Zero to Sixty

by Marie Harte

  “That’s fucked up.” He squeezed her hand.

  “Yeah. I only know what goes on in their lives because my parents aren’t tech savvy. I’m pretty sure they don’t know how to unfriend me on Facebook or they would have.” Sad but true. “You know what’s worse? When Cheryl passed away from cancer soon after Greg was born, I was uninvited to the funeral.”

  He blinked at her. “That’s for real? You can uninvite someone to a funeral?”

  “I guess.” She shrugged. “Not like I wanted to go. Cheryl was a real witch to me. But I felt bad for my brother and my nephew. Not that I’ve ever seen the baby outside of pictures online. My parents treat him like gold. That boy will never want for anything, which is a good thing. They’re so keen on making sure Ethan recovers and Greg has a wonderful life that I might as well not exist.”

  “Man, what a bunch of pricks.”

  She nodded. “Total pricks. All of them.”

  Sam stopped her in her tracks, turned her to face him, and planted a smack on her lips. “That’s for saying prick and meaning it. I knew you had it in you, babe.” The goofy sense of pride on his face made her laugh.

  Ivy suddenly felt better about her past. Her parents sucked. Her brother had turned into an ass, and she’d likely never see her nephew, who was being groomed to ignore her like the rest of her family. But with Sam by her side, her old life didn’t seem to matter as much.

  “You’re a dork.”

  He let go of her hand to wrap his big arm around her shoulders. They continued along the walkway. “Louise, well, I don’t talk about her. We’ll just call her a prick too and leave it at that.”

  “Sounds good.” Another thing she and Sam had in common—shitty parents. Or rather, parent. He’d never mentioned his dad. By the guarded way he now held himself, she figured the omission had been on purpose. “So what about Foley and Eileen?”

  Sam subtly relaxed. “Now there’s a pair. I told you they took me in when I was a kid. I was in sixth grade. I remember it to this day. I was mouthing off. Nothing unusual about that.”

  “Hard to imagine,” she added.

  “Hush. I’m telling my sob story now.”

  She chuckled.

  “So these kids are all bigger than me. I didn’t hit my growth spurt until high school. I’m this whiny little punk, insulting everyone. Especially the bullies. Hell, remembering my mouth, I would have picked on me back then too.” She doubted that, but he continued, “So I’m getting my tiny ass handed to me when Foley comes in. He was big for his age and had muscle when most guys were scrawny and covered in zits. Foley hates bullies. Always has.” Sam didn’t smile, but she saw his eyes light up, felt him ease even more beside her. “He decided to rescue me, invited me home to dinner even. Hell, I wasn’t stupid. Free food?”

  As he talked, she got the impression Sam hadn’t been cared for by his mother at all. Because Sam’s recollection of Eileen’s warmth, of new clothes, food, and a heavenly shower told its own story. What sixth-grade boy loved being clean? One who didn’t have the opportunity to bathe, most likely.

  “Really? Pancakes is what it takes to get to you?”

  “Well, pancakes and breasts.” He wiggled his brows. “Not Eileen’s, ’cause that’s just gross. But yours, on the other hand…”

  “My sympathy meter just took a nosedive.” She watched Cookie continue to glance back at him, waiting for Sam to ease up on the leash. Like the puppy, Ivy felt caught in Sam’s presence, wanting to please him, just to see him smile or hear him laugh. She tried to imagine him as a helpless little boy and stopped herself before she teared up. No one should ever treat innocence like that.

  “So you’re not feeling sorry for me at all?”

  Nope. Not going there. This is a bright, sunny day. No more crappy parents with us on our walk. “Um, no. You had me with dirty little boy who swears a lot and lost me with breasts.”

  “Bummer.” He snickered. “But, hey, it’s a damn good story. Imagine anyone hitting me now.”

  “I have a hard time envisioning that.” They walked some more in silence, then she had to know. “So you’re covered in all those tattoos. You seem pretty tough. How about filling in the parts between you leaving Eileen’s house and her pancakes and getting here, to Lincoln Park, today?”

