Totaled (15 page)

“What do you mean, he said I didn’t look good? Like what?” I fired off. I didn’t want to care, but I did. I completely cared what this guy thought of me and it pissed me off.

“He asked where you were and I told him you were at home sick and he said that when he saw you, you didn’t look good. That’s all. He told me to tell you that he hopes you feel better. And he offered to pick me up and drive me to the gym to train later today. He’s nice. I think we might be friends,” he commented innocently.

“He’s coming here? Like, here? To this house? Oh my God. No! I mean, I’m just not exactly presentable…for company.”
This is about to be an epic disaster.
Liam was looking at me like I had lost my ever loving mind, confused and almost…frightened at my reaction. “And I…I don’t want to get him sick,” I rambled, trying to cover my mania with acting concerned for Drew’s well-being instead of concerned for my haggard appearance.

“So I’ll meet him outside,” Liam countered, furrowing his brows.

“Well, when is he supposed to be here? How does he know where we live?” I asked.

“Around noon, he said. We were going to go eat lunch somewhere and then head to the gym. He knows where we live because I told him. Why are you acting so weird?” Liam asked suspiciously.

“I’m not. I mean, I guess I just don’t feel well still. Sorry. You guys have fun. Be careful. I’m going back to bed now,” I said, retreating to the safety of my room. Slamming my bedroom door, I pressed my back against it and sank down onto the floor. What the hell was going on with me? I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t like this panicked feeling. I didn’t like it one bit.

I sat at my desk and stared at the wall. About half an hour went by and I heard a car pull up outside. Like a moth drawn to a flame, I couldn’t resist peeking out my blinds, already knowing what I would see. Drew got out of his black SUV and headed towards the front door, only to be met by Liam coming out of it. They both smiled, Liam said something, and suddenly Drew turned and looked right at my window, like he could sense me spying on him. He looked disappointed, maybe even a little worried. He paused for only a second, looked down again, and got into his vehicle. They reversed out of the driveway and were gone in mere seconds. I almost felt robbed, like I didn’t get to look at him long enough.

Standing quickly from my desk chair, I stripped my sandy sheets from my bed and threw them in the washing machine. I put a spare set of sheets from the linen closet over my mattress and went into my bathroom next. After straightening up my counter, wiping my mirror, scrubbing my toilet bowl with bleach cleanser, and sweeping hair off of the bathroom floor, I couldn’t find any more busy work within my room to distract me from my thoughts of Drew.

Liam’s words resonated in my ears and hit my brain like a freight train. “He’s nice. I think we might be friends,” he had said to me, with hope and excitement in his voice. Liam has never had many friends. People in school were both intimidated and scared of him, or teased him mercilessly, calling him “retard” or “moron” non-stop. He was finally at a point in his life where things were going well for him. Despite his intellectual level being that of a nine year old, so the “experts” told us, he was functional and doing well. We’d been told that he would never achieve an academic level above a sixth grader, yet he earned his high school diploma with only one additional year of instruction. Sometimes he regressed to behaving like a pre-adolescent, especially in times of stress or change, but other times I could swear that he understood everything as I did. Socially, he was improving, and often people who didn’t know him wouldn’t even know that he was mentally impaired. This could be his opportunity to excel in a skill that he was truly gifted at. I was determined to do anything I could to help him. I willed myself in that moment to make it right with Drew. Not only could I not allow my weird hormonal interest in him to go too far, but I had to be nice. I didn’t want his potential resentment towards me to affect his relationship with Liam, be it strictly professional or an actual friendship.

I was going to apologize and be nice. I was going to control myself and my emotions. I could do this. I had to do this.

And I would start tomorrow.

Chapter Seventeen

BREE

Thankful that whatever stomach virus I’d been plagued with seemed to be gone, I dragged my behind into work at 6:00 am like usual. It was pointless to try to avoid the gym or Drew any longer. I barricaded myself in the office and hid behind stacks and mounds of busy work. I hadn’t seen anyone all day long, which wasn’t surprising since I didn’t even surface for lunch. I was nearly bug-eyed from staring at the computer screen for six hours straight when I finally decided to call it quits. With all of the clerical work caught up, I couldn’t wait to get home, pour a glass of cold sweet tea, and veg out with my latest romance novel.

