Page 42 of Come in with the Rain
Ford taps his fingers in a line on the top of the bag. “Adam, the girl needs a job. She’s been interviewing since you met her. And now the richest person on the East Coast wants to give her a job that doesn’t involve scrubbing toilets and you’re going to fight her on it? It’s not like he’s going to be bending her over his desk every other Tuesday.”
My hand shoots out before I even know I’m going to move, connecting with his jaw. He’s three inches taller than me and probably thirty pounds heavier, all muscle, but his head jerks back. After a minute, he reaches up and rubs his jaw. And then he punches me in the cheek.
It’s bizarre how fast things can happen. How fast you can go from having a reasonable conversation with your best friend to beating the shit out of each other, rolling around on the mat, throwing punches and elbows.
I’m on top of Ford, arm cocked for a good punch, when someone’s arms wrap around me from behind, tugging me hard and knocking me enough off balance that I teeter off of Ford. It’s Dani, her purple-painted nails disappearing in the fabric of my shirt as she drags me back across the mat.
“Goddamn asshole,” she hisses in my ear. “That’s your best friend you’re punching.”
She pulls me to my feet with the sheer force of her strength and then continues to pull me backwards out the door, into the afternoon sun that immediately beats down on us. As soon as we’re in the parking lot, she lets go of me and I stumble, landing on my ass on the concrete.
Dani steps around and crouches down in front of me. “Whatever you’re pissed about, you better figure it out real quick. And from here out, you’re banned from Berserkr.”
I feel something seize up inside me. “You can’t be serious.”
She scoffs and straightens. “Oh yes I can. It’s policy. You started a dirty fight. That wasn’t about mat. That was about your fucking temper. I don’t need that shit anywhere near my gym. Go home, Adam. Call Ford when you’re done acting like a five-year-old.”
CHAPTER42
STELLA
Isqueeze my eyes shut, and the tears that have been poised on the edges of my eyelids spill over. There’s a knock on the door. Everything inside me seems to stop functioning at the sound, my heart and my lungs and my stomach. Because it has to be him. Of course it’s him. And I don’t know how to feel about that.
I’m still standing in front of the door, trying to make myself open it, when he knocks again. I throw open the door. The first thing that goes through me when I see his face is panic. He’s bleeding, but there’s so much blood that I can’t tell where it’s coming from.
“Oh my God,” I cry, pulling him into the condo and leading him over to the kitchen, where I wet a cloth and hand it to him while I prepare an ice pack. “What happened? Do you need to go to the emergency room? You might need stitches.”
“I don’t need stitches,” he says as he carefully cleans his face. Once I’ve got a small ice pack made of ice wrapped in a towel, I turn back to him. I can see his face now, the whole thing, can see the still-bleeding gash along his cheekbone and the fact that his lip is split, some of the blood having collected along his bottom teeth. “I picked a fight with Ford.”
“Why?” I press the ice pack to his face, and he takes it.
His shoulders sag. “I shouldn’t have said what I said.” At first I think he’s talking about Ford, but when his eyes meet mine, I know he means earlier, all the things he said about Mickey and me. He pulls the ice pack from his face, and I’m distracted momentarily by the cuts and the bruises. I pick up the abandoned rag, step closer to him, and dab at the bloody wounds.
“You said what you meant.” It’s easier this way, focusing on cleaning him up instead of looking him in the eye.
“No, I didn’t. I just…I was jealous.”
I pull the towel away from his face and look down at it, at the pink blood blending into the cheap fabric. “What could you possibly have to be jealous about?”
His eyes meet mine. Yes, it was much easier when I was focusing on his cuts instead of his eyes. “I want to be able to give you the life he did. I want to be able to take care of you.”
I toss the soiled towel into the sink. “I don’t needanyoneto take care of me. I’m taking care of myself. When we started…doing whatever it is that we’re doing, I thought I had found someone who would support me no matter what. That’s the kind of guy it seemed like you were.”
“I am.” He pushes up off the counter and comes toward me, crowding into my personal space. “I do support you. I was wrong, and I know that.”
“I can’t trust you.” The words spill out of me, and I take a big step back from him. “What you said, if that’s in there somewhere, just waiting to come out the second that we get in an argument…” I shake my head. “Are you going to throw my insecurities in my face any time I’m doing something you don’t approve of?”
To his credit, he looks horrified, like I hit him. “Of course not. Earlier, that wasn’t about your insecurities; it was about mine. I’m sorry, Stella. I’m so sorry.”
I have to look down at the floor because if I look him in the eye, I won’t be able to say everything that I need to. But looking at the floor, I have to watch his shoes and the way they’re moving toward me, inch by inch, until he’s standing right in front of me again, his hands coming up to cup my elbows.
“Forgive me, Stella,” he says, and I feel the puff of his breath against my face. “I swear, I didn’t mean it. I want to be here standing next to you when you accomplish everything you set your mind to.”
His cheek brushes mine, and I can’t keep my hands from coming up to rest first on his chest and then his neck, and then into his hair as he bends and finds my lips.
He groans into my mouth. Nothing feels as good as kissing Adam does. It’s like the first gulp of air after you’ve been underwater a little too long, and against my better judgement, I’m trying to climb him, hooking my leg up on his hip until he hoists me into his arms and pushes me against the fridge. With all of him against me, I forget everything else, what we were talking about and what he did wrong. All I can think about are his strong arms holding me up, his narrow hips wedged into my open legs, his tongue stroking over mine.
“Stella,” he says against my mouth. “Stella, forgive me.”
