Wreck (Bareknuckle Boxing Brotherhood Book 2) (12 page)
Read Wreck (Bareknuckle Boxing Brotherhood Book 2) Online
Authors: Cara Nelson
“It won’t fit,” Zoe told her.
“Sit on it,” Shea said.
“I am sitting on it. Get in here and sit on it with me,” Zoe called from the bedroom of their old apartment.
“If I sit on it too, who’s going to fasten the suitcase?” Shea demanded. “I knew I should’ve gotten a cat.”
“Cats don’t do stuff like that,” Zoe lamented.
“I could’ve trained it,” Shea said. “If I can get some of these CNA’s to learn to check the chart instead of giving everybody acetaminophen, I could teach a cat some household tasks.”
“Here, I think we can smush it down and zip it now,” Zoe said, shifting and flattening herself across the overstuffed bag. “I can’t believe you’re with Kyle now. I mean, I knew you should be, but mostly no one listens to me,”
“Not true. Carla Dolan listens like you’re a prophet.”
“That’s because she never had a daughter. And also because I’m
precious
!”
“Of course you are. I didn’t actually think I’d wind up with a Dolan boy myself, but here we are.”
“Is yours a brooder, too?”
“Mostly not, but he was a mess when he found out he had a kid. Flipped out completely. It was weird, because he was usually so—shiny and sure,” Shea admitted.
“They’re an infuriating pair, but cute as hell.”
“I wouldn’t describe Kyle as cute. That’s like saying a military-grade assault rifle is adorable. He’s not exactly harmless and cuddly. Cute is a puppy and kitten word, not some fierce, ripped fighter,” Shea mused.
“Fine, so they’re not cute. But they’re loveable,” Zoe conceded.
“Just don’t trip over the ego or the poetry. Kyle quoted
The Tempest
.”
“Aaron’s more a Dylan Thomas guy but, yeah, the poetry. It’s like, where the fuck did that come from? It’s not like they’re all that intellectual…”
“It’s the mom. Kyle said she read to them and made them listen to all these audio books from the library and stuff. I guess they soaked it in without meaning to. It’s nice though, not to have that dumb thuggish thing to deal with.”
“Nobody could accuse them of being dumb,” Zoe agreed. “Maybe a thing about having to defeat or protect the whole world…”
“Superhero complex,” Shea nodded sagely.
“Is that a medical term?”
“Nah. I made it up. We’ll call it the Dolan Syndrome.”
“As long as it doesn’t come with sexual dysfunction, I’m fine with them having a syndrome named after them.”
“Whatever it is, we’ve caught a bad case of it,” Shea said. “Now, help me throw some clothes in the trash bags. I have an apartment to move into.”
***
Carla Dolan kicked the door to her sons’ apartment three times, balancing the Crock Pot full of stew carefully. Zoe swung the door open.
“Dolans! Get over here and carry something heavy. You don’t spend hours working out to sit on the couch while your mom hauls stuff around,” Zoe hollered good-naturedly.
Aaron and Kyle vaulted off the couch, vying to take charge of the stew. Carla shooed them away and deposited the appliance on the counter, dropped her purse into a chair, and set her hands on her hips matter-of-factly.
“Where is my granddaughter?” she demanded.
Olive disengaged herself from the video game and stood up, tugging at the hem of her t-shirt self-consciously. It had My Little Pony on it. She had protested, but Shea had told her to quit being a punk and enjoy being nine, so she admitted to thinking Pinkie Pie was cute…”in a little kid kind of way”. Now she seemed impossibly small and lost in the roomful of Dolans and Dolans’ women, facing off with her grandmother.
“You look like me. Like, a lot,” Olive said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Carla said, sizing her up. “Now, in my purse, I’ve brought a photo album full of pictures of your father as a little boy, doing a lot of embarrassing things like trying to pull off his diaper. Want to see?”
“Yeah!” Olive’s face lit up.
