Unfiltered & Undone

by Payge Galvin

  He came. In the dream and then, yep, as he surfaced from it, sweating and panting, feeling the wet spot on the sheets and… yep, not just the dream. Hell, yes. Hell and fuck, yes. Jess. God, Jess.

  He lay there, panting. Then he reached for the phone. He brought it over, eyes half shut, still riding the lingering tremors of orgasm as he hit the play button, wanting to hear her voice again and imagine her there, curled up beside him.

  “Declan? It’s Jess.”

  His lips curved in a smile as he closed his eyes. Jess. Mmm, yes. Jess.

  “I, uh, I’m going to cancel our lesson for this week.… .” She inhaled sharply. “I don’t think I’ll be back. It’s just… not for me. I’m sorry.”

  The line went dead as Declan bolted up, afterglow evaporating.

  Oh, shit. What had he done?

  ‡

  Cell phone in one hand and a slip of paper with Jess’s number in the other, Declan paced his tiny living room. In three attempts, he’d gotten as far as the first four digits before hitting End.

  He’d screwed up with Jess last night. She’d seemed fine when she left, laughing and joking with him, and then this morning? Dumped.

  Okay, not dumped, since they’d never been, you know, dating. Or even messing around. But her call said she didn’t want to see him again, and Declan was racking his brain to figure out why.

  Well, maybe because her lesson hadn’t been a lesson at all, and not because his damned organizer called, but because he’d gotten a little caught up in having Jess bending over that table. She’d seemed okay with it. Hell, he wasn’t even sure if she’d noticed he was having far too good a time back there. But maybe she’d been telling herself that bulge was his cell phone and then later last night she’d realized he’d pulled the phone out of his rear pocket and thought, “Holy shit, shooting-instructor-dude was grinding on me.” Even if it wasn’t exactly grinding…

  Fine hair to split there, Cavanagh. You were about five seconds from full-on grind when that phone rang.

  Then he’d pulled that bullshit about meeting her at the bar. Yeah, just being friendly and helpful, and offering to hang out at a bar and look out for you, like I do with all my students. Not to mention the fact she probably didn’t appreciate the insinuation that she needed his protection.

  Had she seen him drop by the bar after his fight, looking for her? Decided one stalker was enough? Or maybe she’d just realized Declan was interested and she was running in the other direction before he did something nuts, like ask her out.

  Or maybe, Cavanagh, you should have asked her out before grinding on her. Crazy thought.

  He hadn’t planned on getting nearly so up close and personal with Jess. But when he’d seen her in those boots and that skirt, his imagination had run away with him. Well, not really his imagination. The problem originated a little lower than the head on his shoulders.

  He should have asked her out. He wanted to ask her out. With Jess, he wanted a hell of a lot more than a one-night hookup.

  Except there was no way in hell he was asking her out before he knew she wouldn’t look at him like he’d crawled out from under a rock. You? The gun-club dude? Seriously? She’d never say that, of course. He doubted she’d even think it. But the sentiment would be there. He’d barely graduated from high school. She was on the fast-track to a PhD in Immunobiology.

  “Immunobiology,” she’d said when he asked what her major was. “It’s—”

  “I know what it is.”

  Her face had lit up. “Really? I usually have to explain it.” A soft laugh. “Not exactly a common major.”

  He’d had no fucking idea what Immunobiology was. Not until he spent an hour on the internet finding out. As the name might suggest, it was the study of the immune system. Diseases and such. Jess wanted to get a work-study placement at the CDC and eventually work for the World Health Organization, helping people in third-world countries. Which was fucking awesome. And made his own dreams look like shit.

  He stuffed the phone and her number into his pocket and walked into the bathroom. He peered into the mirror, seeing if any bruises had risen overnight. None that wouldn’t be covered once he got dressed. He raked a hand through his hair and heard Barb’s voice in his mind. “For God’s sake, Cavanagh, cut it before someone rips it out.” He refused. To cut it said he was in the game for the long run, which he wasn’t. So the hair stayed.

