Fix You: Bash and Olivia (7 page)

“Good enough. It takes a lot of stamina so don’t overdo it. We’re not trying to make a boxer out of you, although with that kind of speed, you’ve got some great tools for it.”

My already sweat-dampened skin warmed with pleasure at the compliment as he yanked the mitts off and tossed them on the floor.

“What we want to focus most of our attention on is doing exactly enough to get out of a bad situation. You’re small. You’re not built to whoop anybody’s ass, and that’s okay. You just need to disarm them long enough to get the fuck out of there, okay?” His gaze was serious and he seemed unwilling to look away until I answered what I’d thought was a rhetorical question.

“Yeah, got it,” I said and bent at the waist to suck in a breath. Boxing was hard. I couldn’t imagine doing that round after round. Nobody would have to punch me. They’d just need a little patience. After ten minutes, I’d fall to the floor all on my own.

“One of the most important things to remember about basic self-defense is to go for the soft spots. Eyes, neck, or balls, if you’ve got a shot at ‘em.”

He demonstrated several moves. A knee to the groin, eye gouging, and then he showed me how to slam the heel of my hand into someone’s nose.

Bash stood still and let me practice on him. I’d gotten comfortable with several of the moves, and was about to run through them again when he abandoned the statue routine and rushed at me. His hand came up like he was going to strike me and I didn’t have a chance to think. I just acted, covering my face and turning away. A whirlwind second later, I found myself face-first against the mirror with my hands behind my back and Bash’s body pinning me in place.

For the first time since he’d arrived I realized I should probably be afraid. I’d invited a guy I hardly knew to the nearly deserted hall, assuring him in advance that I had no idea how to protect myself, and now here I was, helpless. In hindsight, it seemed like sheer idiocy. But for some reason, even as I stood there, still gasping for air, the fear never came. Somehow I knew with total certainty that Bash would never hurt me.

At least, not physically.

Our gazes locked in the mirror and his jaw flexed before he let me go. His voice sounded think when he finally spoke. “If you come back at me like that, I can use your momentum against you. That can work whether you’re big or small. Want me to show you how to do it?”

I tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and nodded. Hell yeah, I did. Plus, it would give me a much needed couple of minutes to collect myself. Being pinned against anything by Bash McDaniels wasn’t something I’d forget anytime soon.

It took a while for him to show me, but I caught on to the mechanics of it relatively fast. Soon, we were going at it. We probably looked like lunatics rushing at each other like a pair of bulls in a pen, but eventually, I got him. Pinned him good, and let out a shout of victory. “Oh, yeah! Whoot!”

He broke free easily and laughed. “Good. But ideally you don’t want to try to hold someone bigger than you. You’d just work with that momentum to try to get them to the ground and then—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, get the fuck out of there. Got it, coach.”

A grudging smile lit his face, even reaching his eyes, before he grew serious again. “Olivia, I know you think you know him, but Andy…” He blew out a sigh and ran a hand through his bristly dark hair. “What happened in that bathroom is going to happen again if you let it. I’ve seen it too many times before. These kinds of things almost never get better. In fact, they usually get worse and worse. And if you think breaking up with him is going to be easy, or safe, think again. You need to be prepared for the worst. Maybe do it somewhere public.”

I padded over to the corner of the room and picked up one of the water bottles. Whether what he was saying was true or not, I didn’t want to hear it. Not yet. Andy had been a friend for years, and the thought that this new side of him was a permanent addition, or that he was going to get physical with me when I tried to leave him, made me want to throw up.

“You don’t know him, Bash.” I took a slug from the water bottle to ease the sudden ache in my throat.

“I know his kind. I
lived
with his kind.” The words seemed like they were torn from him rather than offered, and that soft mouth turned into a bleak line. “If I’m wasting my time here, let me know now. I have a policy against helping people who don’t want to help themselves. I’m not in that business anymore.”

My own discomfort over his dismissal of Andy as a person was overridden by the solemn tone, which wrapped a fist around my heart and squeezed. I wanted to ask who had let him down. Who had hurt him. But his face was a mask now and I could feel him pulling away.

