by Izzy Sweet
“Christy,” Travis drawls out as he saunters up to the counter.
I blink my eyes, wondering at first if I’m imagining things. But no, after dragging my eyes over his body, I realize the asshole is right there in front of me.
Immediately, my fight or flight instinct kicks in. My eyes dart wildly around me and I work out my escape plan.
I can jump over the counter and make a run for the door…
“Where ya been, baby girl?” Travis asks, slapping his hands on the counter and leaning forward. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
Glancing towards the door, I see the rest of Travis’ crew walking in. I count at least eight guys, not counting the girls hanging on their arms.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
As if they know exactly what I’m thinking, a couple of the guys linger in front of the doors, blocking my escape.
“Christy,” Travis snaps, bringing my attention back to him. “I asked you a question.”
I stare into his face and my stomach sinks. I suppose it would be too much to hope that he’s sober for once and I could talk reason with him. It’s obvious he’s high on something, though it’s anyone’s guess what that something is. His eyes look strange, too wide and too intense with the pupils too big.
“I’ve been here, working,” I say slowly without emotion.
It’s an old survival reflex I perfected a couple of years ago after my mom passed away and Travis first started hanging out with his crew. Back then, he started coming home so hopped up on drugs the littlest thing would set him off and you’d never know what he’d say or do. The wrong word the wrong way could cause him to go ballistic, raging and breaking things for hours.
Or say something nice and completely innocent and he’d take it the wrong way. He’d take it as an invitation to start kissing me and feeling me up.
During one of my stepfather’s brief moments of awareness, he walked in on Travis cornering me against the wall. All I did was tell Travis to have a good day before I walked out the door for work.
Travis professed his love for me and tried to claim me as his girl. I don’t know if Herb was confused or just drunker than he looked, but I got the feeling he thought I wanted to be with Travis too. Herb told him to keep his fucking hands off of me that I was too fucking young. If we wanted to be together, we had to wait until I was eighteen or Travis could go to jail.
And so Travis backed off, at least for a little while.
Travis’ eyes roam over me slowly, intimately, lingering on my breasts. My skin crawls and my spine stiffens. Everything inside me is screaming for me to run, to get the fuck out of here.
I take a step back, trying to put some distance between us. His eyes widen and his nostrils flare as he watches me intensely. The way his head sways and bobs reminds me of a snake. Any second now he could strike.
“Where have you been staying?” he asks.
“With a friend,” I say evasively, sensing it’s a loaded question.
I dare not take my eyes off of him but I so want to glance behind me, to see if any of the cooks or managers are around. Everyone tends to disappear when it’s slow and no one is coming through the drive thru.
“Not with Nicole,” he says calmly, too calmly.
“Not with Nicole,” I agree.
“Then with who? What other friends do you have?”
I can’t spit out a name. My brain just keeps pulling up a blank. I open my mouth but nothing will come out of it.
Travis strikes. Jumping forward, he grabs me, his hand latching painfully onto my arm. He yanks me towards him and slams my stomach into the counter.
“Who have you been staying with?” he hisses, one hand grabbing me by the back of the head, his fingers pulling viciously on my hair.
Tears sting my eyes but I don’t try to fight back yet, knowing that once I hit him, there’s no going back. I can take him, but I can’t take him and all the guys he brought with him.
“You shacking up with a guy, Christy?” he asks softer yet somehow more menacing. “Who do I have to kill?” His fingers tighten in my hair. “Who’s been touching my property?”
“What’s going on here?” Diane calls out from the back, her voice loud and sharp with authority.
Travis slides his fingers out of my hair, taking quite a few strands with him, and takes a step back.
His eyes are wide with a strange kind of gleeful innocence.
“Christy?” Diane asks, walking up to me. “Are you okay?”
I take a deep breath and straighten away from the counter.
“Is this man bothering you?” Diane asks with a frown as she takes in my disheveled appearance. Her eyes narrow and her lips pinch into a tight line as she looks between us.
I straighten the hat on top of my head and shoot a glance towards Travis.
He’s practically bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement. I get the sick feeling that he wants me to call him out. That he wants me to make a big scene out of this.
The guys behind him are smirking and talking quietly among themselves. They’re all looking for trouble, I just fucking know it. They want an excuse to start shit.
“Christy,” Diane says, placing her hand on my arm and turning me away from Travis. “Was he touching you? Do I need to call the cops?” she asks quietly.
I can’t get Diane involved in this, I can’t. I can’t make her a target.
I know what these guys will do and I know what they’re capable of. If she calls the cops, the cops may come and get involved. But unless there’s proof they’ve done something illegal they won’t arrest them, they’ll just order them to move along. The crew will leave but they’ll be back later, and they’ll pay back Diane for calling the cops on them.
“No,” I say and shake my head. “No cops,” I clarify, and Diane straightens away from me with a look of confusion. “This is my stepbrother, Travis…”
Travis grins and waves his hand at Diane.
