Knockout (24 page)

He released me suddenly. I fell forward into the empty space he had held. I was breathing hard. I was fighting angry, but when I looked at him all I wanted to do was cry.

“Vous n'avez jamais été l'un d'eux,” he spoke quickly and quietly, too quickly for me to fully understand. “Vous avez toujours été le seul. Le seul que je veux et le seul que j'ai trop peur de toucher. Vous êtes trop et vous êtes tout. Mais je suis fait peur. Je suis fait de cacher ce que je veux, de vous. Votre sœur et moi sont faites. Je suis fin ce soir. Et puis je suis venue pour vous.”

I shook my head, willing back the tears. “I don’t know what you just said.”

“That’s alright,” he told me, taking hold of the doorknob. “I’m going to show you.”

When he left he closed the door quietly behind him. I flipped the light off and turned the lock then sunk down onto the cold tiles. I sat there in the dark surprisingly dry eyed and clear headed. I understood what had happened. I knew what was wrong with it and why I felt sick to my stomach from it, but I also felt light. Dizzy. Like I was riding a roller coaster and we had just come to the top. I was about to plummet. To dive down into the wild crazy free fall that made it all worthwhile.

I hadn’t understood most of what he’d said, but what I had caught was this:

…the only one…your sister and I… coming for you…

“Okay, tell me again what happened,” Sam said, sitting up in her seat on the couch. “Tell me about the bone thing again.”

“No,” I replied warily.

“It was hot!”

It was. It was weird and hot and so beyond inappropriate. How did he make my bones feel sexy? How was that possible? I had no idea, but I still felt it. Ten days later and I was still humming inside.

“Don’t tell her again,” Bryce pleaded. “I’ll have to clean the couches.”

“Okay, fine, but tell me what he said again. The French part.”

“Oh, yeah, alright. You mean the part I didn’t understand?”

“Tell me what you did understand.”

I sighed, trying to remember. “Something about ‘the one’ which could have been about Laney, something about ‘my sister’ and him, and then he said he was coming for me.”

“Is he in love with you or is he going to murder you?” Bryce asked.

Sam and I glared at him.

He put his hands up innocently. “I’m just saying, it sounds like he’s a hit man. I’m pretty sure you’re living the movie
The Professional
.”

“Probably,” I grumbled.

“No, he’s in love with her, you jerk!” Sam shouted at Bryce. “He always has been.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Now Sam glared at me. “That’s because you’re in denial. He broke your heart once and you’re scared to let him do it again.”

“How is that not a valid fear?”

“How did he break your heart before?” Bryce asked curiously.

“Seriously? You care about this? Don’t you have magazines to read or something?”

He shrugged, taking a sip of his coffee. “TVs busted and the mail isn’t here yet. This is the most entertainment I can find right now.”

“Great.”

“So, dish,” he said with a fake valley girl accent, making me smile. “What’s his deal and junk?”

“Wow,” Sam whispered, staring at him.

“Okay, fine,” I relented. “When I was seventeen he and Laney were broken up. It seemed like it was permanent. He came over, no one else was home, things got a little intense, but he pulled the plug before they got out of hand.”

“Or into your hand,” Sam said with sly smile.

“Stop it. So then he tells me that it’s wrong. That I was only seventeen and it couldn’t happen even though he wanted it to.”

“He’d wanted it to happen since she was fifteen.”

“Thanks, Sam. I was leaving that out so he didn’t sound like a sexual predator.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, when you were fifteen he was what? Twenty-one?” Bryce asked.

“Nineteen at the time, his birthday wasn’t for another month,” I said, splitting hairs and knowing it.

“And he didn’t touch you before that?”

I shook my head. “I never knew he even wanted to. At that point we’d always been close friends. Kind of each other’s only friend.”

“Hey!” Sam cried indignantly.

I rolled my eyes. “I barely knew you. As far as I knew, you were some Goth chick who would turn all Wicca and want me to drink bat guano on a full moon. You were a big question mark at that point.”

“That’s fair.”

“So he broke your heart ‘cause he got all up on you when you were seventeen but then he pumped the breaks because he didn’t want to go to jail?” Bryce asked, getting us back on track.

“Kind of. Okay, here’s the thing – he’s a man whore. Or at least he used to be. Sex is how he deals with women. He doesn’t let people get close because he has abandonment issues and daddy issues and all this whole mess of crap messing up his head. If he was a girl, he’d be workin’ the pole on the weekends. So he doesn’t get emotionally involved with anyone—“

“Except you,” Sam inserted.

“But he uses sex to fake it with women.”

“And you know all of this because you’re close with him?”

“I’m pretty much the only one, yeah.”

“You’re
the
one,” Sam says, referencing Kellen’s French rant.

“Maybe.”

“Jen, he loves you. Deal with it.”

“What does it matter? He’s still the same guy. The same issue that was there that stopped him four years ago still applies – he can’t connect. If we have sex, he’ll shut down on me and that’ll be the end of everything with us. It’s not worth it.”

“Are you sure? Have you seen his body?”

“Sam,” I growled.

“Okay, okay. Kidding. I know, the Kellen you know is worth more to you than the body all the girls want to bang. I get it. But maybe he’s changed.”

I snorted. “People don’t change.”

“That’s dumb,” Bryce said.

“See?” I said to Sam. “Bryce knows.”

“No, I mean you’re dumb, Jenna.”

I scowled at him. “What?”

“People change all the time.”

“Don’t start this,” I moaned. “Not you. Bryce, please don’t feed me some Harlequin romance shit about how my love can change him and make him whole. Life is not like that. You can’t take the bad boy and love him into being Prince Charming.”

