Hard (22 page)

“Exactly,” Cash says.

We arrive at the yoga studio. Jackson waits by the door.

“Okay, now Cash, maybe, would strike a downward dog in hopes of
getting some poor girl into tabletop position later tonight,”
Shelby says. She points to Jackson. “But I know not even
getting laid is reason for you to do yoga, so something’s up.”

“Can’t
I just accidentally run into my sister and my friend?” Jackson
says, hugging Shelby, then me, in his grey suit and white collared
shirt. He and Cash exchange a look.

“I
saw that,” I say.

“Saw
what?” Cash says.

“Something’s going on,” I say to Shelby. I take her
hand and we walk around to the back of the yoga building, Jackson and
Cash following behind.

In the parking lot, Ryder stands next to Shelby’s car, waiting.

I cock my head. “You just happen to be in the neighborhood,
too?”

“We just wanted to make sure y’all were okay,” he
says. He smiles in his white V-neck t-shirt and jeans, his feet and
arms crossed as he leans back on the car.

I roll my eyes, even though I can’t help smiling, too. “Cute,”
I say. “But we’re fine. I swear.”

“You guys are sweet to want to keep Cassie safe,” Shelby
says, “but am I supposed to take that as a slight against my
fighting skills?”

“Yeah, what the hell?” I say, tossing an arm around
Shelby’s shoulders. “You think we can’t brawl if we
need to?” I flex my bicep.

Ryder walks toward us. He kisses my bared arm muscle. “That’s
good,” he says. “But what if someone does this?” He
bends and scoops me up at my knees and tosses me over his shoulder,
holding me on the backs of my thighs and my ass. Thank God I wore
pants instead of shorts to yoga. “Where are your biceps now?”

I laugh and pound my fists on his back as he carries me to his car.
“Okay,” I say, “Okay. You win.”

“Always,” he says. He sets me down at the driver’s
side and frames my face between his hands as he kisses me, to the
grade-school
Ooohs
of Shelby and Jackson and Cash.

“They’re going to think you like me,” I say to him,
smiling.

“Then they’re going to be right.” He opens my door,
buckles me in with another kiss, and we wave to everyone as we drive
back to his place for the night.

CASSIE

The next afternoon at Altitude, as I start my lunch break, Ryder
introduces me to Gunner, who may be one of the tallest men I’ve
ever met in my life. When he shakes my hand, it disappears completely
below my wrist.

“Nice to meet you,” I say. He nods. The strong but silent
type, I guess.

“Gunner’s one of my best fighters,” Ryder says,
“and he also helps with security at the warehouse sometimes. He
knows some FBI guys at the Atlanta Bureau who can help us figure out
where Sebastian is and what threat level he might be.”

“’Threat level’?” I say. “He’s
not a terrorist.”

“He is a terrorist,” Ryder says. “He terrorizes
you.”

“Not really,” I say, embarrassed to be having this
conversation in front of a stranger. Embarrassed to be having it at
all, actually.

“Cassie,” Ryder says gently. “We need to know
what’s going on.”

Last night before we went to bed, while Ryder was finishing his
shower, I decided to listen to the messages I ignored from Sebastian
earlier. I don’t know why I did it, really—maybe there is
a part of me that worries like Ryder, a part that I don’t want
to indulge anymore. When I was living with Sebastian, it was almost
like I trained myself to be both on alert and in denial about what I
might be on alert for. It was easy to think that if a few days or
even weeks had passed without him raising a hand or his voice, that
maybe it was over. Maybe it wouldn’t happen again.

But
then it would. I’d be locked in a closet overnight because I
didn’t answer the phone fast enough when he called from work
and I needed to learn what it was like to be ignored because that’s
how he’d felt, my cheek throbbing from where it had collided
with his palm.

Or he’d thump me hard on the top of my head if I used the
laptop without asking him first, even though it was
my
computer I had brought with me from Atlanta. One night he got angry
that I had been at the grocery store so long, and he backed me
against a kitchen wall, and while I still held the bags of raw meat
and vegetables and bread to my chest he told me soon I might not be
allowed to leave by myself if I couldn’t respect his rules and
then punched the wall next to my head, leaving a fist-size hole.