Diane stiffens and looks at me pointedly but I look away.
“Okay, Christy,” she says finally. “I don’t mind if you have people stopping in but if they want to stay they’ll need to purchase something.”
I nod my head and look up at her, my eyes conveying my gratitude and relief.
Diane frowns down at me but Travis cuts in before she can speak.
“I’ll take a number five,” he says expectantly. “With extra pickles and ketchup.”
Diane turns her frown on him. “Everyone that wants to stay will need to order something.”
Travis smirks and for a moment I’m afraid that he’s going to start the scene I’ve been trying to avoid.
I don’t even bother ringing up his order until he turns towards his crew and tells them all to, “Get their asses up here and fucking order something.”
With much grumbling, his crew steps up to the counter, and I spend the next twenty-five minutes entering their orders and helping prepare them. Once they’re all served and seated at the tables, Diane calls me back to her office.
“Christy, what’s going on?” she asks, shutting the door behind us.
How do I even explain it? I never expected Travis to find me here. I was so careful, never wearing my uniform around him because I knew if he knew where I worked he would always be in here harassing me.
Someone must have told him, but who? He was right when he called me out earlier, the only friend he knows I have is Nicole and she’d never tell him unless…
Fuck.
“Are you in trouble?” Diane asks when I hesitate to answer.
“No. I haven’t been home in a few days and Travis has been looking for me.”
“You didn’t want him to find you?”
I nod my head reluctantly, figuring there’s no point in trying to lie about it.
“Do you need help? Is there someone you want me to call?”
“No,” I shake my head. “I just… that… I’d like to get out of here, if it’s not too much of an inconvenience.”
Diane stares at me hard for a long moment and I can practically feel the frustration emanating off of her. I know she’s a good person and she just wants to help me, but really, I’m doing her a favor by not getting her involved in this.
“Okay,” she finally agrees with a little defeat. “You can go. I’ll cover for you up front.”
“Thank you,” I nearly gush with relief. The thought of finishing off my shift with Travis and his crew out there, waiting for me to leave, was making me sick with worry.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to call someone?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No, but thank you, thank you for everything.”
Diane nods her head and opens the door for me. “We’re gonna miss you around here. You were our best employee.”
I smile at Diane, wishing things didn’t have to be this way. I honestly intended to finish up my two weeks and do this the right way, but now that Travis knows about this place I can never come back.
Stopping by the employee locker room, I change out of my uniform but decide to keep the beanie cap for Alex. Slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I sneak out the back entrance without getting caught. The parking lot is full of tricked out, brightly colored cars, but the crew still appears to be inside the restaurant.
Avoiding the front of the building and all the glass windows, I skirt around the back of the building and then dash across the parking lot. Pulling my cellphone out of my pocket, I dial up Alex as I’m running.
He answers on the third ring. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Can you pick me up?” I pant and glance behind me.
“Sure?” he says, sounding confused. “You off early?”
“Yes,” I say, deciding to just go with that as I cross the intersection. “But can you pick me up at the gas station up the street?”
There’s a pause and for a moment I fear we lost connection. Then his deep voice comes through the line. “Yeah, that’s no problem.”
“Thank you,” I nearly cry.
“Just hang on, I’ll be there in ten.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alex
Slamming to a stop outside of the gas station, I hop out of the car, looking at the surroundings. I don’t see anything out of the ordinary unless you count a soccer mom filling her van as dangerous. I also don’t see any sign of Christy.
Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I dial her number.
“Hey,” she says quietly.
“I’m here, where are you?”
“Oh… inside. I had to use the restroom.”
“Okay, I’ll be right in.”
“Don’t bother,” she says and disconnects the phone on me.
Not even two seconds later, she’s pushing open the door and walking out to me. She makes a little shooing motion at the car as she quickly walks past me to get in her side.
What the hell is going on? I wonder as I walk around to my side.
Shutting the door behind me, I ask her, “Everything okay?”
She nods her head. “Just ready to get home!”
She’s a little too cheerful when she says that, and I can tell by the way she sits rigidly in her seat that she’s full of it.
“What’s going on, Christy? How did you get off work so early?”
“Oh, well, once I put my two weeks in, they were kind of aggravated. So, close to my lunch time, they said I could leave whenever I wanted.”
She’s still not looking at me.
“Huh… Considering how much you cared about them… That sucks,” I say as I put the car in drive.
Pulling up to the exit of the gas station, I look around. “Why am I picking you up over here though?”
“Oh, well there were some annoying guys hanging around,” she says as she looks everywhere but at me or her old place of employment.
There is something going on right now. Staring across the main road, I see there’s a bunch of flashy douche mobiles sitting in the parking lot. Most of them are beaters that have home installed mods. There are a couple that might be in decent shape, but absolutely nothing in the lot has anything on my red bitch.
My knuckles tighten at the thought of someone harassing my girl. “Were they fucking with you?”
