Brawler (9 page)

“Yeah, we’ll be there soon.”

“Take your time. Have fun, just make sure you come see me before you go home tonight.”

I ended the call and slid the phone back into my pocket slowly.

“Everything okay?” Callum asked.

“Yeah, I think so. Dan wants to talk to me. Something came up.”

“What kind of something?”

“I have no idea, but I’m going to grab Laney and head over there. It sounded important.”

“Alright, man. I hope everything’s alright.”

“Yeah, me too.”

Laney didn’t want to leave. I told her I needed to go see her dad and she was quick to clarify that he wanted to see me, not her. Not both of us. She handed me her keys, kissed me goodbye, and ran back into the water with her friends where the sun was setting in a blaze of red and orange over the vibrant green waters.

I left without looking back.

When I got to the house Dan looked surprised to see me so soon.

“I didn’t mean to rush you,” he apologized, letting me inside. “It could have waited until later this evening.”

“I know, but I wasn’t doing anything. Not really.”

“Where’s Laney?”

“She didn’t want to leave.” I handed him her car keys. “Callum and the girls are there if she needs a ride so she let me take her car.”

“Okay, well, since you’re here let’s go back to my office.”

I followed him through the house. It looked empty and I wondered where Jenna was on a warm summer night. Since I was done tutoring her and Laney and I had started dating, I saw Jenna less and less. Also, she’d started hanging out with a girl named Sam recently, so most of our conversations were through text. I hadn’t even met her friend. I’d only heard Sam’s name in passing and I saw one picture of her on Jenna’s phone. She was a Goth chic with dark eye makeup and all black clothes, but in the picture she’d been smiling broadly. The two of them had looked really happy.

“Have a seat,” Dan told me, taking his place behind the desk. He pulled out a large envelope that reminded me of the packet of college applications he had given me. “I got this at my office today. It was mailed to me from a law firm in Las Vegas on behalf of a client of theirs. A Barkley Thorp.”

“Barkley? Really?”

Dan grinned, but it quickly disappeared. “Yeah. He’s a high roller in Las Vegas and a poker champion for more than a decade. He’s invested his money wisely over the years and he’s made himself a millionaire a few times over. In fact, he owns the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team.”

“What does he have to do with me?”

His eyes held mine steadily, unflinching. “Kellen, he’s your father.”

The words didn’t mean anything to me. My dad had been a non-entity my entire life. No human, living, breathing body or ridiculous ass name could be attached to him to make him real. He was a phantom. A wraith. A ghost in the back of my mind when I boxed. If I ever entertained the idea of him being alive, it was to feed him to the animal.

“No,” I said faintly.

“Yes.”

I gripped the arms of my chair with white knuckles. “What does he want? What’s in the package?”

“Financial documents,” he answered, laying his hands gently down on top of the envelope. I noticed he didn’t try to hand it to me. It was probably his only copy and he was right to worry what I’d do with it. “They’re your documents for accounts in his name and yours.”

“I don’t have finances. I definitely don’t have financial documents.”

“You do now. Inside this envelope is the paperwork for a savings account that was started for you the day you were born. Mr. Thorp started the account with twenty thousand dollars. He’s added eight thousand eight hundred and eighty eight dollars every month since then. His most recent deposit was last week.”

I shook my head, my blood boiling. “No. No. My mom and I never had that kind of money.”

“She refused to touch it. She wrote Mr. Thorp and told him he was more than welcome to keep adding money to the account for you, that she wouldn’t make your decisions about him for you, but that she’d never use it. That was the last he heard from her until you moved away from Las Vegas. She wrote him again and told him you were both leaving town and for him not to look for you. To leave her alone. She swore she would tell you about the money when you turned eighteen and he could try to contact you then if he wanted, but otherwise he was to leave you both alone. He respected her wishes.”

I snorted but it sounded more like a snarl. “Easy to do when he’d already been doing it for ten years.”

Dan didn’t answer. He sat patiently as I worked through the rage building inside me. I hadn’t talked about my dad in a long time. I never forgot how much I hated the son of a bitch for ditching my mom, but it was easy to lose that anger at him in the rest of it. To merge it all into one roiling pot of wrath that bubbled and steamed, fueling my movements. That fed the animal.

I swiped my hand over my mouth quickly. “Why that number?” I demanded. “Eight thousand eight hundred and eighty eight? What is that?”

“He says that eight is his lucky number.”

“I was born on August eighth,” I ground out. “Eighth day of the eighth month.”

Dan nodded slowly. “I know.”

“Shit,” I muttered, standing up and stretching my suddenly aching legs. “What does he want?”