  His hair length wasn’t an issue in boxing. That was Declan’s specialty. He’d started when he was eight, going to the gym with his dad. They’d shared that, long hours ringside, his dad’s gentle coaching, constantly telling him in that soft Irish burr, “Only if you want it, boyo, This is about you, not your old man. You ever decide you don’t want to do this, say the word and we’ll stick to the shooting range.”

  His dad died when he was ten. Hit by a drunk driver. Then came Pete, his new stepdad. Who had no interest in boxing. Fighting, though? Oh, yeah, Pete liked to throw some punches, especially if the guy on the receiving end was a kid. One problem with hitting Declan? He knew how to hit back. That’s when Pete learned something about his new stepson. He was a damned fine fighter. And to Pete, that meant money.

  Not boxing, though. “Boxing’s for pansies,” Pete would say. For real fighting, you took off the gloves and threw out the rule book. Declan fought his first illegal match at twelve. Won his first bout a month later. By sixteen, he was in cage matches. He hated every second of it. Real fighting did have rules. It had dignity, grace. This was raw and brutal and ugly and there was nothing there but pain and shame. And money.

  They’d needed that money—him and his mom, and then Ciaran. They sure as shit weren’t getting any from Pete. When his stepdad actually managed to find employment, anything he earned was distilled into straight alcohol. Declan had cut a deal with Pete—all his earnings had to go to the family. Of course, Pete skimmed, but no more than a crooked manager would take. His mother pretended not to notice the bruises and the broken bones and the missed school and the grades that went from Bs to Ds. What mattered was the money. Declan got the hint fast—shut up, stop whining and fight. So he did. Now he had another reason to fight. At least for a little while.

  For three years, he’d been out of that life. And then…

  He shook off the thought. Forget that and focus on calling Jess back. Even if, personally, he’d rather step into the cage with a three-hundred-pound bruiser. Much less terrifying.

  It’s a phone call, Cavanagh. To a girl. Do you forget how to do that?

  Actually, he kinda did. Working at a campus gun club while keeping up his boxing skills and cage fighting three nights a week? Not exactly a life that encouraged dating. When he wanted a hookup, he found them at the ring. Plenty of women there panting for a chance to get with a young fighter who didn’t look like he’d stumbled into an industrial mixer.

  Six months ago, one of them handed him a hundred bucks in the morning and asked if she could share his number. He’d left the money on the nightstand and gotten the hell out of there.. Bad enough he felt like a whore plying his body in the ring. That was a humiliation he was still recovering from.

  Then he met Jess, and he saw the possibility of more. Of the kind of relationship that involved actual phone calls.

  He took out his cell and her number. Then he started dialing.

  Chapter 4

  Jess

  Jess hadn’t left her townhouse in three days. The place—in a complex on the edge of campus—was all hers now. When Sami left, Jess’s parents had been more than happy to pay double the rent so Jess could crack down on her studying and get into UCSF med.

  Even thinking about that set Jess’s head pounding and her stomach lurching. First Sami, who she’d been lying to and avoiding for three days. Then her parents. Oh God, her parents. Suddenly, admitting she wasn’t applying to medical school seemed ridiculously easy.

  “Hey, Dad? I don’t want to be a plastic surgeon, okay? Or even a medical doctor. But look on the bright side: At
least you don’t have a daughter serving life in jail for murder.”

  That was all she’d thought about for three days—variations on the murder and her guilt and everything else that was wrapped up in it. Staying in bed had been easy. The spring term was done, and she was in the middle of a two-week intensive, with only one class to miss Monday and an optional lab Tuesday. Three days with no valid reason to leave her townhouse, and no one to really notice she hadn’t.

  Besides a couple of brief conversations with Sami, the only person she’d spoken to was Declan when he called back after she’d cancelled her lessons via answering machine.

  “Hey, it’s Declan,” he said. Then added, “From the gun club.” Any other time she’d have smiled at that—as if she could forget who he was—but as he said gun club her stomach clenched.

  “Hey,” she managed. “You, uh, got my call.”

  “Yeah. About that. Did I do something wrong, Jess?”

  “Wh-what?”

