Driving home from campus, I had a hard time not speeding with all the excitement flowing through me. Coach had called me into his office for a quick meeting before class, one where he told me the Minnesota Vikings had their eyes on me.
Now, I didn’t know one fucking thing about Minnesota other than it was damn cold, but the fact that a team knew my name, that I was on their radar, that I could be the missing piece in their offense that took them to the next level… it lit me up like nothing else in the world could.
The only thing I could think about was telling Mary.
I knew she’d have good news, too — a permanent position at the shop. And while I still had Nero on my radar for being a creep, he’d left her alone ever since that first time she’d told me he’d made her feel some type of way, and I knew this job was one Mary wanted more than anything.
I couldn’t wait to meet her good news with my own, to collide at the door as we both burst at the seams to tell the other every single detail. I couldn’t wait to take her upstairs and celebrate afterward, too — and I’d take my sweet ass time, regardless of the early wakeup call waiting for me in the morning.
My tires squealed a little bit when I pulled into the drive, and I noticed Mary’s car was already parked across the street. I all but skipped through the front door, hiking my bag up my shoulder and taking the stairs two at a time. I slung my bag into the corner as I opened the door to my bedroom — our bedroom? — and kicked my shoes off before pouncing on the bed where Mary was curled into a ball.
“Wake up, sleepyhead!” I started kissing all over her neck and shoulders, making them obnoxiously loud with my grin against her skin. “We have celebrating to do.”
But when Mary rolled over, everything inside me turned to ice.
She didn’t meet me with a face-splitting smile. She wasn’t jumping up and down and throwing herself on me as she spilled every detail of her job offer.
Instead, her face was red and puffy, eyes swollen, lashes wet.
She’d been crying.
And instantly, I was ready to kill.
“What happened?”
She shook her head, trying to pull me down into the sheets with her. “Forget it.”
“Absolutely not.” I pulled her gently until she was sitting up, her legs folded underneath her. I took her hands in mine and waited.
“He fired me.”
“What?!” I shook my head, jaw slack. I was completely dumbfounded. “How… why would he do that? You’ve been an apprentice for over a year. You’ve been killing it with your own clients for two months!”
“Which is why he offered me a chair of my own,” she said.
I blinked, confused. “Huh?”
She bit her lip against a wave of tears, finally meeting my gaze after taking a deep breath. “He offered me my own chair. Then, he gave me a hug, and proceeded to grind his erection into me and say he could think of a way or two to properly thank him.”
My soul left my body.
It hovered above us, listening as Mary continued, saying that when she’d turned him down, he’d taken everything back and fired her. I thought I also heard her say she kneed him in the balls, but I couldn’t even find joy in that.
My body was detached, a numb sort of fire crawling up my spine. My jaw ached with how tight it was, throat constricting with the need to scream.
That was it.
I was going to jail tonight.
Mary was still talking when I slid off the bed and wordlessly slid my sneakers back on.
“What are you doing?” she asked with a sniff.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think straight enough to answer her past the red-hot anger seeping through my every pore. Distantly, I heard my mom’s voice as if she were in the corner of the room.
Cálmate, mijo. Think.
I could even hear my father and Coach, as if they were one person, their arms crossed over their chests as they shook their heads.
Don’t do it. You’re risking your career.
I glanced back at Mary, and she blinked, recognition falling over her.
“No,” she said, loud and firm as she jumped up and ran to me.
“Someone needs to put that piece of shit in his place.”
“Leo, don’t!” Mary begged, her hand reaching out to snag my arm.
“He’s not going to touch you like that and get away with it.”
“It’s fine. I’m handling it. There are other places I can work.”
I shook my head. “That doesn’t excuse what he did.”
“I know it doesn’t, but I’m… figuring it out.”
She shook her head, tears still staining her cheeks, and I had to tear my gaze away because it hurt so badly to see them.
“Leo,” she said, squeezing my arm. “Look at me.”
When I did, I was breathing like a fucking beast — nostrils flaring, jaw so tight I thought I’d bust a tooth.
“I am asking you not to do this,” she said. “Please.”
But I couldn’t listen.
I ripped out of her grasp and flew down the stairs as fast as I’d come up them, the thrumming of my heart in my ears drowning out the rest of Mary’s pleas.
Mary
When I pulled up to the shop, it was too late.
Leo had been too fast, like there were squealing tires under him instead of legs as he raced out of The Pit. I’d gotten dressed as quickly as I could and run across the street to my own car, speeding toward the shop to try to stop him.
But I parked and barreled out of my car just in time to see Nero tossing Leo out, both of them bloody.
“Oh, my God!” The scream ripped from my throat before I had any chance of keeping it in. I ran to Leo, who was dragging himself off the ground with his murderous gaze still pinned on my boss.
Ex-boss.
“Wow,” Nero said on a laugh, spitting blood out of his mouth and onto the pavement at our feet. “Real fucking mature, Mary, siccing your boyfriend on me.”
He didn’t give me the chance to respond before he shook his head and turned back to the shop.
