Jaded (25 page)

“Whoa, boss. What’s the deal?” Jimmy walked up to him, eyebrows knit in confusion.

His fist connected with the wall one more time, and then another. An enormous dent had formed. He couldn’t help himself. “God
damnit!”

A few workers murmured something, edging away.

He felt a hand on his shoulder and he shook it off, palms flat against the wall as he struggled to control his breathing.

“Luke, come on, snap out of it.” Jimmy tugged on his shoulder. Luke spun on his heels and looked at his friend, eyes wild.

“Where’s Mark?”

“Out back with the rest. What’s up, buddy? Come on, calm down.”

Luke shook his friend’s hand off of him and charged through the house, intent on finding Mark and getting an explanation, but only after he beat him senseless. He burst through the back door and spotted him in the side of the yard, talking with a couple workers. He burst into a sprint.

Mark saw Luke approaching and fear crossed his face. He hardly had time to react before Luke had tackled him to the ground, fist balled tight and pulled back, ready to strike.

“What the hell did you tell her?” Luke knew in the back of his mind that he should avoid physical injury as much as possible, given their work situation. But he wasn’t sure he’d be able to avoid it, not when Isabella was hurting so much and Mark had indirectly been the cause of it.

“Get off me!” Mark yelled, pushing hard on Luke’s chest. Luke increased his pressure on Mark’s shoulders and leaned closer.

“What—the hell—did you tell her?” he repeated.

“I told her the truth!” Mark looked genuinely scared. He kicked his legs beneath Luke, struggling to free himself. “She needed to know.”

“Did you tell her how the game really works, that we don’t do it like we did this time? Did you tell her I didn’t want to? Did you conveniently forget that you wanted to get in on it too?” Luke’s fist was ready again, waiting for a release. He trembled as he resisted the primitive urge to slam it into Mark’s face.

“Fuck off,” Mark said, sneering. “You think you’re such hot shit but Isabella can do way better than you.”

He’d crossed the line. Luke’s fist flew and connected with Mark’s jaw, hard. Mark’s head fell to the side, pain etched across his face. A small crowd of workers had formed around them, watching with awestruck disbelief. They all knew Luke was scrappy but he’d never directed it at anyone on the team. Their confusion and curiosity were palpable.

“Don’t meddle,” Luke said through gritted teeth. “This is my life, my girl, not yours.”

“Fuck you, Luke,” Mark said once he’d caught his breath from the punch.

Luke punched him again and now some of the other workers were coming closer, intending to pull Luke off of Mark. Luke knew he had to get away from Mark, had to go be alone to process this turn of events by himself. If he didn’t, he might kill him. And besides, now their jobs were on the line.

“She needed to know,” Luke hissed at him, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. “You’re right with that one. But I was going to tell her; she didn’t need to find out from some jealous fuck like yourself.”

He held Mark by the collar for a few moments, fists shaking as he fought the urge to give him one last punch in the head. His better judgment won and Luke threw Mark to the ground.

Luke got to his feet and looked down at Mark, breathing heavily, wondering if he would really make it away without beating him to a pulp. Luke’s fingers twitched, fighting the impulse of violence, of physical release. Mark looked up at him, wary and scared. Blood trickled from both nostrils and had formed streaks down the side of his face.

“Luke, just calm down,” Jimmy said from the periphery. “Come on, buddy, take a deep breath and just walk away. We’re on the clock here. Take it easy.”

“You’re right, Jimmy,” Luke said, not tearing his eyes away from Mark. Punching him again was still an option, and his rapid breathing and the adrenaline pumping through his body told him that he was far from calm. “He’s lucky we’re on the clock, because I might have killed him otherwise.”

There was a murmur among the workers. Mark’s eyes flashed.

“That was a threat,” he said, pointing up at Luke. “I’ll have your ass fired.”

“Go ahead and try,” Luke said through gritted teeth. He pulled his fist back without realizing it, preparing again to connect it with the side of Mark’s face. All of the workers had gathered by now and the crowd was tense.

Suddenly, Jimmy’s hand was around his arm, pulling him back. “Take it easy, boss!”

