Hard (12 page)

“Of course you do,” she says. “You’re coming
to fight night tonight, aren’t you?”

“Am I?” I say.

“What, you have a hot date?” Shelby says.

I shake my head. “No.”

“You have a not-hot date?”

I laugh and shake my head.

“Jealous baby daddy?”

“No kids,” I say. I take in a breath, stand a little
taller. “Actually, I’m just out of a relationship.”
The confession is easier to make the second time.

“Good,” she says. “Then you have no excuse.”

“I don’t think I’m on the list or anything,
though,” I say.

Avery waves her hand. “Please,” she says. “You’ll
be with us. At fight night, we’re above the list.”

“But will Ryder mind if I just show up?” I say. “We’re
not exactly besties at the moment.”

“Don’t even think about Ryder,” Shelby says. “He’s
way too independent and jaded to be anything other than a perfect
fling, not your future. Definitely not a reason to miss all the other
gorgeous guys who’ll be there.”

“Ryder’s just that first pancake that preps your
griddle,” Ruby says. “Soaks up all the grease and then
gets tossed out so the rest of the batch turns out right.”

“Are you saying Cassie has a greasy griddle?” Avery says,
cocking an eyebrow.

Ruby smacks her gently on the butt. “I’m sure Cassie’s
griddle is pristine.” She nods at me. “But Ryder’s
not the only pancake in the world it’ll heat up.”

In the small dressing room of the boutique, still wearing the red
stilettos, I have the black dress Shelby picked out half zipped when
my cell phone rings in my tote bag. Only a handful of people have
this new American number in the first place and I’m with a
third of them right now, so normally I wouldn’t answer a call
that says
Blocked
.

But normally a lump doesn’t form in my throat when I get a
blocked call either.

Jamie.

Calling from prison. The inside of a car trunk. The last pay phone in

downtown
Tijuana where he’s stranded and penniless and scared.

I
close my eyes, suck in my breath. “Hello?” I say.

“Hello,
love,” a male voice says on the other end of the line. Deep and
clear.

And
accented.

Sebastian.

Barely
able to inhale much less respond, I hang up, throwing the phone into
my bag and closing the top, the way you might trap a poisonous snake
that was about to take a bite.

I
can hear my heartbeat, like the beating of a kettle drum that shakes
my whole body, as it fills my ears, underscores the questions that
run together in my mind:
How did he get this number? Why is he
calling me?

Where
the fuck is he?

The
phone rings again
.
I’m too paralyzed even to silence it,
letting it buzz in the oblivion of my bag.

“Cass,
let’s see the dress,” Shelby says. I can hear her and
Ruby and Avery chattering and laughing, same as a few minutes ago
when I was right there with them, smiling and giggling, before the
world leaned over, the axis no longer upright, the orbit no longer
predictable.

Out
of sight, out of mind: that’s what I’d assumed my
disappearance would be for Sebastian.

Or
maybe not assumed, exactly. Maybe really, if I’m honest with
myself, I’d just hoped that’s how he’d feel. That
if I shut him out, left one morning without saying why and never came
back he’d forget about me the same way I wanted to forget about
him.

Because
he knows why I left. Whether he wants to admit it or not.

My
voicemail alert tinkles, muffled in my bag. Of course—after all
this time, did I really think not listening would deter Sebastian
from speaking anyway? Persistence is his talent, part of why he’s
so successful as an investment banker, even one of the things I first
liked about him. His courtship was so intentional—surprise
dinners after my day at the auto shop, little gifts all the time,
flowers and jewelry and lingerie.

So
much attention. It took me a while to figure out there’s a
difference between being showered and smothered, that his constant
focus wasn’t about making me happy. It was about him keeping
control.

I
sink to the stool bolted into the dressing room wall, let my head
fall back, and close my eyes, shutting out the present. It’s
such a basic response, isn’t it? When we don’t want to
see something or know something is there, we cover our face, block
out the view. And we assume, kind of feel reassured, that because we
can’t see the monster, it doesn’t exist. It won’t
hurt us. It’s not real.

But
it is real. And it’s left me a message.

