I was glad that I had Izzy there over the next hour.
An hour that I’d remember for the rest of my life.
The last hour with my son before he was laid to rest.
Where there would be no more pain.
Where he would no longer throw up.
No more needles jabbing into him to force poisons through his veins.
Where he was able to be the little boy he was always supposed to be.
Little did he know that by leaving, he’d taken the best part of me with him.
Part 2
Chapter 9
Sir, are you lost?
-Things not to say when men flirt with you
Isadora
I read the letter with a smile on my face.
I wasn’t sure how the hell I found myself in the situation that I was in, but I blamed it on my obsession—at least at first.
Then I blamed it on the fact that Rome was a really, really nice guy.
And just when I was about to tell him who I was, I learned that Rome had moved to town—my town—and joined the Bear Bottom Guardians MC.
It’d been six months since Ty-Ty’s death, and I finally realized that Rome wasn’t built in a day…nor was he going to fix himself.
So, this was my last-ditch effort.
I was going to fix the man that I had fallen in love with.
Rome was mine. I was sure of it.
But, he wouldn’t let himself heal. He was still mourning his son—and he was allowed to do that. But he also didn’t have to die for that to happen.
I was going to make sure that wasn’t going to happen.
We’d all—Tyler, his MC brothers, hell, even his grandmother—tried to fix him. To help him.
But he’d refused everyone’s help.
He didn’t want anyone anywhere near him.
When we’d tried to gather around and pull him in close, he only pushed further away.
Needless to say, I was pulling off the gloves, so to speak.
It was time for Rome to stop wasting the time he was given and stop fighting against Matias’ ghost.
Which was why I’d loaded up on Abuela’s tamales, and I was going to see Rome at work.
At. Work.
I’d tried his house, and he just didn’t answer the door.
Now I was literally going to try the next best thing—the place where he went and stayed for too many hours, trying to work and ignore the pain he was in.
Taking the last few steps, I opened the door of the prison and smiled at the front desk guard.
I hadn’t realized until just last week what area of the prison Rome actually worked in, but it worked out for me.
Why?
Because my brother was imprisoned at Bear Bottom Correctional Facility and had been for the past five years.
Over the last five years, I’d been a frequent visitor here of one of the favorite prisoners in the place. It was hard, after all, not to love a prisoner when he was in there for killing a cop killer. He was also an ex-cop himself and had been a cop for five years before the day he’d lost his shit after his partner had been killed.
When Slate’s partner had died, Slate had run down her killer. But instead of doing the right thing—which was taking him into custody and letting the justice system figure it out, Slate had done his own thing. His own thing included torturing the motherfucker and then killing him because he could.
Which led my brother to getting fifteen years in prison, with the possibility of parole at seven.
The only reason my brother hadn’t gotten more time was because his attorney claimed that he was suffering from PTSD due to being present at the time of his partner’s murder.
Which was the truth. After his partner was murdered, Slate kind of went off the deep end. To make matters worse, Slate had also been seeing her for over two years at the time of her death without anyone being the wiser.
Needless to say, it was understandable that he’d lose his shit when the person who was not only his partner but also his girlfriend, was murdered. The judges who had presided over his case had obviously agreed because they were very lenient, and it could’ve been a whole lot worse than it was.
Anyway, long story short, I knew the men and women who worked at this particular facility like they were my own family. All of them except for one very ornery man who refused to talk to me or open his freakin’ door.
Hence the reason I was where I was when I was.
I’d gotten some inside info from Murry, my favorite guard, that said Rome took lunch—for an hour and fifteen minutes—during this particular time of the day.
Smiling at the little informant, I walked straight to him. “Is he eating?”
Murry nodded his head, looking smug. “He is. I’ll buzz you back. Once you’re back there, follow the corridor, and Yates will buzz you in from there. Okay?”
I grinned. “Your secrets are safe with me, promise!”
Murry winked. “I’m glad seeing as Rome is twice my freakin’ size and could probably snap me like a toothpick.”
Murry was small, and when I say small, he was about five-foot-five inches of nothing. My right arm was bigger around than his thigh.
“If I’m not out in an hour, come looking for me, because he probably locked me up,” I teased.
Murry rolled his eyes. “He wouldn’t hurt you.”
Murry had been at the funeral. Hell, almost the entire B and C shifts had been—which were the shifts, apparently, that Rome worked.
Which explained why I hadn’t known that he was there since only the A shift worked on the days that I came to visit Slate.
Luckily, Murry was one of the ones that switched in between all the shifts and worked his ass off. He liked to buy expensive stuff that he couldn’t afford if he didn’t, meaning he knew me well.
The buzzer sounded, and I took a deep breath before letting it out slowly.
Then I went down the long hallway and hoped I wasn’t making the worst decision of my life.
***
Rome
I took a bite of my food and looked at the upcoming schedule.
