PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance (11 page)

SAFFRON

Chapter 13

PENSACOLA

PRESENT
DAY

T
he driver, a
young, perpetually smiling Asian chick, took me around to
New Horizons
when I asked. It looked to be a fitness gym, not too
terribly far into town, and it actually looked pretty sleek from the outside.
As I pulled up, the lights were on, and I could see what looked like Sawyer and
a couple of other guys standing around near the front. The entire front wall
was glass, showing off rows of solid, newish equipment…and way in the back, as
we drove past and slowed down, I could make out a large cage fighting ring.

Huh. What’s
he doing in a place like this, so late at night?

There wasn’t any benefit to creepily hanging around,
so I had the driver just take me straight home. I was just getting ready for
the shower when I heard motion downstairs – poking my head around the top
landing, I could see Sawyer moving about, oblivious to my attention.

I considered calling out to him, but I was still
unwilling to cross that bridge until he looked remarkably less angry than
usual.

From that point on, Sawyer was
around a lot more often. As quickly as the next day, he even seemed more
relaxed around me, and unceremoniously broke the silence one early afternoon a
few days later, after a particularly late night out. I caught him shirtless in
the kitchen, fiddling around on the stove, and turned to leave when he suddenly
addressed me:

“Want some
lunch? Nothing too fancy, but I’ve got some spaghetti at the ready if you’re
interested…” Sawyer remarked casually, draining a hot pot into a colander.

“I…sure,” I decided,
thrown off-guard by his less-than-brooding demeanor. “After you were done in
here, I was probably going to figure out lunch anyway.”

“There’s
plenty enough for the two of us. Would you give me a hand and shut the stove
off? If it’s not done soon, I’m probably going to forget about it…” He
indicated the stove with a nod of his head.

Pushing my
confusion aside, I walked into the kitchen and checked the dials. “Smells
good,” I told him, peering into another pot on the stovetop. Inside was a
simmering red sauce, chunked full of cooked ground beef and spices. “I didn’t
know you cooked.”

“I dabble,”
Sawyer replied warmly, setting the pot aside and wafting his hand in the sink.
The colander of spaghetti continued to vent steam as he brushed the heat aside.

A few minutes
later, I was sitting at the dining room table as he handed me a bowl of pasta,
topped with chunky ground beef tomato sauce, grated parmesan cheese, and a
sprinkle of oregano. He sat down across the small table from me with a bowl of
the same, and we began to chow down in an uncomfortable silence.

“This is
really good!” I told him happily. “Do you use a specific recipe, or…?”

“It’s
spaghetti
,” he replied, giving me a
look. “I mean, you have to be a complete idiot to fuck up spaghetti.”

“I know, I
meant…like, the sauce,” I fumbled for words. He was still watching me flounder
with an amused expression on his face. “You obviously did something with the
sauce…”

“I’ll tell
you my secret,” he smiled with that stupid, asshole smirk he liked to use.
Oh boy, here we go.
“It’s called
salt, pepper,
and
garlic.
Maybe a pinch of
onion
.
I swear, Saffron, this is Culinary 101.”

It was my
turn to simmer, as I bit back my tongue.

“You want me
to teach you a few things? I can, if you want. We can start with the basics
– toast. When you’re ready, we’ll start talking
making a pancake.
”

“Are you
always an asshole?” The words spilled from my lips before I could stop them.

“Excuse me?”

“Can you just
learn to take a fucking compliment sometime? I don’t know why I even
try
to be nice to you, you
ungrateful, miserable asshole
…” I stood
up from the table, throwing my cloth down. “You know what? Forget it.”

“Saffron–”
His expression was confused, which only made me angrier.

“No. I’ve had
enough. You avoid me since the day we arrive, and the one time I muster up the
courage to try and reach out to you, you just have to be a complete dick again.
Forget it. Let’s just get through this stupid summer together, and go back to
hating each other.”

“Hating?”

“I mean,
you’ve
obviously
always hated me.” I
remained at the edge of the table, ready to just lock myself away in my room
with a book again. “You’ve hated me from the moment we’ve met. You couldn’t
have made that any clearer if you tried.”

“You…you
can’t
seriously think that.”

“What the
fuck do
you
care?”

In a
spontaneous act of defiance, I shoved the bowl of spaghetti across the table.
It slid towards him, but wobbled at the end of its run. Half the food slid out
of the bowl and against the tabletop as it capsized, making a conspicuous
rolling sound against the wood.

Sawyer looked
uncharacteristically pained as he turned from the upended bowl of pasta to me.
“Saffron…”

“Just
continue doing whatever the fuck you do when you spend all your time out,” I
told him furiously. “I get it, you know. I really do. You just hate me so much
that you can’t even bear to be around me. So, here I am, relieving you of your
duties as
glorified reluctant babysitter
.
I don’t even know why dad sent you here. I’m an adult. I can handle myself! Just
piss off. Spend the entire time out. I’ll tell them that you were here all
summer and we had a
great old time
and
really bonded.”

