He came out from behind the counter. “I was sacked because I was a disruptive influence.” He stood in front of her, his tension clear in the line of his shoulders. “I stressed people out. I was a morale problem. The reason we had trouble keeping staff.” He didn’t break eye contact and he looked at her, daring her to. “I was disrespectful and overly aggressive and constantly humiliated and belittled people. It wasn’t intentional, but that’s how it was. There was a sexual harassment suit against me.”
He sighed, one hand flapping at his side in a helpless gesture. “I can’t do the people stuff, Zarley. Is it any wonder I stayed away from women? And you’d think, given the uber-smart guy status, I’d have learned.” He tapped his chest, over his tattoo. “I was given enough chances.” His throat worked, his jaw was tight. This was his humiliation. “I was sacked because I was slowly grinding the business I founded and loved my whole adult life into the ground.”
She stepped forward so she could stand toe to toe with him, because that’s what the truth deserved. He wasn’t such a stranger anymore.
He was the oddest mix of arrogance and uncertainty. A go it alone guy who was desperate to connect and smart enough to see his own ineptitude was screwing him over, but not confident enough to fix things. He was living two thirds of his tattoo and none the wiser.
“I got pregnant at eighteen. I had a boyfriend, Dalton. We’d been lovers secretly since we were sixteen. I thought we’d be together for the rest of our lives. We were careful and I was on birth control and I’d rarely ovulated anyway, so it shouldn’t have happened. I was booted off the team during the trials in disgrace.” She pushed her hands through her damp hair, it was full of tangles she hadn’t properly brushed out, like her life.
“Then I miscarried. My whole town was banking on me being an Olympic champion. Every year there was a fundraiser to help pay for my coaching until I went pro and got sponsors. I should’ve been a medal contender, a golden girl, instead I was a failure, a pregnant slut and a disappointment to everyone in my world.”
He reached for her. “Jesus Christ, Zarley.” He didn’t try to maul her or smother her. He went for her hands and simply folded them in his, his eyes never leaving hers.
“I don’t talk to my parents, my brother. I don’t go home. I haven’t been home for five years. Dalton joined the army. His father pushed him into it. He lost his foot in an accident during a training operation. And as far as everyone is concerned that’s on me too, because he should never have joined up.” Reid didn’t flinch. He didn’t shift. He didn’t waver his eye contact or let go her hands, not even when she was blinking away tears.
“Dalton got bitter and I got stupid. I had no idea how to live without the rigors of training and there was no place for me in the gymnastics world. I had no other skills and no way of getting a scholarship or paying for college without asking my parents, and I couldn’t, I just couldn’t. I worked as a cashier, a shelf stocker. I delivered singing telegrams. I drank and did drugs. I had a lot of sex with a lot of men, and lived up to my potential as a loser.”
She took a ragged breath. These were all of her secret pains and she gave them to Reid because he’d given her his. “And then twelve months ago I stopped doing all that. No more random hook-ups, no more drink, no more drugs. I enrolled in business at SF State. If I can hold it all together for a couple of years I might get to make something of my life. I got the job at Lucky’s because it pays better than the other crappy jobs, and I can attend school during the day. I bummed around for four years, Reid, and I still don’t have it all together. I can be the girl you have spectacular sex with, but I’m not the girl you want to have more with.”
He jerked her hands so she was forced to bump against him. He had a severe look on his face, as though he might start yelling. “I’m buying that second stool.”
“Did you listen to anything I said? You looked like you listened but—” He stopped her mouth with a kiss. It was hard and pinched and wondrous in its intensity.
“We’re having a thing and it’s bigger than this weekend. That’s what I heard,” he said. “Now take me to bed and let’s do the one where we break something.”
THIRTEEN
They did the one where they fell on each other, kissed till they were breathless and crawled all over each other’s bodies finding ways with hands and lips and tongues, to fill the room with their moans and whimpers, to fill the voids in their lives with hope and pleasure.
Reid couldn’t tell who was leading and who was following, only that he didn’t want it ever to end, not this day in his bed, or this thing with Zarley.
What she’d gone through topped his drama, what she still had to do to find her place in the world was so much harder than it would be for him. She was starting at the bottom with the kimchi smells, student loans and the need for bus fare. He felt fiercely protective of her, in awe of her bravery and desperately uncertain about what she might need from him, what he had to give.
He didn’t know being a boyfriend from reading a wireframe.
She engineered their first orgasms; he gave her the second, asking and receiving instructions on how to use his tongue, what to do with his fingers, intent on topping the class and ruining the teacher.
She taught him to vary t
he pace and the pressure, to curl his fingers, stroke and tug, to suck and blow and nibble, and she thrashed beneath him until she came shaking and sobbing the tears she’d tried earlier to blink away. He couldn’t do people but he knew that’s what was happening to her, grief, regret, release, and when she curled into his embrace he held her, his chest tight with other emotions he couldn’t name and fear he’d do or say something stupid to send her away.
And that included being insensitive and doing nothing.
“I’m glad you told me.”
“Why?”
Stomped. Reid rested his hand over Zarley’s sacrum, thumb to the dimple. Why was he glad? Glad she’d told him about the way her life derailed, how was that a thing to be glad about? “It’s important to you.” That was a dodge and he knew it. She didn’t respond. “I’m not glad it happened to you. It was a shitty way to end your career and your affair and Jesus, did you want a baby?”
She was silent a long time. Long enough for him to assume he’d have been better off asking for another lesson than pretending he knew what to say.
“I didn’t know I was pregnant, but I was sick all the time and the team doctor did a bunch of blood tests and that’s how I learned it, with my coach, Costin, in the room. They thought it was glandular fever. Costin had no choice but to boot me off the team. He’d gone out on a limb to keep me because I was the oldest and there was pressure to let a younger gymnast go instead of me. I’d have been five months pregnant when the games started. I think he was even more disappointed in me than my family. It hurt his career. And it was impossible to keep it secret. When the Olympic team loses a medal hope everyone wants to know why and no one was kind. Not to me, not to Costin, or Dalton. We didn’t want a baby, not then, but we’d have loved it.”
He smoothed his hand over her hip, spreading his fingers on her belly. It was hard to imagine what she’d look like pregnant, her stomach was concave. Her life had been cratered by the life she’d carried. He had to know. “Dalton. Is he still around?”
“I loved Dalton. I’ll always love him. But we’re not in each other’s lives anymore. We tried again. I’d moved here to live with Cara. He’d been medically discharged. We both had new bodies and we thought we could be together again, but it was different, too much,” she sighed and it had an ancient sound to it. “Too much had changed. Neither of us were who we had been.”
“I’m sorry.” He’d said that a lot to people in the last year. He’d never meant it like he did now. She lifted her head from his chest to look at him, no sign of the tears she’d sobbed. She was the fearless Lux once again, and he was simply her latest conquest. “I’m sorry that happened to you. I’m glad you told me.”