If I worked this Friday, and next Monday, then I would be able to pick up the C shift for Knox, and the A shift for Sharif…
The door to the breakroom opened, and I looked up, surprised.
Nobody normally took lunch with me due to the fact that all sectors had to be covered at all times. And when one of us took our lunch break, that meant nobody else in this particular part of the prison could take theirs.
Only, instead of one of my fellow guards or an administrator coming in, it was the woman I’d been avoiding like the plague.
The scowl that overtook my face was nothing short of ferocious.
I’d been avoiding her, along with quite a few other people, for a long fuckin’ time, and I didn’t intend to start talking to them now.
I stood up, sandwich forgotten, and crossed my arms over my chest.
There was no hiding the fact that I wasn’t receptive to her being there.
I should’ve expected it, though.
Goddamn Murry for being such a soft-hearted man.
I should’ve known when he asked about my lunch schedule that he was trying to scheme.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “I’m at work.”
Izzy snorted. “I know you are, numbnuts. I’m here because I knew you would be here.”
I gritted my teeth to keep the growl out of my voice.
“I don’t want you here,” I countered. “Nor do I want to talk about my feelings.”
I wanted to shoot myself in the foot more than I wanted to do that particular thing.
Plus, I knew that if I gave in, I’d rely on her way too much just like I did when Matias was dying, and I couldn’t do that—be that weak person—all over again.
I just didn’t want to be that reliant on someone.
She walked to the table a
nd set down two things. One was a bag of what looked like food, and the other was a bag of what looked like papers—but since I couldn’t see in it due to the sack’s color, I couldn’t be a hundred percent sure.
“I brought you some lunch,” she said, taking a seat. “I hope you like tamales.”
I looked down at the broccoli and grilled chicken I’d brought for my own lunch and shook my head. “I brought my own lunch.”
She looked at my food with disgust.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re working your ass off.” She looked pointedly at where my ass was, and I narrowed my eyes. “This is real food. Not that shit.”
She gestured to my food with a look of revulsion on her face.
“I’m not sure that my ass is any of your business,” I admitted, trying not to allow my amusement to show. “In fact, I know it’s not.”
When I retired from the NFL, I’d put on quite a bit of weight. Sure, it wasn’t necessarily bad weight. While I’d been in, though, I’d had to be super strict with what I did and didn’t put in my body. It was only when I no longer needed to be as strict that I’d changed the way I ate. My workout routine had also become inconsistent.
I hadn’t been fat, but I sure as hell hadn’t been in tiptop shape, either.
Ever since Matias’ passing, I had nothing else better to do—meaning I’d been working my ass off to get back into shape—better shape—than I’d been in.
I wasn’t back to one hundred percent yet, but it was close.
I felt better—at least physically—and looked better, too. As long as you didn’t look at the frown lines on my face, or the deep bags under my eyes indicating that I barely managed to get five to six hours of sleep at night—and definitely not consecutively.
“Whether your ass is or isn’t any of my business doesn’t really matter,” she said lightly, opening the bag that contained the food. “I had my Abuela make us some food. I can cook—but I don’t necessarily have all that much time. In case you’re wondering.”
I wasn’t.
I was also a liar.
I wondered about her constantly.
There was never a point where she was ever far from my mind.
I’d seemed to shift my focus from my son to her.
I’d become obsessed, and I wasn’t sure that it was entirely healthy at this point.
Yet…I couldn’t help it.
She started pulling out foil packets, and I felt my gut tighten.
I could resist a lot of things. A lot.
In fact, had she pulled out any other thing than what she did, I would’ve curled my lip up at her and told her that I didn’t want it.
But…she knew my weakness.
How she knew my weakness, I didn’t know.
But she did…and I couldn’t stop myself.
I groaned.
Izzy’s smile was nothing short of beaming.
“Knew you couldn’t resist this,” she said, a small laugh tinging her words.
I frowned. “How?”
She blinked innocently at me. “How what?”
“How did you know that tamales were my weakness?” I asked.
She licked her lips nervously. “Uhhh, no idea.”
The little liar.
But since I didn’t want to talk to her, and I sure the fuck didn’t want her to think that I was interested in holding a conversation with her when I sure the fuck wasn’t, I held my tongue. And my accusations.
Instead, I tried to fight the temptation of reaching for one of the tamales that she unwrapped and shoved to sit directly in front of me.
I managed to make it through about four or five seconds of it wafting up into my nostrils, and then I caved.
“Fuck you,” I said, reaching for it.
Izzy didn’t give me a smug look. In fact, there was no smugness in her appearance at all.
She just smiled at me and reached for her own tamale.
I went through about eight of the little delicious bastards before I came to my senses.
It took everything I had to put the one down that I hadn’t finished yet, and I leveled Izzy with a glare to end all glares.
“Why are you doing this to me?” I asked, sounding just as frustrated as I felt.
