RASHID: HER RUTHLESS BOSS: 50 Loving States, Hawaii

by Taylor, Theodora

  He’s right. I should get up and defend myself. But instead I lie on the ground, breathing hard. And feeling weak.

  It’s been hours since Al Shafar confirmed he was about to meet with Mika. Did she say no to my offer? Will I never see her again?

  “We’re not here to take breaks. Get up!” Torture orders, ignorant of my inner turmoil. Not that he would care if he knew. I’m fairly sure Torture is immune to the suffering of others.

  I threw up the last time we did this, and all he said was, “You done?” I flip onto my stomach to begin the long process of pushing myself up to get back in the fight.

  Only to stop when I hear my phone vibrating on top of the nearby weight bench where I left it.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Torture asks, when instead of fighting him, I haul myself into a seating position, with my back to the bench.

  “Get out,” I answer.

  “You don’t tell me when to go,” Torture answers. “I tell you—”

  “Faizan!” I yell out before he can finish.

  I will not accuse my personal attendant of purposefully staying away all those times when Mika and I argued last summer. But from the speed of his response to my hail, I suspect not for the first time, that the former commando was only pretending not to be around when Mika and I went at it.

  He escorts Torture out of the room while I grab for the phone.

  It’s Mika.

  I breathe out, my nostrils flaring, and immediately answer the phone.

  “You know, we should talk about this habit you’ve got of making everything between us ten times creepier than it needs to be,” she says before I can say hello.

  My heart sinks. “So you chose option B?”

  As determined as I’ve been over the past months to make myself worthy of her, I can’t bring myself to consider the other option. That she said no to coming back to Hawaii altogether.

  “Dude, yes, I chose option B. C’mon,” she answers.

  A strange mix of relief and disappointment fills my chest. No, it wasn’t what I wanted, but I’ll take whatever I can get. As long as it means she’s coming back.

  “And you know, I’m not a sex worker. I don’t like that you came at me like that,” she says, her voice annoyed and fierce. “Like I’m something you can acquire with the right carefully worded contract. That’s not appropriate.”

  I could lie to her. Apologize smoothly as I was often required to do when a TTG business partner’s feathers were ruffled in the past.

  But thousands of miles apart, I have no explanation for her, but the truth, “There is nothing appropriate about any of this. What happened that night between us. Or how much I continue to want you. Appropriate is not something I’m capable of when it comes to you.”

  Her breath catches on the other side of the line, and she doesn’t say anything for a very long time.

  I hold my own breath, wondering if she’ll hang up on me. Take back even the chaste Option B contract because she never wants to see me again.

  “So how does this work? When I get down there, we look over some kind of consent contract, agree or disagree, then sign on the dotted line? And that’s when we get to have sex?”

  “You…” I’m so surprised by the questions, it takes my usually agile mind a few moments to catch up to the real meaning behind them. “You want to have sex with me?”

  “Yes, I want to have sex with you,” she answers, her tone implying that conclusion to be patent and obvious. “I just don’t want you to pay me for it. I want you, too, Rashid. Just as bad as you want me. But I can’t do that. I won’t do that.”

  Her voice sounds angry as if the vast amount I offered her was a great insult. But her injurious tone barely registers over what else she said. That night…it wasn’t one-sided. She hasn’t been taking my calls out of pity. She wants me. Just like I want her. So much so that she would turn down a million dollars out of insult and still return to me.

  My chest sings, even as my back and legs spasm with the vast amounts of pain that always accompany my fights with Torture.

  “I understand,” I say, even though I’m not sure I fully grasp her reasoning. “And yes, I will accept those terms.”

  I struggle not to ask her to come down sooner. Right now. My cock swells at the thought of what I will do to her once we see each other again.

  But no…I’m not ready yet. Not worthy. I bid myself to be patient as I tell her, “I will see you this summer then. Again”

  “Yes, this summer. Again,” she murmurs. “But Rashid, I’ve got one more condition…”

  “Yes?” I ask, already prepared to give her anything she asks to seal our new deal.

  “I don’t…I can’t do relationships. So this can only be temporary for me. One summer. Then I go home and I don’t come back. Ever. You’re good with that, right?”

  Suddenly the back spasms aren’t the only pain I’m feeling.

  “Rashid? Did you hear me?” she asks when I don’t immediately answer. “Are we cool?”

  Are you out of your mind? Do you think a man goes through such measures for one summer? How do you not realize I want it all?

  “Yes, we’re cool,” I say out loud, using her colloquial English.

  “Okay, see you in June then.”

  “Yes, I will see you in June.”

  See you and keep you, I add to myself after we hang up.

  Then I text Faizan, “On second thought, send Torture back in.”

  20

  June

  MIKA

  Faizan doesn’t just open the door for us at the Diamond Head house this time, he meets us in the Oahu airport’s airy brown and yellow baggage claim. And he even gives us a hug.

  “I thought personal contact was against the rules in Jahwar,” I say, laughing when he lets Albie and me out of the hug.

  “I am Pakistani born,” he reminds me. “Also, I have lived in Hawaii for too long.”

  I wonder if he’s done any hugging up on Jazz since I’ve been gone. Jazz has always been notoriously tight-lipped about her love life. Seriously, I wasn’t even sure my surfer sister liked boys that way until she’d brought another pro surfer home for dinner one day. They’d dated for two years but had broken up a few months after Dad got sick. And I still don’t know who dumped who. That’s how little Jazz ever says to me about her love life.

  “How’s your surfing coming along?” I ask as we walk out to the covered garage where he’s parked the Mercedes G-Class.

  “Very well. I’ve surfed nearly every day since you left,” he answers.

  Dammit, he’s even vaguer than Jazz. So I just ask him straight out, “Have you been getting a lot of surf lessons from Jazz since we left?”

  “No.” A shadow falls over Faizan’s face and he yanks open the trunk. “I haven’t seen her at all.”

  Okay, I think, wondering exactly what happened. Despite their age difference, they’d seemed like they were on the road to somewhere last summer. What had changed? That mysterious client of Jazz’s floats across my memory and I get a bad feeling. Does Jazz’s and Faizan’s failure to launch come down to him?

  “See? He hasn’t aged since we saw him?” Albie whispers to me as Faizan puts our stuff in the trunk.

  “It’s only been nine months,” I whisper back.

  “Did mom tell you Aunt Jazz got me a special scholarship for a surf camp up in the North Shore?” Albie asks Faizan when we’re all in the car. “I’m going to be gone a whole six weeks!”

  “Yes, I heard,” Faizan answers his tone disinterested but polite. He then lowers his voice to say to me, “His Excellency would like for you to come straight to his office as soon as you arrive.”

  My face burns at his announcement. The consent contract signing.

  While I never saw the Option A contract after handing it back to the lawyer, the “don’t sue me over this list” is still emblazoned in my mind. If that list was a preview of what’s going to be in the consent paperwork…

&n
bsp; My chest thunders, wondering if I made the right decision to follow my curiosity and a part of my body quite south of my brain back to Hawaii. Consequentially, I end up staying pretty quiet, while Faizan and Albie chat on the drive back to Diamond Head.

  Well, Albie talks. Faizan mostly makes sympathetic sounds while Albie complains about how much worse everything is in Connecticut. It was colder than it had ever been before this year. “Seriously, my fifth-grade teacher read us an article about one of our snow days being in the record books. Snow sucks. Did you know that, Mr. Faizan?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he answers. “Other than here, I’ve only lived in Jahwar and in Pakistan.”

  “Well, you’re not missing nothing. It gets dirty really easily. Plus, it’s cold and it turns wet. And if too much of it gets on your clothes, you’re done. The only way you can get warm again is standing in front of a fireplace or taking a warm bath.”

  “Warm baths and fireplaces sound nice,” Faizan says.

  Oh, no, I’d forgotten he’s never been introduced to this version of my son. The little boy who can’t see the good of anything located outside of Hawaii.