  “It seemed awfully sudden, and I keep thinking maybe I did something last night that made you cancel.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Are you sure? Maybe, uh, me offering to come to the bar? I didn’t mean you couldn’t handle it yourself.”

  “It’s not—”

  “Maybe it seemed a little out of left-field. Me inviting myself along.”

  “Not at all.”

  “If I did anything wrong—”

  “Declan, no. Seriously. You did absolutely nothing wrong.… .” She inhaled and took a moment, thinking fast. “This is going to sound crazy, but last night, I got to talking to my friends about my lessons, and one told me a story about some girl she knew who started carrying a gun because of a stalker and she accidentally shot this guy… and, it freaked me out.”

  “Ah. Well, okay, I get that. But you aren’t carrying a gun. We haven’t even talked about it. You’re just seeing if you’d be comfortable with one, if it came to that.”

  “I was taking the lessons so I’d be ready if I wanted one. But I don’t want one now. So I don’t need the lessons.”

  “You don’t need to ever carry a gun to take lessons, Jess. You were having fun, right?”

  She had been, and it wasn’t entirely because she’d been crushing on him. She’d enjoyed learning a new skill. Enjoyed doing something that required mentally emptying her mind of all the other crap. Lethal yoga, she’d joked to Sami. Now, thinking of that, she felt sick.

  “I’m sorry, Declan,” she said. “It has nothing to do with you. I just can’t take lessons right now. Maybe… maybe another time.”

  Silence.

  She continued, “I can pay for the next couple weeks, since I stopped unexpectedly and I’m sure—”

  “No, that’s not it. I’m just… I’m worried about you, Jess. With Walker.”

  “I haven’t heard from him in days,” she lied. “If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.”

  And that was it. No more Declan in her life. She felt as if she’d lost something. Something good and real, which was ridiculous, because it hadn’t been real, just a schoolgirl crush of the not-so-schoolgirl kind. Now mingled with that was something weirdly stuck between grief and shame. She kept thinking about Saturday night, about how she’d been consumed with thoughts of Declan and how that seemed so silly and trivial now.

  But Declan hadn’t dropped the matter. He called Tuesday afternoon and left a message.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “Call me.” He paused. “I’m worried about you, Jess. We should talk.”

  Talk. God, yes, she wanted that. She and Declan had been able to talk. She realized that, looking back with her libido thoroughly dowsed by the events of Saturday night. They’d talked more than she had with anyone who wasn’t a close friend. Hell, more than she used to with Chandler.

  Sami was right—Declan wasn’t just some hot guy Jess had wanted to jump. He’d been sweet and funny and easy to talk to. Which was why she’d chosen him as her fling. Not only did he send her libido spinning, but she was sure he’d have been a considerate lover, someone she could have trusted to help her explore the mysterious side-streets of sex that Chandler refused to go near. But that hope was dashed, and all she could do now was treat Declan with respect—and distance.

  She knew he boxed on Wednesday nights, so she’d wait and leave him a message tomorrow. Cowardly, yes. But safer for both of them. Cut ties. Move on. There was nothing else she could do.

  Nothing she could do about Declan, that is. About the fact she hadn’t left the house in three days? Something had to be done about that. This intensive was critical for her grad school application. If she wasn’t going to jail, it was time to get her act together.

  ‡

  Jess’s resolution to leave the townhouse coalesced into a grocery run. She didn’t get further than the edge of the complex before she bumped into one of her neighbors. “Hey, Jess,” Pam called out, then stopped short with, “Are you okay?”

  Jess had been hoping she looked fine. She’d showered, washing her hair twice. She was dressed in boot-cut jeans, an Oxford shirt and flats. Her long hair was braided and she wore lipgloss. In other words, Jess looked exactly as she always did when she wasn’t trying to seduce her shooting instructor. But she’d braided her hair back quickly. The shirt, while clean, hadn’t been pressed, and when she looked down, she saw she’d paired brown shoes with black jeans. None of this was a huge faux pas, but Jess was always particular with her appearance—her mother’s influence.