I stormed
from the room, fighting my tears.
How
stupid could I have been?
For just a moment, I thought that maybe we could
get along…but I was kept so tired of his bullshit. If Sawyer just gave me a few
conversations where he didn’t pull his macho condescending attitude out, then
maybe we could actually have a normal relationship.

Blowing up at
him might have been stupid, but I was sick feeling like I had to be on edge
around him, and I was done with his crap. Sure, I had enjoyed it…when I was
growing up. But it was the same stupid story as before, but now it just got to
me. I’d been stupid to think myself, before we’d even come down here, that I
could continue to enjoy this.

Maybe I would
have been able to handle things if I wasn’t so angry with him for abandoning
us. He expected everything to go back to the way it was before, like he hadn’t
betrayed my trust. I’d made every reasonable attempt to reach out to him when
we were growing up, and I’d started to want to let go of it all when we were
stuck together…but it was clear that he just didn’t care.

No
, I thought to myself, locking the
door to my room behind me.
Fuck you. I tried
to push it aside and engage you in an actual relationship, and you’re just the
same asshole that you always were.

I lost myself
in my book for a few hours. I’d started up on a somewhat forgettable Victorian
romance fantasy. It was more escapist that I generally tended to like, but the
author was an avid lover of the time period, and gave some incredible
descriptions of the relevant caste system and Victorian society as a whole.

I was reading
a particularly juicy section with the servant girl lead giving the handsome
young nobleman a reluctant, sexually charged bathtub scrub when there was a
knock at the door.

“Saffron? Are
you in there?”

A heavy sigh
lifted from my chest.

“What do you
want?
”

“Can you come
out for a moment?”

I bitterly
moved my cherished bookmark into the paperback and set it on the end table.
Climbing up from the bed, I unlocked the door and stood in the doorway, leaning
against the frame.

“I’m reading.
Can you make it quick?”

There was
something about Sawyer that immediately drew my attention. This was the first
time I’d ever seen him…
glum
. He
looked absolutely
miserable
, and I
relished the sight of it…even if it pulled at my heartstrings a little.

No
, I had to remind myself.
He did this.

“Saffron, I
know that I’ve been…difficult.”

“Hah,” I
snorted. “
Difficult
. That’s
one
word for it.”

“You don’t understand,”
he confessed, averting his gaze.”

“
What
don’t I understand, Sawyer?” I
demanded to know. “That you’ve treated me like a second-rate citizen since we
met? That you’re an unapologetic
prick?
Fill me in by all means, because I think I pretty much get the gist of it.”

“Saffron.” He
said my name with some backbone this time, his eyes glaring down at me.

“Oh, look.
He’s
mad
now.” I was enjoying this. I
had never gotten to experience him at anything less than 100% unadulterated
jackass, and it was a treat to see him…wait, was he
nervous?

“I don’t
expect you to get it,” he told me, clearly restraining himself from…something.
What, I didn’t know. “But I want you to know that I don’t
hate
you. Not at all.”

“You’ve done
a pretty shit job of communicating that for the last, oh, I don’t know,
ever.
”

“I know,” he
continued. “But I promise I’ll be…better at it, from now on. I might have gone
too far.”

“Yeah, you
think?
”

“Look…why
don’t you come downstairs? We can sit down and chat for a while. I can explain
some of the things that I’ve been up to, and you can tell me the same about
yourself.”

“Oh my god.
Sawyer Samuels wants a heart-to-heart.”

His
expression darkened.
Crap. I pushed him
too far.

“Look, we’re
going to be here for awhile, I’m extending a fucking olive branch, Saffron. If
you don’t want it, then don’t get pissed when–”

“No, you’re
right,” I suddenly cut him off. Something in me had changed, and I couldn’t let
the opportunity get away. “That sounds nice. I’ll be right down.”

He nodded
before walking down the hallway. I could hear the stairs squeak slightly as he
descended, and I turned my back to the door.

Since when does he give a shit about me?

Mustering up
every once of patience I had, I wandered downstairs. I wasn’t willing to lose
this chance, so I played along…at least, until I figured out if he was just
playing the
long con
now. Cautiously,
I sat down at the dining room table again, realizing that every trace of the
spilled spaghetti had been erased. I don’t know why it surprised me –
maybe I just thought he wasn’t the type to clean much up himself.

“So, you
wanted to…talk?” I asked, uncertainly.

“Saffron,
would you like to know what I’ve been doing for a living?”

“Do I
want
to know?”

“Come on,” Sawyer
pleaded. He looked uncharacteristically strained, and I couldn’t tell if I
should be afraid or not. “Just be straight with me.”

“Alright.
Tell me.”

He took a
deep breath, forcing the first genuine smile I’ve seen him give me. “I’m an
underground cage fighter.”

“You’re a
what?
”

“A cage
fighter.”

So THAT’s why he was at that place last night.

“…Well, that
explains the incredible body…”

I immediately
realized that my face was beginning to redden, and I turned away from his bare
musculature. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice.