Grudge Match

by Jessica Gadziala

Me, well, I had a lot of motherfucking anger to work through still.

  I did it in that ring.

  For years.

  For the rest of my teens and most of my twenties, living like a goddamn pauper in a sleep-and-fuck motel, socking away the money, knowing that someday, I could do something with it, I could make something of myself.

  Then I found the goddamn school.

  On sale for a fifth what it was truly worth given all the space. But the economy was in the shitter, and no one wanted to open businesses, so no one was biting. Hell, I had talked them down another fifty-thousand when I bought it, which gave me that money to turn Hex into what it was, minus some of the more expensive upgrades I put in later.

  It was around then, when I started making a profit from the fights, that my survival mode could finally stop being the prominent part of my personality, and things like the past could creep back in.

  That was when I thought about them.

  And that was when I started hunting them down.

  Miller was a mechanic in Chicago with a wife and three kids who never knew about his past. And while he was glad that I was alive, that Walt was dead, he made it clear that all of that was in the past for him.

  Delaney was down in Florida, making good money, living a life that such a thing afforded, drowning the past in endless pursuits of good times. I couldn't blame him for that.

  Cohen never did really function properly. He lived with his family who were convinced his stories about being a fighting dog were evidence of a broken mind. And because he seemed happy, I didn't bother going out to see him, pulling him back into a past it was clear he was moving away from.

  Wozniak, Beckett, and the kids that came in after were all mostly-functioning adults, one or two with heavy drinking problems, but most of them just chugging along.

  I never did find Adler.

  Not even a trace of him.

  The one out of all of them I wanted to get in touch with again. To thank him for shooting me in the chest, for beating in the skull of a man who turned me into a dog, for digging his bare fingers into my flesh to fish out a bullet that might have killed me, for giving me enough cash to get by.

  But he fell off the face of the Earth.

  Not the best trackers I sicced on the case could find even a scent of him from California to New York.

  Adalind's finger traced over the bullet scar again, something about that action making my stomach swirl around in a way I was completely unfamiliar with.

  "So this isn't necessarily a terrible scar," she mused, running her finger over it again. "It gave you your freedom."

  "Something like that, yeah."

  It was maybe the only scar I had that didn't bring with it awful thoughts. Friendly fire.

  Hell, he didn't even mean to shoot me.

  He thought it would have been a good distraction, getting an empty chamber out of the way before he turned it on Walt with a live round.

  She leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the raised, smooth skin, before pulling back with a small smile.

  "Thank you for telling me."

  "I've never told anyone," I admitted, not knowing why I felt compelled to share that.

  "I figured," she said with a small smile. "That's why I was thanking you."

  "You don't see me differently?"

  "Than the guarded, distant, somewhat cool man you have been a lot of the time? Yes, I do," she informed me. "But not in a bad way. I understand it now, Ross. No one - save for the boys down in that basement with you - could ever understand what that was like, but it makes sense why you can be so lost in your own thoughts. And your guards with women..."

  She trailed off there, making my brows draw together. "What about them?"

  She shrugged a little. "I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you've never really had a woman, save for to have sex with her."

  I felt myself stiffen at that, maybe never analyzing that fact myself, never tracing it back, always figuring my guards had to do with that basement, and my inability to open up about it, not the fifteen years before it.

  "Haven't exactly had the time," I hedged, not liking the idea that my shitty relationship with my mother - and maybe her 'profession' - had a lot to do with how I viewed women and relationships as a whole. "I respect women, Addy, even if I haven't made time for any one in particular. If it were about my mother, and what she did, I don't think I would have that."

  "She was your mom. And she was supposed to be there for you, but she wasn't. And she was the only female figure you ever had in your life until you started, I imagine, having endless sport sex with them when you got free. It had to have impacted you. You have to have messed up ideas about loyalty and warmth and stability with the opposite sex."

  My arm tightened around her, pulling her a little closer.

  "You're warm, Addy."

  Her smile went soft at that, her eyes losing their keen edge, like my words made her stop thinking about my fucked-up past for a bit, and just focused on the present, post-sex, naked in both literal and figurative ways, bodies entwined like I had never experienced before.

  I felt like she got it.

  Maybe not with the same depth as I did.

  But she got it.

  This meant something.

  This was significant.

  Important.

  I might not have understood the why or the how. And I might not have had the damnedest clue what it meant for the future.

  But this moment, in my bed with her, it meant something.

  I got that.

  I think she got that too.

  So we both silently agreed to drop everything else.

  And just be in the moment.

  "It's past sun-up," she said, eyes looking heavy-lidded. "I don't remember the last time I stayed up all night."

  "Well, it's Sunday, doll. We can sleep in."

  I was pretty sure it was the first time in my life I used the term we with a woman.

  Oddly, it didn't feel uncomfortable.

  Then she snuggled in closer, resting her face against my chest, her hand on my shoulder, covering the bullet scar.

  And then we did what I said.

  We slept in.

  TEN

  Adalind

  I woke up before him, still nestled against his chest.

