FORCE: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (87 page)

Ada took several breaths. "You remind me of Mama and Papi," she said softly and a touch sadly. "Passion."

I groaned out loud and slammed my cup down on the end table so as better to cradle my head. "Passion is really fucking confusing," I moaned. "I liked it better when there wasn't so much...meaning...behind everything."

"That's what makes it worth it, I think," my big sister said, letting the weight of her words sink in just before Sammy's cartoon came to sing-songy end. Then she stood up smartly and turned off the TV. "That's it, no more TV, you'll rot your brain," she announced. Sammy began wailing and the room was suddenly too full of sound for me to be able to hear my thoughts. I could only feel what her words had done as the goosebumps marched up my arms.

Fuck.

Declan

I was lying on my bunk, contemplating getting up and grabbing an Advil for the pain that knifed through my back. But in the end I elected to reach for the whiskey bottle instead.

An unspoken truce had arisen, with all of us Sons electing to get blindingly drunk on a regular basis rather than bicker any more. None of us really saw the point in sobriety anyway.
Case and J. were drinking almost constantly now, a beer in the morning right through to a fifth of whiskey by light's out.  The new prospect Thorn seemed only too happy to join them, but he kept his worries to himself. The kid had a diplomat's knock for keeping his head down and his mouth shut, soaking in the needed information in his own time. And right now he seemed to settle on bourbon as the best course of action.

Sobriety seemed pointless to the younger guys. And I was inclined to join them in that opinion.

Instead of grabbing the bottle though, I sat bolt upright and then rolled off the bed and jammed my fist under my mattress to silence my vibrating phone.

I sat there on the floor for a moment, catching my breath. I had never moved so goddamned fast in my life, but a vibrating phone in my bunk was a dead damn giveaway that I was breaking protocols and I didn't really well feel like dealing with a black eye on top of the heartburn and the lower back pain that had been plaguing me since we moved to this hellhole. Case and J. were still nursing theirs.

I slid the phone carefully to the end of the mattress and looked at the number. It was a (973) area code. My heart quickened.

"I'm going to the john!" I yelled to no one in particular.

"Oh Christ, get the gas masks," I heard J. grumble. Good. If they thought I was taking a shit, they'd stay the hell away from the bathroom.

I waddled my fat ass to the closet sized john and shut the door. The phone number was still up on the screen and I jabbed it with my finger before I lost my nerve. "Yeah?" I grumbled low.

"Doc, how you doin'?"

A fucking bomb went off in my head, simultaneous explosions of relief and murderous rage. I had to grip the sink so I didn't put my fist through the goddamn wall. "Ben, you fucking idiot, what the hell are you doing calling me, are you insane?" I looked in the mirror and saw the tears of relief in my eyes. Fuck.

The little shit laughed slightly. He was nervous. I could practically see him running his hand over his bare scalp, running it through the hair he always forgot wasn't there. "Nah, I'm not insane. Teach wouldn't be such an asshole that I couldn't even talk to you anymore, would he?"

I twisted the tap, running the water full blast to drown out the sound of my voice. My heart was hammering so hard in my chest, but I wanted to keep talking to him. "Listen up, you need to know this. Teach ain't in charge anymore, you get me?" I lowered my voice even further. "That dust-up with the cartel? Well things went to shit pretty fast after that. We're in a fucking safehouse now, and Des Harrington is the one in charge. And he's a right number one asshole."

Crash was silent for a second and I hoped to hell I hadn't dropped the call. Reception was spotty as fuck out here in the boonies. "Holy shit, a safehouse?" he finally said. I couldn't tell if he was shocked or regretful or both.

"Yeah and it's cramped as hell too," I complained, pushing against the claustrophobic walls of the tiny bathroom. My body must have had a delayed reaction because my legs suddenly wouldn't work.  I turned and sat down heavily on the tiny toilet with the seat down. "J. and Case are going crazy about their girls and they won't stop fucking sniping at each other like a couple of high school chicks. Teach is always off in some bigwig meeting and seems to be turning into some kind of dictator. That kid Thorn seems to be going off into some dark place hanging out with the Storm MC a-holes and Mac just doesn't fucking talk at all anymore." I took a deep breath. "I fucking miss you, you stupid cunt."

I heard a heavy sigh and Ben's staticky voice sounded heavy with regret. "You were the only one who gave a fuck about me, Doc."

"Yeah I give a fuck, you dumb shit," I swore. "I watched you get reborn!"

"Reborn." Ben seemed to be chewing on the word, rolling it around in his mouth to see how it tasted.