I had successfully created an up-to-date statistical database for every fighter we were training. It was ambitious, but I completed it and was proud of my finished product. If I had to compute one more number on a statistics spreadsheet today, though, I was going to simultaneously go blind and lose my shit. I grabbed my backpack and water bottle and got up to leave. After closing the office door and checking that it was locked because a few stragglers were still training, I turned around to walk down the hallway, searching for my cell phone to text Liam that I was going to stop by the store on the way home. I turned the corner and ran straight into a brick wall, hard. Only it wasn’t a brick wall. It was Drew. I dropped my phone on the floor with a crash. The case came off, scattering into multiple pieces of broken plastic all over the floor, and my water bottle rolled away from me. My face instantly flushed and I apologized as I bent down to pick up all of my crap while I tried to hide my embarrassment.

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I probably should look where I’m going.” I could feel my face turning eight shades of red with embarrassment and my heart rate had increased instantly to full-on cardio workout level. I shook my head back and forth, thinking that I just couldn’t seem to keep it together around this guy.

“It’s okay. It was my fault. I’m sorry if I broke your phone,” he said shyly, bending down to help pick up my strewn belongings.

I could feel his eyes on me, but couldn’t bring myself to make eye contact with him. When I did finally bring my gaze up from the floor, I was rendered speechless.

Dear God, he was shirtless and glistening with sweat, with a towel draped around the back of his neck like he was a sweat towel super model, obviously having just gotten done training. I could see the edges of a tattoo peeking out from under the towel, apparently right over his heart, and ached to look at the entire thing.

“Oh no, I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’ve dropped it a hundred times. I really need to get a better case. Looks like I’ll have to now since this one is shattered. Are you headed out?” I tried to change the subject.

“Yeah, uh, actually…I was coming to try to find you. I haven’t seen you in a while. Liam said you were sick. Everything okay?” he asked, seeming genuine.

“Yes, I’m fine. Just a 24 hour bug, I guess. I’m feeling much better, though, thanks,” I said, feeling awkward by this whole line of questioning. I felt myself fidgeting, uneasy with how to behave in this situation. A few seconds of awkward silence passed between us before Drew finally spoke up.

“Okay, good. So, do you know where I can get a decent cup of coffee around here?” he asked. “I’m new in town and all and I don’t know where all of the good places are. I figured you would know. And I also wanted to talk to you about the other day.”

Oh my God. Here we go.

I chuckled and smiled. “Yes. Actually there’s a really nice little coffee shop a few blocks from here. Their coffee is phenomenal and they have great desserts too.”

“Phenomenal, huh?” he asked, smiling back at me. “Would you like to join me for a cup of coffee?” His expression was slightly shy, but he looked hopeful.

Is he asking me out? Like a date? Who cares? Say yes!

“Yes!”
Smooth
. “I mean, sure. I’d love a cup of coffee, actually. Thanks.”

“Okay, cool. Can you just give me a few minutes to get cleaned up?” he asked.

Actually, I would prefer you just take me to get coffee wearing those muscles and sweat.

“Sure, take your time. I’ll just take care of a few more things in the office while you shower.”
And try not to picture you naked the entire time.

About fifteen minutes later, Drew came to get me from the office wearing dark jeans and a heather gray t-shirt. His hair was still a little wet, enough to remind me that he’d just showered, which started the naughty images of his naked body again. I really needed to get a grip on my hormones if I was going to see him every day.

We walked down the street to the coffee shop and exchanged small talk about how nice the weather was and how cute our quaint little town was. I ordered a chai latte and he ordered an extra-large quad caramel macchiato with no whipped cream.
Interesting.
He paid for both of our drinks before I could even get my wallet out of my bag. I thanked him and followed him to a corner booth.

“So, about the other day—” he began.

