Sweet Release (A Bad Boy Mafia Romance) (7 page)

Mike turned, curious, and then colored visibly when he saw it was me. “Oh. Uh… thanks.”

“No problem. You okay?” I searched his face and found barely contained rage still lurking under it. Not toward me, of course; I knew what that looked like.

“Just some bullshit I gotta deal with time to time,” he said. “I appreciate you looking out. Means a lot. Really.”

“No problem, buddy,” I said, punching him in the arm playfully. What on Earth was wrong with me?

He pretended like it hurt, and rubbed his shoulder.

Jarome gave us both a curious look, and then clapped Mike on the shoulder and left us alone, smiling just a little bit. Way to read the room, Jarome. No end to the surprises in that man.

Mike rubbed the back of his head. “Stresses me out all that.”

I nodded, and glanced toward the door where a police officer and a woman with that authority to search someone had left the gym. Putting the pieces together wasn’t tough. “Your parole officer?” I asked, quiet enough that no one else would hear.

Mike just shrugged, and sighed. “Like I said, bullshit I gotta deal with.”

So that was it. He was an ex-con. Funny, though… he really didn’t look like it. But, then, I didn’t look like I could kill people with my bare hands but I was technically trained to do it. Not that I would. Not that I didn’t think about it sometimes, when I was fondly reliving the worst parts of my marriage.

“You need to chill out,” I told him matter-of-factly. No time like the present. I squared my shoulders. If Mike wasn’t going to make a move, then I was. “After work, I’m taking you out for a drink.”

His eyebrows shot up, and his handsome eyes sparkled with sudden humor. “That a fact?”

“Incontrovertible,” I said.

Mike stared at me, still amused. One eyebrow went up a bit.

“Uh, it means you can’t argue,” I said.

“Oh. Well, in that case I guess I got no choice, huh?” He chuckled at my sympathetic shrug.

“Yeah, alright. I get done at eight. See you… well, pretty much over there,” he pointed to the door. “Sound good?”

“It’s a date,” I announced.

Mike rubbed his neck.

“Well, I mean… you know it’s just an expression…” Alarm bells were going off in my head. Eject, eject!

“Sure,” Mike said. “See you then, yeah?”

Oh thank God. “See you then.” I scuttled away before I made it worse.

Still, though—we were going for drinks. My heart was pounding. Two parts of my brain were barking conflicting messages at me.

One part screamed, “He’s an ex-con! What are you thinking?” But the truth was, He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named was a Harvard graduate without so much as a parking ticket until I slapped him with a restraining order. So, I reasoned that having or not having a record didn’t count for much in the scheme of things.

And after all, the other part was cheering me on with a much more enticing argument. “Six year dry spell almost over! Go Go Go!”

I was inclined toward the latter.

Ella

True to the agreement, we met by the front doors of the gym at eight. My afternoon had been free of grabby hands or overtly sexual comments from clients, especially after Rex had been summarily dismissed. Nothing like an example to keep people in line, I guess.

After that I had trained a little with Jarome while I caught him up on how I was doing in the place. I did try to pry a few details about Mike out of him, but he caught on fast and closed his lips. Bro Code business, or something. Whatever the case was, I finished by seven, showered off, and only then realized that I hadn’t brought anything to wear other than my now smelly gym clothes or my work clothes.

Luckily, it seemed that Mike had the same problem. When I met him, he wore pair of gym pants and a plain black hoodie. At least he had that short, recently buzzed prison-hair look that didn’t need anything actually done to it. I kept my own hair tied back, but at least high enough that it showed off my neck.

Whether Mike noticed or not was impossible to say. He made an obvious effort not to look at me too hard.

I didn’t.

The closest bar was a few blocks away, and within ten minutes or so, Mike and I sat across from one another. It wasn’t until the bartender came by and took our drink orders—mid-shelf whiskey, neat, for me and water for him—that I realized inviting a parolee to a bar was probably about the worst idea ever. Of course he couldn’t drink.

“No alcohol, no drugs,” Mike said. “I’m not even allowed to get the good painkillers. Not that I need them; they’re just on the list of things I can’t do for the next two years. Not that I need the calories anyway.”

I arched an eyebrow at that, though mostly just to make him squirm a little.