“He wants to make sure you know about the money. That’s why he started hunting for you. He didn’t look before because your mom told him not to. When he found out you’ve been in the foster system he was very upset. He had no idea your mom had passed.”

“What a horrible shock for him,” I deadpanned.

“He wants you to take the money your mom refused, Kellen. He wants you to use it for your education, to buy a house, to take care of yourself. He’d love to teach you how to invest it if you’d let him.”

“That fucker can’t teach me anything.”

“I told him that would probably be your response.”

“You’ve talked to him?” I asked severely.

“No. I talked to his lawyer on the phone today when I opened the package. I would never speak to Mr. Thorp without your consent.”

“Why did they contact you and not my foster father?”

“They found you through your arrest record. I was on file as your attorney in that hearing.”

Red flames of shame scorched my cheeks. “So he knows I was arrested? He must be so proud.”

“He offered to pay for my services in your defense.”

“He can go fuck himself!” I shouted, losing control. I shook out my hands, trying to pull it in. It only took a moment for my whole body to start shaking.

“Listen, son,” Dan said softly. “Calm down.”

“No, I—I have to go. I can’t. I don’t want anything to do with any of this. Burn it. Burn it all. Tell him to take it back or give it to a different charity because I don’t want it.”

“There are limits set on how much you can withdraw each year. It can’t be given away. Not that easily. Besides, I think you should give it some time. Calm yourself down and get some distance from it. This could be a very good thing for you.”

“I don’t want it. If my mom didn’t want it, then I don’t want it. You can have it. Use it to send the girls to college. How much is it? Will it cover their tuition?”

Dan sighed. “Kellen, it’s two point five million dollars.”

I almost threw up. It was such an insane amount of money, I couldn’t even stomach it. I couldn’t process it.

I stormed out of the room. Out of the house.

Dan didn’t call out and he didn’t follow me.

I did the math that night. I sat down and thought it through in the dark of my bedroom as the neighbor’s music blared through the walls until after two in the morning. My mom had told him to leave us alone for a second time when we left Las Vegas. She told him to stay away as we moved to Los Angeles, deep into the last days of the cancer killing her. She knew. She knew she was leaving me alone and there would be no one left to take care of me, and still she told that man to stay away and never look for me. She’d taken the one person that could have saved me from foster care – from the abuses I took day after day after day – and she blinded them.

Why? Why the fuck would she do that me?
How
could she do that to me?

I stared out my window at the smog ridden city glowing with electric life, and I watched the structure of my mom’s pedestal begin to crack.

One Month Later

“Please, Kellen,” Laney breathed. Her hands gripped my shoulders tightly. “Please, baby, please.”

I looked down at her where she was sprawled out over the backseat of the car. Her dad’s car. She had backed hers into a light pole at the grocery store and sent it into the shop for the scratch to be repaired. Now we were rolling around in her dad’s car and doing things that made me cringe to think of Dan getting into it in the morning. I felt like a skeeze right then, more than I ever had before.

“I hate when you call me baby,” I reminded her. “I told you that.”

“But you like it when I do this.” She reached out and shoved her hand down the front of my pants. Her fingers wrapped around me like a vise before I could stop her, and my mind immediately slammed into the darkness to escape it. “Please, come on.”

“No, I told you a hundred times, Lane,” I replied irritably, feeling disoriented. “I’m eighteen and you’re underage.”

Her hand went slack inside my pants. “You’re serious? We’re not having sex for two years?”

“Unless you can turn eighteen sooner, no. We’re not.”

She threw her head back against the seat in frustration. “God, you are so lame! I’m begging you to have sex with me and you’re just going to say no? We’ve done it before a million times.”

“When I was seventeen, yeah.”

“Unbelievable.”

This was becoming a common argument. Ever since last month when I turned eighteen and dropped the bomb that we were done doing it, she brought it up at least once a day. I didn’t even understand how we were still together. Somewhere over the summer we had crossed some invisible line from casually fucking to grudgingly dating and I didn’t know when it had happened, but lately neither of us seemed overly excited about it.

I looked around the interior of the car again, feeling sick with myself for being in it with Laney lying underneath me. How did we always end up like this?

“I’m thinking about buying a motorcycle,” I heard myself say.

I had never in my life considered buying a motorcycle. It was a complete lie. One she absolutely loved.

“Seriously? What kind?” she asked eagerly.

“I don’t know. Something though. I’ve been talking to your dad about it.”

Another lie. They were coming easier now. And I had no idea why I was doing it.

“You should get a street bike. Ellie’s brother has one and it is sick! I love it.”

“You’ve been on it?”

“Once or twice,” she shrugged.

The movement of her shoulders reminded me that her hand was still in my pants. I reached down to pull it out, so I could come to the surface again and pay attention, but she grinned and took firm hold of me again.

“Tell me more about the bike,” she whispered, stroking me.

I smirked down at her. “That does it for you, huh?”

“You do it for me.” She sat up on her elbow to put her face in front of mine. “Everything about you,” she whispered, kissing me softly as her hand continued to move, “makes me so hot I can barely stand it.” Her lips trailed down my chin and onto my neck. “I want you all the time.” She bit me lightly, sucking on my skin and rolling it between her teeth. “I don’t want to be with anyone else ever again,” she unzipped my jeans, giving herself more access to me, “because no one in this world feels as good as you do.”

Laney was a liar too. I knew it. It was a line, one I was pretty sure I had fed to a girl before. That didn’t mean it didn’t work. My ego and penis swelled, responding to her words and touch. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against hers as she stroked me gently.

She kept to feather light touches until I started to move. I thrust into her hand harder and faster and she responded by taking a stronger hold of me, flexing and releasing her grip over and over again. Moisture leaked from my tip and she used her thumb to roll it over my head, down on the underside where the pressure of her touch made me crazy, jolting like lightning through my nervous system. My breath caught in my throat and I groaned, low and deep as she repeated the motion. Even as my pace quickened, she kept her forehead pressed to mine. She breathed against me and when my breaths started coming harder, hers did too.

The car began to fog with our sweat as I pushed faster and faster into her hand. Her tongue darted out from her mouth to lick my lips but I kept our foreheads together. I kept that connection because it was the only one we had – physical. My mind was safely stowed away and my body had taken over.

“Do I make you feel good, Kel?” she whispered.

“Yes,” I panted.

“I make you hot?”

“You make me so hot.”

“You don’t need anyone but me.”

“No.” I was getting close. The world was going dark around the edges. I was losing focus. “I don’t need anyone but you.”

She sat up and pushed her face close to mine, her lips brushing against my ear. She took the bottom of my lobe between her teeth and bit it gently in a move she knew would send me over the edge. “I love you,” she whispered roughly.

“Oh fuck,” I groaned, exploding in her hand and tensing from head to toe. “Fuck, fuck. I love you. Fuck.”

She fell back against the seat, smiling up at me happily.

It wasn’t until I was home that night staring blankly at my ceiling and listening to the neighbors have a screaming match that I realized what I’d said. That I’d lied again.

That I was screwed.

***

“Where have you been?” the Asshole demanded.

“Gym,” I lied calmly. I was getting good at it. It had been four days since I’d accidentally told Laney I loved her in the heat of a blurry moment that I could see all too clearly today. Four days and neither of us had mentioned it. She hadn’t said it again and I hadn’t had to either repeat my lie or tell her the truth. A truth that could not take us anywhere good.

“Oh yeah?” Asshole asked sarcastically. “You feel big and tough? Are you getting ripped so you can finally be a man?”

“I do it to stay in shape. You should try it.”

He chuckled dryly, his laugh threatening to turn into a cough. “I’m plenty fit.”

“It shows.”

“Don’t be a smart with me,” he growled.

I bit my tongue, hating the taste. “I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

He turned back to the TV, but he wasn’t done with me. “You get a job yet? It’s been a month.”

It’d been three months since I finished school, but that wasn’t what he was talking about. He was reminding me that it’d been a month since I turned eighteen and the checks from the government had dried up. I wondered what he’d do if his mom’s Social Security checks ever stopped coming. Throw her out on the street, probably.

“No, not yet.” I thought about lying again, but instead of making it a habit, I told the truth. “I’m not going to get one.”

“Oh no? You gonna start working the street? I know Mrs. Bessman down the hall would love to see you take your clothes off for her.”

“No,” I said shakily, not recognizing my own voice. It sounded small. Afraid. “I’m going to college. I leave in two weeks.”

He rose slowly from his chair, his eyes on me sharp as daggers. “How am I just now hearing about this?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything. I’m eighteen. I’m my own man and I’m leaving.”

“Like hell you are.”

He took a step closer to me, and as his fists balled, mine did too. But I knew I couldn’t hit him. I couldn’t get into trouble again. I had worked all year to keep my nose clean and I was almost out. I was almost free. I had to keep it together. I had to keep my calm.

“I am,” I said as forcefully as I could. It still sounded weak. “I’ve been accepted. I’m going.”

“And how do you think you’ll pay for that fancy education?”

“I’m smart. They’re practically paying me.”

