Trina inhaled deeply and closed her eyes as she looked up at the sky. “What a gorgeous day. How ‘bout we just walk to the cafe?”
“Fine by me,” I replied. It really was beautiful outside today, the sun beaming down on us through just the thinnest veil of fluffy white clouds. The world around us was basking in the warm, golden glow of noon, and I instantly felt a little better about everything going on.
Even Marc Montoya and his hand on my ass.
“So, what’s going on, honey?” Trina nudged me as we walked along.
“Well… it’s weird to talk about…” I began awkwardly, not sure where to start.
She gave me a questioning look. “Let me guess. Does it have something to do with that delicious MMA guy you’re training?”
“Trina!”I laughed.
“Come on, is it?” she pressed, grinning.
“Yeah, yeah! You’re right,” I relented.
“I knew it,” she said, sighing dramatically. “I just knew that boy would be trouble. I told Danny you could handle it, but I do know all about his reputation, honey. I told Danny that if Marc Montoya lays a single finger on you, he’d need a lot more than physical therapy when I got done with him!”
“Wait, wait, two seconds ago you called him ‘delicious!’” I backtracked.
“Mhmm, trust me, a man can definitely be both at the same time. Delicious, but bad news. A really good time, but a huge mistake. You just gotta learn to recognize which ones are worth the storm,” Trina advised me sagely.
“Does Danny know what happened yesterday?” I asked, panic starting to take hold of me. “Did Marc go to Danny and complain or something? Oh god.”
Trina shook her finger back and forth. “No, no, no! Don’t worry, Gemma! Nothing like that. Nobody’s said anything, as far as I know! I just assumed he pulled some kinda rude stunt on your or something, sweetheart. And obviously I’m at least half-right, since he’s got you all riled up and freaked out. Come on, tell me what happened.”
The flood gates burst open and I started to ramble at top speed. “I really thought I could handle him, but I might just have to get him transferred off to another therapist. I’ll just tell Danny I’m really, really sorry, and I tried my best, but it just isn’t working out, and it’s my fault, I take full responsibility for -”
“Hold up, hold up! Calm down,” she said kindly, putting her hands on my shoulders to center me back in this dimension. She cocked her head to the side and gave me a more concerned, motherly look. “Gemma, what did he do to you?”
I sighed, hanging my head a little. “Ugh, it’s so embarrassing. And we were doing so well. I mean, yeah, we started out on the wrong foot but he was really coming along and I thought he was starting to warm up to me and then… Well, he kind of warmed up a little too much, I guess,” I concluded lamely.
Trina bit her lip, clearly trying not to giggle. “Um, what happened, exactly?”
I started blushing, regretting ever even bringing it up. I should have kept this to myself and dealt with it on my own terms. But it was too late to back out now.
“We were having our third session yesterday and everything was going really well. He’s been making excellent progress and we were finally getting along.” I paused, unsure of how to word what came next. “And, um, he got a little friendly with me.”
“As in…?”
“Oh, Trina, don’t make me come out and say it,” I begged her, shaking my head.
“Nuh-uh, honey. You can’t back down now. No take-backsies.”
After a moment of hesitation, I blurted out, “He got hard, okay?”
Trina tilted her head back and cackled, pulling me in for a hug. “Aww, honey. That happens sometimes. Especially with some of the nasty old men we get at the gym, you know, they get one touch from a pretty woman in workout pants and suddenly they can’t control themselves. No big deal, sweetie. It happens from time to time. Goodness, was this your first occupational boner?”
“Yes,” I admitted, blushing. I was relatively new to the field, and I had mostly worked with women so far. But even the men I had worked with had never shown this kind of… enthusiasm for my work, until Marc.
“Well, that’s nothing to worry about,” Trina said, waving her hand dismissively. “He can’t really help it, you know. Blood circulatin’ and all that. Not your fault, either.”
She started leading me down the road again and we stopped in front of the cafe. She pushed the door open for us and we found a table in the corner. We both ordered iced green teas and chicken salads and then I worked up the courage to continue the whole humiliating ordeal. After all, the erection wasn’t even the part that bothered me all that much. I was relatively used to guys being lewd around me at various gyms. The one I worked at when I was younger was filled with horny guys who hung around my desk while I was working on the off chance that I’d go out with them. But what happened yesterday was different. He didn’t do it to upset me. And it wasn’t entirely one-sided, either.
Although, I wasn’t quite ready to admit that part out loud yet, not even to myself.
“Trina… that’s not all that happened,” I confessed quietly. She looked up from her menu and fixed me with a narrow-eyed glare.
“You mean, there’s more to this story?” she asked, leaning forward interestedly.
“Well, yeah. He-- he came onto me a couple of times during the session. Even before he got the, you know,” I muttered, glancing around nervously to make sure nobody was close enough to eavesdrop. The last thing I needed was for someone to leak to the media that big-time MMA fighter Marc Montoya was flashing a boner for his nobody of a physical therapist.
