropping her peanut butter spoon on the sheets. That would have just been the endcap to a delightfully shitty day. Sticking the spoon in her mouth, she shuffled in her bare feet toward the door.
As whoever it was pounded again, she yelled out a garbled, “I'm coming!” around the spoon and sticky peanut butter. Whoever it was could just damn well slow their roll and give her five freaking seconds to get to the door.

But when she opened it, spoon still lodged in her mouth, she fought against the urge to slam it shut again.

That wouldn't be the mature thing to do. And she was Mature Reagan. Professional Reagan. Can Handle Anything Reagan.

He looked her up and down, then raised a brow. “Nice outfit.”

She slammed the door in his face.

Not so mature or professional, but she could call a mulligan on today and try again tomorrow. Looking down, she had to admit he was right on the clothing. She was still wearing her skirt, but the jacket had long been ditched in favor of her favorite University of Wisconsin hoodie that was a size too big. And her hair, she knew, was a tangled mess from lying down on the bed. Her makeup was either smeared or long gone, most likely, and her eyes were red from the crying jag she'd indulged in on the way home from the gym.

So yeah, she'd looked better. But as his own moral ground was damn shaky, he could have ignored that.

She leaned against the door, and heard him sigh on the other side.

“Reagan, come on. Open up.”

She shook her head—despite the fact that he couldn't see her—and had another spoonful of deliciousness.

“Reagan, please.” His voice sounded more hoarse.

She simply waited.

“Reagan.” It sounded almost like a plea. “Please. Baby . . . we need to talk.”

It was the “baby” and his tone—defeated—that had her opening up again. The look he gave her was so bleak, it almost broke the few pieces of her heart left. “I'm not sharing my peanut butter.”

He looked surprised a moment, then shrugged. “Fine. Just let me talk and I'll get out of your way.”

She motioned for him to come in, debated running to her room for a minute to change and pull her hair into something less manic-looking and wash her face clean. In the end, she did wash her face, because it felt good on her puffy eyes and seemed like a clean slate, and brushed her hair to pull it into a no-fuss ponytail. But she'd be damned if she changed in her own house just to listen to a five-minute story.

He sat on her couch—in the middle, of course—and waited for her to sit. So she did . . . in the computer chair. With one eyebrow raised, he silently called her on it, but she simply crossed her legs as calmly as she could, like she was fully dressed in a meeting instead of in her apartment about to have her heart shoveled out, dressed like a loon.

“Reagan . . .” Greg stopped, sighed and ran a hand through his short hair. “Can you come over here, please?”

“You wanted to talk. You can talk from there.” If he wanted a pushover, he picked the wrong woman to start a relationship with.

No, not relationship. That word implied a give-and-take. A mutual sharing. Not a give-and-give-and-get-nothing-back.

He watched her, probably considering his odds, then just ran his hand over his hair once more before sighing and settling back. “My mom didn't want me.”

She blinked. Didn't want him . . . to come visit? To join the military?

“Didn't want me, period. She gave me up. Dumped me, actually. I guess the reason I'm as lucky as I have been is because she gave me up to begin with, instead of trying to raise me with no help, no resources, and no real desire to bother with a kid.” The corner of his lips tilted up, and her breath caught at that hint of vulnerability. “So, thanks, Mom.”

“Greg,” Reagan breathed, but he didn't hear her.

“Bounced around to a few foster homes. People seem to have stages they prefer when it comes to the temp kids. They
like the infants, but when they start crawling, they're done. Or they like the toddlers, but when they start getting mouthy, they pass them on.” His chest moved in an imitation of a laugh. “You can guess how many families want to deal with surly teenagers, especially the ones who already have a rep for being uncooperative and, well, sort of douchebags.”

Suddenly, her stubbornness to sit alone in the chair seemed so stupid, so petty. But to move now might have broken the moment, and she knew he was finally ready to purge.

“Some were okay, none were great. Some were downright shitty. More than once, I ran away. I would have been better on my own.”

No, never on your own.

“So when people, a few guys around the city, some from school and some not, started paying attention, I fell for it. Hook, line and sinker. I was their lackey. ‘We're your family, Greg, do it for your family.'” He sighed and closed his eyes. “Such an idiot.”

That unlocked whatever hold she'd had on her own control. She ran the three steps toward the couch, jumping to his side. He let out a big “oof!” as she landed against him, holding tight. Her legs wrapped around his waist, her breasts smashed against his ribs and her nose pressed into his shoulder.

“Hey,” he said in a shaky voice, wrapping an arm around her. “What's this?”

“I hate this story.” She could barely choke out the words, because she knew she couldn't cry and make it through the rest of the talk. And they had to talk. Now that the dam had been torn down, the rest had to be purged. But if she cried . . . game over. “And I just . . . I need this.”

He didn't say anything for a while, just rubbed her back. “I thought you'd hate me because of it.”

