Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (58 page)

“What about your injuries when he hurt
you? Wasn’t that documented? Why wasn’t he arrested?”

“I was so afraid of him…and afraid of what
he’d do to Paul if Paul found out he was hurting me and went after him. I made
up stories, and I never called the police. Paul would have tried to kill him
and ended up dead or in jail. He had the whole police force to back him up…Paul
had no one.”

“I’m so sorry, Marie. That sounds awful.”
I thought about the siblings and all they had gone through to protect each
other and I was genuinely touched by it. Marie had tears in her eyes and my
heart was breaking for her. If she was lying, she was really, really good.

CHAPTER
FOUR

By the time I got back to my apartment it
was noon and I was already exhausted. I didn’t know how Marie did it…or Paul.
Being on the run, picking up your entire life and moving it…always looking over
your shoulder…It had to be exhausting. I was worn-out just from finding out
about it all…and recovering from the scare Mitch gave me too. I parked in my
usual spot and found myself looking around and over my shoulder as I walked up
to the door. My hands were shaking when I slipped the key into the lock. I kept
alternating between asking myself what I was doing getting into this mess, and
telling myself that these people needed all the help they could get and there
was no reason why I shouldn’t help them.

I stood inside the door of my apartment
for a few minutes…listening. I started letting my imagination work overtime on
the way home from Marie’s. Mitch is a cop. What if he broke in? I closed the
door behind me and locked it and then I picked up the only thing I saw that I
could possibly use as a weapon…my umbrella. It was one of those with a hook on
one end and a point on the other. It wouldn’t take out a bullet…but in hand to
hand combat it would give me an edge.

I tiptoed through the living room and
threw open the kitchen door. I glanced around to make sure that no one was
there. My heart was pounding in my chest but no amount of telling myself that I
was being ridiculous was working to calm me down. I made my way back through
the living room and down the narrow hall. I was for once thankful I lived in a
small place. I opened the door to the extra bedroom and flipped on the light. I
went over to the closet and opened it. I stepped back and held the umbrella out
in front of me like a sword. I struck at the clothes in the closet, beating at
imaginary monsters like I was seven again. I did the same thing in my room. I
was about to pronounce it all clear. All I had left was the shower.

I swear it was like that shower scene in
Psycho
; as I pulled open the curtain and
aimed my umbrella…my fucking phone rang in my pocket. I screamed and dropped
the umbrella. The sound of it clattering to the porcelain floor of the shower
startled me again and I dropped the phone. I fumbled for it and when I finally
had it in my hand and saw who was calling, I wanted to throw it against the
wall. My mother always had impeccable timing.

“Hello, Mom.”

“Jessie! I didn’t think you were going to
answer.” After I heard her voice, I wished that I hadn’t. I could tell from her
tone that this was not going to be good. I considered hanging up before I even
heard it. “Jessie! Are you there?”

“Yes, Mom. I’m here. What’s wrong?”

She instantly went on the defensive. “Why
are you saying it like that? I don’t only call you when something is wrong.”
Bullshit.

“I didn’t mean to insinuate anything, Mom.
I don’t want to fight with you today, okay? What’s going on?” Tell me what you
need.

“Tyler is kicking me out.”

Damn, that was the one thing I was afraid
of. Tyler was my mother’s latest in a string of younger men. She meets them in
bars and moves in with them within weeks. All goes well until they tire of her
neediness and realize that her looks really are only skin deep…then they toss
her out. She hasn’t had a job in over a year. I have no idea how she can stand
to always let someone else support her.

I took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry,
Mom.”

“I need a place to stay,” she said in a
whiny voice. It was the sentence I was hoping not to hear, but expecting. The
last time I’d lived with my mother was while I was in college and dating my
ex-boyfriend Justin. The whole situation was…ugly, to say the least.

“Mom, you know I love you…but it’s not a
good idea for us to be under the same roof.”

“You would let your mother be put out on
the street?” Here it comes, the guilt.

“I’m not kicking you out, Mom. Apparently,
Tyler is. This is why I keep telling you that you need to get a job and take
care of yourself so that you don’t have to depend on these men.”

“Now you’re going to lecture me? So this
is what I get from my daughter? A lecture and an “I don’t care if you sleep in
the park?”

“Geez, Mom! I didn’t say that.”

“Please, Jessie…just for a little while.
I’ll get a job, okay? I’ll move out as soon as I can. I won’t get in your way.”

I don’t know why I even try. She always
guilt-trips me into doing what she wants. What I have to feel guilty about…I
really don’t know. I wasn’t the one who was a terrible parent. “Okay, Mom.
That’s fine. I’ll get the spare room ready for you. When will you be here?”

“Tyler bought me a bus ticket. I’ll be
there in the morning.”

Trying not to let her hear me sigh I said,
“Okay, Mom. I’ll see you then.”

“Oh wait!”

“Yes, Mother?”

“I saw Justin.”

If there was one name that brought the
weight of the world crashing down onto my shoulders quicker than my mother did,
it was that one. “Mom, I don’t want to hear about—”

“Honey, he misses you.”

“Are you kidding? Are you still buying
from him?” Justin was my own personal nightmare. He was gorgeous and
intelligent…and he was a drug dealer and although he didn’t use his own
product, he loved his alcohol. It was an explosive combination that I’d been
too young and inexperienced to see in time.

“No!” she said in an indignant tone. “That
is so insulting! You know I’ve stopped using.”

“So you say.” In my defense, it definitely
wouldn’t be the first time she lied to me about her pill use. OxyContin had
been her drug of choice. “If he’s not dealing to you, why were you seeing him?”

“I wasn’t seeing him. I ran into him. He
was at the bar where Tyler was playing and we started talking. He told me he
was happy for me that I’d gotten clean. Honey, he had tears in his eyes when he
talked about you. He misses you so much. All he wishes for you are good
things.”

