A Moment (24 page)

“Fuck you!” I jerk to my feet, slamming him hard into the lockers as a blinding haze of red obscures my vision. “You just wait till I get you in the ring, motherfucker.”

He doesn’t even flinch, just shrugs my hands off. “White boy, you don’t know how to handle that puta.”

Cracking my fist into the locker next to him, I shove my face right into his. Fury, hate, those are emotions I understand. My old friends, and they are going to take his head off tonight.

 
I’d waited all night for the spar and olive oil had known it too, because the second we broke off the mats and headed to the ring he jerked his fingers at me.

I’m going to make him pay.

I know she’s watching me, know she senses the discord… that’s why I won’t look at her.

I feint, he blocks. Twisting and twirling around me, trying to make me dizzy with his pretty moves.

But I don’t take the bait.

I wait and I watch.

Never showing him what I have until I spot the slip.

The moment he thinks he has me. The moment he forgets there’s a predator in the ring. He drops his guard and I run right at him.

Dropping my shoulders, I make like I’m going for a take down, but at the last second I come up with a left hook, blasting it into his temple.

He drops like a rock.

But it isn’t enough.

I’m on him, pounding my fist into his face.

Over and over.

There are voices, but I can’t understand them. I’m wrapped in obsession, one thought hammering through my skull.

No more.

Never again.

I see his face.

Not Olive Oil’s.

But my uncle’s and the sickness burns hot in my gut.

Olive’s teeth tear through my knuckles as I connect with his jaw.

Arms tug at me, push at my shoulders.

Finally the voices are penetrating, cutting through the fog.

“Fuck man!” Gene, my trainer, slaps my face, finally getting me off Olive oil, forcing me to stagger back to the ropes. “You trying to kill him? He’s down. Down, means down. Shit!”

Blinking, I shake my head.

Olivio is bloody and swollen. His face unrecognizable from the one that’d entered the locker room with me earlier. He’s breathing, but it’s nasally and sounds wrong.

What the hell have I done?

I feel her look. A hot, weighted press against me and I want to die.

What is she thinking?

What has she seen?

A monster?

A beast?

Something ugly and vile and terrifying?

Then her flowers are there and she’s wrapping me in a hug, pressing a kiss to my brow even as her body trembles violently.

Chapter 19

Liliana

I can’t stop thinking about it.

In that moment, I hadn’t recognized Ryan. He was a stranger. A violent, horrible one.

The tears had started and they hadn’t stopped for hours.

He’d driven me home in silence and I hadn’t asked.

Too afraid to know.

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting in my living room, Javi’s kneeling on the floor by my feet, Mama’s already asleep.

Ade’s gone for the night. Even though she’s Mama’s live in nurse, the understanding is when I’m around she gets to go home and take time with her family.

I have no one to talk to and desperately-- as sick as it is-- miss Ryan.

But I need to think.

I know I love him.

That’s obvious.

I haven’t given myself to him because I feel sorry for him.

Javi turns a page in his book, the sound feels so loud. And I look at my child, studying his sweet, innocent face. It’s not just me in this equation anymore. There are so many things to consider.

Ryan has never been anything but good to Javi and to me, but what he’d done to that guy. It’d been brutal.

I’d called Alex this morning, just to see how Ryan was.

Ryan was fine, he’d said, but the guy-- Olivio-- had sustained several hair line fractures and a nasty concussion.

I know fighting is a blood sport and I’m cool with that-- for the most part.

But Ryan had gone into a kind of trance that went beyond the ring. Pounding Olivio had been incidental; Olivio wasn’t the one he was fighting.

I huff a lank of hair out of my eye and change the channel, there’s a commercial on. A man and woman gazing into each other’s eyes, out on a date and my heart twists so hard it’s painful.

I look at Javi again. He’d been at the window today, nose pressed to it, fingers splayed, as if looking for someone. He’s getting attached to Ryan.

I know that’s who he’d been looking for.

I wish I could talk to my son. Talk to anybody.

This is one of the few times that I even miss my father. He’d know, I’d get all the answers from him.

What does it mean, daddy, when a man does that? What does it mean? Is he a lost cause? Can I really save him? Or am I just wishing an impossible dream?

***

Ryan

I’m not going to let this happen again.

Not after Thursday night.

We’d made love and I’d told her I loved her.

Rolling over on my bed, I stare up at the popcorn ceiling, entranced by the slow turning fan paddles.

I’d meant it and then proceeded to fuck up.

Like always.

Why had I allowed myself to get goaded that way?

Olive oil was just a dick who thought himself God’s gift to women, who the hell cared? And if I’d had any sense I wouldn’t have. I’d have let his stupid shit roll of my back and gone home proud, knowing Lili had picked me.

