Splintered Oak (Winsor Series Book 3) (16 page)

The guard watched me carefully as I pushed through all the doors, slamming each one with force. The hot, stale air outside didn’t help, and I leaned over to grab my knees, praying it would help me catch my breath. The card Bruce had handed me worked free from my pocket and landed right in front of me as I stared at the ground. Feeling desperate, I reached down to pick it up and ran full speed to my car.

The gym was easy to find. It was just a small building within a large outdoor shopping center. Appropriately named
The Storm
, I could see wrestling rings, boxing equipment, and weight training benches through the large windows facing the parking lot. My hands were still shaking as I approached the building and turned off my phone. Issy’s continual phone calls were only infuriating me more.

Stopping on the sidewalk to consider my next move, I completely missed the reception guy from Bruce’s office as he approached me.

“Hey Jake. Didn’t expect to see you so soon,” he offered lightly, opening the door for both of us. When I didn’t move, he paused. “You going in?”

I stared at him, still a little undecided and lost in thought.

He sensed my hesitation and shut the door again before approaching me. “There is a room in the back that’s completely secluded from anyone. It has boxing gloves, a bag, and really, really loud music. It wont kill the demons, but you can chase them away for a little while.”

I just nodded and followed him in this time when he opened the door, unable to say anything for fear I would explode or worse, start to have an anxiety attack. 

The smell of sweat and plastic assaulted me as I walked into the small gym. Each ring was full of athletes; some were boxing, some wrestling. They all wore gear on their heads and some seemed to have a coach or trainer yelling at them while they worked their way around the ring. To my left were treadmills and weight equipment being used by even more men lost in their training regiments.

“This way,” the guy said as he guided me past the check in desk and down a small hallway. We stopped at a room that looked like it had been converted from an old racquetball court. In the center was a boxing bag just hanging there silently as if daring anyone to touch it. The room was equipped with a bench, shelving, and it’s own stereo system.

My guide pulled back on one of the heavy doors and let me walk past him into the room.

“Bruce calls this room
Apocalypse
. Kind of appropriate, huh?”

Still not speaking, I tossed aside my jacket, removed my tie and began unbuttoning my stiff cotton shirt. I could see the gloves and tape on the shelf and could almost hear my body crying out for them.

“I’m Matt, by the way,” he continued, putting out his hand.

I shook it quickly and then walked over to start taping my hands. Realizing I had no idea what I was doing, Matt followed me and took the tape out of my hand.

“I spent some time in juvie before I met Bruce. He’d come and do these group Bible studies with us and we’d go because it got us out of work detail. Most of us saw the meeting as a joke until we walked in and saw him. Honestly, he scared the crap out of us so we all just shut up and listened. After a while of listening, I finally started hearing. It changed everything.”

He spoke while he taped until he finally sensed my need for silence. I wasn’t here for his life story, and I certainly didn’t care about how he found religion. Eyeing me closely, he continued to help me slide on the gloves and then turned on the stereo, increasing the volume until I nodded at him.

Ready to go, I turned to the bag and stared at it for a long time. Then suddenly, I saw Grant’s face on the red plastic, and anger surged through me. The initial punch made my arm tingle and my abs burn, but it also released some of the intense fury that had been building for what felt like years. The punching continued as the bag morphed from Grant to Avery’s future husband to Andrew to Robbie to the image I had of my father, and finally to me.

My image on the bag brought the biggest surge of violence as I pummeled the face that had stared at me in the mirror for so many years. I was a failure, a fraud. The outside so perfect, but the inside so jagged that it
wounded everyone who had the misfortune of loving me. Wounds so deep that eventually they all abandoned the cause for the sheer hope of self-preservation. Issy’s leaving was inevitable, Avery’s too, and Naomi was next. Part of me hoped her exit would be sooner rather than later, because the idea of hurting her made me sicker than Issy’s betrayal did.