He laughed in my face. “Sure. Of course they are. Out of the goodness of their hearts they’re taking on some punk off the streets.”

“No.”

“You’re an idiot if you think you’ll trot off to this big fancy college acting all hot shit and blowing everybody away. You’ll fail just like you always do. You’ll fall flat on your face and come crawling back to me to take you in and I won’t do it, so you better think twice about leaving this house ‘cause once you’re out, you are never coming back in.”

“I’m counting on that.”

“Oh you think you’re better than me now?”

“I know I am.”

My heart was in my throat. I nearly choked on it.

“Why? Because you’re sticking your dick in some rich girl? You think that makes you something? Let me tell you what’s happening there. She’s slumming. She’ll get bored with you when this college bullshit falls through and you’re working in that gym for minimum wage. No girl wants to stay with that, especially with no money.” He stepped closer until he was nose to nose with me. He wasn’t any taller than I was, but in my mind he was a giant. In my memory, the one concreted into my brain by the terrified twelve year old boy who had first moved into this hell, he was a mountain of a man. He was something you didn’t fight with. You didn’t argue. “Go ahead and go to your college with your rich girlfriend. It doesn’t matter. You are nothing but the bastard son of an Irish immigrant whore and that’s all you’re ever going to be.”

I wanted to hit him. I almost did. The animal growled and snarled inside me, but I locked the cage up tight. I kept reminding myself of the fact that I was almost free. I was days away from getting out. He couldn’t stop me. No matter how much he managed to terrify and anger me, he couldn’t stop me. Not unless I let him.

“Go on and hit me, boy,” he growled. “Do it. Take a swing and show me what a man you are.”

“No.”

“Do it! You’re always at that gym learning to fight, so do it. Show me what a champion you are. Show me what a fighter they’ve made you.”

“I’m not a fighter,” I muttered weakly. “I’m a boxer.”

And this wasn’t a ring. This was something else entirely. This was the woods and the bonfire. It was two against one and it was a mistake. One I wouldn’t make again.

I took a step back from him.

That’s when he hit me. He put his fist right in my eye and then he did it again. And again. He hit me until I fell to the ground and my vision was off. Blurred by blood and pain. And I knew for sure this time – he’d broken my nose again.

He left me there on the ground, muttering about punks and ungrateful idiots as he walked to his bedroom and slammed the door.

I got up immediately, wincing against the pain in my ribs and sides. I was an over tenderized piece of meat, a bleeding broken mess that should not be seen in public, but I couldn’t stay there. I didn’t trust myself not to burst into his room and beat him unconscious where he lay in his bed. I had to get out.

And there was only one place I could think to go.

Feeling the itch in my palms begin to burn, I pulled out my phone and quickly dialed a cab company. I took me three tries, my hands were shaking so badly. I told them to meet me on a nearby corner then I hurried in that direction as fast as I could. I stumbled a couple of times, my feet and brain not communicating properly.

When I reached the corner, I glanced around at the old, shitty buildings with the gang tags, the bars on all the windows, the sweaty gleam on the sidewalk that I could feel on my skin, and I felt it all closing in on me. I felt trapped. Like I would never leave this place, no matter what Dan or Karen or Jenna said. No matter what I did with Laney or whether or not she really loved me. I worried I’d never be better than what he said I was – a bastard.

The cab appeared and pulled to a stop in front of me. I jumped inside quickly, hoping he wouldn’t catch sight of my face in the interior light, but he did. He knew what he was transporting. When I gave him the address, he seemed to relax. Orange Country was made of money. We were bound to find enough to cover my fare just lying on the streets somewhere outside a Starbucks.

And we would have to. Not only was I broken, I was broke. I didn’t have a penny to my name.

When we pulled up into the driveway of the Monroe Mansion, I started to have regrets. I was tempted to tell him to take me somewhere else, but it was too late. It was three in the morning and I had nowhere else to go.

“Give me one second,” I grunted as I stepped out of the car. “I’ll get you your money.”

“You don’t have it?” he exclaimed after me. “I knew it! I knew the second you got in my car that you were—“

I shut the door on him. “I’ll get you your money,” I repeated. I doubt he heard me.

I shuffled to the door and stared at it for a long time. Finally, I knocked.

I heard him when he came hurrying down the stairs. I watched him through the glass on the side of the door, feeling like I was falling as he descended. As I stood there dripping blood from my busted nose on their pristine white concrete porch, I fell away. I hid deep inside the recesses of me where I went when I wasn’t able to feel. I hid in the dark in the corner of my mind, a shaking twelve year old. A heartbroken nine year old missing his mommy. An aching, confused ten year old pinned to the floor.