I
sigh and dig the phone out of my bag. As much as I want to, it seems
pointless to ignore the voicemail.

And potentially harmful not to get all the information I can since he
obviously has more about me than I’d thought he did.

I
play the message:
Seems we have a connection problem, love. Surely
you aren’t just avoiding my call when you must know that all
I’ve done since you’ve been gone is think about you. When
I’m home, every sound I hear I imagine it’s you at our
doorstep, every ring of my mobile, I expect to hear your voice. I’m
growing tired of waiting for you to regain your senses. It’s
time to come home, Cassie. There’s no reason to drag this out
another moment. I’m not letting you go without a fight, and you
know how I fight. To the death. Cheers, love. See you soon, I’m
sure.

My
finger shakes as I press delete.

My
mom told me once that anger and fear are relational, that often we’re
mad because we’re afraid. Anger is a way to cover the emotions
that make us vulnerable, exposed, weak. It makes us feel in charge in
times when we’re not.

Hearing
Sebastian’s voice again, the menace thinly veiled by his
charming British accent, certainly brings back a lot of memories that
I usually only revisit in my nightmares, and my body tenses
instinctively.

But my muscles don’t twitch just because I’m scared of
him and what he wants. What he might be capable of. The fury I feel
now is just as real as the fear. With some distance from the source,
finally, it might even be realer this time than usual.

“Cassie,
get your tiny ass out here,” Shelby says. “Or we’re
coming in there.”

I
take a deep breath, standing to zip the dress the rest of the way. I
open the door’s latch and step out of the stall.

Shelby’s
standing in the entryway between the dressing room hall and the
boutique, wearing one of the other black dresses she had taken off
the rack, a V-neck halter top and mini skirt sewn into a lacy
overlay. She claps her hands together when she sees me. “Oh my
God, Cassie. It’s killer.”

I give a small smile, which deflates her big grin a little. “You
okay?” she says. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

Heard one is more like it.

I widen my smile hoping maybe the physical act of seeming happy will
dissolve—or at least hide—whatever uncertainty
Sebastian’s phone call has provoked. “I just haven’t
gotten this dressed up in a while,” I say, fidgeting with the
high hem of the dress. “I guess I feel a little out of my
comfort zone.”

“Well, you look like you’ll fit right in,” she
says. She guides me to the threeway mirror where for the first time I
see myself in the dress, in triplicate, no less. The front of the
dress hugs me just right, the top curving around my boobs, shapely
without being too tight, but the back is what makes it special: a
straight, thin strip of fabric runs from the neck to the top of my
butt, intersecting with a strip crossing just beneath my shoulder
blades, like a low cross.

Avery
and Ruby join us. “Perfection,” Avery says. “Fight
night fierce.”

“It’s
really not too bad, is it?” I say, turning sideways to take
another look at my profile.

“Total
fucking knock out,” Shelby says. She stands behind me, her
hands on my bare shoulders.

“It’ll
definitely knock Ryder out,” Ruby says.

“I
can’t wait to see the look on his face,” Avery says.

I pull down the zipper slightly, just enough to give my cleavage a
chance at a little attention, and strike a pose: hands on my hips,
lips pursed, stomach sucked in. “I can’t wait to see the
bulge in his pants.”

Shelby laughs. “That’s the spirit,” she says. “That
man doesn’t know what he’s messing with.”

I turn to look into the open stall where my tote bag sits with my
iPhone tucked inside, quiet for the moment, and I stand taller,
straighter as I think how my answering the next time it rings is no
guarantee. It’s entirely up to me.

I put an arm around Shelby. “None of them ever do,” I
say.

CASSIE

High heels and cuff links, money and blood: fight night is at the
same time more civilized and more primitive than I ever would have
imagined.

The
air smells of sweat and perfume, the music from the DJ’s corner
punctuated by the grunts of the shirtless guys battling it out in the
middle of the floor. “They’re such brutes,”
Savannah says next to me. She grins. “I love it.”

