Battlescars (15 page)

Dyson looked at Kayla, and she gave him a faint smile.

“Let me talk it over with Kayla,” he said.

Chester opened his mouth as if to protest, but then closed it. He nodded, said he would be seeing them, and walked out the locker room so abruptly that Dyson knew he was displeased. Dyson knew that Chester would be furious if he didn’t take the fight, but he also knew that Chester was too much a gentleman to argue about it in front of Kayla.

Dyson sat down and chose his words carefully. “It’s a $20,000 purse. It’s a big-name fight, one that could put me on the books. It’s the kind of fight that only comes along every now and then, and only for the really lucky ones.”

Kayla nodded, her mouth set in a hard line. “I get it. I know you want to take it.”

“And I need the money, frankly…things aren’t going so well on that front.”

“I completely understand that.”

“But you…if we’re going to be together, then this should be your decision too, right?”

She softened a bit and smiled at him. “I appreciate that.”

“So…”

“So you could get hurt. You can get hurt so much worse than you are right now. This isn’t just boxing where you are nice and polite and keep things above the belt. This is…well, this is true fighting. It looked so brutal.”

Dyson couldn’t argue with her. It was brutal, and she had seen a fight that had ended relatively quickly, not one that had lasted until both fighters were bruised, blood, and so tired they could barely keep their footing in the ring. If there was anything good about Dyson being taken down before the end of the night, it was that Kayla hadn’t seen just how much of a beating he could take. But he knew the next fight – the big fight – would be a no-holds-barred brawl that would leave both men aching for weeks.

“Let’s talk about this,” he said to her. He wanted to take the fight, but he wanted to keep Kayla too. As he stood up and took her hand, he wondered: Could he have both? Or would he have to give up one for the other?

K
ayla had woken up very late, and had been tardy for her first class. She sat through one class after another with blurry eyes, trying to focus on taking notes, but all she could think about was the night before.

She had been believed all along that Dyson had a good reason for whatever he did that got him dismissed from the military, but she was still shocked by what she heard. She wasn’t shocked by Dyson’s reaction – had she been in that woman’s place, about to be raped, she would hope that someone would go to such extremes to protect her honor. She wasn’t even put off by the violence he’d used to put a stop to the appalling behavior of his fellow Marines. After all, if she had been in his position, and that had been happening to her mother, or her friend, and she could stop it, Kayla could only hope that she’d take whatever measures were necessary to save the victims.

What really shocked her – and what she couldn’t get out of her head – was that it had happened in the first place, and that these gang rapes didn’t even appear to be uncommon. That was the last thing she had expected to hear.

What also shocked her was that he had been bounced out of the military for defending someone. Defending the very people that they were sent there to help, in fact. She knew it all must be true, but it still seemed impossible that Dyson would face such harsh punishment while a group of serial gang rapists were still serving in the Marine Corps.

Dyson had explained that his discharge was not a dishonorable one. A dishonorable discharge would likely have prevented Dyson from having worked at the school, and it may have even made it impossible for him to find a place to live. He had been, however, discharged under circumstances “other than honorable,” which meant that he had a big question mark in his history, one that he would have to explain over and over again.

“But at least it wasn’t dishonorable,” he had told her. “Dishonorable discharge means no explanations are asked for – people just write you off.”

But despite all the things that they had talked about, all the revelations they had shared and stories they had told, Kayla found that when she got home that night, all she could really think about was going to bed with Dyson. It was the strangest thing to think about right then, because she knew that he was hurting from the fight, and she was feeling rather vulnerable herself, but none of those things could stop what was really happening, though – her body was absolutely begging for Dyson’s touch. No matter what her mind said, no matter how she tried to coach her heart, the fact remained that she had a desperate, unmistakable need that only Dyson could fulfill.

When she and Dyson had parted ways after the fight, Kayla had gone straight home and reached into the bottom drawer of her nightstand for her vibrator. It was something she rarely did, but when she did indulge, she liked to take her sweet time. That was what had kept her up late at night, when she should have been sleeping instead of playing around with the fantasies in her head.

But regardless of the time on the clock, she had been determined to enjoy herself.

Thinking about Dyson in a sensual way was effortless. She wondered when it had started – maybe when she admired his arms while she sat in the lecture class? Or did it start even before then, when he broke out his white knight armor and saved her from the jerks at the bar?

All she knew for sure was that in her mind last night, he was making good on every promise his body could possibly make. She imagined him underneath her, looking up at her while his hands were on her bare hips. He was moving her back and forth, showing her exactly what he liked, and she was learning fast. When she leaned over him, he took her nipple into his mouth. First one, then the other, licking and sucking while she moved up and down on him. His cock was hot inside her, a heat that spread through her own body and made her want more. She liked this position, but even in her imagination, she wanted to try every position that she could think of.

She had imagined him moving so that he was on top of her, and she fantasized about what he’d look like looking down with her underneath him. What kind of power would he have? How hard would he thrust, and how deep would he go? She imagined her legs over his shoulders as he thrust into her, gently at first and then harder, finally showing her what all that power could really do.

But when she started to think about what it might be like to make him come for her, she really got close to the edge. She played with the vibrator, placing it where she wanted to feel Dyson. In her mind’s eye he came hard for her, looking right into her eyes as he did, and that was enough to trigger her own pleasure.

She came so hard that she thought she might have woken up the neighbors. She wasn’t sure. But more importantly, she really didn’t care.