"Yeah," I choked on the memories.  "I was there when you learned to talk again. I was there when you learned to walk. I taught you how to fucking ride again, remember?" I don't know why I was being such an ass, he knew all this shit. Maybe I just needed to remind myself.  "I raised you."

I heard a sound on the other end but couldn't place it. Then Crash's mumbled, "You did."

It was more than he had ever said. A fucking tear slid down my face and into my beard and I hurriedly swallowed. "Yeah."

"I know that," he said. "I wanted to tell you that. I know it."

He paused and I felt something burst open in my chest. A tightly balled fist that suddenly unclenched itself and I no longer could taste the acid of my heartburn. I sat back against the cool of the toilet tank and felt fucking happy for the first time in a month.

Then I heard footsteps. Hurriedly I flushed the toilet and fiddled with the tap, grunting and swearing like I had just had the worst shit in my life. The footsteps passed but I couldn't be sure I was out of danger. "Doc?" I heard the staticky voice say again. I gripped the phone as hard as I could, holding on to it for dear life. I had to protect him. That's what I did, I looked out for him, even when he wasn't here for me to watch over. With the mood around here what it was, if they found out I was talking to the one they blamed for all this mess....

It was a risk I couldn't take. The fucking Hippocratic oath, first do no harm. My selfish desire to talk to him would do him...and me...some real harm

I tasted the tear that slipped to the corner of my mouth as I stared at the phone.

Then I shut it off.

Gabriela

I loved him. Thinking the words held a kind of defiance, so I decided to say them out loud to. "I love him?" I asked the bushes in front of the in front of Ada's apartment complex.

But saying it like a question sounded to wishy-washy, so I said it again. This time a declaration. "I love him," I told the azaleas with as much determination as I could muster. The azaleas didn't care, but I felt better for having said it. In fact, I felt almost giddy. Here he had shut the door in my face not an hour past, but now all I could do was think about going back to him, and saying the words, right to his face.

They needed to be said. I might choke to death if I didn't say them. Now.

But instead I had to wait.  After Ada put Sammy down for a nap, we shared another cup of coffee while the sun dipped below on the horizon. I half expected my sister to ask me to stay for dinner, and I was debating over whether or not I would accept, when we both heard the rattling wheeze of Manny's beat up old work pickup pull into the lot. I looked up and saw the tension on her face and rose to excuse myself.  "I need to get home," I lied. "Early day tomorrow."

Ada nodded stiffly.  "Manny'll take you home," she offered. I wondered if she was trying to delay having to see him. Or maybe avoid seeing him in front of me?

"Okay
mi hermana
," I rose and bent down to kiss her cheek. "Thank you for rescuing me today."

Her eyes glittered as she looked up at me. "You'll figure it out,
hermanita
, you're smart as hell, and you know what you want."

Her words startled me. Not that I was smart but that she thought I knew what I wanted. Clearly I gave off more confidence then I felt.

When I met Manny in the parking lot and told him he needed to drive me over to the bridal salon, he only nodded tiredly and hopped back behind the wheel. I slid into the passenger seat without saying anything. My brother-in-law's quiet stoicism was something I appreciated, even if Ada didn't.

When I spied my little silver hatchback, I knew I had two choices. I could go home, eat something, sleep on it, maybe punish Crash a little with my absence, make him a little worried that I wasn't coming back.  Play a little game with him, and end up only hurting myself.

Or I could go right to him and say what I needed to say and let the chips fall where they may.

You know what you want...
Ada's voice echoed in my head.

In this case, I did.

Crash's bike looked so out of place parked on the street of fussy Cape Cods that I had to suppress a laugh. I pulled into the driveway and leapt from the seat before I could lose my nerve. Before I could think further, I was rushing up the walkway and pounding on his door. I could feel the huge, stupid grin on my face.

It swung open, seemingly by itself, and I peered inside. Crash was standing there, stock still, clutching his cell phone.  I couldn't read the emotions that were roiling across his face. There were too many of them.

He looked up at me finally, an inner struggle raging before he lowered the cell phone down. "Why did you make me do that?" he demanded, his voice tight with fury.

My wide smile froze in to a grimace. I stopped short, my profession of love dying on my lips as I saw how his fist was clenched at his side. He was pale, two blazing red spots on his cheeks, ready to lash out.

Instantly, my defensive temper rose to meet him. The angry, too-often-hurt, defense mechanism was in full effect. I stepped right up to his chest and prodded him with one accusing finger. "I didn't
make
you do shit, what are you talking about?"

