PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance (7 page)

SAFFRON

Chapter 7

PENSACOLA

PRESENT
DAY

M
oving everything up the stairs to my
bedroom was a complete pain in the ass, and it didn’t help that my jackass
roommate wasn’t willing to lift a finger. It took me over an hour to get
everything up into my room while he comfortably lounged in the den, relaxing in
front of the big screen television.

Any time that
we made eye contact, I gave him the filthiest glare I could muster. Sawyer
would flash his smile and turn back to the television, sometimes fluffing a
pillow or folding his fingers behind the back of his head.

What an asshole.

While he
preoccupied himself with whatever the hell he was doing down there, I set about
unpacking.

The Beach
House was built to favor
large
rooms
over
many
rooms, and I had a lot of
room to work with. This included the beautiful, robust cherrywood furniture
that helped tie the entire villa together. In my bedroom alone, I enjoyed the
company of a queen-sized four-poster bed, an end table on either side, two
dressers, two bookcases, shelves, and a vanity desk. There was also a spacious
walk-in closet – half the size of my old apartment bedroom.

I had been
borderline broke for most of my life; as a result, I delighted in the simple
pleasure of owning things. My suitcases were filled with beautiful clothes that
I was going to enjoy for the summer, regardless of Sawyer’s stupid habit of
bothering me. Within an hour or two, they’d be empty and tucked away in the
bottom of the closet, while everything would be on display in their proper
places.

My shoes fit
comfortably into a cubby bookcase, built into the left side. Next to them, I
hung up my array of dresses, and then on the other side I hung shirts, shorts,
and a few bathing suits. A few hats wound up on the bare pegs above, ready and
waiting to be proudly worn under the hot Pensacola sun.

To one of my
drawers went my undergarments. I had taken great care to bring a spectrum of
matching attire. Out of the four drawers, I left the top one empty – just
in case. To the second drawer went my bras; to the third, I placed my panties;
the bottom received my socks. I structured everything with black on one side
and white on the other, and lay out the spectrum of dominant color between the
two. Each drawer corresponded vertically with the right color for each garment,
no matter where it was.

Proud of the
uniformity, I unpacked the books that I had brought. These went on the shelves
across the room, close to the exquisite floor lamp. There were plenty of places
in the Beach House where I could read to my heart’s content, should living
alone with my brother turn out to be too much a bother.

Last but not
least, I removed a few small, personal artifacts, mostly just for display.
Removed from their padding, I placed them on the end tables, in my private
bathroom, and a few on the top shelf above the rest of the books.

Pleased with
myself, I changed into a comfortable, loose tee and a pair of baggy pajamas. Passing
Sawyer’s room down the hall, I could hear that he had resumed unpacking his
things behind the closed door. I briefly flirted with the idea of yanking the
door open and trying to pay him back – something
he
probably would have done anyway.

Great, now I’m even THINKING like the jerk.

I instead
retrieved one of my paperbacks and descended down the stairs. Sliding it onto
an end table beside a nice reading chair in a side room, I strolled back
towards the kitchen. It was only now that I realized I hadn’t eaten anything
since the morning, and I was absolutely starving.

There was an
ample selection in the fridge. Rows of sliced, premium deli meats, cheeses,
fruits and fresh vegetables, gourmet yogurts, and much more immediately came
into view. On the door there was a wide variety of beverages: milk, soy milk,
almond milk, orange and pineapple juice, grape juice, apple juice, frigid
coffee drinks, smoothie blends, carbonated sodas…

“There’s no
way
we’ll eat all of this,” I thought
aloud. “Half of this is going to spoil…”

Pulling out
the bottom freezer compartment, I perused the wide variety of frozen foods. It
seemed like maybe twenty percent of the drawer was filled with desserts and
treats – there were ice cream flavors in here that I had never even
heard
of, let alone seen. As for the
rest, it was everything you could think of, with the blatant exception of TV
dinners and preserved food. Seemed like our parents had ordered a smorgasbord
of food and stipulated
convenience
above
everything else – I hated to waste, and was aggravated that there just
wasn’t any room to save anything from spoiling.

I settled on
a borderline gourmet four-cheese pizza. Dreading the nutritional facts, I
closed the drawer on its gliding rails with my extended toe, and then read the
instructions on the back. A few seconds later, the oven was preheating
appropriately, and I began to rip open the box.

A noise
alerted me.

I looked up,
spotting Sawyer in the distance. He was passing through the foyer and on his
way towards the door.

“Hey!” I
called out to him. “Sawyer, HEY!”

He paused,
glancing around until he spotted me. It looked like he was grumbling for a
moment, but he wandered towards the kitchen.