At school the next morning, Kayla smiled about her sexy thoughts from the night before as she walked between classes. She was startled from her reverie by her ringing cell phone. She looked at the caller ID and her eyebrows shot up in surprise. Richard Dawkins was calling already?

“I found him,” he said in greeting when Kayla answered the call.

Kayla stopped right there on the sidewalk. The sea of students parted around her. One of them bumped her from behind, and that was enough to make her realize that not only had she suddenly frozen, but that she wasn’t speaking either.

“Hello?” Richard said, sounding puzzled.

“I’m here…just a second…” Kayla walked out onto the grassy quad until she found some empty space and privacy. “Okay. What did you say?”

“I said I found him,” Richard said proudly. “I got what you wanted. Want to meet me today to discuss it?”

Kayla didn’t hesitate. “I could meet you right now.”

“Give me half an hour. The same place?”

“Yes, please. And Richard…thanks.”

Kayla hung up and stared at the phone for a moment. It was almost time for her next class, but there was no way she could wait to hear the news that Richard had for her . This was much more important than the class, and besides that, she had a solid A in the class, and the instructor knew that she took the class seriously. Her mind made up, Kayla took off for the restaurant.

Richard had already arrived and had taken the liberty of ordering her a cup of coffee, which she gratefully accepted. The caffeine would be good for her, and besides that, holding the cup would keep him from seeing how badly her hands were shaking.

“You found him?” she asked, bypassing all pleasantries.

Richard slid a stack of photographs over to her. She looked down at the first one and her breath caught in her throat. It was her father, all right – he looked twenty pounds heavier and twenty years older, but it was definitely her father. She studied the bulbous nose and the dark eyes. She noted with some satisfaction that his hair was thinning, leaving him with a higher forehead than she remembered. He was dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, and looked as though he needed a shave.

She slowly flipped through the rest of the photographs. There were close-ups of his face, each one making him seem older than the last. There were long-distance shots that showed where he lived: In one he entered an apartment, in another he was putting bags in the back of a car that had seen better days, and in another he was grinning at a woman slightly older than Kayla, who had bleached-blonde hair and a smile that looked more like a grimace. She had a cigarette in one hand and wore short shorts that showed off legs with far too much of a tan. Large sunglasses covered her eyes.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“California,” Richard said. “That is his girlfriend, so far as we can tell. He works for a shipping company, driving a desk all day and answering phones. Not very demanding work.”

“No surprise there,” she said. She came to the last picture of her father. He had a beer in his hand. The label was obscured, but there was no mistaking the color scheme. It was his brand of choice.

She went back to the picture of her father with the girl. She looked at her again, this time with a more critical eye. Now she paid closer attention to the sunglasses, and suddenly that grimace looked more like pain rather than a picture taken at a bad angle. Kayla wondered when the woman had last been hit. She knew it wasn’t a matter of “if” she had been struck, but only a matter of when the last time might have been.

“We took a peek into his bank accounts, too. Not much there. He lives paycheck to paycheck, and it seems his little chickie makes more money than he does. But even so, she qualifies for food stamps and he gets housing vouchers for the apartment. It’s not an easy life.”

“Good.”

Richard raised an eyebrow at Kayla’s quick answer but didn’t say a word. She took her time going through the pictures again, and then he handed her the pages of information on the bank accounts. She wasn’t interested in the bank records, and set them aside.

“Has he been in trouble with the law?” she asked, and Richard nodded.

“He’s on a first-name basis with the town cops,” he answered. “Petty stuff…drunk and disorderly, one indecent exposure for going out on the lawn in his underwear and yelling at the neighbors, that kind of thing. He also has a domestic violence record – apparently he knocked a girl around a few years ago and she wasn’t having any of it. No charges were pressed, but the paper trail was still there.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Richard nodded again. “I didn’t figure you would be,” he said, and then Kayla realized that he had seen all of her father’s paperwork, going way back to the murder of her mother and maybe even before that. She felt the heat rising up her face, turning her ears red. She looked down and shuffled through the papers to give her time to rein in the emotions that suddenly flooded her.

“He’s a bastard of the lowest degree,” Richard suddenly said. “Be glad you’re free of him.”

Kayla looked up at Richard. “I’m not even sure why I wanted you to find him,” she admitted. “Sometimes I think it’s a good idea, and that I need answers, but then I know he would never give them…and what would he tell me anyway? That he’s sorry?” Kayla snorted with laughter. “That wouldn’t do a bit of good at this point.”

Richard shrugged. “Maybe you just need the upper hand. Maybe you just need to keep tabs and know that you can contact him if you want to, while still knowing that you’re the one in control.”

Kayla thought about that. Had she ever had the upper hand over her father before?

“I have contact information,” Richard said, and let the idea hang in the air.

That was what she wanted, right? To find him and have the chance to speak with him on her own time and her own terms, if she chose to do so? So now that the information was so close at hand, why in the world was she hesitating?

“I’ll take it,” she said with more bravado than she actually felt.

Richard handed over a sheet of paper. There were only a few lines, but they summed up her father’s current life. She looked at the address and the phone number, places and digits unconnected to anyplace she knew. She looked at the name and even that seemed foreign, after having avoided seeing it or thinking about it for so many years. She stared at the paper as the waiter came over and asked if they wanted more to drink, and Richard waved him away.