“It’s just up here,” she said, trying to keep ahead of him. His long legs kept pace with her, though, until she stopped abruptly at a hotdog vendor.
Marcus just looked at her, a small chill entering his voice. “This is your favorite place?”
“Not really. I just wanted to eat outside,” she smiled so naturally back at him. They ordered, and Marcus thanked the vendor quietly then paid in silence. They walked to a nearby bench with their dogs and sodas, and Erin seemed to be enjoying herself completely.
Marcus, however, remained quiet and distant. He was brooding, and he knew it. He also knew she’d call him out. Right on cue, Erin noticed the sullen look on his face.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, totally unaware of what could be bothering him.
“Tell me something,” he said quietly. “Why did you want to come here?”
“Huh? I don’t know. I thought it would be fun. Is this ok? I mean, we don’t have to eat here…”
“But why here?” Marcus insisted, but Erin didn’t know how to answer him.
“I don’t understand, Marcus. Please tell me what’s wrong.” Her eyes looked sad and the look on her face bothered him to no end, but he didn’t know how to explain.
“I would take you anywhere. You know that, right? So why here? Are you embarrassed by me? Or if you’re worried about money, don’t. I live like I’m poor so I never have to be. I put my sister through school. I can take you out on a real date.”
Erin’s heart broke to hear him say that. “It’s not that at all — it’s just that I’m having so much fun with you. I’m tired of stuck up people and their pretty little restaurants. I really just wanted to be out with you, not dealing with any of that.”
Marcus looked almost angry, and Erin only looked more confused.
“What??” she said, anguish in her voice.
“So you’re just slummin’ it with me?” Marcus said with ice in his voice. He dropped his head into his hands and then said very quietly, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
Erin just sat beside him, completely uncomfortable and silent. Marcus felt like an ass, but he couldn’t take back what he said. He tossed his dinner in the waste bin beside their bench.
“Maybe we should just go,” Erin said softly, tossing hers there too.
“Yeah.”
They walked back to the car and Marcus opened her door for her again. She stayed on her own side of the car this time and remained silent while the loud car rolled out of the parking lot.
Marcus drove in the direction of her apartment, but then pulled over into a service driveway on the side of the road near a power station. He put the car in park, turned it off, and sat quietly, staring straight ahead at nothing.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, still staring through the windshield, distant and cold. “This is not your fault. But you need to understand something. All of us down at the gym…
all
of us… have allowed ourselves to be the play thing of some rich bitch who thought it was fun to say she fucked a fighter. Every single one of them dropped us like a bad habit. None of them wanted us in their world.
“Then I meet you, and you probably have more money than I’ll ever have. I offer to take you out, and you choose a fucking hot dog stand — a place I’m sure you’d never go without me. It just made me feel like you didn’t want me in your world. It stung. I reacted like an ass. This is just
my
issue. Not yours. I’m sorry.”
Erin heard his words, but the ice in his voice hadn’t changed a bit. She sat in silence for a while, absorbing what he said. She looked over at him and saw him still staring ahead. It killed her that he wouldn’t look at her.
They had connected so easily, and now everything seemed to be unravelling. But she knew he loved her, and she loved him back. No matter what his issue was, she would help him. But that didn’t change the fact that she was now very, very angry.
“Rich Bitch? You’re right,” she finally said, completely livid. “I’d never go to a hot dog stand without you.”
He dropped his head back against the headrest of the car, defeated by her confession. She continued, still biting at him with her tone.
“But it’s not why you think. I never went
anywhere
without you. I was scared of my own shadow. One guy at work asked me out to a pretty damn restaurant. I wouldn’t go with
him
either, or a hot dog stand, or the goddamn Taj Mahal. Money doesn’t equal character, and none of them had enough character to understand me at all. So, yeah. That
fucking
hot dog stand was just for you.”
