Love on the Mat (Powerhouse M.A.)

by Winter Travers

  “I got up to get a drink. Did you just get home?” Ryker grabbed two glasses from the cabinet and filled them with water from the tap. He handed one to me and leaned against the counter sipping his.

  “Um, yeah. Work was pretty crazy tonight, and I stayed to help Rick and Vanessa clean up.”

  “Everything okay?”

  I nodded and took a swig of water. “Yeah, just some ass muffins thinking they could tear apart the club.”

  “They didn’t touch you or anything, did they?”

  Ryker was looking after me again, when it should be the other way around. I knew he hated me working at the club, but there wasn’t any other choice. “I’m fine. They sat down in Vanessa’s section, and Rick won’t let anything happen to her.”

  “But what if they would have sat down in yours? Would Rick have taken as good of care of you?”

  I set my glass on the counter and put my arm around Ryker’s shoulders. “Okay, Dad, I think it’s back to bed with you. You need to be rested for your driving lesson tomorrow.”

  Ryker laughed. “You’re actually going to go through with it? I figured you would have tried to find a way out of it.”

  “Nope. I said we would find a place, and we will, as soon as we wake up.”

  We stopped in front of Ryker’s door. “You mean when I get done with classes. I told Master Kellan I would help with the lessons today since he needed the day off.”

  “So you’re the only one teaching?” It still blew my mind that Ryker was so responsible that he taught karate classes at only sixteen.

  “No, Master Tate and Dante will be there. I’m just there to help.”

  I nodded. “Well, that means I can sleep in until you get done.”

  Ryker laughed. “I’m done at one. That gives you plenty of time to sleep.”

  I leaned against the door as he hopped back into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. “Do you want me to pick you up?”

  “Nah, I’ll walk there in the morning, and then I can walk home. It’s only three blocks away.”

  I shrugged. “If that’s what you want. I’ll be ready at one.”

  “Night, Aunt Haddie.”

  “Night, Ry,” I whispered. I closed his door, the latch clicking into place, and I leaned against it.

  Would I ever feel like I wasn’t a failure? I wished I could change everything and go back six months. Before everything changed, and before I start to ruin Ryker’s life. No matter how many times I wished for that to happen, it never did, so that meant I needed to pull up my big girl panties and figure out what the hell to do.

  I smothered a yawn with my hand and closed my eyes.

  “Tomorrow,” I mumbled.

  I was too exhausted to think of anything except falling into my bed and passing out until Ryker came home tomorrow.

  Tomorrow, things would change for the better.

  At least, that’s what I told myself every night.

  **********

  Tate

  I dropped my keys on the table next to the door and flipped on the light.

  Roman and I had left the club well over two hours ago, but I was just rolling through the door. I made the mistake of driving past Tig’s on the way to Roman’s house, and he had insisted stopping for one last drink. That had turned into shutting the place down and literally carrying him home.

  I was hungry, cranky, and ready to fall over from exhaustion. A night out with Roman always turned out the same way. It was no wonder why I was the only one who agreed to go out with him.

  The house was quiet, only the sound the ticking of the large clock in the living room greeted me. I had left the TV on when I left, but it had timed out, and the living room was draped in darkness.

  I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and collapsed in the recliner in the corner.

  My house had an open floor plan with a huge living room housing a large fireplace on one wall, with a sixty-inch TV hanging above it. A monstrous dark brown suede couch curved into an ‘L’ shape, set the boundaries of the living room which spilled into the kitchen.

  I had a house built for a family but I was the only who lived here. The guys didn’t understand why I had built a four-bedroom, three bath house on the outskirts of town with a huge yard, but I knew when I had seen it finished, that it was perfect. It had been a huge piece to my puzzle, although I was still missing the key piece to complete it.

  I never told the guys what I really wanted, because I knew I would sound like a damn fool and I would never hear the end of it.