I swung and swung until my arms were numb and my white undershirt was thoroughly soaked with sweat. Exhaustion gripped me, but I continued to beat the bag until the energy was completely drained from my body, and I had no ability to even lift one of my arms.

The rage was finally gone. I stood, motionless, the sound of my steady breathing the only noise in the room as the CD had finished a while ago. Grasping the glove with my arm, I pulled my hand free and shook it until the feeling slowing began to return. I did the same with the other, and within minutes I had the tape falling into the trashcan. While my jellied muscles had gotten most of the feeling back in them, I realized that inside I was completely numb. Without the rage, there was nothing left.

18
. FIGHTING BACK

NAOMI

I was furious by the time Jonathan pulled back into the parking space at school, four hours after we had all left for a “quick” lunch. Slamming the door, I took off in a sp
eed walk toward my car without saying a word to anyone. I could hear him calling me, but I didn’t care.

It took him several minutes to catch up with me, but when he finally did, he halted my steps by grabbing my arm.

“Naomi, stop. I’ll drive you to your car, okay? Why are you so mad?” His face was completely baffled.

The fact that he had no idea what he did wrong just infuriated me more. I turned, pulling my arm free, and glared at him. “Are you k
idding me? You knew I had plans tonight, Jonathan. You knew I was worried about the time, but you didn’t care.”

“I didn’t know they wanted to go to the mall when I asked you to come. I didn’t want to be rude and tell them no.”

“Of course you didn’t, so you chose instead to be rude to me. To not consider the fact that I was trapped there with you. I’m not at your beck and call, Jonathan. I know that’s a hard concept for you, but I do have a life now, and friends. I made promises that I now have no choice but to break because of you, and that is simply not okay!” I was yelling now and only stopped because Jonathan looked completely stunned.

“I’m sorry,” he pleaded, trying to get closer to me. I stepped away, unwilling to touch him. “I know I messed up, but cut me a little slack, Naomi. You’ve been one way for nineteen years and now you are suddenly this different person. There’s a bit of a learning curve for me.”

Shaking my head in frustration, I forced myself to take a deep breath and calm down. “That’s just it. Old me, new me. It shouldn’t matter. You should have considered me today and you should have considered me back then.”

Noting that my voice had calmed a little, Jonathan reached out again and slowly pulled my arms free from their tense position across my chest.

“So are you this mad because of today or because of before? I can’t change before. I was an idiot, but I can try and do better. Listen, I’ll come with you. Two hands are better than one and we can get things done twice as fast. I’ll even have dinner with Issy and Jake.”

His offer was sweet and considerate, but I knew immediately I didn’t want him there. My mind questioned why, but I didn’t have time to analyze it.

“That’s a really nice offer, but you have practice. I don’t want you missing it for me.”

Jonathan pulled me close, wrapping his arms around my waist. “You sure? Cause I would. I don’t think you realize how much I want this to work between us.”

My head began to pound as he moved in to kiss my cheek slowly, intimately.

“You forgive me?” he asked softly, kissing the other one this time, closer to my ear.

I slowly eased out of his grip and nodded, forcing a smile. Mostly, I just wanted to escape and every minute we spent talking was one less I was working. The meat was probably already bone dry and I still had to go by the grocery store.

Jonathan let go of me reluctantly and finished walking me to my car. Once I was safely tucked inside, he squatted down and put his left hand on my thigh, squeezing it a little.

“We okay?” he asked, looking intently at me.

“Yes, we’re fine.”

“Okay. Call me tonight then when you’re finished.” Before I could protest, he moved his right hand to my neck and pulled me down for a goodbye kiss. It was sweet and caring, and I couldn’t help but kiss him back.

Satisfied, he stood back up and shut the door, waving at me as I pulled out of the parking lot.

My mind was a mess the entire drive home, partly due to the intense pain of a headache that had started hours before and partly due to the stress of knowing I was responsible for a dinner that I hadn’t even really started.