  “That’s a tall order.”

  “Yeah, well, we have nothing better to do,” she said, goading him. “And before you offer something that’ll scorch my ears, I actually agree with you.”

  “About?”

  “This. Talking and getting to know each other. I like this.” To her surprise, she really did. The sex would have been great, but it also would have put conditions and new emotions into the mix. And what if her first time with him had been a fluke? She’d feel the pressure to give him a good O face the next time around. Orgasms could be easy to fake, not so easy to achieve. She didn’t want any falsity with Sam. This time she planned to do things the right way.

  “So you want my life story.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who wanted mine. I’ll even tell you more about my disaster of a relationship with my ex.”

  He studied her before coming to a conclusion. “Fine. But you have to answer in detail. Anything I ask.” He paused. “Even sex stuff.”

  “So do you.”

  “Yeah?” He perked up. “You want to know about my sex life?”

  “I want to know about your time from high school to the here and now. I’ll let you know if I want to hear the sexy parts.”

  He looked disappointed, and she did her best not to laugh.

  “Well, go ahead.”

  “A little from me, then a little from you.”

  “Fine. But, Sam, no lies, okay? We’re still new. Why not get all the ugly out from the beginning? That way there are no surprises later on. Heck, once you hear all I have to say, you can end things now and feel good about it,” she teased.

  He didn’t look amused. “Yeah, fine. Okay.” He handed her back Cookie’s leash, and they waited while the puppy investigated a series of shrubbery. “My home life sucked, so I spent a lot of time with Foley. Hell, all my time, really. We’d hang on the streets or at his place. Eileen was always there, making sure we had enough to eat, washing our clothes, tucking us in if I stayed over. I mean, talk about a sucker. Foley could tell her anything and she’d believe it.” He shrugged. “But that woman loves the shit out of him.”

  “And you?”

  He nodded. “And me. God knows why.”

  Ivy liked the woman more and more.

  “Foley and I managed to get through high school. We were a little girl crazy. But no way was I as big a player as he was. I’d say is, but Cyn’s reformed him.”

  Ivy chuckled. “I can’t see Cyn tolerating any fooling around.”

  “Woman has brass balls, so to speak. So no.” They both grinned at that. Cookie finished sniffing everything, and they continued their walk. “I ran into trouble in high school. Lots of fights, suspensions, barely passing grades, but they were passing. Eileen didn’t fool around when it came to graduating. Foley and me, we were doing good. Then came a girl…” He paused.

  She waited.

  Still he said nothing.

  “And? Don’t leave me hanging.”

  Sam shrugged. “Your turn.”

  “Come on, Sam.”

  “Nope. You first. So. Max. How’d that happen?”

  She blew out a breath. “You’re such a pain.”

  He smirked in response.

  “Oh. Fine. I’d graduated high school with honors. Top of my class, and my parents couldn’t care less. It was all about Ethan and his acceptance into medical school. I guess I finally realized nothing I did would ever be good enough for them.” She still sometimes wondered what was so lacking in her that no one loved her. Not her parents, her brother, her exes. Certainly not Max. Crap.
She felt the depression of her past creeping over her present once more.

  “Hey, no doom and gloom,” Sam growled, and Cookie froze, his tail low. “Not you, boy.” He crouched and petted the dog as Cookie writhed in ecstasy. “You, Ivy. Remember, they’re pricks. You’re not. Tell me about Max.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I’m getting there.” The big galoot wouldn’t let her wallow. More, he’d recognized her unhappiness. Reason 302 to like the man. “Anyway, they gave me money for graduating with honors. Probably so I’d go away to school, anything to get me gone.” Those assholes. Swearing inside made her feel better, especially because she knew Sam would approve. “Long story short, I had friends in Seattle, so I moved out here. The money wasn’t going to last, and I needed a career that would be easy to manage and quick to get going.”

  “So massage?”