  My bed was just up the stairs, but I didn't have the energy to move. I grabbed the remote, turned on the TV to a late night infomercial, and pulled the blanket off the back of the recliner over me. Class started in five hours, and there was no way I could call in.

  Kellan had taken a rare weekend off, whisking Molly away to some cabin in the woods, so the studio was left in the hands of Dante, Roman, and me. Roman was going to be a useless pile tomorrow, so it was down to Dante and me to wrangle the kids and take care of private lessons. At least Ryker was coming in to help with classes, so it wouldn’t be complete hell.

  It had been a long night, and I had a feeling it was going to be an even longer day.

  **********

  Hadley

  “Oh, sweet Jesus!” My life flashed before my eyes, and I threw an arm across Ryker’s chest. I had the whole ‘mom arm seat belt’ down pat. It was the fourth time I had pulled it out of my bag of tricks today.

  Ryker batted my arm away and slammed the car into park. “What did I do now?” he demanded.

  “Do you not see that tree?” I tossed my arm toward the windshield and shrieked, “You were about to hit it!”

  Ryker squinted his eyes and unbuckled his seatbelt. “I’m done. That tree is over twenty feet away, Haddie. I think you either need to get your eyes checked or take a chill pill. All I’ve been doing for the past half an hour is slow circles in the parking lot.”

  I turned in my seat and glared at him. “That is way closer than twenty feet.” It was more like nineteen, but I wasn’t going to admit that.

  “You drive home. I’m likely to kill us by hitting a tree three blocks away.” Ryker wretched open the door, slid out, and slammed it shut.

  “Shit fudge,” I whispered. I wasn’t trying to be wound so tight, but it was damn nerve-wracking having someone who didn’t know how to drive operate the only means of transportation I had to get us around. If an accident were to happen, we would be shit out of luck with no way to buy a new car. I could only afford liability, and I knew they wouldn’t cover my sixteen-year-old nephew who didn’t have a license crashing into a tree…twenty feet away.

  Ryker leaned against the door, his back to me, and I knew I had fucked up again. “One day, Haddie. Can you at least go one day without fucking up?” I pushed open the door, rounded the front of the car, and leaned next to Ryker.

  “Let’s just go home,” he mumbled.

  I sighed and pulled my phone out of my pocket. “No can do. I put a roast in the crock pot before we left, and I don’t have to start the potatoes for at least two hours. You’re stuck with me in this parking lot until then.”

  “Haddie, you about had a heart attack when a leaf blew at the windshield.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “It was a damn big leaf.”

  He pushed off the car and stood in front of me. “How about I try a little bit longer, and then we head to the trampoline park?”

  “Trampoline park? We have one of those?” I had lived in Falls City all of my life and knew nothing of a trampoline park.

  “They just opened it a month ago. It looks like a huge warehouse, and it’s in the industrial park. I heard some of the students talking about it today. I can work on my hyper tricking.”

  There was so much in that sentence I didn’t understand. Warehouse? Industrial park? Hyper tricking? “What is hyper tricking?” I decided to ask about the thing I really had no clue about.

  “Flips, kicks, j
umps, and all mashed together, and if I get really good, I can add it in with my weapons.”

  “Ah, karate.” I should have known. Karate was what Ryker talked about ninety percent of the time. “So, it’s just one big trampoline you jump around on?”

  “No, at least the ones I’ve been to before aren’t like that. I’ve never been to Sky Fall before.”

  Hmm, Sky Fall. I had no idea how much going to a trampoline park cost, but Rick had tossed an extra fifty to me last night for staying late to clean up. We should be able to swing it and hopefully still have money left over. “Okay. A couple more turns around the parking lot, and then we can head over there.” Ryker didn’t get to have a lot of extra fun, and he seemed super excited to go.

  “Yes!” He pumped his fist in the air and pushed me to the side to get back in the car.

  Well, that was easy enough to cheer him up. Apparently, this parenting was a balancing act of messing up and fixing it.

