Page 107 of Between Commitment and Betrayal
“What the fuck are you doing?” The voice was deep with fury and laced with menace. I could place that voice anywhere. My body instantly reacted to it every time I heard it and even as I wheezed for oxygen.
I wheezed only because it was a body’s initial reaction to gaining oxygen after being choked, not because I couldn’t handle it. I was fine.
Just fine.
“We’re sparing, Dec.” Dom threw his hands, but he was smiling and shaking his head like Declan was insane.
The smile died when Declan charged him and threw him on his back. They must have done this before because Dom put up an extremely good fight. They flipped one another over again and again before Declan pinned him down and had his fist cocked to punch his brother square in the face.
“Declan!” I screamed and grabbed his arm before he could. “Are you crazy? We’re in the ring. There’s a bunch of people around. It’s a standard self-defense practice and—”
“No more!” he bellowed at me, releasing his brother to come to standing. “You’re done with the self-defense instruction.”
“Declan, I’ve been—”
“Everyone hear me?” He walked around the ring and eyed every man in the gym. “You touch mywifeyou answer to me. And I’ll break every bone in your body before I let you leave my gym. Do you understand?”
No one answered directly. I think they were all as shocked as I was. Before I could say anything, he bent under the rope and hopped out of the ring. “EverlyHardy, get your ass in my office, now.”
Shit.
36
DECLAN
“Areyou out of your fucking mind letting a man touch you that way?” I fumed when I slammed the door to my office upstairs.
“Are you out of your mind calling me a Hardy when I’m not and acting the way you just did over a standard sparringin the ring?” she threw back, and her chastising tone could have brought a weaker man to his death. Truly. She wanted me in hell, and I felt like I was. The fact that I had to tell Anastasia to stop following me on the way to grab my brother off my wife was enough in and of itself to piss me right the fuck off.
Anastasia and her mother were pushing me way too far for the damn studio. They knew they were getting something that held a value to me above all else because they knew I loved Everly. Anastasia and Melinda had both sneered at me, asking if I really would do all this for a woman, if she was really worth it. I’d answered yes without hesitation, and Anastasia smiled like she had me by the balls. They agreed to me buying the studio that Everly held dear for an extravagant amount as long as Anastasia was seen a few times with the cameras following us around. She wanted to go to dinner a few times to discuss it. She wanted this, she wanted that.
I wanted to rage, though, seeing Everly’s face.
I couldn’t tell her what I was doing. She’d fight me on it, say she’d help figure out a way to do it herself. She didn’t want anything given to her for free, didn’t want anyone to struggle for her. I saw it in how she’d never driven my cars, how she never took money from Carl, how she didn’t ever ask me to get that yoga studio for her.
Yet, it’s the one thing I would do. I didn’t care about the shares of the empire. I’d figure that out later. First, I was appeasing Anastasia so that Everly could have the one thing that meant something to her from the very beginning. I was getting rid of the inheritance hanging over our head, and then I was going to ask her on a damn date for real. I was going to make sure she knew I loved her for real.
We were going to start completely over.
I hated that I had to make her think I didn’t love her, but it was the only way we’d get through it. I couldn’t make her have a baby with me now, not when she’d wanted one in a completely different way.
Seeing her think we wouldn’t be together, that we wouldn’t be trying after this inheritance went through probate, though, was driving me insane, driving me to madness.
Then, I’d actually come to blows with my brother over him wrestling her to the ground like she was a damn rag doll. Hadn’t he read the papers? “Men shouldn’t be putting their hands on you that way.”
“You used to put your hands on me like that all the time, Declan. We sparred in the ring before and, well, we’ve sparred while we screwed too,” she shot back and then proceeded to pace back and forth in front of the window overlooking the oceanside. “Just because we aren’t doing that anymore, doesn’t mean I can’t do it with someone else.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
She stopped and turned to me, her eyes full of blue fury, her body vibrating with a tension I’d never seen from her. “You think I give a shit about a rough-and-tumble? I enjoy it. I enjoy knowing I can hold my own in the ring, that there are people out there I trust enough to step in it with me. And as for you and me, it means I fucking loved screwing around with you.” She closed her eyes like she was in pain before opening them again. “But we won’t have that anymore, just like we won’t have anything anymore. So I’ll have to find it with someone else now.”
Didn’t she understand we couldn’t move on from one another that easily?
I don’t know if she meant to taunt me, to remind me that another man could have her—that another manwouldhave her if I didn’t figure out the will—but it drove me insane. I was already wound tight enough to snap, but it happened to be her that snipped the small thread holding me together.
“What the hell did you just say?” I growled as I stepped toward her.
She didn’t back up. She pointed her finger at me in fury. “You aren’t the man I’ll do it with anymore, but you can bet your ass that I will do it with someone else once I’m out of here.” Then she spun around and went to the computer on my desk. She typed with purpose and then my printer jolted to life. Before my eyes, her letter of resignation appeared. “Here’s your written notice. One month.”