“How so?” Trina questioned, folding her hands in front of her. The waitress walked over and set our green teas on the table and we thanked her.
I unwrapped my straw, stuck it into the glass, and took a long sip before going on.
“Marc just kind of made some offhand comments. Nothing too obscene or obvious, of course. He’s smarter than that. But then he, um, he grabbed my ass,” I whispered, feeling my face start to burn. Trina’s expressive brown eyes grew round and she covered her mouth.
“Oh my goodness,” she gasped quietly. “That’s a little out of line.”
“A little?” I repeated. “More like a lot.”
“Yeah, you’re right. It’s definitely not okay. What did you do?”
I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, a little afraid to admit what I did to him in retaliation. I mean, it was my job as a physiotherapist to be understanding and compassionate, not to purposefully cause my patients pain. But I had to be honest. My dad didn’t raise me to lie.
“I might’ve applied some pressure to his weak points,” I said, barely audible.
“Please tell me that’s a euphemism for kickin’ him in the junk.”
“Oh, god no!” I laughed, feeling relieved that she wasn’t angry with me. I respected Trina immensely, and I wanted her to take me seriously. We joked about a lot of ridiculous stuff that happened at The Fighting Chance, because sometimes silly things just tended to happen in our line of work. But I never wanted to take it too far and have her or anyone else question my skill or dedication to doing my job well.
“I just did what I had to do to distract him, you know,” I said softly. “I kind of panicked a little, I guess, but I didn’t want to make a bigger deal out of it than it already was.”
Trina raised an eyebrow and smirked impishly. “And just how big was the deal, anyway?” she asked slyly.
“I am so not answering that,” I shot back, giggling exasperatedly. I was already starting to feel a little better about what happened, but I still needed her help deciding what to do next.
“How do you feel about what happened?” she asked, her maternal nature kicking in.
The waitress brought us our chicken salads and I was grateful for the fuel. I started digging in, and between bites I replied, “I’m not sure. I mean, I just don’t really know what is the protocol for this kind o
f thing. Do I tell Danny what happened? Do I recuse myself?”
“Well, that’s really more up to you than me. It’s all pretty subjective. Personally, I would give him a little longer to prove himself. Maybe he was just misjudging the situation. By a lot, I presume, but still. You’re good at your job, Gemma, and I think you’re the best staff member we have for this particular assignment. And what’s more, you’ve already proven that you can handle yourself. So I would give him a second chance, if you think you’re up to it,” she explained.
“Yeah, I’ll give him another try,” I said, without even thinking about it. Besides, I wasn’t quite ready to stop seeing him yet. Even though he was a massive pain the ass sometimes, he also had his moments in which he seemed like a genuinely good guy. A little lost, maybe. But good, deep down where it really mattered.
And it didn’t hurt that he was ridiculously, extremely attractive, either.
“You know, he’s got a bit of a reputation as a womanizer,” Trina commented.
“Does he?” I asked, as if I hadn’t picked up on that vibe from day one already.
“Yup. He’s hot and super talented, and I’m willing to bet he’s an incredible lay, but he’s also got a wild streak a mile wide. I don’t think he’ll ever settle down or chill out. Not for a long time, anyway,” she replied.
That was fine by me. Plus, it’s not like anything was actually going to happen between us, anyway. I could always just look and not touch-- as long as he was able to do the same.
CHAPTER 7 - MARC
I still wasn’t able to get the memory of the last session out of my mind. It was like a petulant bee buzzing around me, and there wasn’t anything I could do to clear my head.
It just didn’t make sense, I thought as I paced around my house with a beer, glaring out the window. Gemma was tiny. She couldn’t have been a third of my weight, and there hardly looked to be any muscle at all on that narrow frame of hers. The idea that she could hurt me like that so easily made me cringe--partly at myself.
I tossed the empty beer bottle into the garbage and squared up with the window, looking at my reflection before letting my vision focus on the streets below. This was so stupid. Why was I brooding over a woman I could pick up and toss around on a whim?
The worst of it was just how professional she was about everything. I’d have thought a woman like that would learn to lighten up, but no, Little Miss College Degree had to be all about formality, didn’t she? She was so damn smug about being able to inflict pain on me, too. That was the worst of it.
I had spent most of today out on a date with Selena.
Admittedly, the two of us weren’t as close as we could be. It would be more surprising if we were really tight together, in all honesty. We’d broken up and gotten back together more times than I could count.
Still, today hadn’t been bad. We went out to lunch and got some food, and she asked me how my therapy had been going. I left out the details of what happened last session but gave her a general overview of how things worked--especially the fact that despite what I put lightly “not seeing eye to eye on everything,” Gemma had helped me get some real control of my body back.