“No shit,” he agreed whole heartedly. “That’s not what I’m saying at all because that’s insane. No. What I’m saying is that people can make changes in their lives if they have the right incentive. It has to be their choice, it has to be for them, but they can do it. Addicts get clean, alcoholics go dry. It’s possible. I’m living proof.”

Sam and I sat silently staring at him, neither of us sure if we could ask the big question. Bryce looked back at us patiently, sipping his coffee. Finally he realized we weren’t going to man up and ask so he spoon fed it to us.

“Alcohol.”

“Oh.”

“Ah, I’m so sorry.”

“Anyway,” he said, ignoring our awkward responses, “my wife didn’t know. I hid it really well, which is the sure sign of an addict that knows he’s an addict. You don’t hide things you don’t see a problem with. But I hid it from her and about a year into our marriage she caught on. It was getting out of control at that point and she tried to get me help but I refused. I wasn’t ready to give it up. Not for her, not for anything. Then she got pregnant and she told me she was leaving. She didn’t tell me was leaving
if
I didn’t get help. There was no ultimatum. She was straight up leaving and she was taking my kid with her. I told her fine, fucking go. I didn’t need her or that kid.

“After she was gone, I spiraled out. It got ugly. I almost lost my job, I lost a lot of my friends and my family was fed up with me. But I hadn’t hit bottom yet. That didn’t happen until she sent me a sonogram in the mail. No note, nothing from her at all. All it said was what had been printed on the screen.
Addams, Boy.
I was having a son. And that kid, with his tiny unformed fingers and fat little misshapen feet, had a real piece of shit for a father. This was his shining example of what it was to be a man – a selfish loser on the floor eating three day old pizza and drinking his breakfast from a warm whiskey bottle while his wife went through the scariest, most emotional and difficult experience of her life alone. That’s the moment I saw myself and saw what I was. It didn’t make sense to me what everyone was bitching about until I saw it through my child’s eyes. That’s when I decided to get help. No one could have pushed to me to it, no one could have loved me more and made me want it for them. It was just a moment of pure clarity where I saw my life for what it was and it was crap.”

“Wow,” I said inadequately. “Congrats. You know, on getting clean.”

“Thank you. It wasn’t easy and there are still times, even now years later, when I make mistakes or I feel like I’ll fail. But I want it. I want to be clean for me because I want to be the right kind of father for my son and the husband my wife deserves. But don’t get me wrong. I’m selfish. Most addicts are. I’m not doing it all for them. I do it so I can look at myself in the mirror in the morning and not want to put my hand through it. That’s the difference. You can’t ask someone to change for you. They have to want to do it for themselves because they’re fed up with how their life is going. Maybe this guy loves you, maybe he always has, but whether or not he can handle all the ins and outs of being with you, that’s up to him. You can’t make that happen for him.”

“So I should walk away,” I said, feeling like it was the right choice. The smart decision.

“Is that what I said?” Bryce asked, sounding annoyed. “No, I said people can change. Find out if this guy has.”

“Okay, but the only way to find out is to have sex with him and see if he stops talking to me.”

“Well, there you go,” he said, tipping his cup to me.

I frowned. “That has got to be the worst advice I’ve ever heard. You were doing so great with the inspirational story about your son and overcoming your addiction and then you dive-bomb into ‘fuck him and find out’? Are you kidding me?”

“Admittedly, I make a great cautionary tale,” Bryce said, standing to head for the door. “But my advice is worthless. Anyway, mail is here. Later.”

“What the hell?” I muttered, watching him go outside into the sunlight.

“I got him a flask for Christmas last year,” Sam said glumly. “Now I feel like a douche.”

“Well, we didn’t know.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I told her firmly. “He’s still engaged to Laney. I’m not doing anything or making any decisions based on one grope fest four years ago and an ill-advised make out session in a bathroom. Kellen Coulter is he who is and until I see otherwise, I’m assuming that old dog doesn’t know any new tricks.”

“Ooh, speaking of tricks and dogs, I read about this position where you have a dog collar and you take a squeaky ball and you—“

“I’m not listening to this.”

I nearly ran for the back of the store.

My first indication that the old dog was up to some tricks came from Laney herself. I thought I would hear from Kellen at some point but he’d gone silent and I wasn’t about to reach out to him. Not after the way things had gone. I still felt like a slut and a terrible sister and talking to Kellen, even if he had always been my closest friend, seemed shady to me now. So I stayed out of it. Whatever he had rambled at me in the bathroom was his business.

But I didn’t have to wait long to find out what part of it meant.

“Jenna!” Laney screamed through my door. She pounded on it furiously five or six times before screaming brokenly again. “Jenna!”

“I’m coming!” I shouted, falling out of bed and stumbling through my apartment.

I’d taken Sam up on the rain check for drinks last night and I was feeling a little rough this morning. Especially when I spotted the blurry numbers on my microwave. 7:30 in the morning. You gotta be kidding me.

I collapsed against my door, wincing when Laney screamed into the seam around it.

When she finished, I cleared my throat and called sweetly, “Who is it?”

“Open the damn door, Jenna!”

I unlocked my door and swung it open. There she stood in all her perfect glory. Matching outfit, styled hair, and flawless makeup. Despite all her beauty, her face was pinched in rage.

My blood ran cold. Did she know? Had Kellen told her we’d kissed? That rat bastard! I wasn’t angry over the honesty, but a little head’s up would have been nice.

“What’s up?” I asked carefully.