Crash looked down at my finger and his nostrils flared in anger. "Revisit the past like that," he held the cell phone up in front of my face like it would mean something to me.  His voice was rising, the tight control fraying at the edges, "Isn't this good enough for you?" he demanded, "Because this," he raked his hand around to take in the past month, "is all you get with me, do you understand?" His voice caught. "Isn't it good enough? Aren't I good enough?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about, and I have no idea why you're so pissed off," I informed him coldly

He stabbed an accusatory finger into his cell phone, "Doc, right?
You
wanted me to call Doc?" And with that he whirled around in a fit of rage and threw his phone into the living room. I braced myself for the shattering crash, but it only bounced harmlessly off of the straight-backed couch. The fact that it didn't shatter into a million pieces seemed to piss him off even more.

"What the hell did he say to you?" I demanded

Crash whirled on me like he had already forgotten I was there. "It's bad," he said. "That's all you need to know. I can't involve you in this, okay Gabi? This is not a side of me I ever wanted you to know."

His words cut me right down to the core "I already know about your
sides
," I said sarcastically "I was here for your seizure, wasn't I?"

He pressed his lips together in a thin white line, the only color on his face the bright blue of his eyes and those two spots of color blazing high on his pale sculpted cheekbones. "This is worse."

I couldn't recognize his face any more. The eyes that I had stared into as he moved above me, our pleasure in each other spurring us to new heights of ecstasy, were now the eyes of a stranger: hard, glittering, and bitter. I felt the pain like a knife in my chest and turned away before he could see me cry for the love that died before I could even speak its name.

Crash

I am a fucking asshole.

We knew that though, right? It's a well-established fact that I am not a nice person. Not a good person. That never fucking bothered me before.

But now I
felt
like an asshole and that was an entirely new feeling.

I didn't like it.

In fact, I fucking hated it.

I usually loved watching Gabi walk away from me. The view was spectacular from behind. But two times in one day was more than I could handle.

She didn't cry, didn't protest. She turned on her heel and made her way back to her car with more dignity than I had ever felt in my life. It was so fucking breathtaking, honestly, that I felt my hands reaching for her of their own accord. Once again, my body knew it should be doing even if my mind was still in the fuck-up stage.

A fucking safehouse. I couldn't believe it, but as far as I knew Doc had never lied to me and why would he now? But, a safehouse? I couldn't accept it. That wasn't the type of shit that happened to them...us. The Sons kept their heads down, kept things easy and light, doing things that, while not strictly legal, were low-stakes. We were brothers, we weren't a goddamned street gang.

And then there was the fact that the old fucker had hung up on me. I heard a sharp hiss and then the line went dead. It wasn't right. The whole thing wasn't right.

I had a half a mind to hop on my bike and go try to find them. But the rational side of me knew that they didn't want to be found. For better or worse, this didn't involve me. It was in my past. I was here now. I had been handed a golden fucking opportunity to start all over again, and here I was letting that past fuck up the now.

My cell phone buzzed furiously on the floor. I rushed over to it, ready to light into Doc for hanging up on me. But it was Sal, wanting me to come in to work early and help move some boxes. Even though I had nothing else to do, I told him no.

I needed to ride.

I found myself heading up the road to the reservoir again. Just like how my bike had led me to Lenape on autopilot, now it was leading me back to the place where I had been deliriously happy only a few hours ago. The sun was almost gone behind the dense trees and the winking skyline glittered like a jewel in the pale twilight.

Gabi would have been so happy to see that. I could picture her reaction, wide-eyed and happy, the wild gesticulations like the only way she could properly express herself was by dancing. The disappearing sun brought a harsh chill to the air, and I wanted her behind me. Wanted her arms wrapped around my waist, inches from my cock. A promise of things we'd do later, when later became now. 

This was the first time in my life I was planning for the future. Even if my plans involved nothing more than burying myself between her legs, it was still a plan. A fucking good one.

I pulled over to the shoulder and looked out over the dense network of highways, all leading off into the darkened eastern horizon. In the dim light, I could see a few wildflowers, the first pilgrims of early spring,

There were all these lives being lived below me. All that suburban stuff that I was born to, but never was able to accept.  I was never going to quite fit in with an ordinary life, but then again, neither would Gabi. Like me, she lived between two worlds and was used to being an outsider in both of them.

And I loved her for it.

Oh fuck me, I just loved her.

I looked at those wildflowers, weeds really, and a strange sensation closed around my heart like a fist. It was going to suck ass, but I knew what I had to do.