by Zuri Day
A rush of something flooded into his heart at this very moment. It would be another several months before he realized that it had even happened, and even more so . . . what that something was.
“I’m right here,” Michael answered, his mind filled with possible scenarios of what could have happened and why Shayna was frightened. He remembered how out of breath she was as he lifted her up, as if she’d just run a marathon. His brow creased as he tried to recall if he’d seen her car outside—the cherry red Hyundai that he’d teased her about outside her lawyer’s office. He didn’t remember seeing it, but then again he’d been busy. Still, it was a car that was hard to miss, even in waning daylight. Had she been carjacked? Robbed? Assaulted? And if so, for what reason? And where? Frustration filled Michael’s chest as he took in the reddening scratches and deepening bruises, felt her skin growing cold to the touch. “You’re cold. Let me get you a blanket.”
He walked to the edge of the bed and opened the chest that had been custom made, along with his bureau and armoire. Pulling out a quilt that had been hand sewn by his maternal grandmother, he started as he heard the front door slam, before remembering that he’d told Gregory to come directly inside.
“Michael!”
“Back here, bro.” Knowing that his brother would need to examine her wounds, he placed the quilt over her legs and feet.
Gregory came around the corner and into the room, his steps purposeful, his eyes scrutinizing. “What happened?” he asked, as he placed his satchel on the nightstand and opened it up.
“I don’t know,” Michael said, rising from the bed as his brother approached. He turned and looked at the woman who just an hour or so ago had left his home with a smile on her face. “Shayna.” He adjusted the quilt that he’d placed on her, waited until she opened her eyes. “This is my brother, Gregory. He works at UCLA, and is one of the best doctors in the country. He’ll take care of you now, okay?” Shayna nodded, but didn’t turn her body to face the men. “Gregory, this is Shayna Washington.”
Hearing the name, Gregory’s brow rose in surprise. A quick look passed between the brothers. Michael subtly shook his head and Gregory nodded in understanding. They’d talk later. His tone softened as he addressed his charge. “Shayna, like Michael said, I’m Dr. Morgan.” Taking off his suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves, he continued. “I just need to ask a few questions so that I can determine what’s wrong. Can you lie on your back for me?” Shayna slowly uncoiled from her fetal position, wincing as she did so. “Where does it hurt?”
“Side,” she croaked.
“Here, Shayna,” Michael said, reaching for the glass. “Drink some water.”
Gregory stayed his hand. “Not yet, Michael. Let me first determine what’s happening internally. I need to raise you up and remove your jacket,” he informed Shayna. “Michael, help me out.” Michael held Shayna as motionless as possible while Gregory removed the now torn and soiled off-white creation. After Michael laid her down, Gregory softly placed his hand on Shayna’s midsection. “I’m going to apply slight pressure,” he said, his voice calm, almost melodic in its delivery. “It may hurt just a bit, but I need to determine if anything’s broken. Okay?” Shayna nodded. Gregory placed a hand just underneath her breast and slowly, methodically worked his way down one side and up the other. “Feels like we’ve got a couple cracked ribs here,” he said, moving his hands from her midsection down to her pelvic area, then across to the bruising on her arm. He squeezed the area around her bicep. “Pretty good bruise here, but no fractures or breaks.” He noted the bruising around her neck and again, the brothers exchanged glances. “Some pretty nasty scratches, too, but those should heal quickly.” He finished his examination and stood. “We’ll need to get you to the hospital to get x-rayed,” he said, pulling down his shirt sleeves and buttoning the cuffs.
“I’d rather not,” Michael quickly interjected. “At least not until we find out what happened. I don’t want this turning into negative press.”
Gregory nodded. This wasn’t the first time he’d had to get creative when it came to his brother’s clients. “Very well, then. I’ll call a doctor friend of mine and we’ll take you over to his private practice. Get you checked out, taped up, and let the healing begin. But first, Shayna, we need to know what happened and who did this.”