“No. I'm still pissed at you. Seriously, numbingly pissed. But I'm not going to hate you. I know who you are now, and whatever was behind you will stay there.”

“Except it won't. Clearly, someone's out to get me.”

She pinched his arm, and he yelped.

“Damn, woman, what was that for?”

“Just finish your story. We'll talk later.”

He settled back against the couch, Reagan still wrapped around him like a barnacle. And she had no intention of leaving him.

*   *   *

HER
belief in him filled him with awe. Even knowing what he'd done, seeing it in black-and-white, along with that horrible mug shot, she was willing to sit here like this with him. She didn't think he was tainting her presence, her life, her career. She was giving him the chance to stay. He'd damn well earn it.

“I was mostly the lookout,” he began again, “a few times I was a distraction or a diversion. But my hands were largely clean of the major lifting when it came to any crime. Petty stuff, more than anything. The kind of stuff a judge would slap you on the wrist for as a kid, maybe do some community service. I got caught a few times, which you saw on the sheet. But other than moving to a new foster home each time, the penalty wasn't too severe. Never enough to make me quit. Because each time I moved, my crew found me. The foster families were never consistent . . . the crew was. It just reinforced in me I was making the right choice to stick with them. Follow in their footsteps. Screw the man,” he said, feeling an ironic sort of humor in the whole thing.

“Screw the man,” Reagan whispered as she absorbed it all. “So if it was mostly petty kid stuff, what happened?”

He reached up and undid her ponytail—what was left of it—and let the tangled strands float down around her shoulders. Chestnut, mahogany, some streaks of redwood in there . . . she was so damn beautiful it made him have to swallow. As he worked on a few tangles with his fingers, he told her the rest just as he'd told his friends. How he'd been sucked in higher, about getting in a fight, being caught, and
a judge finally realizing where he was headed and wanting to give him an out.

“It was my choice to join the Marines,” he said resolutely. “I had the choice, and I took what I thought was the easy way out. Play military hero for a few years and get a clean slate. Not a bad trade.”

“It was right after 9/11,” she argued. “Not exactly a peace-time service record. You've deployed. You've seen combat time. That's not a simple choice to make, especially not as a seventeen-year-old.”

“Opposite . . . it's exactly what a seventeen-year-old would do. At seventeen, you're invincible. Nothing can touch you. Hell, you think you can respawn.” When she looked up at him, confusion in her beautiful brown eyes, he added, “Video game term for restarting. Basically, once your character dies, you just start all over. There's no real death.”

“Boys are weird,” she muttered, burying her nose against his shoulder again.

“We are, yeah.” Smoothing his hand over her now-untangled hair, he bent down and took in a deep breath of her calming scent. It filled him, his senses, with a moment of peace in what was now a very tumultuous moment. “I joined a boxing league after basic because clearly fighting was something I did well, and decent exercise. I stood out. I'm not big, but I'm fast.”

“I've noticed. You kick everyone's ass in sprint drills.”

“Long distance, Costa nails my ass every time. Don't tell him that,” he added automatically, then smiled when she laughed. When she quieted, he sobered. “I did everything in that packet you read. All of it. And then some. I was a horrible kid, and I would have been a pretty shitty adult.”

“You got out. You had the chance to make a change and you did. You haven't repeated those offenses once, have you?”

“Until I nailed Tressler, I haven't been in a fight outside the ropes since I joined the Marines. Haven't taken a dime,
haven't done anything that would leave anyone with doubts about my character. The Corps is my family now. My crew. I'm not shaming it. I'm honoring it.”

She patted his chest, and he realized he was breathing heavily. Her hand rested over his heart, and he fought to slow his breathing again. “Not sure why I keep getting worked up about it.”

“You're defensive because it's hard to have something like this flung at you when you've spent the last ten years being a model citizen.”

He ruffled her hair a moment, wondering how he'd gotten so lucky. It certainly hadn't been because of the sum total of his life to date. Karma, as he thought of it, still had some balancing to do before it fell in his favor. He pressed a kiss to her temple. “Does this mean you won't lock me out again?”

“Someone has to keep an eye on you.”

He laughed and squeezed her to him. “You say that now, but if you feel differently later . . .”

Reagan looked up, her eyes clear and bright, and carrying a hint of mad. “I'm perfectly capable of making my own decisions. Don't patronize me.”

There was the independent spitfire he loved. “And you're not just feeling some pity for me?”

“Stop patronizing yourself.” One finger poked him in the belly, and he gave an exaggerated groan for effect. “You're hardly someone to pity. You had a shitty childhood. You were still a child when you had to make a very adult decision. You made the right one, because that's who you were meant to be all along. A good man. So there's nothing to pity about you. Unless you mean I pity you because you have to share the tiny bed in my room.”

That made him grin, then roll them until she was pinned beneath him on the couch. “Since all that does is force you to plaster this sexy body against mine all night, that's hardly something to worry about.”