  She nodded. Cookie wandered over and gave her a lick. “Man, you are so cute.” She turned her attention back to Sam. “I went to school for a year, got my one-year certificate and a license, and started massage. I planned on letting the massage pay for my schooling. I love sports and exercise, so I had planned to be an exercise science major. I would have become a trainer or sports therapist. I don’t know. Something physical.”

  “Uh-huh.” He gave her a lascivious once-over. “Physical, right.”

  “Stop.” The man leered at her and she wanted to smile. She had issues. “Anyway, I told you all about how I met Max, how he was a psychology major.”

  Sam made a face. “I hate shrinks.”

  “Yeah, I do too. Now.”

  He nodded. “Good. So tell me why you fell for dickhead Max.”

  An apt description. “What can I say? I was young, he was handsome, smart, and he liked me. He treated me like I mattered. And I hadn’t mattered to anyone in a long time.”

  Sam took her by the hand again. “I get that. That’s the way Eileen and Foley made me feel. Important. Like if I died, someone would come to the wake.”

  She gave a sad laugh. “Exactly. I wish I could go back and tell my younger self to be more careful. But what’s done is done.” She shrugged, then narrowed her eyes on him. “Your turn.”

  “Oh, come on,” he growled.

  “Nope. See how you like it.” She raised a brow, not at all bothered by his mean glare. “So what was this girl problem in school?”

  He lost the glare and sighed. “I had a major crush on Jennifer Roland. She liked me right back. We made out after school and fooled around when she could sneak out of the house. She always told her parents she was with her girlfriends, I guess. I just figured it was because her parents were overprotective. I found out the hard way her dad was a fucking rich-ass dickhead.”

  “What happened?” She saw their walk coming to an end as they reached the parking lot where they’d left the car. So she pulled him with her to a nearby park bench and let Cookie have a lot of leash to play in the grassy area.

  “Foley and I broke into her house, to leave a love note, if you can believe that. They’d gone on vacation, but I found out where she lived. It was like a mansion. Huge frickin’ house with a maid and everything. I had no idea Jen came from money.”

  “She’d left her lipstick in my car, so I figured I’d return it. Fuck, Ivy, the house wasn’t even locked up tight. If I had money like that, I’d have more than one tiny lock on the back door. That sucker jimmied free with a credit card.”

  “Breaking and entering. Nice.”

  He gave her a dark look, and her heart raced. She waited for him to finish.

  “It was innocent. No one was home. I left a note in her bathroom, wrote in lipstick on her mirror. Something cute. Hell, I don’t even remember it now. Foley kept bitching at me to hurry up. I started dicking around in her room, found a few notes she’d written me. She was into me. I was her first, and she was mine.” He swallowed. “Not sex, but like, the first girl I fell for. Next thing I know, Foley is hauling my ass out of her room and out a window. Her dad came back early from their vacation to get something they’d forgotten, and he saw us leaving.”

  “Oh no.”

  His grim expression warned her that what came next wouldn’t be pretty. “Oh yeah. The next day, the cops rounded us up. Eileen was all freaked out. But not angry, just worried. We were booked and, before we knew it, going to prison.”

  “How old were you?” she asked, pitying the younger, smitten Sam.

  “Eighteen. I’d been in trouble before for some minor stuff like fighting and breaking shit that didn’t belong to me. Our court-appointed lawyer tried to reason with the judge. Hell, we hadn’t done anything. The love note I left was proof it was nothing dangerous. But the girl claimed I’d been bothering her.”

  “What? What about her notes to you?”

  “The ones I had from her were no good. Because they said I must have written them. The girl’s dad was loaded, and he hated the idea of his precious virginal princess out with a nobody like me.” He shrugged. “Can’t blame him for that. But I am still pissed he sent me and Foley to prison, not jail. Trust me, there’s a difference. We spent eighteen months doing our best to get out in one piece.” He gave her a look she couldn’t read. “So there you have it. You’re dating an ex-con.”