“I think we’ve done enough for today.”

As he popped a squat to load his duffel bag, the urge to beg him to stay for a while longer was overwhelming. I didn’t want our time together to end this way. For once, I just wanted things to be normal. I’d only turned twenty-one a couple weeks before, but I felt like I’d aged ten years in the past few months. Why couldn’t I be young, and carefree, and the two of us be just two people enjoying each other’s company? And what would it have been like if I’d known him before? Before Andy. And before whatever awful thing had happened to Bash to make him so mistrusting.

Somehow, during all that wishful thinking, my legs had carried me toward him and I had closed the gap between us. When he stood again we were so close that his body brushed against mine.

His hard mask slipped away, leaving behind a pained expression. "What are you doing, Olivia?" His breath was warm against my lips and I tipped my face toward him like a flower to the sun.

"I don't know,” I whispered, rocking forward onto my tiptoes. It was like I was on autopilot. “I just need to…"

And then I did it.

I leaned in that last little inch.

I wish I could say I thought it through, but my brain wasn’t part of the process. It was all feels. Like my very soul was straining toward his, and my body was just a shell waiting for direction from somewhere deep inside me. I couldn't have stopped it if I tried.

When our mouths touched what felt like an eternity later, the room seemed to let out a sigh.

Thisss.

This was the thing I’d been waiting to feel. The thing people wrote about in books and sang of in songs. The thing that made the pain of the past few weeks fade away until there was nothing left except me and Bash.

An instant later, the kiss went from sweet to off the rails. A low growl came from deep in his throat and he closed his hands over my hips, thumbs pressing into my flesh in a way that turned my stomach into a pool of taffy. His mouth slanted over mine and teeth and tongues clashed like it was war.

And it was. A war inside me, at least. My brain had popped back into gear and I knew with every fiber of my being that what I was doing was wrong. I needed to stop, but my body was so not on board with that plan. Instead, I pressed closer, mashing my breasts to his chest, moaning into his mouth when the heat of his skin seeped into mine.

More.

He anchored me to him, crowding me backward until I felt the chill of the mirror against my back. Our bodies were flush now, and he speared a hand through my hair.

It was madness. All-consuming madness.

"Olivia?"

He'd pulled back a scant inch to mutter my name before dipping back in to nip my bottom lip hard. I gasped, stunned at the sensation. It stung, but sent a bolt of need slamming through me so hard, my knees trembled.

"Liv?" he tried again, before tracing my bottom lip with the tip of his tongue.

"I-if you want me to answer you, stop doing that for a sec," I murmured desperately.

“Doing what?” His voice was low and husky, like his throat was raw from screaming. Or tight with need. He was as far-gone as I was.

The knowledge sent every nerve ending firing at once and, helpless to stop it, I flexed my hips against his in a slow grind, reveling in the thick evidence of his arousal.

“Kissing me,” I croaked, and paused to moisten my throbbing lips. “And…touching me.”

But apparently, whatever he’d needed to know wasn’t that important, because he didn’t stop. His fingers blazed a trail over my rib cage and higher, to trace the underside of my breast. I strained closer to him, and my nipple peaked in anticipation of his touch when a low buzzing sound reached my ears. Maybe the blood pounding in my head?

“Your phone,” Bash muttered against my mouth. He pulled away, the breath sawing in and out of his lungs, and jerked his chin toward the floor where my cell sat.

We both looked down at the name that lit the screen.

Andy.

Chapter Six

Bash

“Answer it if you want to.”

I wasn’t trying to be a dick or pull some reverse psychology on her. It was obvious by her stricken expression that whatever crazy-ass chemistry had been going on between us that made her kiss me had died a quick death the second she saw his name. No point in pretending otherwise. It fucking stung, though.

She pressed her fingers to her mouth and shook her head. “I-I don’t want to.”

