OGs: Deep Down (13 page)

She’d had loved to leave, but her legs wouldn’t carry her. She’d stood there, seeing Mike being pleasured by someone who wasn’t her. Jess’s head bobbling up and down over him, him looking straight at Kyra.

His grip on her arms tightened, bringing her back to reality. And reality was a pissed-off Mike glaring at her, his jaw locked, his gaze ablaze with fury. “Let me see if I understand correctly: you saw Jess sucking my cock, and you didn’t scream at me, bash my head in with a baseball bat? You up and left? That’s how much I mattered to you?”

She blinked at him, not really understanding his questions, why he was scowling at her. “What—“

“You just walked away and got knocked up by an asshole to rub it in? To thumb your nose at me? What did you want, to make me pay? To make me suffer? Because you fucking got it, babe. I didn’t know what I was paying for, but I sure as hell paid. In blood and pain.”

“It wasn’t like that, Mike. I—”

But he wasn’t listening to her; he released her so fast she stumbled back. “And the ring I offered you? News flash, sweetheart. I bought it when you were eighteen! Eight-fucking-teen, Kyra. I was going to give it to you when you moved in with me, but I decided to wait until you finished college, didn’t want you to feel pressured.”

Oh God. “Mike—”

He shook his head and stalked away. “Just fuck you, Kyra. Fuck you.”

She stood there in the shower stall alone.

She’d gone from anger to shock to elation to despair in a matter of minutes. She’d had a glimpse of hope when Mike had explained to her what had really gone down. She’d thought maybe, maybe they could fix all this. Apparently not.

Chapter Six

“You’ve never been too talkative, but come on, Mike, this beats all. Compared to you, Cole is a giggling Girl Scout,” James said as he wiped sweat from his forehead.

“And slow the fuck down,” Max added with a grunt. “We’ve already run twice as much as usual. We may not be in Massachusetts anymore.”

“You can quit whenever you want; no one’s stopping you,” Mike answered and continued jogging, even stepped up the rhythm. He could feel Max and James staring at him, but he ignored them.

“Can you please tell Max and me why we have your students begging us to take over your classes before you kill them?”

Mike hadn’t set a foot in the gym for a couple of days, but then he had to go back. He was taking the morning shifts from his dad and making an appearance in the afternoons just for his martial art classes. He wanted to pass them to James and Max altogether and get out of Alden, but that wasn’t a possibility. At least he hadn’t let his grandma guilt-trip him into anything that would involve Sam or Kyra.

Mike shrugged. “It’s just sparring.”

“Right. At this point they’d risk a pounding from Cole or Jack before you,” Max said. “Hell, they’d choose Mike Tyson over you. What’s up?”

Another grunt was his answer.

“It’s because of Kyra, right? She got to you.”

He couldn’t suppress the snort. As if she could
not
get to him.

“Did you get involved with her?” James asked carefully, as if even those words had the capability to explode or something.

Mike didn’t want to answer, but his friends had a right to an explanation. Or a half-assed one. Especially if he expected them to drop it anytime soon. “Kind of.”

“Oh man.” James stopped dead in his tracks and shook his head. “Fuck. Fuck. You had sex with her, didn’t you?”

Mike stopped too. Flung his head forward and let out a harsh breath.

“Don’t you ever learn?”

No, clearly he didn’t.

“Well, it was bound to happen,” Max said. “The sooner they work out all that sexual tension, the sooner Mike will be able to relax and go back to normal.”

James motioned at Mike. “Right. In which book is this relaxed? He’s fucking tighter than a bowstring. Running us to the ground. And the guys in the gym are scared shitless of him, even the black belts.”

“On that you’re spot-on,” Max agreed with his brother. “What exactly happened, Mike? Was it bad? Because I really don’t see how having sex with someone like Kyra would be anything but spectacular.”

Mike growled. Literally. “Not discussing this with you, so you better shut the fuck up.”

Bad? It had blown his head off. And his dick. And everything in between. Like always. Like fucking always.

He was screwed. Even as furious as he was, his cock hadn’t gone down in days.

James cursed. “Mike, you crazy? Don’t you remember what happened the last time she dumped your sorry ass? You were a fucking mess. For a fucking long time. This time you may not be able to bounce back.”