He winced at her use of the f-word, knowing how completely out of character swearing was for her. He knew she was right, too. She wasn’t playing with him, and she didn’t worry a thing about whose world they were in. He was an idiot.
Now she was the one staring blankly ahead. Marcus slammed the heal of his hand against the steering wheel and then gripped the cracked vinyl tightly before hitting it again, twice. This side of him was unsettling for her, but she still wasn’t scared that he would hurt her. Even so, she was still relieved when he stopped white-knuckling the steering wheel.
He dropped his forehead into his hands. He spoke again, but this time Erin heard a hint of his usual warmth back in his voice. “I know. God, I know you’re not like that. I’m so sorry.” He still wouldn’t look at her. When he finally did, he asked her flatly, “How bad did I blow this?”
She felt for him, and realized that all the time she had been with him, confidence had oozed off of his very being. He had been strong, and giving, and unshakable. He had been her knight in shining armor, completely perfect and seemingly custom-made for her.
But she knew in this moment how wrong that was of her to think. She had never considered that he might be insecure about anything or have his own issues in their relationship. She never allowed him to be human, and yet here he was, in all his human imperfection. He had fallen off the pedestal she had placed him on. She wanted to kick herself, but she felt even closer to him. He was beautifully flawed.
“You didn’t blow it completely,” she whispered to him. “It’s nice to know you aren’t perfect.”
He laughed almost bitterly and the ice came back to his voice. “I sure as hell am not perfect.”
He started the car again, turning the key almost aggressively. He backed out of the service drive too quickly and headed
away
from Erin’s apartment. Erin looked around a bit wide-eyed. She had no idea where they were going, and now she was starting to feel a bit scared. She had never seen him like this.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked in a steady voice, trying to keep the nerves out of her question. She failed.
Marcus replied after a long moment, his voice full of some frustrated, dark emotion. “I just need you to see me like I really am. I’m not even close to perfect. You should know that. You
have
to know that.”
Erin had no idea what to think or feel in this moment. Their dinner had turned into disaster. She was trying to understand where all this was coming from, what she had done to turn him so cold.
“Talk to me, Marcus. Please. What is so wrong right now? I don’t understand!”
He drove on in silence, having no idea what to say to her. Talking had never been his strong suit, and he had done more of that with Erin than he had in the rest of his life with anyone. Right now, he was all talked out.
He heard her say she thought he was perfect, but she was utterly wrong. She had never seen him beat someone to a bloody pulp — in the ring or on the street. He only ever let his rage loose in the ring, or when someone needed him, but he only used those situations as his excuse.
He lived for the power and release he felt from completely destroying his opponents. He was fury and rage incarnate. The thought made him sick, but he knew he enjoyed the violence as much as his bastard father did. She needed to know what kind of man she thought she loved, that even as much as he wanted to be, he wasn’t good enough for her.
They drove in silence for a while longer and Erin tried to keep her breathing steady. She wanted to be strong for him, for whatever was that was going through his mind. Everything clicked when she saw him pull up to his gym. He stopped the car and came around to open her door. Erin was almost frozen to her seat by the crazed look in his eyes that was only barely masked by the calm set of his jaw.
“Come inside,” Marcus said flatly. He reached into the car and took her wrist, pulling her to her feet. He nearly dragged her to the door. He fumbled for a key but didn’t need it when Bill opened the door. Erin saw the look on Bill’s face turn from warm to instantly concerned based on the look in Marcus’s eyes.
“What’s going on, son,” he said.
Marcus dropped Erin’s wrist and pushed past Bill and right over to the heavy bag. He let out a primal, guttural yell then pulled back his fist. He hit the bag with such incredible force and rage that Erin flinched as the bag swung wildly from its hook. Bill placed a protective arm around her. He had seen Marcus like this many times before.
“It’s ok, Erin,” Bill said in a fatherly, comforting tone. “Marc has a lot of that in him. Sometimes, he needs to get it out. But you don’t have to worry. He’s got more control than any of the brawlers I’ve seen. He saves it all for the gym. That’s why he has his own key, so he can get in here whenever he needs to.”