“Because you’re ignoring me,” she answered. “And I don’t like being ignored.”
I glared. “I’m not sure if you know this or not, but the world doesn’t revolve around you.”
Izzy laughed. “Oh, I know it.”
“Then why are you pushing when I don’t want to be pushed?” I crossed my arms.
“Because someone needs to,” she answered. “And, I’m tired of how you’re acting. You didn’t die, Rome. Yet, for all intents and purposes, you did. I realize that you’ve lost something great but ignoring everyone and everything isn’t going to make that heartache go away.”
I knew that.
But hearing my best friend’s voice reminded me of Matias because I’d named my son after him.
Hearing Izzy’s voice reminded me of Matias and how he’d wanted her there with him because she brought him cookies.
Hearing Liner’s voice reminded me of Tara—which reminded me of Matias.
It was a vicious fucking cycle, one that was just easier to ignore than to admit that it hurt.
The only people who didn’t remind me of Matias were complete strangers, and even then, it was a crap shoot. Hell, there was a girl that was eighteen or nineteen that’d been visiting her father at the penitentiary that had shaved her head for some fashion statement. She’d been spouting about feminism and how she shouldn’t be labeled by her hair, so she’d done the unthinkable and had shaved it off.
And then she reminded me of my boy with his peach fuzz head—both when he was a baby, and again when he was a little boy.
“You don’t know me,” I snarled, pushing back from the table.
Tamales forgotten, I stormed up from the table and ran my hands viciously through my hair, hating the way it’d gotten so long—but still unwilling to go cut it because I just didn’t care to go see my barber and see the saddened look on his face when he saw me for the first time after Matias’ death.
But before I could work up too much anger, Izzy stood, too.
And then did the last thing I ever expected her to do.
She hugged me.
Threw her arms up around my neck and pulled me in close.
I inhaled deeply, and I was once again fighting to draw breath through a closing off windpipe.
Goddammit! Was it too much to ask for a little fuckin’ time?
But, the longer Izzy hugged me, the more I started to calm down. The faster the anger leeched off of me.
I blew out one final breath…and then gave up.
Wrapping my arms around her tightly, likely too hard, I hugged her to my chest and dropped my face down on top of her hair.
Her hair smelled like peaches. Peaches and cream.
Her body also fit inside of my arms perfectly.
Feelings I’d been denying since the first time I saw her roared to the surface, and all of a sudden, it wasn’t just a hug anymore. It was more. It was everything.
But before I could get too comfortable in that hug, she had to open her mouth and ruin everything.
“I need to tell you something.”
I dropped my arms from around her and lifted my head, unsure that I liked the tone of her voice.
She sounded like she was battling with something, and she really, really didn’t want to tell me that something she had to tell me.
“What?” I asked.
She backed up some more, and then reached for the other bag she’d brought with her, pulling it across the breakroom table like it was holding venomous snakes instead of the papers that I could now see since the bag’s tie had come loose.
And what I saw was familiar handwriting.
My handwriting.
I stif
fened, a feeling of unease shifting through me.
Then I had my worst nightmare confirmed.
Because the letter that I’d written last week. The one that I’d written to someone that I thought was anonymous, was the first paper in a stack of similar papers—all with my handwriting.
All of them to some random fan that had become just as much of a lifeline after Matias’ death as she was before.
The letter that I’d written last week, the one that had shared how truly alone I was, was staring me straight in the face.
And there was no doubt in my mind that Izzy had read it.
Because, as I started to put two and two together, Izzy was RP’s Biggest Fan. Izzy was the person that I’d been writing to. Izzy knew everything that there was to know about me. My hopes and dreams, my worst fears come true. My entire life had been in those letters, and she knew.
She knew.
I swallowed, and then looked up at Izzy, unsure what to say.
But what I knew was that I couldn’t look at her right then.
I just…couldn’t.
“Please leave.”
Izzy’s shoulders slumped.
Then, without another word, she left, leaving everything that she’d brought with her behind in her haste to leave.
Even her jacket.
I watched her go, and all the while I wondered what that feeling in my chest was—disappointment or anger.
***
The first thing I did when I got to my empty, mausoleum of a house was go directly upstairs and find the letters I’d been getting over the last year. The moment I found the sealed lifelines, I started opening them, starting with the one on the bottom first.
It was only when I was through the fourth letter that I realized how very stupid I’d been.
I should’ve realized that my letter-writer and my Izzy were one and the same. They were both brash, said what they felt, and didn’t have the time for bullshit.
By the fourth letter, she’d also straight-up admitted who she was, too.
By the tenth letter, I was angry all over again.
Irrationally angry.
Why hadn’t she told me any of this face to face before now?
Sure, she’d given a pretty explanation as she had explained what happened and who she really was to me during my lunch break earlier, but that wasn’t the real reason.
Mess Me Up Page 7