  I had the messing up down; I just needed to work on the fixing part.

  **********

  “Man down,” I croaked, waving my arm in the air. With my luck, I was seconds away from being trampled by the gaggle of giggling girls who had been following Ryker around for the past hour, and no one would miss me.

  I was on one of the corner trampolines, trying to not draw attention to myself, but Ryker kept coming by me with the group of girls in tow.

  My lungs were begging for air, and I realized how out of shape I was. Ryker was looking down at me, a huge grin on his face. “I think you almost just did a cheat seven twenty.”

  My hand rubbed my chest where I had somehow managed to knee myself. “That’s great, except I have no idea what that means.” It had felt like I had been flying through the air to my death.

  “It means you rotated, a lot,” he laughed. He held his hand out to me and helped me up. “Next time, try landing on your feet, and not with your knees in your chest.”

  I shakily stood. “I didn’t think I was flexible enough to do that. That is definitely going to leave a bruise.” The park was divided up into numerous rectangles, each surrounded with padding for individual jumping. There was also a basketball-type trampoline court and another area with a huge trampoline where you could play dodgeball.

  I had no plans to venture out of my own little rectangle.

  “I think you should try jumping first before flipping,” Ryker chuckled. He bounced over to his trampoline, next to me, and lightly jumped.

  “That’s what I was doing.” I had been jumping up and down, minding my own business, when I had gotten a little brave and decided to up my game a bit. I upped it a bit too much. I dropped down to my knees and fell back on my butt. My legs were not ready for me to be standing on them again. “I’ll leave the fancy stuff to you.”

  Ryker jumped, each time going higher and higher. “It’s easy to do it here, out on the mat is where it’s hard.” He tucked his legs, flipped backward, and landed on his feet, bouncing back up. “It took me months to figure out how to do that in the studio.”

  I believed that. I couldn’t even get the hang of it on the trampoline that was doing all the work of getting my body in the air. “I blame my inability to get my ass in the air on the fact that I’m old.”

  “Then if I were you, I wouldn’t come to the studio.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because Tate, Dante, and Kellan are older than you and they can get their asses in the air. Well, maybe Dante can’t flip very well, but Tate and Kellan can.”

  I laid back, slightly bouncing. “Well, more power to ‘em. I’ll keep my ass on the ground.”

  Ryker did a series of flips, coming down from one, already planning out the next. He was flawless flying through the air, and it didn’t look like he was trying at all. “You can really do all of that on the ground?”

  He did one last flip and plopped down on his ass. “Most of it. I can’t do a cheat seven twenty like you did, though.”

  I sat up, my elbows underneath me. “That’s because I have skills no ninja has ever seen before.”

  “I didn’t know that there were ninjas in Falls City.”

  “Looking at one right now,” I said, laughing. “You’re like grasshopper in Karate Kid. Although, you have more skills than Daniel ever did.”

  Ryker shook his head. “I don’t know; his switch kick was on point. Especially from that flamingo stance.”

  I laughed loud, picturing Ryker standing on one foot like the pink bird. “I’m going to need to see you try that.”

  “Come to class next Saturday, and you can see it. Maybe I can get Kellan and Tate to show you how this stuff should really look.”

  I sighed and smiled. “You really like this stuff, don’t you?”

  “Karate?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, I do like it.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “It just is something I’ve been doing for so long that I don’t feel like myself if I’m not doing it. Somewhere along the way, karate became who I am.”

  I sighed and laid back down. My sixteen-year-old nephew had more passion for something in life than I ever did. “I’m sorry I can’t afford lessons for you, Ry.”

  “It’s okay. I like to help teaching the classes. Besides, I do get small lessons from the guys. Roman, one of the instructors, was one of the best guys on the circuit. The fact that I can even walk into the same school as him is amazing.”

  I’d never been to the karate school Ryker was teaching at. I knew where it was, but I had never stepped foot inside. “Can I really come watch you help teach?”