  I facepalm when Faizan makes the rookie mistake of trying to fight against Albie’s litany of complaints. Then I lean over to advise my fellow front seat hostage, “Just stay quiet. It’s easier than trying to talk him out of hating on Connecticut.”

  “Warm baths and fireplaces suck,” Albie insists from the backseat with the authority of a scientific expert. “If you forget to turn on the heat in the bathroom, you’re going to be cold again as soon as you get out of the tub. And, you know what? That fake heat makes your skin really dry and ashy, so Mom’s always making me put on this Aquaphor stuff. It’s too greasy. Don’t even get me started on fireplaces. They’re not like beach bonfires, which are the best. Fireplace fires make you sneeze all over the place. You got to get super close to them, or you’re not going to feel the heat at all. But if you stand in front of one too long, they start to burn your eyes.”

  Faizan wisely steers the subject back to the North Shore surf camp after that. And by the time we pull into the house at Diamond Head, Albie’s back to the happy kid Faizan met last summer.

  “I missed you Hawaii!” he declares when we pull into the carport. Then he jumps out of the Mercedes and throws his arms around the closest palm tree.

  “It would seem he much prefers it here,” Faizan says as he goes around the car to get our suitcases out of the trunk.

  Yes, obviously. Guilt assails me as I watch him literally hug a tree. Hawaii Albie is fun and grateful, but Connecticut Albie is kind of the worst. And I know, he should be doing more to appreciate and adjust to our blessed life in New England, but sometimes it feels like I really am keeping him from his happy place.

  But his happy place also happens to be home to Alberto’s powerful police family, I remind myself. You know the ones who are still proving what great Christians they are by blowing up my phone with “you’re a whore” Bible verses…

  “That’s enough Albie,” I call out to my dramatic son. “Let’s help Faizan with our things.”

  “If you ask me, Aunt Jazz should open up her own summer camp,” Albie says as we roll our bags to the kitchen side door off the carport. “I could help out. And now that Mr. Faizan really knows how to surf, he could too.”

  “I’ll escort Albie and your luggage upstairs,” Faizan says, obviously changing the subject. He takes the handle of my rolling bag from me after we walk through the front door. “You should go straight to His Excellency.”

  A chill goes up my spine. Fear? Excitement? Both? I can’t tell.

  Either way, I turn toward the hallway off the open kitchen, only to stop when I see the man standing in the living room.

  At first, I squint, thinking I must be mistaken about his identity.

  His hair is still long, but now it’s lustrous and pulled back into a smooth man bun, instead of a tangled and dull mess hanging in his face.

  He’s got on his usual uniform of a t-shirt and sweatpants, but now muscles budge underneath his clothes.

  His eyes are exactly as I remember, but now his unflinching gaze is above, not below, mine.

  I blink as I realize what I’m seeing. It’s Rashid. And he’s standing up!

  “Hello, Mika. How are you?” he says.

  21

  MIKA

  How am I?

  Somewhere in the background, I hear Albie freaking out and congratulating him.

  But I’m mute. All I can do is take him in, scanning my eyes up and down his body in open-mouthed shock.

  I don’t realize there are tears falling from my eyes until he says, “Don’t cry, Mika,” with a gentle laugh.

  But how can he laugh right now?

  And how is this possible? Everything I read about Rashid’s type of spinal injury said it would take at least a year for him to even get up on a walker—and that was for cases where the patient hadn’t let their muscles atrophy for over a year.

  I find myself repeating my question out loud as I wipe at my tears. “I’m so happy for you, but how is this possible?”

  “And how did you get so swole?” Albie demands, his tone implying that his question is way more important than mine. “You did, like, a Captain America transformation!”

  To my surprise, Rashid laughs. Again. “Much like Captain America, I had some help. But it was not a special serum.”

  He reaches down and raises one sweatpant. We both gasp when he unveils a leg covered in titanium steel and carbon fibers.