I hid every sharp item in the house and stayed awake til after he
went to work in the morning, unable to close my eyes for even a
second without seeing the look on his face as he swung his fist so
close to my head. The next day, over the hole, he hung a framed
picture of us on a day trip to Stone Mountain when we were first
dating, smiling and tan, our arms around each other. Neither of us
ever mentioned what was behind the photo. It’s just so damn
tempting to let something be out of mind when it’s out of
sight.

But Sebastian made pretty clear that night at Altitude, the last time
I’ve seen him, that just because he’s invisible to me, it
doesn’t mean I’m invisible to him. I guess I was hoping
that his voicemails might prove that hunch untrue. Denial is a hard
habit to break.

Cassie, I think we should talk about the other night
, his
voice trilled on the voicemail.
You’ve gotten away from me,
love, and I don’t know who you’ve become—your hair,
your clothes. We have to make it right. You have to make it right.
Til death do us part, love.

“Who was on the phone?” Ryder said behind me. I hadn’t
heard him come out of the bathroom. He was barefoot and shirtless in
loose black pajama pants, his torso and hair still glistening with
water droplets.

I turned the phone off. “It was just a voicemail.”

Ryder sat next to me on the bed. “From who?” But the way
he said it, his voice going down instead of up at the end of the
sentence, I could tell he already knew the answer to his question. I
looked at him and nodded. “What did he say?”

“A bunch of nonsense,” I said. “I didn’t even
listen to them all. I’m sure they’re identical garbage.”

“Them
all
?” he said. He put his hand on my hip
over the t-shirt I wore. “How many did he leave?”

“Three.”

“And you weren’t even going to tell me?”

I rubbed his arm, my fingers lightly playing across the battleship
tattooed on his bicep, canons at the ready, bound for a mid-sea
fight. “I just don’t want you to worry. I feel like
everyone’s overreacting, which is what Sebastian wants,”
I said. “He wants you to be concerned. He wants me to be
afraid. He’d be thrilled to know we’re talking about him
right now.” I took Ryder’s hand from my hip and kissed
his palm, put it to my chest. “He doesn’t love me. This
is a game to him, because he’s a child. And the way to make him
lose for sure is not to play.”

“I’m not saying we have to respond to him,” Ryder
said. “But I think we should take him seriously. So that if the
game turns into reality, we’re ready.”

I guess Gunner is our dose of reality.

At Altitude the next day, Ryder says I should just tell Gunner
everything I can think of about Sebastian. “The more info he
has, the better he can run a search, right, Gun?” Gunner nods
and sits on the barstool next to me. Ryder kisses me as he heads back
to his office. I chase after him.

“You really think this is necessary?” I say, stopping him
in the hallway. My stomach tightens at the thought of having to
recite Sebastian’s biography for the next hour. Height, weight,
sleeping patterns, food allergies, hotel preferences: All those
things a wife is supposed to know because she loves you, not because
someday she needs to describe you to a bodyguard.

Ryder’s blue eyes lock into mine. “I hope it turns out
not to be, but right now, I don’t know if we can be too
careful. This guy seems crazy, Cass.”

I sigh. “Do I have to tell Gunner about,” I pause,
hesitating on how to describe what it is I don’t want to say.
I’ve never used the word
abuse
to talk about what
happened between Sebastian and me, and even if it’s accurate,
I’m just not ready to integrate it into my vocabulary today.
“Do I have to tell him about everything?”

“You don’t have to tell him anything you don’t want
to,” Ryder says. “But I think the more he knows, the
sooner we can make sure you’re safe and get Sebastian out of
your life. For good. Can’t divorce someone you can’t
find.” He pulls me toward him, hugging my waist. “And I
want you all to myself.”

I kiss him on his perfectly beautiful face, his soft facial scruff
tickling my lips as they linger. “Thank you.”

He grins. “For what?”

“For caring about me so much.”

And so, for the next hour, I recount for Gunner everything I know,
remember, or intuit about Sebastian. Even after he leaves, as I go
back to my balance sheets and invoices for the afternoon, when other
things spring to mind, I shoot him a text, finally turning all those
painful memories into helpful information, my past with Sebastian
helping the present become a future without him.