“Take your drink!” Kyle reminded her as she bounded off into her room with her grandmother in tow.
Olive smirked, but grabbed the supplement shake and took it with her.
“I think those two will be dangerous together,” Zoe said.
“You know it,” Shea agreed, burning herself on the Crock Pot as she tried to remove the lid. “Shit!”
“Run it under cold water,” Zoe told her.
“I’m a nurse. I know that,” Shea hissed.
Carla and Olive emerged from the girl’s room hand in hand.
“That’s settled,” Carla pronounced, “and as I live and breathe, I’ve found my soul mate. She is Capisci through and through, with a hint of the Dolan stubborn streak, I suppose.” She said proudly, “We’ll be spending the summer together. I’ll come here in the mornings, and I’m teaching her to cook and appreciate poetry. She’s going to teach me to appreciate hip hop and dystopian YA fiction, apparently.”
“What’s ‘dystopian’?” Olive put in.
“You said you wanted to read
The Hunger Games
. It’s a story about a cautionary society—a place where something is seriously wrong. I think we’ll find the book vastly different from the movie, and it’s glad I am that I’ve lived to see a grandchild—a fully grown one with interests, who is out of diapers. It’s as if I’ve won a lottery,” she said fondly.
“She’s really coming here every day, and she’ll stay with me so I don’t have to hang out in the fight school all day. Just for my class. I’m starting a class there next week,” she informed Carla.
“You’ll need to look out for yourself, that’s for certain, if you’re running with this shady lot,” Carla cautioned teasingly.
“Oh, Zoe’s nice, but I still think her boyfriend’s mad at me,” Olive said in a stage whisper, and everyone laughed.
“Her boyfriend is your uncle,” Kyle reminded her.
“Yeah, but I’d rather claim Zoe,”
“At last, a female you’ve failed to win over, Aaron,” Carla told her younger son.
“I think I’m her favorite Dolan so far,” Kyle told Aaron.
“No, I think Ma’s her favorite,” Aaron shot back.
“Alas we both lose, then,” Kyle said.
“Another generation of Capisci women to keep us in line, more like,” Aaron grumped, sniffing his mother’s stew appreciatively.
They loaded their dishes with Carla’s stew, Zoe’s cornbread, and Kyle and Olive’s brownies (made that morning from a brownie mix purchased for the occasion). Olive picked at the stew, eating the potatoes and meat, poking a carrot with suspicion. She had mostly eaten freezer fish sticks and hot dogs at home, so this was a new dining experience for her, but Shea had given her a talk about eating a variety of nutritious foods and how they helped her kidneys function. There had been a short video about the food pyramid involved, but Olive had rolled her eyes at it so much that it ended early.
Kyle plied his daughter with more cornbread, a second brownie, another glass of water. He was anxious to see her gain weight and get stronger. Already, he had plans to schedule her for a check-up with his mother’s kidney specialist. He watched as she joined in the general conversation at dinner, a little less withdrawn, a little less thorny than she’d been at first. They’d spent a day fixing up her room—one wall was silver now—and taking her to see her mom in jail.
Ashley had been full of instructions for Kyle, but spent most of her visit trying to convince them both that it was a mistake and someone planted all the drugs on them—that it was in no way her own fault she was there. It disgusted Kyle, but he was moved by unexpected pity, seeing how vital it was for Ashley that their daughter should believe her to be innocent. And Olive seemed ready to believe anything that might bring her mom home sooner. It was a relief to Kyle when they were told their time was up.
He could see how drugs had affected her, how she must once have been a devoted and protective mother before the meth took her, making her paranoid and angry. He had carried Olive crying from the jail, her child’s resolve melting as soon as her mother was led away.
As Aaron cleared the table, Olive commandeered her grandmother for a game of Apples to Apples. Kyle grabbed a bag and claimed Shea’s hand and tugged her toward the door.