Instead she’d seen that and she hasn’t called.

I can’t blame her.

The burden of apology is all on my shoulders. I’m scared that she won’t take me back, that this time I went too far. But I have to try.

Picking up my cell I debate whether to call now or wait until the morning. It’s almost eleven. She might already be asleep. But if she’s feeling at all like I am, waiting isn’t the answer.

I dial.

And wait.

And hold my breath.

“Ryan?”

“Lili, I’m… God,” I shove fingers through my hair, “Lili.” My voice cracks as the awful knowledge that she might very well want to walk away chisels its way into my heart.

“Can you come here?” she askes.

Whatever happens, whatever she says to me, I’ll do it, I’ll man up. Even if this means she’s asking me over to end it for real this time.

“Yeah.” I try to keep the panic from my voice. “Be there soon.”

Tossing on whatever clothes I can find, I walk out my room. Alex is sitting at the table drinking a cup of coffee. He has a paper due tomorrow morning. Looking up at me bleary eyed, he lifts a brow.

“Wassup, dude?”

Tucking my undershirt into my jeans, I shrug on a sweater and finger comb my hair. “Headed over to Lili’s.”

Alex’s lips are grim. “Yeah. Okay. Take the house key, I’ll be locking up after you leave.”

For once in his life he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t try to caution me to be smart, and not act like a dipshit. I think he knows what I do.

This might be it.

A man headed to the gallows.

I’m at her place in no time, kind of walking through a trance. Going to her door, I quietly knock.

She opens it and I can’t help smiling. She’s dressed in the same juicy pants and tank top she’d worn the day she’d thrown herself into me for the kiss that’d made my heart clench.

The house is still. A patchwork quilt blanket lies on the sofa and the TV’s on. I was right, she hadn’t been sleeping.

“Want to sit?” She points at the couch.

Walking over to it, she tucks one leg underneath her butt and sits, patting the seat next to her. I sit, but I don’t know what to do with my hands, how to act. So I keep them in my lap. For a while we stare at the screen, my pulse thundering in my veins, I keep waiting for it. For the deep breath, the look, and then the words: We’re done.

“What happened?” her soft voice makes me turn.

Closing my eyes, I take a second to gather my thoughts. “He was talking shit about you.”

“What? Me?” She pats her chest, brows pinched with confusion.

Wiping my palms down my pants, I lean back. “Lili, I snapped. The things he said. It was so fucking ugly and he was saying it about you. I couldn’t…”

“That’s what triggered that?”

I narrow an eye, stomach going cold because I know what she’s thinking. Liliana’s smart, it’s only a matter of time before she figures out what’d happened to me. Maybe not all the particulars, but if I don’t get my shit together-- and soon-- she’ll know.

“What else?” I frown, pretending like I don’t have a clue what she’s getting at.

Because I can’t let her know. Ever.

Her closed off body language slowly opens and turning more toward me, she slides her hands down her arms, dropping them into her lap and hope blooms like a seed in my soul.

“You scared me, Ryan.”

Daring to touch her, I grab her hand, needing the contact and praying she won’t pull back.

She wraps her fingers through mine and I can finally think again. Can breathe through the panic that’d encased my heart in ice the whole drive up here.

“I’m sorry. Baby, I’m sorry. I went ape shit, I know that. What does puta mean?”

“What?” She wrinkles her face. “He called me that?”

Rubbing my thumb along her knuckle, I play with the soft skin. “He called you a lot of things.”

“It means bitch, or whore,” she shrugs and walks her other fingers up my arm, making my skin pucker. “Maybe next time, if someone calls me that though, you don’t go all loco on them. I thought you were going to kill him.”

“I can’t stand the thought of anyone saying things about you like that. Drives me fucking nuts.” I stroke her forearm.

Shivering, she scoots toward me, wrapping her leg over my lap before finally leaning her head on my chest.

“You know, Ryan, you give me a lot of good advice. Advice I don’t always want to hear, I have one for you. Stop trying to kill every Tom, Dick, and Harry that acts like an ass, because guess what,” she taps my chest, “they’re all over the place.”

“But it’s you.” My gaze roams her face. “It’s you, Lili. Not just some girl.”

Her eyes soften. “And that’s very sweet. Really. But you have to understand what seeing you doing something like that does to me. It scares the crap out of me. You know what I’ve been doing yesterday and today?”

She twines her fingers through my hair. Settling deeper into the cushion, I wrap one of my big paws around her sweet ass and close my eyes. So fucking tired I know it will be nothing to pass out right now, I hadn’t slept last night.

“I was wondering what exactly I was doing with you. Why we were even together?”