“My ex-boyfriend,” Shayna whispered, her eyes fluttering shut with the pain of his memory. “I stopped . . . on Sunset and he must . . . he must have been following me. Tried to make me . . . go with him.”
Michael gritted his teeth as an instant and all-consuming anger arose. There was nothing worse than a man who’d attack a woman, for any reason. “What’s his name?” he asked, trying to sound nonchalant when in fact, his hand was already on his phone to call his brother.
“Jarrell,” Shayna said. “Jarrell Powell.”
“Excuse me a second,” Michael said, and left the room. He walked out of earshot of Shayna and punched a number on speed dial. “Troy.”
“What up, big bro?”
Michael ignored the sound of multiple females in the background. “I need you to get the four-one-one on somebody for me.”
“Who and why?”
“A man named Jarrell Powell. He just beat up my newest client.”
“Damn.” A beat and then, “I’m on it, brother.”
Michael nodded at the indignation he heard in Troy’s voice. “Don’t go after him or anything, yet,” he warned his hotheaded younger brother. “For right now, I just want to know exactly who I’m dealing with.”
This Jarrell Powell dude was about to find out that when you messed with one of Michael Morgan’s clients, especially one who made his heart beat the way Shayna Washington did, you’d just pissed off a whole posse better known as the Morgan men.
8
The next day, Shayna and Michael sat talking in the living room. At first she’d been evasive, but after several attempts by Michael to get a bead on Jarrell from Shayna’s point of view, along with his assurance that everything she shared would remain confidential between them, she opened up.
“We grew up together, for years lived in the same complex. His mother and my mother were friends, and at one point, he spent as much time at my grandmother’s house as I did. When we reached high school, he was the one who really encouraged me to run track. He became my personal trainer. One thing led to another and when I was sixteen . . . we started dating.”
“What did your father have to say about that?”
“He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I never knew him.”
Interesting. Michael remembered watching a show about the effect on women who didn’t have a father in the home while growing up, how they were much more likely to start dating young, and were more likely to choose the wrong man for the wrong reason. Had that been the case with Shayna? “So Jarrell Powell is your boyfriend.” The background check hadn’t been extensive, but as with all his clients, he’d had Troy run a profile on her. There had been no arrests, no record of drug use, and no mention of this best friend turned boyfriend who’d played a major role in her life. Obviously, a major piece of information had been overlooked.
“At one time, Jay was my best friend.” Shayna looked at Michael, her eyes filled with confusion. “That’s why his actions are such a shock. We shared everything, dating steadily through high school and my first two years of college. Then we started having problems, him feeling like he was taking a backseat to track, which he was, and starting to go out with other girls. We were on-again off-again for almost four years until I broke up with him for good right before the Olympics. Needless to say, that decision isn’t going over well.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he wanted to share your limelight.”
“He felt that he deserved it, feels that he’s responsible for me being where I am. It’s true that he encouraged me back in the day, but I’m the one who’s been putting in the work on the track day in and day out. Anything I
owed Jarrell I feel I paid back a long time ago.”
She sat on the same couch she’d occupied the day before, this time wrapped up in one of Michael’s shirts (several sizes too big) and a pair of his shorts (several inches too long). Her ribs were wrapped as well, tightly and expertly. They had gone to Gregory’s doctor friend’s office last night, where his diagnosis of cracked ribs was confirmed. Two, on her right side. A blood vessel in her throat had been broken, causing a nasty looking purplish splotch, but the other scratches and bruises were superficial. After learning that her car was still on Sunset, and that last night she’d run from there all the way to his house, Michael had insisted she stay, at least for the night, so that they could decide the best course of action. Shayna didn’t want to, felt she’d already been enough of an imposition and should go home. Gregory advised against it while Michael simply informed her that leaving his house in her condition without her roommates there to take care of her and a fool still on the loose was not an option. Period. Having taken the sleep-inducing pain pill that Gregory had offered, there was nothing Shayna could do but leave a message on the phones that neither Talisha nor Brittney were answering to let them know that she was all right and would see them later. Then she’d enjoyed an incredible night’s sleep in Michael’s room (he’d insisted), and a scrumptious all-American breakfast that Orlando had prepared. And now, here she sat, feeling somewhat surreal, as she shared with Michael the details of her first and only love. Not at all what this twenty-five-year-old had planned for this particular Saturday. But here she was.