  “Touch of the flu, I think.” Jess forced a wry smile. “Better stay back. I’ve been trying to keep my germs to myself, so I haven’t been out in a few days. But now the cupboard is bare.”

  “I can grab your groceries. You did it for me during finals last year.”

  “Thanks, but the bug is passing, and I really should get out. However bad I look.”

  “Not that bad,” Pam said unconvincingly. “But if you need anything, you have my number.”

  So, apparently, Jess looked like shit. She resisted the urge to go back inside and fix herself up. If she did, she might not leave again.

  She took the shortcut to the campus mini-mart. Down the same dusty path she’d walked to the gun club Saturday night. It was open, rocky land, set aside for future development. Currently considered “green space,” at least by those who weren’t from Seattle.

  Jess was in the mini-mart, trying to pick the best apples from a very meager pile, when she caught a whiff of familiar aftershave and froze.

  “Jessie.”

  A hand slid around her waist and she spun, sending apples everywhere.

  “Here, babe, let me get those for you.”

  Chandler made no move to actually help, just waited for her to say, No, I’ve got it, so he could look like he’d been willing while not actually lifting a finger. When she nodded instead, he stood there, confused, until a bespectacled boy—probably a freshman—started scooping them up for her. Chandler shouldered the kid aside and bent awkwardly trying to retrieve the apples without touching the dusty floor.

  Chandler Walker. First-year med student. Blond. Tall and slender. Captain-of-the-polo-team looks, though he was actually captain of the rugby team because polo didn’t afford nearly as many opportunities to knock people around. Not that Chandler would ever admit he enjoyed that part. He was far too civilized. Mayflower roots. Political family. The kind of house with servants’ quarters that were still in use for the house staff. As her parents put it, he was a prime catch. Jess had stayed with him for eight months because of it, before his possessiveness and control issues grew too big for her to ignore and she’d ended it.

  Now, as she took the apples, he gave her a once over and said, “You look like shit, Jessie.”

  “Thank you.”

  He straightened and leaned in, squeezing her between him and the fruit stand. He didn’t make contact, but she felt as pinned as if he’d grabbed her arms and held her there. When she tried to sidestep, he put his fingers on her w
aist. “Studying too hard again, aren’t you? Bet I’ve got a cure for that.” He tugged the bottom of her shirt up, his fingers sliding under to her bare skin. She jumped and squeezed away from him. He seemed ready to block her again when he noticed the freshman staring.

  He glared at the boy and turned back to Jess and whispered, “You know it’ll help. Remember the last time? Worked off a lot of stress, didn’t we? Made us both feel so much better.”

  Jess wished she could deny that. Their last time together had been the best sex they’d ever had. Admittedly, that bar had been set exceedingly low. Jess had held out until college, not because she hadn’t been tempted but just, well, she’d wanted to wait. Not wait for Mr. Right but for Mr. Right-for-Now. Chandler had been it. But the sex? Horrible. Perfunctory and dull, and when she’d tried to liven it up, he’d made her feel like a slut. Then, after they broke up, she found out he’d been screwing around with a Hooters server.

  Madonna/whore syndrome, Sami called it. Jess was the good girl, for old-fashioned Missionary-position-no-foreplay sex. When Jess found out about the server, she’d gone to his apartment, and they’d argued, both losing their tempers and… Somehow that turned into sex. Incredible, clothing-ripping, raw, passionate sex. That apparently told Chandler he’d made a huge mistake and he needed to get Jess back so he could have more amazing sex. What it told Jess was she could have amazing sex. And she wanted it, just not with Chandler.

  “If you’re free tonight…” he said.

  “I’m not.”

  “But I bet you could be. It won’t take long.” A wicked grin. “Give me an hour, and I’ll cure whatever ails you, baby.”

  She laughed. Judging by his look, not the response he expected, but he wiped away his scowl and replaced it with what he probably thought was a seductive grin. It made her skin creep.

  “It’s over, Chandler. If you’d like, I can put that in a recording and e-mail it to you. Play it whenever the urge to follow me into the mini-mart strikes.”

  His gaze hardened. “I didn’t follow you anywhere, Jessie. I don’t need to follow girls to get their attention.”