***

I haven’t seen Jamie all week, not since I’ve been
staying at Ryder’s place, and as usual my brother has been lazy
about responding to my check-in texts, claiming he’s busy or
out with friends. At first I was worried that Sebastian might go to
the house and try to talk to Jamie, push him to find out where I’ve
been hiding, but so far there’s been no sight of my tormentor
and no word from Jamie about him, either. I’m not sure if this
makes me feel better or worse.

Over the next couple days Gunner becomes a fixture around Altitude,
not that anyone would notice. He is a man of very few words.
Actually, make that no words. I’m positive he can talk—I’ve
just never heard him. I respect that, though. If you don’t have
anything to say, don’t say anything at all. He probably learns
a lot about people that way. No wonder he does security.

“I may end up needing him in the ring tonight,” Ryder
says. We’re sitting at the bar having a post-work drink,
watching the happy hour crowd start to trickle in. Well, my drink is
post-work. Ryder’s work is just beginning, it sounds like.

“I thought Crutcher was your man tonight?” Cash says as
he twists off the top of a Stella and hands it to me.

“He thinks he has a broken rib,” Ryder says. “Crutcher’s
the best fighter I have right now, but, you know, he’s green.
Still toughening up.”

“How many times did you fight with a broken rib?” Cash
says, grinning like he already knows the answer.

“Too many to count,” Ryder says.

“They heal quickly, though,” I say.

“Spoken from experience?” Cash says. As easily as word
gets around in this group, I haven’t told anyone but Ryder and
Shelby about the physical nature of the problems Sebastian and I had,
and I know they wouldn’t divulge such personal stories. So I
know Cash is just joking—but, unfortunately, his guess is a
good one.

“I could see you doing some damage in the ring,” Cash
says. He pours two whiskey shots. “You’re small but
something tells me you’re scrappy.”

“Cassie’s got a pretty good jab,” Ryder says.

“You trying to recruit me?” I say.

“Dude, yes, you should. That’s the best idea ever,”
Cash says, clinking Ryder’s glass and my beer. “To girl
fights.” Cash throws back his shot as he slides down the bar to
take a customer’s order.

I shake my head. “He knows that’s already a thing,
right?”

“I have found it best not to imagine what Cash Garner may or
may not already know,” Ryder says. “You about ready to
go?”

“You’re leaving for the warehouse now?”
“Tyler’s
bringing by some guys who might fill in if Crutch doesn’t
show,” he says. “I want to see how they spar.”

I look down at my jeans and tank top and flip flops. Cute outfit for
a day of balancing the budget. Not so cute for fight night, where
everyone in the crowd looks like they just stepped out of a fashion
ad. “Actually, I probably need to get some clothes at my house
first.”

“Oh,” Ryder says, checking the time on his phone. “I
can call Ty and tell him I’m running late.”

“You don’t need to do that,” I say. “I’m
sure I can get a ride.” I ended up leaving my car at my house
yesterday after work, since Ryder’s been driving me most places
this week, but I didn’t even think about throwing a dress into
the little overnight bag I packed for the weekend.

“It’s
fine, tiger,” he says. He combs his fingers through my hair. “I
want to stay with you.”

Yesterday Gunner’s FBI contacts were able to confirm
Sebastian’s cell phone is still in Atlanta, which we can only
assume means he is, too—I’ve never known Sebastian to be
without his phone. But it hasn’t been anywhere near my
neighborhood lately, which is good. And he hasn’t called me in
several days, which is even better.

I
love how much Ryder wants to take care of me, but I also know how
important it is for him to take care of the fight tonight. We can’t
live our lives worrying about Sebastian. I tried that for two years,
and it got me nothing but bruises and a very expensive last-minute
ticket home.

I take his hand, kiss his knuckles. “No, you have business. I
don’t want you to be late,” I say. “I’m sure
Gunner can drop me off on his way to the warehouse in a little bit.
And then I’ll drive myself to the fight and you can follow me
back to your place tonight. I’m not letting him run our lives,
okay?”

He
considers. “Where’s your car parked?” he says.

“It’s
been locked safely in my garage since yesterday,” I say. “I
promise I’ll be safe. A quick wardrobe change and I’ll
see you soon.”