  Albie’s the first one to figure it out. “Is that a exoskeleton?” he asks. “Like, to help you walk?”

  “That’s exactly what it is,” Rashid confirms, straightening back to standing but leaving the pant leg hitched up.

  Albie’s eyes bug. “Ender’s going to be so jealous we saw this,” he crows. “Mom, quick take a picture with your camera.”

  That open for questions look falls right off Rashid’s face. “This is proprietary IP, still in the prototype stage,” he tells Albie. “Most people would be made to sign an NDA just to look at it.”

  Albie shakes his head. “What does that mean?”

  “No pictures,” Faizan translates behind us.

  “Aw, man,” Albie whines.

  “If it makes you feel any better, Barron is the one I have to thank for this. Come stand behind me.”

  Albie and I scramble behind Rashid and discover that the area below his man bun is completely shaved. Not for fashion reasons, either. The skin there is covered with a cluster of small EEG electrodes. The same kind Ender’s always tinkering with when he’s making adjustments to his bioHelmet.”

  “Cool!” Albie says, totally speaking for both of us.

  “Yes, very cool,” Rashid agrees. “He modified his bioHelmet to interface with my Future Legs…after he signed an NDA, of course.”

  “What does NDA mean?” Albie asks.

  “That he did all this work without being allowed to tell anyone,” I answer, realizing why I had no idea Ender and Rashid were in communication.

  “So he already knows about your bionic legs?” Albie translates, his face shadowing over with disappointment.

  “I’m afraid so,” Rashid, answers, obviously struggling not to laugh.

  “Aw, man!” Albie says for a second time. But then his face lights right back up. “Wait, does that mean you have a lab now? Like Iron Man? Can I see it?”

  To my surprise, Rashid grabs a forearm crutch I didn’t see resting against a nearby chair before and does just that. “Follow me,” he says. And his legs let out what sounds like small puffs of air, as he walks—actually walks—down toward the hallway.

  While his lab is nowhere near as fancy as the ones at Stark Industries, I have to say it’s pretty damn impressive. He’s torn the wall down between the second bedroom office and the previously never-used home gym has disappeared. Now there’s a treadmill with bars attached in the middle of the office and all sorts of weird versions o
f weight machines on the gym side.

  “We’ve modified all the exercise equipment to either work with a wheelchair or the Future Legs,” Rashid explains, following my gaze. “The Future Legs are helping me to gain mobility and strength faster than I would have been able to without them, and eventually they’ll allow me to walk up and down stairs, run, and do other things that are difficult for people with SCIs.”

  “What’s an SCI?” Albie asks.

  “A spinal cord injury,” I supply, looking around the space with wonder-filled eyes. “I can’t believe you did all of this in just nine months. Tell us everything.”

  Albie must agree. He goes quiet for once, and we both listen in rapt fascination as Rashid explains how the Future Legs are technically assistive devices for working out. Apparently, muscle waste and atrophy was a huge problem for all kinds of people at the lower end of the mobility spectrum. “The hope is that it will help people like me develop the muscles they need to recover more quickly, allow senior citizens to stay mobile longer, and even enable those with much more severe spinal cord injuries than mine to walk again.”

  “So because of these legs, you can walk all over now?” Albie asks.

  “Not exactly. I still use the wheelchair for most activities. Eventually, I’ll be able to drop the crutch, but walking around on bionic legs is harder on the joints and muscles than it looks. And I’m still working to get the actuator balance right so that I can go up and down stairs. Right now, Future Legs are only good on flat surfaces.”

  “How about surfing?” Albie asks. “A board’s a flat surface.”

  “Funny you should say that.”

  He walks over to a wall cabinet that definitely wasn’t there last summer. He opens it to reveal what looks like a blue plastic version of the exoskeleton braces he’s wearing.

  “Waterproof legs,” he says. “But if anybody asks you, I’m not working on this. I’m using exclusive technology GoBionics wasn’t allowed to buy when they acquired my company. Technically this tech belongs to the Navy Seals.”