“Not that I… that is, not that you…” He sighed, and shook his head. “I’m not so bright sometimes. Too many blows to the head.”

“I’m just messing with you, Mike,” I admitted. “So… parole.”

“You jump right in, huh?” He asked. But he bobbed his head a little and then shrugged a shoulder. “Is what it is.”

“How long were you in? Is it okay to ask that?” I hoped I didn’t look as mortified at having asked as I felt.

“It’s fine,” he said, thankfully. “I’m an open book. Four years.”

I whistled. “That’s a long time.”

“Not as long as others,” he said. “I was lucky, really. First time offender. I knew lots of guys in there that was in for life.”

“Guess it’s a matter of perspective.” I swirled my whiskey, sipped, felt self-conscious about it, and set it back down. Terrible, terrible idea, Ella.

“You get lots of that inside,” Mike said. He drank his water without any hint that he wished he had something else. I supposed it had been a while since he had a drink.

“What were you in for?”

“Possession,” he said easily, “but… it was a bogus bust. I got set up.”

Somewhere inside me, a very subtle tension released. Non-violent offender. Thank God. It honestly wasn’t until he said it that I realized he might have gone in for manslaughter, or assault, or any number of things that could be the giant red flag that a parole officer apparently wasn’t.

“Well, that sucks,” I said.

Mike watched me, and then snorted softly before he finished his first glass of water. “You don’t believe me.”

I was apparently transparent, but I still wasn’t going to outright say it. “No,” I said, “I don’t think you’re lying, just… I feel like that’s what anyone would say. It’s okay with me, though. I mean you’re not on anything now, right?”

His face grew just a little tense at that. “I really was set up,” he said firmly. “I know everyone says that, but in my case a cop actually put drugs in my coat when he patted me down, and then sent another buddy to search me over a second time to find ‘em. If I done something stupid, I’d cop to it. I don’t lie about stuff like that.”

“What do you lie about?” I wondered.

Mike paused, mouth opened. His eyebrows tugged toward one another like he wasn’t sure if I was kidding. I was, a little, but he answered anyway. “Not much,” he said. “And never to make myself look better than what I am or keep from taking responsibility.”

I winced. “Sorry. I was mostly kidding… anyway, if you say so, I believe you. We can talk about something else if you want.”

I guess he did want, because he moved on to the usual small talk. Where we were from, where we grew up, how things were different, and how they were the same. Mike didn’t talk profusely about his family—except for his mother, who, based on his description of her, was due to be sainted posthumously any day now, by the Pope, personally. He had a hard, pseudo-Italian way of talking when he got animated, which made sense—his family was old Italian it turned out; as if his last name, Frazetta, hadn’t given it away. It was clear that it was something he was making a conscious effort to hide about himself. When he was calm, his accent subsided a little.

I told him all about growing up in a typical middle-American household, with its repetitive weekly cycle of school, church, lunch with Grandma, and summer camp. I’d lived the same year for almost six years straight between sixth grade and graduation. Mike avoided talking about women, so I avoided talking about men, though he did not that there seemed to be a gap in my story that was about two or three years wide.

“Yeah… that’s a chunk of life I try not to think about too much,” I admitted.

“Hey, I got one of those. I get it. Were you in prison, too?”

I laughed, and then swallowed it, but Mike was chuckling over his own joke so maybe it wasn’t that rude. “Uh, no,” I said. My smile faded a little. “I was married.”

“Oh, you win,” Mike said, deadpan. “I take it that didn’t go well.” That part was said more gently than I’d have thought that chiseled, prison-hardened persona of his was capable of.

“Well, I think any marriage you talk about in the past tense was sub-ideal, at least,” I sighed. “It was rough.”

“Sorry about that,” Mike said. He didn’t seem to mean it but then what guy did when he was having drinks with a pretty girl?

“It’s done and over with. And it was a long time ago, really. Six years or so now.”

“And it still hangs on you like that?” Mike wondered. He frowned. “Must have been pretty bad.”

“I met He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named the year after I graduated,” I said.

“What, Voldemort?”

I laughed again, and shook my head, but was impressed. “You know Harry Potter?”

“Hey don’t tell anybody, alright?” But he was smiling. “Eh, you got nothing much to do in a cell but work out and read.”