Jake’s car was already in his parking space when I pulled in, making me feel even worse. Grabbing my school bag and purse, I rushed to the door, almost missing the fact that Jake sat in his car, gripping the steering wheel. I finished unlocking the door and set my stuff inside before approaching his car.

“Jake? Are you okay?” I knocked on his window a little.

The door opened, forcing me to step back and Jake slowly stood from the car. His appearance shocked me. Wet from head to toe, Jake looked completely spent. His wet shirt pulled as he suddenly captured me in an embrace so fierce that I had no choice but to hug him back. He was like a man drowning and holding on to me as if his life depended on it.

Pressed against his chest, sweat and a smell that was uniquely his, bombarded my senses. Jake’s masculinity seemed to be pouring off of him, and I felt that fire form again in the pit of my stomach.

“Jake?” I started to pull away a little, needing some distance.

His grip tightened. “Please don’t say anything. I can’t take another rejection today. I just need one more minute.”

His voice was so broken and desperate that I felt tears hit my eyes a little. I continued to hold him until he moved away. He grabbed his keys and shut up his car before heading into the apartment, still silent.

I followed, still completely unsure of what was going on. Issy wasn’t with him and I immediately sensed that had something to do with his strange behavior.

Jake grabbed a
bottle of water from the fridge as I shut the front door. Approaching him, I could smell the meat and knew immediately it had been cooking too long.

“Dinner might end up being take out after all,” I mused, turning off the slow cooker. “Do you think Issy will hate me?”

Jake let out a bitter laugh. “I have no idea what goes on in Issy’s head.” His voice was empty, shockingly so. Jake was usually emotional extremes, either high or low, but never just flat. Tonight he was flat.

I watched him tentatively, not sure if it was the calm before the storm or not. “So is she still coming over?”

Jake just shook his head and walked to his bedroom. “No.” Then he disappeared.

I stood in the kitchen, completely unsure of what to do. There had obviously been something big that went down today and I was apparently out of the loop. The only thing I felt sure of was the fact that dinner was not going to happen. Dumping the overcooked meat into the trash, I began cleaning up the mess I had left when I rushed out to class that morning. The work calmed me a little, but I still had that gnawing feeling in my gut.

Unable to make it go away, I picked up the phone and called Issy. No answer. For some reason that just made me more anxious. I grabbed my stuff from beside the door and convinced myself that I was being ridiculous. My head was still pounding and I needed to just take an aspirin and relax.

Minutes later, my phone rang from the other room and I bolted back to it, sure it was Issy calling
me back. It wasn’t; instead the screen showed a number I didn’t recognize. I hesitated at first, but then felt compelled to answer it.

“Hello?”

“Naomi?” a frantic voice asked from the other line. “Hey, this is Grant. I’m so sorry to bother you, but I can’t seem to get ahold of Issy or Jake. I know they’re fine, but I just can’t shake this feeling I have.” He kind of laughed off the concern radiating from his voice and then continued. “Anyway, I’m on my way home. I can’t stand the distance any longer. I know Jake is with her, so will you just let them know I’m coming?”

“Jake is here, Grant, but I don’t know where Issy is. I think they had s
ome kind of fight because Jake was acting very strange.”

The other line went eerily silent and that feeling in my gut got even more extreme when Grant’s panicked voice came back on the line.

“Naomi, I need you to do me a huge favor, okay? I need you to go to our condo and stay with Issy for me. I’ll be home in two hours tops. The pilot is doing the final check right now.”

“Okay, sure. I’ll head that way now,” I promised. “Grant, what is going on?”

“I’m sure it’s nothing. I know I am over the top in trying to make sure she’s safe. There is a man from her past who is unstable. He hasn’t shown himself, so I’m sure it’s fine, but I don’t like her to be alone.”

I promised him again I would head right over there. Grabbing my keys, I knocked on Jake’s door. “Jake, I’m going to Issy’s okay? Do you want to come?” I called through the door.