I’d invited her along, figuring she’d enjoy meeting
Shelby and Ruby and Avery, and also thinking that if I were going to
tell her all about it later I might as well just bring her to see for
herself. I had a hunch that describing fight night in the serene
atmosphere of brunch at Sunrise Café wouldn’t do it full
justice.

It’s
well past midnight by now, but the crowd’s energy only seems to
increase as the hour grows later. I wear the red stilettos and little
black dress with the gold zipper I ended up buying this afternoon at
the Virginia Highland boutique. From the way Ryder’s been
looking at me all night, like a lone wolf eyeing a fawn, they may be
the best purchases I’ve ever made.

We’ve
only spoken once since I arrived. He happened to be near the entrance
when I came in with Shelby and Avery and Ruby and Savannah, talking
to some guy in a black leather jacket, wearing a suit similar to the
one he had on at my house that night he came looking for Jamie. Only
a couple weeks ago. Seems like a long time.

“You’re the last person I ever expected to see here,”
Ryder said as I approached them, trailing behind the girls.

I rolled my eyes. “Didn’t mean to disappoint you, boss.”

“I didn’t say that,” he said. “So, does this
mean I’m forgiven?”

I smiled and batted my eyes. “I didn’t say that,” I
said. “Forgiveness is something you earn.” He raised his
eyebrows and grinned. “Confucius says to be wrong is nothing
unless you continue to remember it.”

“Wow,” I said. “Thanks for the deep thought.”

“I can go as deep as you want, tiger,” he said. He
reached for my arm, but missing it, grabbed my hand instead, his
fingers wrapped tightly around mine. “New dress?” His
palm was warm but rough, the hands of someone who actually uses them.
He pushed me away without letting me go, to give me a once-over.

“Brand-spankin’.”

He tugged me toward his chest, close enough for me to imagine
touching the hardness of his pecs under the softness of his button-up
shirt, like feeling a phantom pain. Or pleasure. “What do you
do if the zipper gets stuck?” he said.

I
tilted my chin toward him. Even in the heels, I’m still a good
half a foot shorter than he is. “Just pull it over my head, I
guess,” I said. “Or ask whoever I’m with to do it.”
I slid my hand from his grip and walked away to join Savannah by the
ring, feeling like I’d just played with fire but it was the
flame that got burned.

The
flow of the evening’s activities are seamless and endless.
Ryder, no surprise, seems to have managing this affair down to a
science. He’s clearly in his element here, his quiet command of
the environment a contrast to the live wire activity all around us.
Despite the relaxed look of his five-o’clock shadow, his
tie-less shirt, he’s all business in his dark suit, his swagger
even more sexy than usual as he weaves through the sea of people
while he watches the fights, the bets being made, the drinks being
bought.

While
he watches me.

The
hunter thinks he’s in charge because he has the big gun, but a
truth of the wild is this: the hunted wields power, too. It’s
her willingness to be caught, after all, that makes him a hunter in
the first place.

In
the ring, the two fighters circle each other, fists up, their torso
muscles constricted, their eyes only on each other. I think about how
upset I was to imagine Jamie as one of these guys, taking hits for
the amusement of a crowd and some cash, but being here now, in the
moment, it’s hard not to get swept up in the spectacle, the
heat of two bodies battling for dominance. It’s controlled
danger, and from the sounds of the cheers as the fighters throw their
punches, I’m not the only one who feels more alive in its
presence.

“Did
you make a wager?” the guy standing next to me says. Like
everyone else in here, he’s dressed for a nightclub more than
what you’d expect for a fight club, his button-up shirt
pressed, his pricey jeans ripped in all the right places.

I
shake my head. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

“What
kind of girl are you?” he says, stepping closer.

I
rub my lips together and smile. “The thirsty kind,” I
say.

“I
can take care of that.” He nods at Savannah who stands on the
other side of me. “Two beers?”

“I’m
definitely not the kind of girl who takes drinks from strangers,”
I say, heading toward the bar in a front corner of the warehouse by
the entrance. “But I’m happy to buy a stranger one.”

“A
beer for me and body shots for you two?”

Savannah
raises an eyebrow. “It’s late, but it’s not that
late yet,” she says.