That might be true, but his call definitely changed things. This was exactly the kind of complication my life didn’t need right now.
Eye on the prize, Bash.
And the prize was and would always be getting the hell out of Boston, ASAP. I couldn’t afford to lose sight of that again and I sure as hell couldn’t afford to get lost in this girl’s confused, stormy eyes.

I adjusted the strap of my bag over my shoulder and resisted the urge to adjust my dick while I was at it. While my
mind
was made up, that fucker still hadn’t caught on to the fact that his presence was no longer required at this little party, and was pushing insistently at the waistband of my gym pants.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Not that I didn’t want to. I…did.” Her tongue peeked out and swiped her plump bottom lip.

Walk away.

“It’s fine,” I said, and then cleared my throat of the leftover huskiness. “It was just a kiss.”

Lies.

She nodded uncertainly. “Sure. I know.”

The phone had stopped buzzing and I almost wished it would start again just to break the heavy silence.

“Do you have to go, though?” she asked softly. “I won’t do that again.”

But I would. Now that I’d tasted her, I would think of nothing else until I got more. Her mouth was my drug. I knew it the second our lips touched. Hell, maybe before. And the only way to break an addiction was to go cold turkey.

“I have to get ready for work soon.” Steeling myself against the despair on her face, I grabbed the bottle of water she’d given me and headed purposefully toward the door.

To her credit, she didn’t ask again. When we reached the front door, I turned to face her, which was my first mistake.

“Thank you, Bash. For everything.” Her gaze was solemn and the pretty pink that had flushed her cheeks for the past hour was gone, leaving her looking tired and pale. “I’ll never forget what you taught me. I’ll practice every day.”

Until Andy came home. And then what? She wouldn’t be ready to handle him if he lost his shit when she told him she didn’t want to be with him anymore. That, even assuming she was able to work up the nerve to break up with him at all. What if something happened to her? How could I live with myself knowing that I walked away from this situation when I knew far better than she did exactly how volatile it could become? How could I turn her away when she needed a friend?

Fuck.

I raked a hand through my hair and swallowed a curse. No matter what I did, at least one of us was going to get hurt. But if I saw this through, could I muster the will to resist her long enough to make sure that once Andy got home, she was safe?

She stared at me, wide eyes full of sadness, lips still swollen from kissing me, and I realized it didn’t matter. I’d been fooling myself from the start if I thought I had a choice in the matter. It was all about damage control now.

“We can do a couple more lessons if you want. But I’m done for today.” I had ninety minutes before work, but at least an hour of that would be spent training until I’d burned off some of this frustration, and the rest would be spent taking a cold shower.

Her face lit up instantly. “Tomorrow then?”

“Sure.”

I let myself out and she waved from the door, the relief plain in her gaze. She seemed to feel a lot better about the situation, but it was only because she didn’t know what I knew. This pie-in-the-sky idea of hers where she thought we could pretend that the kiss had never happened, and that Andy was going to come back and accept their breakup with a Coke and a smile, and that we could be friends, she and I, until school was over or I left? It could never happen. We could never be friends. The pull between us was too strong, the connection too deep, right from the start. I had no doubt that, someway, somehow, the two of us were going to ruin each other.

The only question now was if we’d each be able to pick up the pieces when it was over.

###

Olivia
Three days later…

“How ya like me now, you bastard!” I rolled off another quick series of moves Bash had taught me and then sneered into the mirror. “Go on, get out of here,” I called after my imaginary assailant.

“Bravo.” The voice came from directly behind me and I whipped around to find a guy around my age in a pair of jeans and a hoodie, clapping. “But you’re going to want to get that knee a little higher unless your attacker is a jockey or a dwarf.”

Humiliation, thy name is Olivia.

I managed a tight smile in spite of my embarrassment. “I was just fooling around waiting on Bash.” I jerked my head toward the stairs heading to the second-floor apartment. “He should be back any second if you need him. He went to get tape or something.”

The guy nodded his dirty-blond head and stuck out his hand. “Actually, I’m Bash’s big brother, Matthias. I live upstairs too.”