It swung open in a fury, making me step back. Jake stood, a towel wrapped loosely around his waist.  His chest looked every bit as striking as I remembered, and I quickly averted my eyes.

“Don’t mention Issy to me again,” he demanded. “You want to be friends with her, fine, but I’m done. Understand?”

I glanced back, careful to avoid his exposed chest. His face was no longer void. His green eyes were stormy, and I could see the muscles in his neck tighten as he stood there. He didn’t wait for my response, just slammed the door again.

“Okay,” I said to myself as I left the apartment. This was definitely going down as the strangest day on record.

I pulled into the somewhat empty parking lot across from her building. Parking always got lighter as we approached the end of the workday. It was pushing five now, so most people were on their way home. Pressing the buzzer in front, I waited for the click that always meant entry. Nothing came. I buzzed again, but still no answer.

Just to be sure, I pulled on th
e front door and surprisingly the heavy metal opened without any resistance. Stranger still was that both of the guards were missing from the lobby, leaving me free to go straight to the elevators. Thankful I had the override code for Issy’s condo, I punched in the number and tried to calm the ripple of anxiety that shot through me.

The elevator opened to an empty room, and I immediately called out Issy’s name. No response. I looked around the living room and my nerves got even more intense. Lamps were knocked over and the couch looked like it had been pushed back haphazardly. Glass also lay broken on the kitchen floor.

“Issy?” I called again, slowly making my way to the back bedrooms.

The guest room and bathroom were empty and looked untouched. Her room was open and, at first glance, appeared to be empty as well. I moved towards it, calling her name again. I could see as
I approached that furniture had also been thrown around in the space.

Stepping in the doorway, I gasped at the mess in front of me. Chairs overturned, frames and lamps knocked over, sheets pulled to the floor; it looked like world war III had occurred in there. I turned to my right and my heart completely stopped beating. Against the wall, Issy stood pinned with her mouth completely covered by his hand. I knew him--he was the same man that threatened Jake in the park.

“Oh Naomi, always in the wrong place at the wrong time, aren’t you?” His cold voice traveled through me like razor blades.

Issy was crying, and I watched the tears flow down her battered face. Blood ran down her neck and pooled between her bra, which had been exposed because of her torn blouse. Finger marks were already showing on her neck and arms. His clothes were also pul
led and torn, making me realize that Issy must have been putting up a serious fight. The danger of the situation soon hit me, leaving me frozen in fear.

I watched helplessly as Robbie pulled out a syringe and removed the top with his gloved hand. “You’re going to take a little trip,” he whispered to her. “While I deal with Jake’s girl.”

Robbie then turned to me and smiled. “Be sure to thank him for me. Without his valuable information, I would never have pulled this off.”

Issy and my eyes widened in shock at the same time, and she tried once again to fight him. Weak from the previous battles, she barely moved him. He leaned in to whisper one more thing as the needle struck her arm. “I am a man of my word, Isadora. If I can’t have you, then no one can.”

His harsh words seemed to be the thing that got my brain functioning again. Issy slowly dropped to the floor, her pupils dilating as the liquid moved through her blood stream. I needed to move…now. My first instinct was to run to her, but I was acutely aware that I now had Robbie’s full attention. His eyes were predatory and sinister, sending tingles down every part of my body as I tried to mentally process the next step.

Backing away, I heard Alex’s voice boom in my head.

If you are ever attacked, first try to run. Escaping is always the best defense.

I contemplated fleeing
as I approached the living room, but knew it wasn’t an option to leave Issy here, vulnerable to him.

If you can’t run, then prepare yourself to fight. Watch his every move; be fully aware of your surroundings.

I kept my eyes steady on the hallway, waiting for him to come. I quickly glanced around for something I could use as a weapon, but everything available had already been thrown across the room.

Robbie soon appeared, pulling at his gloves to tighten them. He looked almost pleased as he approached me.

Watch the shoulders. It is the first indication of where they will attack. As soon as
they move, go for the groin. The hit will immobilize them so you can get away.