Max had missed the brunt of the fiasco because he’d been in the military back then, and when he’d returned, Mike was already coming out of the hole, but James had been home, getting an eyeful of Mike going down the drain.

“I appreciate your concern, I really do, but fuck off.”

“No, not fucking off.”

Mike sighed. “Things are complicated.”

“Complicated how?”

“Complicated,” he stated and curtly explained to them what had happened on his birthday seven years ago.

“Fuck,” both brothers said.

Exactly.

Mike just couldn’t look at her without losing his ever-loving mind and hitting the roof. He was pissed at her, really pissed, and at himself too. He kept trying to remember that night, but he drew a blank each and every time. He did remember Jess coming on to him and him blowing her off, telling her to go home. Rather rudely too, but it hadn’t deterred the bitch. Last thing he remembered was her sitting near him, talking some shit he hadn’t listened to. He hadn’t had the strength to up and leave. He recalled thinking that whatever, she was welcome to stay and jabber all she wanted; it wouldn’t make a lick of difference to him. Next thing it was morning and he was waking up with the mother of all the headaches.

He’d been such an imbecile. He’d known Jess had been after his ass for a long time. Now, though, all her snarky comments made sense, how hot she’d been on his heels after that night, how pissed she’d been when he’d rejected her. If he’d sent her away that fateful night, Kyra would have found him totally shit-faced but alone. Worst-case scenario, he would have been sleeping the booze off. And when he’d woken up, she would have been by his side. Instead, he’d woken up alone, hungover. And so damn angry. Never truly understanding what had happened. Why she never returned his phone calls. Why she didn’t come back to Alden after the ten months on the cruise were up.

The kick in the teeth was that he hadn’t fucked Jess, or anybody else for that matter, until Kyra had come to town with Sam and that douche bag. Apart from that blowjob he had no recollection of, he’d been faithful. Miserable as he’d been, jerking off to her every fucking night, he hadn’t looked at anyone else. Until he found out Kyra had married and he went into that free-for-all pussy-and-fighting spree. Then he’d fucked Jess. Many times, actually. She always came back for more, even though he’d made it crystal clear they were just fucking and that they were never going to have anything else.

Pity Jess had left town some years ago. He would love to ask her a couple of things. Like did she see Kyra and continue blowing him? Better not. He wasn’t sure he would be able to behave in a civilized manner. And he was the guilty one, not Jess. He’d been the one smashing his phone into the wall. Sick and tired of waiting for her call, of dying to call her.

“What about the posing gig this afternoon?” Max asked, taking Mike out of his gloomy thoughts.

“Not going.” He’d already informed his grandmother she could contact the two firefighters she’d threatened him with if she wanted to. Or the whole squad. He was out.

James ran his hand through his shaggy hair and sighed loudly. “Okay, so what’s the plan? You’ll be running yourself to death in the mornings and scaring the shit out of your disciples in the afternoons?”

“Pretty much,” Mike answered, avoiding eye contact.

He was so enraged. He had no clue how to get past this, how to swallow all that shit, so he was going to try sweating it off. However long it took for him to digest this, he was going to run and keep away from Kyra.

“This won’t work,” James warned. “You can’t run forever.”

Well, he could try. “No one is forcing you to keep me company.”

Max and James both snorted.

“Lead the way, Forrest Gump, but let’s stay in the East Coast. I’d like to be home for supper.”

* * * *

That afternoon Sara came running from the front desk, looking scared out of her mind. “Mike, Wilma called. Gram’s hurt.”

“What do you mean, hurt?” he asked, stilling the punching bag he’d been killing for the past half hour.

“Not sure. I think she fell. I couldn’t understand Wilma too well. They’re at the community center,” she yelled after him as he was throwing the gloves and running out of the gym.

Fuck, his grandmother didn’t give a second thought to her age, but she wasn’t young anymore. Not by a long stretch.

He ran as fast as he could, hoping she was okay, regret knotting his stomach as he remembered the way he’d rebuffed her these past days, when she’d tried to talk to him about what was bothering him and he told her to mind her own business.

The community center was quiet, so he headed for the second floor, where the painting lessons took place. When he rushed into the room, Kyra was there alone.