“We’ll be back in a few minutes, Ollie,” he said. “We’re just going down to the gym.”
Kyle’s instinct had been to sneak out with Shea, but he didn’t want Olive to think he was skipping out after she had been suffered so much change so fast. So he had reassured her instead. Once the door shut behind them, though, he caught Shea in his arms and kissed her full on the lips. His mouth curved in a smile when he felt her gasp. Eagerly, he drew her down the stairs to the school, which was closed for Sunday. Flicking on the lights, Kyle told her to get her running shoes.
“I didn’t even put on shoes, Danny Boy. I saw the chance for alone time and I ran,” Shea joked.
“You left your shoes here last night. Check the hall.”
“I was hoping for less clothes, not more,” she said.
“Go with me on this.” He grinned.
“Fine.”
Shea marched back when she had her shoes on and presented herself for inspection.
“I’m ready.”
“Okay, let’s jump rope,” he said, tossing her a speed rope and getting started.
“This isn’t what I had in mind, Dolan,” she said, starting with a slow skip.
“I think better when I’m working out. Stay with me here.”
“Okay, but I’m starting to sweat already.”
“I mean it. I want you to stay with me,” Kyle said earnestly, not even breathing hard from the exertion of jumping rope.
“I’m jumping rope. That’s proof I’m with you,”
“I mean for good,” Kyle said. “Hear me out, lass.”
“You’re serious. I thought you were just tormenting me with exercise.”
She dropped the rope and stepped up to him, laying her hand on his chest. Suddenly, she was breathing harder, and it wasn’t from jumping rope. Kyle let his jump rope fall to the floor and covered her hand with his. His fiery blue eyes were intense, his gaze seeming to capture her and hold her suspended in midair. She held her breath.
“Truth is, lass, I want to marry you, but I think with all the change, with taking in Olive and moving in together, we need to wait a while, get settled in. But that’s—that’s my intention with you: to take a bride, to have a baby if you will, to be your husband,”
Shea looked at him in disbelief with tears in her eyes, biting her trembling lower lip.
“I didn’t buy you a ring. I can’t actually afford a ring right now. Thing is, I’m starting a series of classes in a couple of weeks that’ll teach basic boxing to kids, give them some skill and some discipline, get them off the streets. And Zoe’s talked one of the schools into paying me and Aaron to come do demos and teach a unit on self-defense to some kids in PE. So, there’s going to be more money coming in, and when that happens, I want to take you to pick out an engagement ring. Until then, I got you this.”
Kyle pulled out the bag and handed it to her. She reached in, never taking her eyes off him, and lifted out a pair of blue mittens.
“Where’d you find mittens in June?” she asked, bewildered.
“I had to look around. They had to be perfect. It had to mean something, you know.”
“These are bitch mittens, aren’t they,” she said, beaming at him and starting to laugh.
“Technically bitch mittens are boxing gloves, but I didn’t want to give you boxing gloves, so I got these. They’re your favorite color; there’s two of them in a pair like—us, we’re a pair. I won’t let you down, Shea.” He broke off and kissed her, dragging her up against him almost desperately and parting her lips to take the kiss deeper. Shea clung to him with equal passion, and he tasted tears. “Tell me yes, or that at least tell me you’ll give me a chance.”
“I want you more than I’ve ever wanted anything, Kyle. I know it’s going to be messy and there’s going to be Ashley’s trial, and Olive’s going to have problems, and then she’ll be a teenager, which is its own kind of hell but—I want to do all that with you. Like as long as we can be together, that’s what I want. I want to know that at the end of the day, I get to come home to you and be where I belong.”
“I know it’s asking a lot of you—I want you to be ready to say yes to me when I can buy you a ring.”
“I’m ready to say yes to you over a pair of mittens, Danny Boy. You’ve got me,” she said shakily, kissing him.
“And you’ve got me, lass,” Kyle said, “you’ve got me forever.”
END OF BOOK II
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