Lazily and
somewhat impatiently, Sawyer leaned against the doorway. “What? What is it?”

“Do you want
some pizza?” I asked, indicating the box. “There’s no way I’m going to eat this
whole thing.”

“There’s no
way
either of us
is going to eat everything
in that damned fridge…” my stepbrother nodded towards the luxury refrigerator.
For the first time, I realized that it was taller than even
him.

“Yeah, you’re
right,” I agreed, looking over at it again. “Why did they have it filled so
much? You and I could get by with maybe a quarter of that freaking thing.”

“Because our
parents don’t seem to know how to live without excess.”

“Well, that’s
not fair,” I reprimanded him with a grim smirk. “Until we met you two, Mom and
I got by without the big, fancy house and the full fridge. I think our Dad just
went a little…overboard with it. That’s probably all.”

Sawyer seemed
only mildly convinced, crossing his arms.

“So, about
this pizza…”

“No, I’ve got
plans.”

“Oh? That
quickly?” I bit the back of my knuckle.

“That’s
right.” He seemed oddly tense.

“And what are
these
plans?
How long are you staying
out?”

“I’m not
sure.”

“You’re not
sure what they
are
, or how
long–”

“What’s with
the third degree?” Sawyer demanded, leaning up against the wall and adjusting
his crossed arms. “Back off.”

I was
dumbfounded. “Look, I just…you’re all I have here. Don’t leave me alone all the
time.”

For a brief
moment, regret seemed to cloud Sawyer’s face, but it was gone before I could
know for sure. “I’m going out. I don’t need any pizza. I’ll find something to
do and something to eat.”

“Sawyer…”

It was like
this every fucking time, just like when we were younger. I’d try to forgive and
forget him being moody, or cocky, or just an all-around asshole, but he would
just push me again. Sometimes he’d pick at me or antagonize me, but other
times…he just got so
distant.

Why do I even fucking bother?

For a moment,
I knew the answer, but I immediately shoved it back down in my head.
No. That’s not it. That CAN’T be it. I can’t
let him have that kind of power over me.

“Look,” he
conceded, “I just need to get out of here, alright? I can’t be here.”

“We just
got
here? You’re going to leave me alone
on our first night in? Aren’t you supposed to be, you know, watching over me or
something?”

“Is that what
you want?” He growled. “You want me to watch your every move? Stand around and
just hover whenever you want to do anything? Or would you like to slam a door
in my face again?”

“Look, that
was my
underwear
, you
jackass
,” I snarled at him.

“You’re the
one who left it out in the open. Why in the hell do you need the world’s
biggest assortment of sexy underwear anyway? Plan on moonlighting?”

“NO! I…
That’s none of your business!” I said, flushing red.

 
“I was just trying to help. And if you
do
want my help,” he said, throwing a
hand against one of the cabinets, “then
maybe
you shouldn’t piss me off.
Maybe
you
should stay out of my way and let me just go enjoy some of my night…the parts
of it I can salvage, anyway.”

I clenched my
jaw and fought back my tears, curling my hands into fists at either side.

“By the way,
the oven’s preheated.”

Sawyer turned
away, disappearing from sight.

Fuck you....

As I
furiously glared at the spot where he’d been standing, trying to hold myself
together, I heard his footsteps retreat. A few seconds later, the sound of the
door opening and slamming shut rang out into the silence, and I broke down in
tears.

SAWYER

Chapter 8

NEW ORLEANS

FOUR
YEARS AGO

A
fter my first brawl, life fell into a particular
rhythm. The fights were scheduled late on the weekends – but the venue
skipped around from time to time, depending on how much of a blind eye we
received from the authorities.

For the most
part, the fuzz didn’t seem to give a rat’s ass about our matches. Sometimes,
that would change for a few weeks. Luckily for us, Gary had a high-ranking
friend on the force, and we were tipped off early to any increased interest.
All that meant was moving information through the network of usual spectators,
then shifting our fights somewhere else for a weekend or two.

During the
week, I took up odd jobs for Gary’s bar regulars, doing more manual labor. It
was easier to manage with a roof over my head and a shower on call, and they
paid me under the table for everything.

Meanwhile,
Gary pulled through on that ‘training’ promise from the start. Before the
second weekly brawl, I’d already been introduced to Chen, his dojo owner
contact, and even attended a few sessions. It wasn’t news to me that Gary had
been right – I
was
unrefined,
and that was painfully clear to me after a few afternoons with the group.