  I spent the next fifteen minutes carefully inching away, not wanting to wake him up, finding that in sleep, his face was at peace. Not soft, because a man like him could never be soft. But at-ease.

  I didn't want to take that away.

  Besides, I got the feeling that he was not a man accustomed to much sleep, and that he likely needed some more of it.

  So I carefully padded across the room, taking the clean shirt he had taken out for me that had fallen to the floor during our, ah, activities, and went into the bathroom to take a quick shower, dress, and make my way quietly back out to the kitchen to make coffee.

  And maybe salivate over the view for a bit.

  Though with the quiet apartment, and nothing to keep my mind occupied, it wandered.

  I could imagine a lot of things. My mind was good at spinning crazy theories when I was watching an arc play out over a season of a show, sure I knew what way they were going to twist all the threads together.

  But even with my imagination, I never could have come up with his story.

  And maybe that was a good thing.

  Because knowing that that kind of evil exists in the world - because, let's face it, for every dead Walt, there were a dozen ones still walking around creating terror - was making a heavy weight settle on my chest.

  Maybe it was so strong because I knew someone who had faced that evil, who had suffered in a basement for two years, who was a map of scars because of it, who could have died time and time again.

  And even through all that, he was a good man.

  Was he necessarily well-adjusted? No. But considering all he had been through, it was a miracle he wasn't sitting in a corner rocking.
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br />   He had gotten out. He had struggled. But then he built something pretty great for himself. He was wealthy. He had power that he had never had all his life. And, whether he was aware of it or not, there was sweetness in him as well. Maybe I was the only one who got to see it, maybe something about my helpless situation that night brought it out of him, made him want to help me for all the times no one could help him. Hell, maybe he just didn't like seeing a woman hurt. Whatever the reason, he had shown me such goodness for someone who was not familiar with the sensation.

  You're warm, Addy.

  Those words had melted me.

  I had been gooey inside until I fell asleep.

  Even now, just remembering it, I felt the warm liquid feeling in my belly.

  I wanted to be that for him too.

  His warmth.

  In a life of coldness.

  I wanted to be able to offer him that.

  I wasn't sure, though, if he would allow it, if maybe he would get a good night of sleep, then rethink allowing me to be in his life.

  Even the thought of that made my belly drop.

  It was too soon to feel that way, to be so invested, to worry about this being all it might be.

  But regardless of the logic - or lack thereof - it was how I felt.

  "Addy, why didn't you wake me?" his voice called, making me jump, suddenly thankful that I had mainlined my coffee, or I would have spilled it all down myself as I spun to face him.

  And there he was.

  In all his bed-tossed glory.

  He had pulled on a pair of black and gray plaid pajama pants, slung indecently low on his hips. And I damn sure wasn't complaining at getting an eyeful of his abs first thing in the, ah, afternoon.

  "You needed some sleep," I told him as he moved toward the coffee machine, filling a cup, and taking a long sip.

  "Six hours," he said, shaking his head. "I don't think I have ever had six hours of sleep." He looked out the window for a second before looking over at me. "Come over here," he demanded, leaning back against the counter.

  And, well, when a sexy as all get-out man who had saved you, protected you, gave you incredible orgasms, then opened up to you told you to come, you went.

  It was as simple as that.

  I put my cup down on the counter as he did the same, stopping a few feet in front of him, not exactly sure what he wanted.

  But then his hands sank into my hips, and he dragged me forward, his lips claiming mine.

  It was sweet, deep, promising, and by the time he was done, I was all but swaying on my feet.

  "Didn't decide I was a mess you didn't want to clean up, huh?" he asked, tucking me into his side as he reached for his coffee.

  "You're not a mess," I rushed to say, not particularly liking him thinking that way of himself, let alone believing that I might feel the same. Then, deciding the moment was maybe a bit too tense, I tried to lighten the mood. "Besides, I believe I was promised lunch."

  There was a low, rumbling chuckle, making me crane up my neck to look at him, seeing that this time - maybe just barely, but it counted - the smile actually reached his eyes.

  "That I did," he agreed

  So then we ordered lunch. I got some fancy sandwich which had some ingredients I didn't actually recognize that came with a pear and spinach salad with raspberry vinaigrette and some drink that included, I kid you not, papaya green tea, hibiscus, plum, and ginger.

  "Just order another one," Ross said a couple minutes later as I moaned through my last sip of a drink I was pretty sure I had been looking for my entire life.

  "No, it's too good. It needs to be a special treat thing so I don't get sick of it," I informed him, it being one of my favorite pieces of advice my mother had ever given me after I binged so hard one summer on salted caramel gelato that I never had a taste for it again.

  After informing him of this, his head cocked to the side, watching me as I picked at a salad I wasn't sure I was going to like, and didn't want to not like in front of him since I was sure it was absurdly expensive.

  "I just realized that, for maybe the first time in my life, I have told someone I barely know anything about my whole fucking life story."

