Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (11 page)

After unlocking the door,
I walk back into the front room and grab my purse, pulling the cellphone from
inside.

It’s Mason.

The phone stops ringing,
probably to go to voicemail, but it starts again a few seconds later. Even
though I know that it’s Mason again, I check the screen. When I see his name,
though, I just put the phone back in my purse and I walk back to my room.

I shouldn’t be talking to
anyone right now.

Chapter
Eleven

Shiny New Bracelets

Mason

Chris is on house arrest,
or at least my version of it.

Since he came back a week
ago, pounding at my door, I made my final offer to him: Either he does
everything I tell him when I tell him or he’s out. He doesn’t leave the house
without my permission and nobody I don’t know ever comes over to the house.

He was too quick to say
yes, but I let it go. If he’s here, I can keep an eye on him.

I have school and
training and my ultra-part time real job, but I’ve found I can bring him with
me most places. Apart from sleeping and bathroom breaks, he and I haven’t been
out of each other’s sight for longer than an hour since he’s gotten back.

The obvious downside is
that Chris is more whiny and demanding than ever. I know he’s just trying to
get me to ease up enough so he can go out there and ruin someone’s life, but
I’m not going to let him push me.

He acts up in any way and
he’s out.

I’m not sure whether I
feel more like a parent than a prison guard, but so far, at least, I’ve managed
to keep him from doing too much damage.

Today, though, could pose
a problem.

Chris’s return and the
imposition of my terms of his staying with me have put new strain on my
relationship with Ash. I promised her that today, we’d get out and we’d do
something fun together, something neither of us has ever done before. She
wasn’t very excited until I told her it was just going to be the two of us.

That means leaving Chris
at home for at least a few hours.

I considered picking up
an ankle monitor for him, but who has that kind of money to throw around?

Right now, he’s sitting
in his normal spot on the couch, this morning’s paper half-folded next to him.

“How are you doing
today?” I ask.

“Don’t worry,” he says
monotone. “I’m not going to rob Fort Knox while you’re out skinny dipping with
your girlfriend.”

“I’m more worried about
you scamming the neighbors and me being forced to move out of my home,” I tell
him.

“Whatever,” he says.

I’d rather have him mad
at me right now than spewing his usual nonsense about how I need to trust him,
but I’m still nervous as I go to the kitchen to get some coffee.

My phone rings as I’m
pouring and I answer it, saying, “Hey, Ash.”

“Hey,” she responds. “Are
we still on for Lake Park today?”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “I’m
just grabbing some coffee and I’m ready to go.”

“Okay,” she says with an
audible exhale.

“You sound relieved,” I
respond, smiling.

“It’s not you,” she says.
“I just know how crazy things have been around there the last little bit.”

“Yeah,” I affirm.
“Anyway, I should be ready to come pick you up in a minute, I’ll see you in
ten.”

“Sounds great,” she says.
“It’s supposed to stay pretty warm today, and I could really use some time out
of the house.”

“How’s Jana’s eye?” I
ask, trying to hold in my laughter, but not doing a very good job of it.

“It’s not funny,” Ash
says, but from the tone in her voice, I can tell that she’s smiling. “I
shouldn’t have done that. It was wrong.”

With that, I burst out
laughing.

It’s not that she hurt
someone or that that someone was Jana; Ash is usually such a pleasant person,
though, I can’t even imagine her hauling off and punching someone in the face.
It’s like if the Pope backhanded a bishop.

“Are you done?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I answer, still
laughing as much as not. “I’ll see you in a few.”

*
                   
*
                   
*

Lake Park is exactly what
it sounds like. I’ve been through here quite a few times throughout my life,
but I’ve never approached the boat rental until today.

Now, sitting in the
middle of the lake facing each other, only us and the guy running the boat
rental shop in the park from what I can tell, I’m having trouble finding the
right thing to say.

“Is this your first time
boating?” I ask.

“Yeah,” Ash says and we
resume our silence.

She told me she’d never
been on a boat when we made the plans to come here, but I don’t know where else
to go from here.

“I would have thought
you’d have all sorts of yachting experience,” I tell her.

She smiles a little. She
says, “My parents were more the private jet types.”

“Tell me about them,” I
say. “It must be pretty unique growing up with them as your parents.”

“I don’t know if it’s
unique,” she says. “It doesn’t feel that way to me. It’s what I’ve always
known. There were a lot of things I found weren’t universal as I started
growing up, though.”

“Yeah?” I ask. “Like
what?”

Our first few hours
completely alone in almost a week and we’re sitting here talking about her
parents. This kind of talk is good for setting the groundwork for a
relationship, but it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to bring back that
chemistry that brought us together in the first place.

“Well,” she says, leaning
back a little, holding onto the underside of her seat for support, “I remember
being freaked out when I got to school and realized not everyone’s parents had
a different luxury car for every day of the week. When I went home that night,
I asked my parents if they could give some of their cars to the other kids’
parents. You can imagine how that went over.”

“When I was a kid, we
almost never had a car,” I tell her. “When we did, we never had it very long before
mom wrapped it around a light post.”

This isn’t the way to go
and I know it. We should be talking about what we have in common, not the
massive differences in our upbringings.

“How’s Chris doing?” she
asks. “Do you think he’s going to clean up his act?”

“I don’t know,” I tell
her. “If it’s all right with you, I’d rather not talk about Chris right now.”

“Oh,” she says, nodding.
“All right.”

It shouldn’t be this
hard.

“It’s a beautiful view,
isn’t it?” I ask, looking around.

“Yeah,” Ash says. “It’s
really pretty out here.”