“That had better not be the only thing you’ve got control over,” Selena had remarked with pursed lips as we ate. She put on a show of being defensive when it came to talk of Gemma, but in reality, I knew most of our relationship was just a means to an end for her. To be honest, I couldn’t blame her. She was a model currently under contract for some vodka company or other. I had loads of the shit in my freezer. Appearances meant everything to her career.
Still, I assured her everything was professional between the two of us. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but the truth of our power play in the therapy sessions would be even more awkward to explain--and in any case, it wasn’t the kind of response she’d care to hear.
The rest of the lunch comprised of small talk about how things were going for her, some of the latest gossip of her friends, and who was caught in what ugly outfit at this party or that. I was only half-listening. Once we’d gotten on the subject of Gemma, I was lost and distracted by my annoyance.
I knew Selena was noticing my distraction, but she didn’t seem to pay it much mind, and I didn’t pay her much either. It was weird between us, but it always had been. Kenny had introduced us when I first got to Vegas, and while neither of us had ever cheated on the other to the best of my knowledge -and I knew I’d never even think about something like that - I got plenty of action to work off the steam with other women when my on-again-off-again girlfriend and I were in our off-again stages. I’m not sure whether Selena did the same, but that was none of my business.
Kenny was a little less lax about the situation between Selena and me. He straight up thought she was just in it for my money, and that our spotty relationship was just her coming up from air before she dove back down to dig more gold. Part of that opinion might have been guilt over the fact that he introduced us, only to have the relationship become... complicated.
But that was a point of contention between Kenny and me. Selena wasn’t exactly close and open to my heart, but she was no gold digger either. Hell, she was a successful model who was in the spotlight as often as she could be. Latina women in that industry faced enough trouble without guys calling them gold diggers for going after men who did well for themselves.
Kenny.
Snapping back to my brooding over Gemma, I realized that if I was going to drink to dull the pain, I shouldn’t be doing so alone, and Kenny usually had the best advice of anyone. Whipping out my phone, I shot him a quick text, asking if he wanted to meet up for a few beers down at a bar not far from my place.
***
“So I’m laying there, and she’s working out the muscles on my arm and down my side, right?”
“Right.” Kenny took a swig of his beer, both of us leaning on the bar off to a corner. Nobody really tried to crowd us; we were probably the biggest couple of guys in the whole place, so we had a fairly wide berth.
“And then she gets to my leg, and she starts like, swiveling it around, said something about getting the fluids moving or some shit like that.”
“Okay,” he said with a nod.
“Well, then I guess I said something that pissed her off, I don’t know.”
Kenny raised a knowing eyebrow, and I knew I wasn’t going to get out of this one easily.
“Alright, so I might have said something I shouldn’t have. I don’t know, I was pissed, and it felt weird with some college kid prodding and poking me, you know? And I might have, uh...I guess she didn’t like when her ass backed into my hand.”
Kenny’s look was stony.
“And then she puts her hand on my hip and pulls the leg out, like away from me, and before I know what the fuck happened, I’m in almost as much pain as I was when I hit the floor the first day!”
Kenny’s booming voice filled the bar as he roared laughter right in my face, slapping the table as I held my hands out in disbelief at him.
“What the fuck, Kenny, I thought you had my back on shit like this!”
“Sounds like she went easy on you for pulling shit like that, Marc,” he said through his settling laughter, wiping a tear from his eye. “I’ll tell you right now, that’s some poetic justice you had coming your way. She was probably just looking for an excuse to keep your dumbass mouth shut!”
I opened my mouth to protest more, but I shut up silencing myself with a long drink of beer. “Shit, man,” I said at last, defeated, “you’re probably right.”
Kenny wasn’t the kind of guy I could pull funny punches with. He was in his late thirties, all towering muscle and thick, sandy blonde hair, and he was at least ten years’ wiser than me, especially when it came to this kind of thing.
“Look, Marc,” he said, his jovial tone finally settling down to a more serious one as he looked me in the eye, “when I got you out of that little town in bumfuck nowhere, you were a young man with a hell of a lot of potentia
l for fighting and all the energy to make it happen. Now you’re a young man who’s realizing his potential. I know exactly what you’re feeling, Marc.”
I gave him a doubtful look, but he shook his head. “You feel like the whole world is in your hands. Like nothing can stop you. Then something like this happens, and you want to take it out on the people around you, even do something stupid like touch a woman when she hasn’t asked for it.” The look he gave me was deadly serious, and I nodded. There was no way I could defend how I’d acted.
“But you’ve gotta keep focused, Marc,” he said. “you can’t let that kind of pettiness get in your way. If you want to keep up this crest you’re on, you’ve got to concentrate on swallowing your pride and building that body of yours back up into shape, you hear me?”
TKO (A Bad Boy MMA Romance) Page 5