“What? No… definitely not,” she says a little too quickly. “I just… I didn’t want to give them the opportunity is all.”
I growl as I consider going over to see for myself. I don’t know where this almost overpowering sense of protection I have for her is coming from but it’s like something has unleashed a wild animal inside of me who is roaring to get out.
Turning onto the road, I drive past the restaurant, looking at it from my window. I see a couple of guys running out to their cars but that’s about it.
Fuckers are lucky I didn’t pick her up there.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as the miles separating us from the restaurant seem to take all the pressure off her shoulders. Eventually she reaches over, lacing her fingers through mine on top of the shifter and giving my hand a squeeze.
“Thank you for coming to the rescue, as always,” she says, and while I know she wanted it to come out as a joke it seems just a bit terse to me.
“I’ll always be there for you, Legs,” I say with a grin.
“Legs?” she asks, confused, as she looks down at her jean covered legs.
“Yeah, that’s your new nickname.”
“What? Why?”
“Because those fuckers are straight out of a wet dream. At least, for me they are.”
Rolling her eyes, she shakes her head at me. “That is so… dirty.”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t change how fucking insanely hot you are.”
* * *
I once got really bored and looked up the meaning of controlled chaos. What was described was things seeming to be chaotic to an outsider but actually functioning to unseen rules.
Well, the last week before a major fight is controlled chaos.
There are so many things happening at once that if you aren’t used to it, it may seem like the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. Press conferences, double the hours in the dojo, weigh-ins, interviews, drug tests, and then you get to the actual fight.
It’s all crazy shit, and one of the reasons I’m in love with the sport.
Christy is finally getting to see the business from the inside. It’s one thing to train in the dojo, to push the weights at the gym, to go round after round on the mats with another fighter. It’s a completely different beast to see all the lights and glitter that goes along with it.
There are cameras all over the gym, filming me for the last week before the fight. They want to get my side of the fight. They want to hear what I have to say about Rocko.
That’s how they build up the tension for the fight. They want me to trash talk, to say how I’m going to beat him to a pulp.
That shit ain’t for me.
I do my usual talk up. I talk about how hard I’ve been training, how hard I know Rocko has been working, and how I think it’s going to be a battle for the ages. But I’m careful with all my words. I don’t give them any options for a sound bite that can be turned against me. You have to be careful with that shit.
The hype before my title fight has the gym moving at an upbeat tempo. That’s probably a blessing considering how tense things were after the incident with Mark. Good thing Chase held a gym-wide talk the next day. He gave a quick overview of the rules of the gym before letting us all know exactly how fast anyone who pulled what Mark did would earn them a one-way ticket to being a pariah in the MMA world.
Chase has a shit ton of clout in the business because of his reputation and his credentials as a former champ. Hell, the company I fight for probably has Mark’s name on a blacklist.
Shit was a little tense after the talk, but Dale being the abusive bastard he is, ran us all through the ground. He made sure the guys were all punished as a whole for what happened.
Trust me, even I was.
<
br /> He set the example, I guess. That, and what I did to Mark in the locker room, ensured that shit like that wouldn’t happen again.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alex
“Dale?” I call out, pulling my earbuds out of my ears.
“Yeah?” he asks from his chair next to the door.
“It getting hot to you?”
“Yeah, it is…” Standing up from his chair, he walks over to the thermostat, giving it a couple of flicks.
Looking over at Christy, I ask, “You hot at all?”
“Kinda, what’s wrong?”
Shrugging my shoulders, I say, “Feels hotter than normal. Usually they keep this place at an even seventy-four degrees. It feels like it’s eighty.”
She looks around. “Is that bad?”
“Yeah, it makes the fighters sweaty. Which means if I am sweating in here… I will be sweating heavy out there. Hard to get good holds on a sweaty guy.”
Grumbling loudly, Dale says, “I’ll go check and see what the hell is going on.”
Shutting the door behind him, I can’t help but get up and flick at the thermostat myself. I need to do something, anyways. My blood pressure is rising ever so slowly. My body is going into pre-fight mode. I’m becoming the Beast now. I’m losing that human part of me and turning into the monster I love to unleash.
Twisting my neck back and forth, I hear the small pops. Then I work each knuckle on my hands.
Looking over at Christy, her cheeks are slightly flushed, her eyes widening. There’s a bit of perspiration on her collarbone, showing through the off-the-shoulder shirt she has on.
Fuck, if I didn’t have a fight in a few minutes I would be trying to do very dirty things to her.
“What are you staring at, Alex?” she asks with a terse chuckle.
Slowly edging my way towards her, my mind is starting to flood with dirty images of her bent over the table in the room. My long hard cock sliding through her so very fucking tight pussy.
“You,” comes out of my mouth in a growl.
She shakes her head. “Whoa there, big head. You look a little too…”
There’s a knock at the door and I turn to it. The door guard opens the door to show in the state official.