“It’s funny how this
place has been sitting here all of both our lives and we’re both just seeing it
for the first time,” I observe.

“Hey, Mason!” Ash says
and I look back at her. She’s leaning over the side of the boat, looking into
the water. “Come here and check this out. What kind of fish are these?”

I lean a little so I can
see where she’s looking, but I can’t see any fish. It’s hard not to smile. I
think I know what she has in mind.

“I can’t tell,” I answer.
“What do they look like?”

“They’re pretty small,”
she says, “but they’ve got all these bright colors. Like that one has a big
green splotch on one side. Come over here and look at this.”

Yeah, it’s a trap.

Regardless, I slowly
stand and step over to Ash, trying to keep the boat as steady as possible as I
do.

“Careful,” she says. “We
wouldn’t want you to fall in.”

“Where are they?” I ask
as I get close enough.

“Right there,” she says,
pointing. “They’re small, though. You have to get kind of close otherwise the
tint of the water makes it so you can’t see them.”

Do I have my cellphone in
my pocket? I give my pants a quick feel. Nope. Keys and money are either in the
car or in the locker the boat rental guy let us stash our remaining valuables
in, too.

“All right,” I answer,
holding back a grin.

I lean over where she
tells me to.

“Can you see them?” she
asks. “They’re about six inches from the surface.”

“I don’t see—wait,” I
tell her. “I think I do—”

And that’s when she does
it. Ash simultaneously rocks the boat in the direction I’m leaning and, with
her foot, she pushes me over the side of the boat.

The water’s cold, but not
frigid, but that’s not my concern.

“Help!” I scream. “I
can’t swim!”

“Oh my god!” Ash cries.
“Grab my hand!”

My arms are flailing as I
try to stay above the surface of the water, and Ash is reaching out for me, but
the push out of the boat put me farther out than our arms reach.

“Mason!” she shouts,
grabbing an oar and holding it out toward me.

I grab onto the oar with
everything I have and, just when it looks like Ash is standing nice and
precariously at the side of the boat, I give it a good, strong tug. Her mouth
is open and she’s cursing me as she hits the water.

She comes up and I grab
onto her, but she swats my hand away.

“You jerk!” she teases,
splashing water at me.

“Oh, I’m the jerk?” I
ask, splashing her back. “You’re the one that dumped me in in the first place!”

“You looked hot,” she
says. “You looked like you needed a drink.”

“Well, it was so
refreshing I thought you should join me,” I tell her.

“Uh, Mason?” she says,
looking past me.

“What?” I ask.

“The boat?” she answers,
pointing.

I turn around to find the
boat is about fifty feet away and gaining distance with the help of a moderate
breeze.

“We should probably…” I
start.

“Yeah,” she finishes and
we take off swimming after the boat.

We’re swimming after the
boat and I can hear the rental guy screaming something at us from the shore,
though I can’t make out the words. At first, I think he’s just being an ass,
but as I turn back toward the boat, something looks a little off.

“Does that,” I breathe,
still paddling, “look like,” I breathe again, “it’s sinking?” I ask. I’m not
used to swimming, and I’m getting a substantial amount of the lake in my mouth.

Ash doesn’t answer, but
increases her speed.

“Why’s it sinking?” she
asks, now well ahead of me in the water.

“I don’t know,” I gasp,
having to slow down to keep the waves I’m creating out of my mouth and nose.
“This isn’t part two of your evil plan?” I ask.

She’s almost to the boat
now, and I’m treading water, trying to catch my breath. I really need to get
better at swimming. I’m good enough to keep my head above water, but I think
I’ve drunk about a gallon of Lake Park Lake.

Ash gets to the boat and
turns around, seeing I’m still a ways back. “Come on!” she calls. “I can’t save
this thing myself!”

I’m starting to feel
really sick, but I suck it up and start going again, this time resolved not to
let my mouth open for anything. Still, every time I bring my head up to take a
breath, my mouth comes open automatically and I get another gulp of lake water.

After an amount of time
I’m not particularly proud of, I catch up with Ash. She’s trying to lift the
edges of the boat out of the water enough so we can dump it out, but that’s not
going to work and we don’t have time.

“Here,” I tell her,
gripping one side of the boat. “Put your hands here and just hold on for a
minute.”

“What are you going to
do?” she asks.

“I’m going to go around
to the other side and start tilting the boat toward you,” I tell her. “If it’s
going to pull you under to hang on to the side, let it go. What we’re going to
do is try to lift it like that up just far enough that when we tilt it back,
whatever water’s still in there isn’t going to drag the boat down where it can
fill back up again, okay?”

Her eyes are wide open,
her eyebrows up. “I don’t—” she says. “I don’t think I can lift it.”

“I’m going to help you,”
I tell her. “With both of us, it’s going to be okay. When I start tilting the
boat, though, I need you to help me get it exactly on its side. You’re going to
need to help it rotate, okay?”

“Your job sounds easier,”
she says.

“Whichever way you want
to do it, we’re going to have to do it now,” I tell her.

She looks at the boat
which, from where I am, looks like it’s already a lost cause. “Okay,” she says.
“I’ll do what you said.”

“Okay,” I tell her. “If
at any point you don’t feel safe, just yell and swim away, all right? It’s just
a boat. Nobody has to risk anything more than a security deposit, okay?”

“Okay,” she answers
weakly.

“Ash?” I say, trying to
put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her, though it ends up being little more
than a pat. “Are you okay?”

She looks up at me, her
eyes searching mine.

“Hey,” I tell her. “We
can do this, okay?”