I was gagging on the bile that had come up
from my stomach. “Justin cares about two things, Mother, himself and money. You
know how long I struggled with that and how hard it was for me to get away from
him when I finally figured out I couldn’t change him. Why would any mother want
her daughter to be with a man like that?”

“He’s a good boy.”

“Are you freaking kidding me? He’s a
‘good’ boy? He’s a drug dealer, Mother!”

“It’s a rough economy. He’s just trying to
make a living. Not everyone is handed a good start in life, you know?”

I growled into the phone and said, “He
took the easy road for him, Mom. He doesn’t want to go to work and have to
answer to a boss. He thinks the rules are for everyone else. He wants to live
his life as if it’s one big party.” I realized then I could have been
describing her. She and Justin were made for each other, really. “If you want a
place to stay there will be two conditions: No drugs and No Justin! Do you
understand me, Mother?”

“You don’t have to yell.”

“I’m not yelling,” I said through gritted
teeth. “Try this, Mom…since you seem to have an easier time putting things in
perspective when it’s about you. When you think about Justin, remember the time
you were at his apartment and it got raided. Remember the time you did in
jail…away from your kid because of that. Remember that he wasn’t in the least
bothered by letting you take the fall for all of that. He’s not a ‘good kid.’”
You need to get over that. He’s a man, and a dangerous one to boot.”

“Okay, Jessie,” she said. She had the
ability to morph from a poor, misunderstood old woman to a teenager to a little
girl and back again in thirty seconds flat. She could also be a raging bitch in
between if it suited her purposes. She was what she thought she needed to be at
that moment in time. She was a master of manipulation and whether or not she
was using, she had an addict’s personality. I knew that her living here was a mistake…but
what the hell was I supposed to do? I wouldn’t be able to live knowing that she
was homeless either. I was so tired of all the drama.

*******

I needed a respite from how I was feeling
after I got off the phone. I spent the rest of that day pampering myself. It
was something I rarely did, but I was on the edge of letting my nerves from
everything that had happened take over. I took a long bubble bath and
deep-conditioned my wild hair. Then, I slathered lotions and creams all over my
body. I got dressed just in a tank top and pair of shorts and put my still wet
hair into a smooth braid down the side of my head. I sat down and painted my
toenails and fingernails. It wasn’t as good as a day at the spa, but by the
time I finished I felt a whole lot less stressed. I knew it would all return in
an instant when my mother arrived the next day. She’d bring a suitcase of crap
with her, I was sure. But for that night, I wasn’t going to think about it. I
was just about to go see what I could round up in the kitchen for my dinner
when there was a knock on the door.

The anxiety returned all at once and I
froze. I wondered if I should just pretend that I wasn’t there. I wasn’t
expecting anyone…what if it was Mitch again? Could I even call the police?
Would they even help me? The intruder knocked again and I tried to walk quietly
over to the door to look out the peephole. Before I got there I heard, “Jessie!
It’s Paul.” I jumped at the sound of his voice before I processed that it was
him. This was getting a little bit ridiculous. I wasn’t even this paranoid when
I dated a drug dealer.

I went over and just to be sure, looked
out the peephole. It was definitely Paul. I pulled open the door. “Hey,” I
said. He was dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt that hugged
his tatted biceps nicely. I wondered if there was anything that he didn’t look
good in. If I recalled correctly, he also looked good in nothing. He was
holding a bag in one hand from a hardware store and a hammer and drill in the
other. “What’s up?”

He held up the bag and said, “I brought a
chain lock for your door. Is it okay if I put it on? I’ll feel a lot better. I
don’t want that asshole trying to muscle his way back in.”

I smiled and stepped back to let him in.
It was nice of him to worry about me. “Sure, thank you.”

He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Don’t
thank me. None of this is your fault. Thank you. I’m just so sorry about all of
this.”

“It’s really fine. You can stop
apologizing. I was just going to fix myself some dinner. Are you hungry?”

“Always,” he said with a grin.

“Okay, I’m not sure what I have but I’ll
find something.”

I went out to the kitchen, stopping to
look once over my shoulder at him as he got ready to drill holes in the door
for the chain. God, he was hot, and now he had power tools as well. I forced
myself to tear my eyes away and go start on dinner.

I had some boneless chicken in the
refrigerator. I took it out and cut it into cubes. I was thinking about making
it with rice and vegetables, but then I thought about Paul’s upcoming fight and
I was sure that he needed his protein. I pulled out the peanut butter and made
a spicy peanut sauce that a friend of mine in college had showed me how to
make. It was easy and quick and packed with protein. I put the cubes of chicken
on metal skewers and put them in the oven while I made the sauce. I made the
brown rice while the chicken cooked, poured on the sauce and it was done. I fixed
out plates and carried them out to the dining room table. Paul was cleaning his
mess up by the front door and the shiny gold chain lock was in place.

“Good job!”

“Thanks,” he said. “That smells good.”

“It’s ready.” He went in the bathroom to
wash up and met me back at the table. Sitting down with him for dinner was a
little weird and uncomfortable at first, but eventually I asked him about
fighting and the conversation grew from there.

“So your match that I went to last week
was the first one I ever watched live. You’re good.”

He grinned. “Yes, I am.”

“Oh, and you’re modest too,” I said.

“There’s no room for modesty in fighting.
When it means the difference between getting your ass kicked or not, you have
to know that you’re good.”

“True story,” I said.

“So why have you never been to a match?
Don’t you train fighters all the time?”

“I train with some. I haven’t really been
out of school that long, so I can’t say all the time. But, it’s just the idea
of watching someone get beat up that bothers me.”