“Discipline,”
Chen told me on the second night. “You lack
discipline
.
Your body is a heavy block of clay – very powerful, very sturdy. But power
is never enough. Teach yourself
discipline
,
and you will learn
finesse
.” He sized
me up, as so many did around those times, and smiled confidently. “You are a
quick learner, and you do not fear pain. An excellent pupil… I think you
will
be.”

And so it continued:
brawls every weekend, a roulette of work during the week, and fitting forty
hours of training around it. At first, my training was at the drawing board
– revisions made to how I lift weights and trained my cardiovascular. At
the same time, I was educated in how to throw a proper punch, the right stances
to take, and everything I needed to know about
taking
critical punches and kicks.

After I had
been retrained in the very basics, I studied for a month under Chen’s
instructors with basic, common denominator martial arts. I learned the
bottom-rung ways to evade powerful jabs to the jaw, catch or deflect striking
kicks, and how to avoid being wrestled to the ground. Optimized for efficiency
and speed, the improvised curriculum was equally brutal on my flesh and taxing
on my exhaustion levels.

However,
results began to slowly appear.

With my
large, powerful build, Muy Thai was a natural fit for me. As a full-contact
style, it required that I utilize hard striking surface that my body supplied
– forcing me to consider my shins and elbows equally viable weapons in
the ring. This meant that I had to harden these surfaces through rigorous body
conditioning, alongside my fists and feet.

The full
curriculum of training involved everything from shadowboxing to weight
training. I began to take less work during the week, allowing my body to rest
from the intensity I faced practically every night in the dojo. I moved from
four nights a week to six, resting the entire day leading up to the weekly
fight.

I could have
stopped at eight months, but I pushed through for two more. Once this was done,
I took my hard, refined body and forced it through two more months of
specialized wrestling techniques, eager to either keep myself on my feet or to
crush whomever dared to get me onto the floor. Thanks to my specialty, I could
be easily devastating in either environment, and my natural affinity for
fighting made me an intimidating contender. On top of this, my body was
hardwired for increased endurance, and I always found a little more stamina in
my veins to pull from when things turned desperate in the ring.

However, I
did lose a few times. Each night that I tapped out or blacked out, Gary
threatened to throw me to the streets again – but I had already proven my
worth, allowing him to charge higher ticket sales. I was indispensible to him
now.

Gary settled
on making me work for his friends for half a week – usually in something
a little more nefarious that my typical work. More often than not, I was acting
as a bodyguard for some criminal element in the city. It was work that made my
skin crawl, but I took it all in stride.

I did what I
had to do.

Slippery Pete
was the closest thing that I had to a friend. His strange blend of
condescending camaraderie even started to grow on me a little. He considered me
his partner in crime, always making sure we wound up on the same team in the
ring. If he held any bitter resentment towards his father obviously favoring
me, he never showed it.

It looked
like he was just happy to have someone.

I couldn’t
begrudge him; I felt the same way.

He filled me in
about Hurricane Katrina, and the devastating toll it took on the city. I’d seen
the images and read the news reports, but he had lived
through
it, and offered a harrowing insider’s view into the
disaster.

“Thought the
world was gonna fuckin’ end, man,” he confessed one night, over takeout Chinese.
“We couldn’t get out of here, Gary and me. Locked ourselves up with every ounce
of food and water we could find. Stupid fucker gets these ideas in his head, y’know?
Stubborn bastard. He stays the course, man. A’int no matter where those tracks gonna
go.”

“That’s not
always the best approach,” I observed, chewing on a forkful of
lo mein
. “Gotta know when to fold ‘em.”

“Damn right,”
Slippery Pete agreed. “But it’s all okay, see? You and me, we’re a team. We’re
gonna get outta this dump, maybe head out west. Plenty of action out there.”

“Out west?
Out west is expensive,” I chewed.

“Not when
you’re all resourceful, see?” He took a bite of an egg roll, quickly
swallowing. “It’s all in the, uh, approach. You just gotta believe, pal. And
you
believe
me
…it’ll happen. With my speed and your strength, we’ll be a duo.
Fuckin’ unstoppable
, that’s what they’ll
say about us. You’ll see.”

“I wish I
shared your enthusiasm,” I remarked. “New Orleans is decent, but I could use
some different scenery. Sure. Maybe we’ll head out west. I mean it’s a cliché
for a reason, right? There might be a better life out there just waiting for
us.”

“Now
that’s
what I’m talkin’ about!” He
shouted, jabbing a dirty chopstick towards me. Not that he knew how to
use
chopsticks, but he tried, anyway.
“You and me, all the way. We’ll bust outta this piece-of-shit bar and make
something of ourselves, see? It’s gonna be spectacular.”

“You might be
onto something,” I agreed, swallowing another bite. “If there’s anybody that
can do it…might as well be us.”