“It’s okay,” I interrupted. “Can we just not talk about it? I am
so
sorry. I didn’t expect to see anyone down there. I usually go that far north because no one’s ever around and I can just be alone with my thoughts. You just startled me. I just, I don’t know. I saw your face and recognized you and felt horrible. I reacted the wrong way. I didn’t mean to be so rude to you. I’m usually not like that. I was just so embarrassed. And I feel awful that I went all rabid spider monkey on you and broke your nose without reason. I guess I owe you a double apology. Can we please just start over?” I pleaded.

“Sure,” he answered with a smile.

My God, he has a nice smile.

He reached his right hand out toward me and asked with kind eyes, “Truce?”

“Truce,” I replied and shook his large, strong, firm, masculine hand. I could’ve sworn I almost felt an electric jolt up my arm, like an energy transferring between us. It felt startling but reassuring at the same time.

“So you obviously train at the gym. You’ve got quite a right hand, so says my nose,” he joked.

“No, I actually don’t train, but I’ve taken a few of the self-defense classes we offer and mess around with Liam sometimes to practice my moves,” I answered. “I’m seriously so sorry about everything.”

“It’s really okay. I promise. It’s not my first broken nose. Although, I’m pretty sure I’m never going to be able to have kids now,” he blurted out, laughing.

My face instantly turned bright tomato red with embarrassment. I lowered my head to try to hide it but it was no use.

“I’m sorry. I’m just kidding. Hey, seriously. It’s fine. I promise,” he insisted. “You should really consider talking up martial arts though. You’re a natural.” He smiled and sipped his coffee. Smooth, confident, casual. He was nowhere near as uncomfortable as I was.

“You can tell all that by twenty seconds of received action?” I asked, immediately regretting that I said “action” like that.

“Well, not really, but I’m 6′4″ and 255 pounds of experienced fighter and you managed to almost knock me out. I saw stars and everything,” he admitted.

When he recited his physical statistics to me, sounding proud of his size, the MMA-loving section of my heart fluttered and high-fived the sexually charged section between my legs. The words coming out of his mouth sounded stronger and larger than me reading them on his gym application.

“Yeah, but you weren’t exactly attacking me,” I pointed out. “Or fighting back.”

“Eh,” he said with a shrug. “Regardless, you’re damn good. Think about it.”

We continued chatting back and forth casually as we drank our coffee and each ended up getting dessert. He caught me basically drooling over his lemon cake and offered me a bite.

Smiling at his effort to get a bite that had both cake and icing on the fork for me, he joked, “What? You need to get the whole experience.”

I appreciated the thoughtfulness and appreciated the taste of the cake even more, audibly groaning at how good it was in comparison to my carrot cupcake. I learned that he came here from Phoenix a few days ago, originally headed to Daytona for a “fresh start,” but detoured up here to Fernandina because our gym was actually recommended to him. Telling me that he needed a fresh start made a small red flag go up in the back of my mind, but I thought better of probing further. His body language told me that it wasn’t the right time for me to push.

“What do you mean, our gym was recommended to you? By who?” I questioned.

“Well, I met a man just outside of Jacksonville and he said he knew your father back in the day. Once he learned that I fought MMA, he told me that I just
had
to come and see Pat Murphy’s gym! I figured I didn’t really have a reason not to. I didn’t even really care where I was going, I just needed to be by the ocean. I guess Fernandina is as good a place as any,” he said.

I loved listening to his voice.

“Wait, who told you about my dad and the gym?” I asked, truly baffled at who he could be referring to.

“His name was Mick Spalding. He pulled over to help me when I broke down on the side of I-10 with a busted radiator. I ended up staying with him and his wife for a couple days while my truck got fixed. Nice guy.”

“That’s crazy. We’ve known Mick forever. He lived in Fernandina for the longest time but moved away to Baker County a few years back. When they put a name brand hardware store on A1A, he claimed it was getting ‘too city’ for him. I’m not at all surprised that he pulled over to help you. He was always picking up some stray to help. Not that I’m calling you a stray, of course. He just loves to help random people, animals, whatever. If you need something, and he finds out, it’s impossible to refuse him,” I explained. “We only get to see him at the shrimp festival every year, which is coming up next weekend, now that I think about it.”