“Don’t fuck with me, Mark!” Luke screamed, resisting Jimmy’s intervention. “If you have a problem with me, find me after work and we’ll finish this. But do not—I repeat do not ever”—his voice had reached a feverish pitch and his throat was already raw from the screaming—”fuck with me or my girl again.”

“Whoa, boss,” Jimmy said “What happened here? What did Mark do?”

“He fucking told her about the bet,” Luke said, voice cracking. Tears were coming to his eyes but he didn’t care. “But she heard it from him, not me. Who the fuck knows what he told her. She won’t even talk to me, Jimmy!” Luke felt helpless again. Mark had scampered away behind some of the crew members and was watching him fearfully.

“She knows about the bet?” Some of the guys began murmuring over this bit of news; the rules had been different this time around but to hear that their client, the woman they’d practically been living with for so long, knew this dirty detail was shocking.

“You can thank this dumb fuck,” Luke spat. He charged toward Mark and almost had him knocked to the ground before the workers restrained him.

“Easy, boss,” Jimmy said, as he and two other guys fought to keep Luke at bay. “Look, and we ain’t even had a couple of drinks. Mark’s got you all messed up.”

Someone told Mark to leave, just disappear for a while so Luke could calm down.

“You being here is gonna provoke him,” Jimmy said. “Just get out of here.”

“He punched me. I want him fired,” Mark protested, cupping his jaw. His words came out strange and the swelling of his face was already visible.

“Maybe you deserved it,” Jimmy said. “You know better than to go messing around in other people’s business. We’re a team, and we always have been. If I were you, Mark, I’d suck it up and forget about this. You’re lucky Luke didn’t do more; you’ve seen what this guy can do.”

Mark was silent as he stewed over this. Glaring at Jimmy, he said, “And if I go to the big boss anyway?”

“To tell him what?” Jimmy laughed. “That we gamble at work and made a bet on a client and Luke found out you told her and punched you a couple times? Don’t be an idiot, Mark!”

Mark spun on his heels and stormed away, muttering obscenities under his breath.

“If I let go of you, do you promise you won’t go after him?” Jimmy asked.

“Yes,” Luke growled, feeling the tears forming in his eyes again. “Just let me go. I need to get the hell away from here.”

“Because if I let you go and you hurt him more, then we might actually have some trouble with the big boss.”

“Jimmy, I promise you, I won’t touch him again on the clock.”

Jimmy released him. Luke paced the yard heatedly, all of the workers minus Mark waiting for some signal to the end of the drama.

“All of you guys need to apologize to her,” Luke said, pointing at the house. “Me most of all, but also the rest of you. Do it as soon as possible, and that’s an order.”

He stormed around the house and toward the front yard, chest so tight he could barely breathe. He leaned against the side of the house momentarily, knees buckling. His heart slammed against his chest, every beat reiterating the rage coursing through his veins. He wanted to scream. He wanted to kill someone. He wanted to die.

He cried hot, fat tears that were born in the deepest parts of his heart. The kind of tears that no amount of sobbing or wailing could do justice. They left moist trails on his cheeks and dripped onto the dry ground.

He tried in vain to wipe them away but it was impossible; there were too many and he was spiraling out of control. He scampered into the front seat of the work van parked out front and gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could. His knuckles turned white and still he didn’t feel any better.

He felt wounded in a way he hadn’t known was possible, and on top of that he felt like the biggest idiot in the world. He’d wanted to tell her about it since the beginning, knew that it had to be shared with her despite how unsavory it was.
Why didn’t you just tell her at the beginning? Why didn’t you tell her the first chance you could?
If he’d been able to tell her in his way, with his own words, this never would have happened. Or would it have? Was his former life really so reprehensible? Regardless, he knew this was his own fault—he should have told her eons ago, but he’d been too mixed up in what to say to her and when.

He punched the dashboard as hard as he could and screamed again. To hell with everything. He didn’t want the cash, he didn’t want his friends to think he was macho, he didn’t want easy lays and easy money. He knew these things, but Isabella never would.

Mark had it out for him, that was for sure. But Mark’s feelings about Luke didn’t matter; he was dealt with easily enough. He could swallow his pride and work with him, save a few angry glares here and there. But he knew Mark had done this to sabotage his relationship with Isabella—either because Mark wanted to be with her, or wanted at the very least to make sure Luke
wasn’t
. He punched the dashboard again and noticed a crack had formed along the length of it.