  “Yeah, of course. The guys won’t mind.”

  “Well, then I guess I’ll have to drag my cookies out of bed next Saturday and watch my ninja nephew kick a little ass.”

  “Really?”

  Saturdays were always hell waking up early, but for Ryker, I would stay up all night and be to the school an hour early if it made him that happy. “Yup. And if you’re lucky, I’ll even let you drive.”

  “You know, if you just let me drive, you won’t have to wake up so early to get me to school every day.”

  “I need my car during the day, Ry.”

  Ryker scoffed. “You don’t need your car during the day.”

  I rolled my eyes and sat up. “Do you seriously think I do nothing but sleep all day?”

  “No, but if you give me a list of errands to run, you can do nothing and sleep all day.”

  “How about you work on getting your license, and then we can discuss you taking the car to school.”

  “Sounds like a plan I can get down with.” Ryker bounced away, and I fell back.

  I was tired. Who knew bouncing for an hour could wear you out? “Fifteen more minutes, Ry, and then we’re hitting the road,” I called.

  Dinner, dishes, and then I was falling into bed.

  Thank god I had the night off because adulting was exhausting.

  **********

  Tate

  “Kellan told me you and Roman had a little fun the other night.”

  I grabbed the cup of coffee off the counter and shoved a twenty in the tip jar. “Roman had fun. I was his damn babysitter.”

  Molly giggled and wiped her hands on her apron. “At least tell me he was feeling it the next day.”

  “And the day after that.” I winked and took a sip. “Dumbass can’t bounce back like he used to.”

  “He’s in his twenties, Tate,” Molly chuckled.

  “Late twenties.”

  Sage scooted around the counter and set down the empty coffeepot. “Who’s in their late twenties?”

  “Roman. He and Tate went out last weekend, except Roman didn’t fare well the next day,” Molly explained.

  “Oh, to be in my twenties again. I can’t even remember them anymore. Sammy has wiped out any memory that doesn’t involve him.” Sage sighed and leaned against the counter. “Hell, I can’t even remember the last time I had a night out without Sammy.”

  M
olly clapped her hands together and bounced up and down. “We totally need a girls’ night. We can all go out and then crash at my place.”

  I didn’t know how much Kellan was going to like that. When he wasn’t at the studio, he was with Molly. “You might wanna run that one by Kellan, Cookie.”

  Molly rolled her eyes and rubbed her hands together. “He can deal without me for one night. He can go out with you and Roman.” She pointed a finger at me and narrowed her eyes. “No fighting, though.”

  Hmm, she did know everything that happened Friday night. “Talk to Roman about that. I tried to talk the dumbass out of it.”

  “Wait, wait. What do you mean ‘we?’ There is only two of us. That’s not much of a girls’ night,” Sage butted in.

  Molly tapped her finger on her chin, thinking. “Well, I can talk to Kennedy and Karlton and see if they want to come.”

  I choked on my coffee and set the cup down. “How is it a girls’ night if you have a dude coming with you?”

  “He’s gay and fabulous. That’s how he gets to come along,” Molly said matter of factly. “The man has to come.”

  “Well, good luck going out and not having Kellan crash the party when he hears there’s another dude coming.”

  Molly held her hand up in my face. “I’m ignoring you right now, even if you are one of Kellan’s best friends.”

  “You can’t ignore the fact your reasoning is whack.” I smirked.

  She leaned in, her hand pressing against my face. “Shh. The adults are talking right now.”

  Sage laughed, and between Molly’s fingers I was able to see Sage pick up the empty coffee pot and set it in the sink. “But where will we go? Tig’s?”

  “If you want food poisoning and fifty guys hitting on you, then that’s the place to go.” Tig’s was not the place for three women and a gay guy looking for a girls’ night out.

  Molly dropped her hand and fully turned to look at me. “Well, where did you and Roman go the other night?”