  "I told you about me at Famiglia," I reminded him, shrugging. "There really isn't much more to tell."

  "That's not true."

  "Really, Ross, my life hasn't been all that interesting."

  "How about I decide that?"

  I wasn't being self-deprecating.

  In comparison to him especially, my life was that of a darn cheesy sitcom where the mom is a housewife, slaving away cooking, cleaning, driving me here and there, and sacrificing everything for other people.

  My father worked long hours, usually making it home for a late dinner that my mother left wrapped on the stove, eating by himself most nights long after I had gone to sleep.

  I saw him mostly on weekends when we would go for hikes or, in the winter, skiing.

  I had been an only child because - though she wouldn't admit this to me until I was much older - my mother didn't think she could handle any more.

  But growing up in a sleepy town where everyone trusted everyone else, the kids were just allowed to roam from yard to yard, or hang out in the nearby park behind the school, completely without adult supervision.

  Until I heard Ross' story, I don't think I ever truly comprehended just how careless that probably was. If Cohen could be taken from somewhere like Montana, something like that could absolutely have happened in Vermont as well.

  My childhood was simply that of a bygone era, coming in when the streetlights came on, never spending more than a rainy day here or there in front of a television set.

  My teens involved after school activities, dances, community events, and some dating, first heartbreak, all the normal, everyday things.

  I wasn't valedictorian or prom queen.

  I didn't impress anyone with Ivy League prospects.

  I just graduated and got a job at a local office, taking weekends to care for my grandmother.

  "Were you close?" Ross asked, not sounding bored which, well, he probably should have been, but instead, treating it like it was somehow the most important information he had ever been privy to before.

  "She was like a second mother to me," I admitted.

  And, like my mother, she was sweet, soft, protective, and maybe just the smallest bit naive about the world.

  Then she got sick.

  And I spent every day and night at her bedside until she finally passed.

  "I found out a week or so later that she had left me a small inheritance along with a note begging me to go on an adventure. But, well," I said, smiling a little, shaking my head at myself, "I'm kind of scared of flying. And I get seasick. So my options were rather limited. I decided the biggest adventure I could possibly have would be to start over somewhere new. So that's what I did. And here I am."

  "Were your parents upset?"

  "Upset? No. I think they were just surprised? I guess they figured that I would want the exact same life they did."

  "You don't?"

  "That's the thing... I had no idea. All I had ever known was their life. I wanted to see maybe if there was something else I could want. I told them I would give this a year. If I wasn't happy here, I would move back there."

  "Have you been happy here?"

  "I've been scrambling a bit," I admitted, realizing that the salad was actually almost as good as the drink. Almost. "I didn't realize how different things would be here. More expensive most prominently," I told him, shrugging. "For the rent I pay here, I could have a duplex up there, fully furnished on my salary. And, I mean, I have no friends here, no family. It's been..."

  "Lonely?" he supplied, sounding almost tense at the word.

  "I don't know if lonely is the right word. But I've somehow felt more isolated here than I did there, even though everything in my old town closed at eight, and there wasn't even a local bar there. I mean, I've been out more in the past we
ek than I have been in all the months I have been here."

  "Do you like going out?"

  "Yeah. I mean, I like staying in a lot too. But occasionally. It's kind of nice to actually get to see parts of the town."

  "I got work tonight," he told me, though I already knew that. "But you want to see more of the town tomorrow night?"

  Hell yeah, I did!

  I bit that back just in time, but there seemed to be no way to avoid the huge smile I felt tugging at my lips. Because he hadn't woken up and thought that letting me in was a mistake. He wasn't going to try to put guards up again. He was just going to accept it. He was willing to keep moving forward.

  Would that mean it would go smoothly?

  No.

  Did it guarantee he wouldn't have times of guardedness or coolness again?

  Of course not.

  But he wasn't going to let it get in the way of trying.

  No useless angst.

  "Where are you taking me?"

  "I got an idea."

  "You're not going to tell me?"

  "Nope."

  "Okay, well, surprise dates are only sexy if you're dressed appropriately for them. Heels? Dress?"

  "Comfortable. Flats."

  "Interesting," I said, pushing my plate to the side, reaching for one of the fries he hadn't eaten from his plate. "Should I eat before?"

  "I'll feed you."

  "The mystery thickens. What time?"

  "How about seven-thirty. You get out of work at five, right? Is that enough time to get ready?" I snorted at that. "What?" he asked, smirking.

  "This is pretty much as 'ready' as I get. It took five minutes. Well, and add pants."

  He chuckled again at that. "Doll, anytime you want to go without pants, I am a full supporter of that."

  "Careful what you wish for. I'm about as opposed to pants as I am to bras."

  "Still not seeing a problem here."

  And with that, the smile didn't just toy with his eyes.

  Oh, no.

  It lit them the hell up.

  It might have been the most brilliant sight in the world.

  "Now if we could negotiate the panties and shirt, shit will be ideal."

  "Naked all the time, huh?" I asked, moving to get up and grab another cup of coffee before I started blushing.