“You’re done in this town,” he said, so low I thought I misheard him. But he whipped around and pointed a finger at me, his nose busted up and bleeding, eyes already turning purple. “Done,” he reiterated. He pointed at Leo next. “And you’re fucking lucky I don’t press charges, you dumb sonofa—”
It happened so fast; I couldn’t register it all.
One second Leo was beside me, puffing like a dragon, and the next, a sickening crack split the air and Nero was laid out on the ground. Leo had connected his fist right to Nero’s jaw, making him spin around like a giant in a cartoon before he fell.
“If you ever so much as fucking look at her again, I’ll kill you,” Leo seethed, grabbing Nero by the shirt. He held him inches from his face long enough to land the threat before he dropped him back to the pavement.
And the sight of him standing over Nero and defending me like that both turned me on and pissed me right the fuck off.
“Leo,” I ground through my teeth.
Nero blinked a few times, groaning as he stood. He spit blood again, and this time?
A tooth.
He picked it up with an amused grin, rolling the piece of white bone around in his fingers before shoving it in his pocket.
Then, he pinned Leo with a bloody grin. “I hope you enjoyed that because you just fucked your girlfriend — and not in the way I could, I promise you that.”
Leo surged forward like he was going to hit him again, but I wrapped my arms all the way around him to stop him, my chest to his back, me hanging on him for dear life.
“I bet you would have been a lousy lay, anyway,” Nero said to me as his final word, and then he was in the shop and locking the door behind him, a manic sort of laugh like he’d won ringing out in the air.
And he had.
He held all the power over me. I wouldn’t stand a chance of landing another job in the city now, and Leo hadn’t proven anything by knocking a tooth out, other than that Nero had enough power to upset both of us.
We’d shown our cards, and he’d played his ace.
For a long moment, we stood there, me wrapped around Leo and him breathing loud, shallow breaths, both of us staring at the door Nero had disappeared through.
When I finally released him, I shoved him hard.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
“Me?” Leo spun to face me, his eyes still wild. “I should have killed him, Mary. He’s a fucking scumbag and—”
“And I can handle my damn self!” I shouted, chest heaving. “I kneed him in the balls. I walked out of here with my head held high and at least a scrap of my dignity still in place. I don’t need you swooping in like some fist-happy shining knight to defend my honor. I had a plan, which you’ve now shot to hell. Because now I’ll never work anywhere in this city because I have a psychotic boyfriend.”
Leo blinked, taking two long breaths. “Boyfriend?”
I chuffed a laugh, turning and striding to my car. The words that burst out of my throat without permission were immature and hasty, but I didn’t care. “Ex, now.”
“Whoa, whoa, wait,” he said, catching up to me and taking me by the elbow to spin me toward him. “What do you mean ex?”
“You completely disrespected me,” I screamed through my tears, chest tight. “I asked you not to. I begged you. And you did it anyway.”
Leo’s face leveled out more with every word. “Mary.”
“No,” I ripped my arm out of his grasp. “I can’t believe you.” I shook my head, tears blurring my vision. A short laugh chopped out of me. “Actually, I can. I really fucking can. I should have known better.”
I hated myself before the next words even left my lips, but I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to feel loss like I felt in that moment.
A small part of me remembered feeling this way before with him, seven years ago, when he hurt me and I was desperate to return the favor.
“You don’t really care about me,” I said. “You just wanted a prize, something to have on your arm and get in fights over. You didn’t stop to think twice about what I wanted, how this would impact me and my fucking dream. I have worked for years for this. Years, Leo. Imagine if I did this to you, if I tore through the stadium and ripped a cheerleader off the top of a pyramid by her hair for ogling you or bragging to her friends in the bathroom how you’d fucked her into the next decade at a party last year.”
Leo had completely sobered now, all the fight gone from him as he rushed me and pulled me into him. He held me tight, brushing his fingers through my hair.
“I’m sorry,” he breathed.
His knuckles were bleeding.
So was his eyebrow.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again when I didn’t pull away. “You’re right. I was stupid. I just—”
“Didn’t think,” I finished for him, sniffing and pulling away. “Yeah. I know.”
He crumpled. “Stig, I—”
I held up one hand to stop him. “Don’t you understand?” The realization hit me like a boulder, one that fell from a skyscraper and squashed me like a bug. I sniffed, searching his gaze. “I trusted you.”
That nearly broke us both, and I tore away from him, needing to get away from his touch.
“I trusted you not to hurt me. You promised me I could.”
“I would never hurt you,” he said, voice booming.
“You already did.”
His nostrils flared, jaw hinged tight as his eyes glossed over just like mine. But he didn’t move, didn’t try to touch me again, didn’t try to argue. He just stood there waiting for me to absolve him.
And I couldn’t.
“Leave me alone, Leo,” I pleaded softly, bringing my eyes to meet his. “I need you to leave me alone.”
He swallowed. “What if I can’t?”
“Then you’ll prove that you really don’t care about me at all.”
Twenty minutes later, I pulled up to Giana and Clay’s.
They made up the couch for me without asking a single question, and Giana held me as I cried until I fell asleep.
