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I know how hard it is to accept any help. At the same time, I need to make damn sure he fucking knows he is wanted and needed here.
Jagger and Tatiana are back and manning the desk, which is a good fucking thing, because I need to take out this frustration on something to quiet the rage that is increasing.
I hit the heavy bag, left then right then left again, while I think about what I want to do to whoever it is that messed up his face and to him for putting himself in the situation, whatever it was.
And then there is Tatum and that fucking book. No sense in going after it now. She wanted it bad enough to come here and get it after I walked away and broke a promise to her while keeping one to myself, then I am damn sure hope she reads it.
Fucking embarrassing.
She wants a muse. A man who looks like the guys on the covers of those fucking books; books she doesn’t even want to read, yet she is now writing.
Her words, they get me all sorts of worked up.
For the first time since I can remember, I bared myself in the words I put down, in this crazy game of Mad Libs we have been playing. I got too involved. I want nothing more than Jonathon and Annie to be me and Tatum, yet I can’t do that to her. I’m damned.
Doesn’t she see that I’m tainted? In the world of saints and sinners, I am so far removed I’m death walking, while she wants to live again.
I deserve no life. Maria, she deserved the world. It was taken because I waited too long. The end result is always the same. I would kill the fucker, anyway. Even today, draining the life from his body isn’t what haunts me at night. It’s my sister, it’s my father’s loss of his children, and it’s society’s judgment.
They labeled me a monster, and I am one. I feel no remorse for taking his life. Never have and never will.
Tatum keeps trying to see beyond that. In that journal, in those words, I gave her just enough for her to find hope. Hope for her, hope for me, when there is no hope.
Every pound on the bag only has my skin crawling more with the need for her to see she needs to walk away. I’m tainted. I am the damned.
When I’m done beating up the bag, I walk over to the desk and grab a premade shake from the fridge and swallow it down.
“Where did little fuck go?” Jagger asks.
“He’s upstairs. Gonna stay here for a while. We need to give him some work.”
“So, we’re rewarding him for his bullshit?” he snarls.
I turn and look him in the eyes. “We’re keeping him safe. Both of us agree he has a shot at something you and I never did. He gets killed or falls with the wrong kind, he never will.”
He shakes his head in disparagement.
“Not up for discussion.”
“He spouts off again—”
“He spouts off again, take it out in the cage; never outside of it. Contain it, Jagger,” I tell him.
He shakes his head. “What the hell happened to you?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Tatiana elbows him and gives him a look.
“Nothing, man, nothing at all.”
“Good,” I say before walking away toward the ring. “Tito, you ready?”
“You just beat the shit out of that bag for an hour, man; are you ready?” He laughs.
“I’m always ready, smartass.”
Buck doesn’t come back down, and I never go looking. He needs sleep, and I need to exhaust myself before facing what I have invited into my life.
“Gonna head out. You two lock up tonight?” I ask my business partner and his wife.
“You got a date?” Jagger snickers.
I feel my eyebrow inching up with words of warning tipping on my tongue. That’s when Tatiana gives him an elbow to the ribs, silencing him.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going out to grab a mattress for Buck.”
“Take the truck,” Jagger says, tossing me the keys to Shaw’s old rebuilt Ford F100.
“The thing running today?” I joke.
He winks. “Always running. Just waiting for a driver.”
It’s been years since I drove, and this thing... it’s a stick shift.
“Like riding a bike,” I remind myself as I turn the key, and the old engine roars to life.
Chapter Fifteen
His words, needs, desires; my words, needs, desires—all of it has me in such an unbelievable and out of control state. One that, regardless of how much I try, I can’t ignore. I won’t.
Dressed in a black wrap dress and high heels, Italian takeout in my arms, I walk toward Legacy with a clear intent. Then I stop when I see him climbing out of a truck that has a massive mattress hanging over the tailgate.
