Page 55 of Until You're Mine
I caught her arm and tugged her closer. “You can’t. It already sank in and my head’s getting bigger by the second.”
“Oh, great. You’re going to be impossible to deal with now.” She shook her head and her light, joking demeanor changed, sobering as she studied me.
“What is it, baby? Is my head actually growing before your eyes?”
Her forehead smoothed out as that amazing smile of hers returned to her lips. “Not that I can tell—yet.” Her features softened and she placed her hands over the center of my chest. “You… You told my dad no. And when he gave you his charging-bull face, you didn’t back down. Do you know how few people have ever done that?”
I shrugged. “There’s a lot I’d go along with, but I meant what I said. I don’t want you near that prick. I can’t believe your dad would put you in that position.”
“He doesn’t know how bad it was, I guess,” she said, and her eyes widened when what I presume was a murderous expression crossed my face. “Whoa. I’m not saying—”
“What did he do? Tell me. Then I’ll make sure he never touches you again—that he never touches anyone again.”
“Hey.” She wound her arms around my neck and met my gaze. “I need you to calm down. Let’s rewind to the part where we were getting ready to tear off each other’s clothes.” She tipped onto her toes and kissed me, and I wanted to deepen it and forget everything, but I’d never been great at letting things go.
“I’m all for tearing off your clothes, and trust me, we’ll get to that, but I want to finish up this conversation first. What did he do to you?”
She lowered herself to flat on her feet and wrapped her arms around herself in a protective way that made me want to do something completely irrational, like find Conrad “Croc” Rochenski and skin him alive. Suddenly five weeks from now didn’t seem soon enough.
Chapter Thirty
Brooklyn
Shit, what was I thinking, opening my big mouth? Easy, Iwasn’tthinking. I’d been so stunned Shane had stood up to my dad, and then there’d been kissing, and I really wanted to get back to the kissing. Clearly he wasn’t going to let it go. I sorted through the truth, trying to pick out what parts of it I should tell him.
“He was…temperamental. And before his fights, the mood swings were worse. I wrote it off as him being driven, especially since after he won and his stress-level went down, things were mostly good again.” I told Shane how I’d taken a gap year because Conrad said he needed me with him to reach that next tier on the ranking ladder, the one where guys started making real money and becoming household names. “Since it meant having me around to take care of all the admin stuff, my dad was thrilled. Of course, my art got pushed to the bottom of the priorities pile and I began to feel really restless. I submitted a couple of pieces and got into a small, local show—my very first that wasn’t sponsored by the high school. That week, my disgruntled boyfriend, my brothers, and my dad went to Vegas to get ready for the bouts, and the same night as the fight, I had my first showing. I’ve never felt so alone.
“Until afterward, when I found out that Conrad had slept with one of the Vegas ring girls to celebrate his win. We’d abstained for those few weeks prior because he was exhausted, dropping weight, and prescribed to the theory it’d give him that extra edge, and when we had our big blow-up, he berated me for not being there and told me my absence was to blame for his infidelity. Apparently after going without that long and then having all that extra testosterone and adrenaline from a win, it’s impossible not to trip and fall into some girl’s vagina.”
I smiled at my attempted joke, even though it didn’t land, and Shane was far from laughing. Conrad could be a complete ass and often was, but back then I’d mistaken passion for intense, infinite love, and factor in the part about him being my first, and the betrayal made me question everything and was hell on my self-esteem. “He told me it didn’t mean anything, but it did. It meant that he and I were over, something he had a hard time understanding.”
In that after period, Conrad would park outside my house, and if I was out with anyone but my brothers, he’d threaten them, threaten me. It scared me, and then I felt weak, and I didn’t want to admit to my family that I couldn’t handle it, especially since they’d always been crazy overprotective and Finn had nearly landed himself in assault territory over the situation already.
Right when I was about to loop in Liam, Conrad backed off. Then I moved several hours away, and that seemed to solve all my problems. But I didn’t dare tell Shane any of that, since intent-to-maim was written in the tight set of his features already.
“I should’ve seen it coming,” I said, putting lightness I didn’t feel behind the words. “I should’ve ended it before any of that happened, but I was young and naive and optimistic. That was when I believed the MMA lifestyle didn’t have to take over everything. That I could be a part of it and do my art as often as I wanted to, and there could still be a happy ending.”
That was when I’d realized where my mom was coming from those years she’d clung on, hoping somehow things would change despite having so much evidence to the contrary. Sometimes I thought I should’ve moved to Arizona with her after they divorced my junior year. Then I never would’ve even met Conrad.
Naturally, Dad’s infidelities only made it harder to believe guys who traveled a lot could be faithful, something I didn’t want to delve too deeply into right now, standing across from a guy who was on the verge of doing exactly that.
Shane had gone from angry to…I wasn’t sure. “It doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t mean you can’t have the best of both worlds.”
“I’m afraid it does. Every single time my family missed my events for theirs, it made me bitter. I don’t want to feel bitter toward my brothers. I didn’t want to feel bitter toward my dad, but that ship’s sailed. I’ve accepted it.” The words scraped my throat on the way out, making an accidental liar out of me. “I’mworkingon accepting it, anyway.”
The silence stretched longer and longer, and instead of thinning out and evaporating it grew thicker and heavier.
I ran my finger down that carved line in Shane’s forearm I was becoming slightly obsessed with. “So, sexy, right? There’s nothing like talking about exes and family drama and all the issues both have left you with to really set the mood.”
“Hey…” Shane placed his hand on the side of my neck and then tipped my chin up with his thumb, another thing that drove me crazy in the best possible way. “I asked. Everyone has issues, and everything you just told me? It doesn’t scare me. And honestly, all it takes to get me in the mood is to look at you.”
He gave me the once over, being extra brazen about it, and I cracked half a smile. He reached for me, and I pushed my hand flat to his chest, holding him back. Before I got carried away in the way he looked at me, the wicked curve of his mouth, and the ridiculously hot body, I needed to make sure that I drove a very important point home. “I want to move on from this crappy topic, but before we do, I need you toswear to methat you won’t do anything with what I’ve told you about Conrad until you step inside the octagon. Think of your career. Think of all this work you’re putting in. You’ll get your chance to hit him.”
“I know the risks of fighting outside of the cage.”
“That’s not a risk, it’s a sure way to ruin your career. Just stay clear of him until your fight. Promise me.”
He removed my hand from his chest, lifted it to his mouth, and kissed the center of my palm. A zing darted from that spot right to my heart. “As long as he keeps his hands off you, I’ll wait.”