  They stared at each other. Ivy took in all he’d said and hadn’t said. He looked the part of a convict, for sure. He’d done time—at eighteen, for breaking into a girl’s house to write a note to his crush. How sad.

  “So, um, have you been back to prison since?”

  “Hell no. I might look stupid, but I’m not. And before you ask, even though I know you won’t, it’s a place where you don’t bend over to get the soap. I didn’t get to room with Foley until we’d been there nearly a year, but I got lucky. My roommate was an older dude who didn’t play around that way. He was a jerk, but he never tried to get a good look at my ass.”

  “Sam.”

  He grinned, and she knew he hadn’t lied. Thank goodness. Her life had been messed up, but he won the prize for awful adolescence.

  “But, man, the guy could fight. I learned a lot, like how to dodge a fist. How to survive, who to protect, who’d protect you. It was harsh, and I never want to go back.” Despite his lighthearted tone, his words were strong.

  She stroked his fist lying on the bench between them, wanting to make him feel better but not sure what to say. Nothing he’d revealed turned her off to the man. Instead, she learned more, putting the pieces of him together. His fierce need to protect, the harsh face he showed the world. How little he thought he deserved from people who should have cared about him. She wanted to give Eileen and Foley Sanders a great big hug.

  “Can I ask you something personal?” she said softly, reading his caution and knowing he had every right to tell her no. But she needed to ease his tension.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is it true every prisoner makes license plates? Did you wear black-and-white-striped uniforms? Have a ball chained to your ankle? Break up rocks with an Acme pickax?”

  He blinked. “You watch way too much TV.”

  “And cartoons. My next question was if you’d ever shared a cell with Wile E. Coyote or Bugs Bunny. Because I’d swear they wore the black and white and looked good doing it.”

  The tension in his shoulders eased, and he shook his head. “Don’t make me start with the blond jokes.”

  “Yeah? Watch it or I’ll start with the ex-con jokes.”

  “Go ahead.”

  She bit her lip. “I don’t exactly know any, but I’m sure they’re out there.”

  He chuckled, and she knew they’d passed one major hurdle. “You really okay with me having done time?”

  “For writing a note on a girl’s mirror about how cute she is? Um, I think I can handle it. Oh, and I have a dead bolt on my door. No way a credit card can break that.”

  He smiled, and the joy in his expression flo
ored her. “Good to know.” He sobered. “I’ve seen some shitty things in my life, Ivy. I swear to God, you’re always safe with me.”

  “You don’t have to keep telling me that.” That he felt he needed to broke her heart a little. Poor Sam. Big, brutish, mean-looking SOB, with a marshmallow for a heart. “I might look innocent and nice, but I’m not. If I thought for one second you might hurt me, I’d show you the door.”

  “Good.” He nodded. “You do that.”

  “I will.” She stood and glared down at him. Then she poked him in the chest for good measure. “Now, get off your butt and take me to lunch. I’m hungry.”

  He rose, stared down at her, and shook his head. “I don’t know where you put it, but you eat a lot. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Yep. Something else we have in common because I’ve seen you wolf down a steak or two.”

  His eyes lit up, and his lips quirked. “Well, come on then. Let’s find a place that takes dogs and get you some food before you waste away.” He looked her over. “You could gain a few pounds, you know.”

  “Oh, I think I love you for that, you wonderful man. Imagine me needing to gain some weight.” She twirled and laughed. He gave her an odd look, but she grabbed him by the hand and hurried with dog and man to the car.

  Chapter 12

  Monday afternoon, Sam couldn’t keep himself from humming under his breath as he took a minute in the break room. It was either that or smile all damn day, and God knew the guys would razz him if they saw how happy he felt.

  I think I could love you for that, she’d said. Sure, she’d been teasing. She hadn’t meant it. But she hadn’t dumped him after hearing about his murky past. Man, he’d wanted to break down and kiss her friggin’ feet for that alone. She was giving him a chance. Ivy had taken his talk of prison time in stride, asked some silly questions, then shared hamburgers with him and Cookie.