“Where’s Gram? Is she hurt?”

She looked surprised. “Hurt? Not that I know of. We’re having a five-minute break. They were just here—”

Click.

The door behind him closed and locked.

Oh no, no, no, no. She fucking wouldn’t dare.

Mike darted to the door, rattled it. Yep, locked.

Fuck him. He banged the door, hard. “Gram, open the door!”

Silence, then a whisper coming from the hallway.

“Will the door hold?”

“Yes, don’t worry.” That was his grandmother whispering back. “They don’t build them now like they did before the war.”

Mike took in a deep breath and prayed for patience. “Gram?”

Silence.

This was fucking incredible.

“I know you’re there,” Mike continued. “You scared the shit out of me. And Sara. She said you were hurt!”

She cleared her throat. “Oh, it was nothing. I was feeling faint from the heat, but that’s all. Wilma just exaggerated. She’s a drama queen.”

A thump and an “Ouch.” Probably Wilma slugging his grandmother.

Man, he should have seen this coming. And the afternoon had started so nice—Kyra gone from the gym. His grandma too. Sam apparently with Angie.

He went for a conciliatory tone. “Just open the door. Let’s be reasonable.”

“Oh, is it locked?” she asked innocently. “We don’t know how that happened. We didn’t lock it. Must be the draft; it’s pretty strong here. Let us go find the janitor. He might have a spare key. It may take a while, though. Just sit tight and, I don’t know, talk with Kyra?”

“You frigging high?” Because the hallway still smelled of paint from last week’s renovation. That would be the only explanation for all this craziness.

“I don’t think so. We don’t even drink alcohol.”

“There’s no need,” Greta added with a snort. “We get the same effect just from standing up fast.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m still feeling weird from those new blue pills that quack ordered me to take in the morning,” someone murmured.

“Nonsense, those are to stimulate bowel movement,” someone else interjected.

“Really? Because—”

“Open the goddamn door,” Mike yelled out of patience, banging the door with both hands, so hard it shook.

And then he heard a sound. He couldn’t see, but he’d swear his grandmother was rustling a piece of paper. “I’m losing you; you’re breaking up.”

For the love of all that was sacred. “That only works with cell phones! You can hear me just fine!”

No wonder his grandma hadn’t pushed too hard for him to talk to her these past days. She had her own plan. She and her crew. Bunch of meddlers and blackmailers who had just graduated to kidnappers.

“Must be my hearing device, then,” his grandmother said, sounding farther away.

“You don’t have a hearing aid!”

“So there’s the problem. Just sit tight. We’ll be back in a sec.”

“Or two. Those blue pills started working,” someone whispered.

Mike pounded on the door some more but soon gave up. It was useless. This was an old, sturdy building; these doors could hold back a bomb.

He took a deep breath and turned around. “They locked us in,” he said, looking straight at Kyra, who was right behind him, her eyes big as plates.

“This is a joke, right?”

He stepped aside and motioned to the door. “See for yourself.”

She moved to the door and wrestled with the doorknob for a while. She gulped. “Locked.”

He pinned her with his stare. “Did you have anything to do with this?”

“Of course not,” she said, sounding outraged. “I can take a hint. I know you don’t want to see me.” Kyra had tried to talk to him several times, but he’d shut her down.

She hugged herself, looking nervous, her gaze darting around. “They will come back, right? They can’t leave us here.”

Mike wasn’t so sure. Those crazy ladies could easily go on to their next mischief and totally forget about them.

Man, when he got out of here, he was going to… Going to what? Ground his grandmother? Leave her without her weekly allowance? Yeah, right, that didn’t work with misbehaving eighty-year-olds. Nothing worked.

“I guess this proves growing old is a given, but growing up is optional. Got a phone?” He’d run out of the gym with nothing on but the pair of boxers he was wearing while training.

Her face lit up. “Yes. Yes, I do. We’ll be out in no time.” She ran to her bag, rummaged in it, and then her smile fell. She looked disgruntled. “Damn it. Out of battery. I’ve told Sam a thousand times not to play with my phone.”

That was why his grandmother and Sam got along so well. Both did whatever they pleased.

He wouldn’t be surprised if Rebecca had encouraged Sam to go to town with the cell today.