“I guess so,” I said. Subject avoided? No? Mike was waiting for me to go on. I sighed. “Robert,” I said quietly; his name would burn me if I said it too loud, still, “was a dick. From the very beginning, actually, which is the only funny thing about it all because I remembered thinking when we first met that he was an asshole and I should snub him just to put him in his place. But I didn’t, for some reason and… things just escalated from there.” Once, my therapist had told me that I was finally able to talk about Robert without showing signs of trauma. Congratulations! Breakthrough!

Mike was possibly a better therapist, or at least a better observer. His eyes darkened, a squall over an iffy sea. “So it was that kinda bad, huh?”

“It was that kinda bad,” I said. I shook my head, shoulders, and arms out, divesting them of all that awful body memory.

“He still around?” Mike asked.

I chuckled nervously. “Uh, he’s somewhere. I don’t really keep up with him. Why, you offering to go beat him up for me?” I regretted making the joke right away. That was a face that said “yeah, actually, I am.”

But Mike sighed, and shook his head. “Nah. You sound like you handled it.”

“And how,” I grunted. “I just sort of woke up one day, like the alarm clock was going off on my life and I’d been hitting snooze for two and a half years. And, six years later, here I am, all shiny and new.”

“Must be nice,” Mike said.

“You get over it. Eventually.” I shrugged, and finished my whiskey. After talking about Robert, even for a second, I wanted another drink. But, that was a slippery slope so I took a water instead.

“So,” I said, eager to talk about literally anything else, “how’s your rise to MMA fame and fortune going?”

Mike smirked, and shook his head. “I got a ways to go. Two years before I’m off parole, for one thing. For another, my close quarters needs work. Jarome routinely wipes the mat with me once we get locked up.”

“I could help you with that, if you wanted,” I offered.

Mike grinned, and looked me over dramatically. “You sure about that?”

“Uh huh,” I said, “you just try me, buddy. I’m hard core. Don’t think just because I’m little I can’t put you on your back and make you say ‘mama’.”

His eyebrows rose, and the corner of his lip twitched up again. “Oh yeah?”

I blushed at the look in his eyes. He’d gone straight to the gutter, just like I had. “Well,” I said carefully, “I mean… you know… like in the bed. I mean the ring! Jesus…” I wanted to hide my face.

Mike was laughing, though, his head nodding slowly as he appraised me again. “That one of those, whaddya call it, Fraudian slips?”

“Freudian,” I said, “and… yeah, it’s been a while…”

“For me too,” he said. “I get it.”

We were both quiet for a long moment.

I moved my foot toward him. It wasn’t an accident, but it was almost unconscious. When I nudged his leg, he nudged me back.

And then, just like that, he changed the subject. I couldn’t quite decide how to feel about it, so instead I just went with it. We talked shop, mostly—the differences between my style and his, why I like the up-close stuff more than his fancy Chinese style; surprise, it had to do with handling guys who were bigger than me, which was almost all of them.

I told him all about Chelsea, my Krav Maga instructor, who was ex-Israeli military and was about as badass as a person could be, man or woman, and how she worked specifically with women who’d been abused. “She’s on a mission,” I said. “And she’s succeeding. I think about eight of the ten women I trained with were all getting out of abusive relationships of one kind or another. Chelsea has this way of making you feel invincible; like no one can touch you without your permission ever again.”

“I get that,” Mike said. “My teacher was a lot like that, but for self control. That was his whole thing—martial arts, he told me, wasn’t about fighting other people but about fighting yourself, and winning.”

“More ancient Chinese wisdom?” I asked.

“He was a walking fortune cookie,” Mike chuckled. “Everything that came outta his mouth was some kind of riddle you had to sit quietly and contemplate for days. I felt like Kane.”

“Did he call you Grasshopper and everything?”

Mike snorted, and shook his head. “No. And he wasn’t native Chinese, either. His name was Richard, and he grew up in Pennsylvania. Not even second generation—his grandparents came over in the thirties.”

“What was he in for?” I asked. “Sorry—is that rude?”

Mike shook his had, “Nah. Everyone asks inside. But Richard never told me, and no one knew. Something bad, though. He got put away when he was twenty five, and he was in his forties at least when I met him.”

The conversation died down a little, and it was getting late. We’d been flirting, and there was obvious chemistry here. I opened my mouth to ask if Mike wanted to come home with me.