He squeezed his eyes shut and all he could see was Isabella and the look of pain slashed across her face. He rested his forehead on the steering wheel and let the sobs wrack his body.

She might never know the truth, and she might never forgive him either.

Luke had never felt so hopeless in his entire life.

***

The next morning, Isabella decided she was ready to leave her bedroom.

Dressed in a sleek black suit, she strode through her house purposefully, holding her head high. She was important and busy. Luke had meant nothing to her. Everyone would believe it as long as she played the part.

Somewhere in the last twenty-four hours, the ladder had been quietly replaced with a winding staircase. Her first thought was confusion—how could they do it so noiselessly, without even a gruff shout or belt sander to pique her interest? But the cloud of grief yesterday had been so dense that nothing could have penetrated it, not even a staircase installation. She was so determined to remain aloof and unaffected that her face betrayed no reaction, though she was impressed by the wrought-iron handrails. It looked great, but now was not the day to congratulate any of the crew.

Later that afternoon, she was meeting her family in a posh restaurant for lunch. She welcomed the distraction, the chance to force every thought of Luke and these ridiculous workers from her mind, for at least a few hours.

She sighed heavily, looking into the mirror in her foyer, hoping she had done a good job concealing the bags under her eyes from crying all of yesterday.

“Morning, Miss Isabella.” Mark nodded his greeting in the mirror. His jaw was bandaged and his words came out muffled and strange. She turned to him, horrified.

“What happened to you?”

“Ah...just a little altercation. Nothing major.”

Jimmy, who had been standing nearby, scoffed. “Right. Luke got to him; that’s what happened.”

Isabella looked back into the mirror. “Ah, I see. Well, Mark, I’m sorry you got punched. I think you should have been the one doing the punching, to be perfectly honest.”

This caused a stir among the other guys in the hallway. They began harassing Mark, elbowing him and reiterating Isabella’s words.

“I’d like to have seen him try that,” Jimmy said, laughing. “I’ve never seen Luke so pissed in my entire life. And Isabella, I want to apologize to you for everything that happened. We like you a lot around here and think you’re a great lady.”

She frowned, focusing on her appearance and attempting to ignore him but struck by the fact that he’d bothered to apologize to her. The workers continued filing into the hallway, the new ones muttering a greeting or nodding their head. Everyone except Luke.

She glanced at him in the mirror. He had just entered and missed the exchange between her and Mark. He paused behind her, watching her reflection. She continued fiddling with her lipstick as though he wasn’t there, despite the way his presence made her heart tighten.

“Isabella,” he said finally.

She ignored him.

He continued watching her in the mirror. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Please forgive me.”

She continued ignoring him.

He sighed and walked away. As he left the foyer, she was struck with a sudden spurt of resolve. Last night, she’d had an idea that was brilliant. She’d figured at the time that she would be too scared to put it into action, but now was the perfect moment.

Isabella fought waves of nausea and approached Luke. She pulled him aside and said in a calm, level voice, “I want you guys to stop working on the house. I want you to leave.”

“What?”

“I’d rather die than spend another month in the same house as you,” she said through gritted teeth. “So consider this the end of your work here.”

He expelled a laugh of disbelief. “Honey, we’re contracted. We’re not going anywhere.”

Her stomach flopped. “You’re kidding me.”

He shook his head. “As soon as we’re done, we’re done. No sooner, no later.” He paused. “But the next month doesn’t have to be so bad.”

“Even if you’re one hundred miles away from me, the next month is going to be bad,” she spat.

He cast his eyes to the ground. “You never let me explain.”

“I don’t need an explanation, Luke.” She paused, leveling him with her gaze. She added, “And you better damn well fix that hole in the wall.” She pointed to the ghastly dents she’d noticed earlier that morning, no doubt caused by a clash of Luke’s fist and the drywall.

She turned on her heel and climbed the stairs, stomping loudly. Her mind was racing again and tears were quivering at the edges of her eyes. She prayed he wouldn’t try to talk to her anymore—she wasn’t sure if she’d be able to contain her tears long enough to keep up her façade.