Erin watched Marcus punch and kick at everything in the gym. He was full of anger and rage and more power than she ever would have guessed. His mind was completely elsewhere and his body was wild and aggressive in its absence. She couldn’t reconcile the man who had held her so gently with the primal beast she saw here.
“I don’t understand this,” she said to Bill, still occasionally wincing at Marcus’s punches. Tears started silently dripping down her cheeks. “What can I do?”
He leaned over and kissed her gently on the side of her head. “Oh, honey. You’ve already been doing whatever it is that he needs. He always fought wild like this before he met you. Every time. Every training. But then I saw a bit of change in him, and he started to focus. He started on skill and precision. Now don’t get me wrong. He still fights like an animal, but you got him to fight from his head, too. You’re very good for him, Erin.”
Her tears flowed freely now, moved by what Bill said. Across the room, Marcus was pounding away at a sparring dummy, and it made her feel bad for anyone that got in the ring with him. Surely they would walk away broken, if they could walk at all. She saw him knee-kick the gut of that dummy, pulling its shoulders down as he did to bring as much force to the blow as he could.
“He’s really messed up, isn’t he,” she said quietly.
“Hmm. How much do you know about his father?”
“Just that he hit him a lot, and that Marcus protected his sister from him.”
“Well, then he was keeping the worst of it from you. It took me a long time to get the whole picture from Marcus,” Bill said, “but when I did, it made me want to do exactly what Marc is doing now…and
I
didn’t have to live through it.
“His dad was sadistic. It wasn’t enough to just hit Marcus when he was drunk. He humiliated him, and burned him with cigarettes under his arms so the marks wouldn’t be obvious. It got worse than that, too, but it’s not my story to tell. By the time Marcus was big enough to fight back, he was too broken and scared to do it.”
Erin put her hand over her mouth and sobbed twice before gathering herself, trying to be strong for Marcus. “How did he come out of all that and still be as good as he is? You should see him with me. Until tonight, he was nothing like this at all.”
“I think his sister saved him, to tell you the truth. She was something good he could focus on. Have you met her? She’s a spitfire,” Bill said warmly. “I came across the two of them when they were 19, and Marcus was beating the crap out of some guy that smacked her on the ass.
“I broke up the fight before he could do any real damage and dragged him down the block to the gym, kicking and screaming and cussing me the whole time. That’s when he found the right outlet for his aggression. He learned to control it, and it didn’t take him long to do it. He’s a lot smarter than he lets people know. I had him in his first official cage match not even a year later. Now he’s my best fighter. There’s no one like him in the ring.”
Erin could only nod, understanding a lot more about the man Marcus was. He was here to prove to her that he wasn’t perfect, but he ended up proving the opposite. He was not just rage and anger, he was control and gentleness. Marcus fiercely protected what was his, and only let himself release this kind of rage where it was allowed. Erin couldn’t imagine anything more perfect than that. She had issues, too. He accepted her, and she would accept him.
Bill just rubbed her shoulder while they watched Marcus fight to exhaustion. Bill excused himself to his office after one final squeeze around Erin’s shoulders. “Go take care of him,” Bill said to her sweetly on his way toward his door. “He’s all fought out.”
Erin looked over to Marcus who was facing the wall beside the sparring dummy and leaning his forearms there, staring at the floor. His head hung down so low and his body was spent and defeated. Sweat soaked the middle of his strong back and he had not yet caught his breath.
Erin took a steadying breath and walked over to him. She wedged herself between Marcus and the wall and looked up at him. She pushed herself up on her toes and kissed him very chastely on his lips. She couldn’t describe the look on his face when she did that, but she saw heavy emotion. He pulled his sweaty arms off the wall and looked at her for a long time. She supposed he was looking for fear, and she wouldn’t show him any. She didn’t have any.