Michael reared back in the oversized chair that was positioned across from the couch. His emotions had been turned upside down since seeing Shayna huddled next to his wrought-iron gate. The line between professional and personal was not only blurred, but quickly becoming obliterated. Michael felt an indescribable need to protect Shayna, to take care of her, in a way he’d not only never felt about a client, but had never felt about anyone. He wasn’t comfortable with that. Not at all. Still, he continued questioning this very personal part of her life by telling himself that as her manager and the shaper of her public image . . . he needed to know.
And for some inexplicable reason, Shayna felt a need to tell.
“Jay is basically a good person. He’s got enough game for his own arcade, but he’s smart and focused and at one time, I really cared about him. He always seemed so knowledgeable about everything. I thought he was sophisticated, going places. He wore suits to class, even in high school, and was a business major in college. He’s good people.”
“He’s also the man who attacked you on a public street.”
Shayna glanced up at Michael as her eyes became glassy. “I know. And I know I should hate him right about now. As it is, I’m pretty pissed off. But the man who tried to grab me isn’t the Jay that I know. Plus, part of this is my fault.”
“What?” Michael looked at her as though she’d lost a major part of her mind, if not all of it.
“No, Michael, you don’t know the whole story. He’s been calling and I keep ignoring him. Whatever has happened between us, he was my friend for many, many years.” She continued, looking out the patio doors into a yesterday when Jay had been the sun in the sky otherwise known as her life. “If I’d just talked to him, maybe none of this would have happened.”
“So you’ll keep talking to him for the rest of your life, then he won’t beat you up. Is that the logic that we’re working with here?”
“I know it sounds crazy, and no, I’m not going to get back with him. But I’ve known him practically all my life and dated him almost ten years, since we were sixteen. You can’t just turn off those feelings overnight, even if that’s the right thing to do. He’s now turned into somebody I no longer know, but at one time, we were happy. . . .”
Michael observed the sad yet dreamy expression on her face and ignored the stab of pain that came with her acknowledgment of her love for another man. Growing soft in his old age, he’d later reflect, though some might have argued thirty-one wasn’t all that old. “And then shift happened, when he was too immature to understand what obtaining dreams cost, what I needed to do to get to where I am now.”
She clasped her hands together; twirled her thumbs. “It was so subtle I didn’t even recognize it.” After a moment, she continued. “He was always kind of possessive, I guess, but since we were so often together anyway I didn’t recognize it. He basically ran our personal lives, my athletic career, everything. Then, during my second year at USC, which has its own workout and training regimen, I stopped working with Jay, stopped listening to his recommendations for my training schedule. That’s when things started . . . going downhill.”
“You fired him as your PT?”
“Technically, though he’d never been official in the first place. Plus, he still worked with me on weekends and came to all of my events. I basically had two coaches until my senior year. But when they brought in John Joyner, everything changed.”
“What happened then?”
“Coach and Jay mixed like oil and vinegar. He, and I’m talking about Coach, set me up on an intense new regimen that cut into the time I spent with Jay. But Jay, being the self-centered guy that he is, saw my new schedule as Coach’s attempt to separate us and accused him of liking me even though Coach is married and they’d just had a child at the time. It got to the point that I couldn’t go anywhere without Jay knowing time of departure and estimated return. Later I realized that he was accusing me of cheating because of the women crowding his bed. He kept apologizing and I kept taking him back, always on the strength of what once was. I should have ended the relationship a long time ago.”
“What made you finally do it? I mean, for good?”
“Training for the Olympics was intense and by then Jay and I were fighting all the time. It was too much pressure. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
Michael nodded in understanding. “And then once you came back with the gold, the accolades, the status . . . he realized what he’d lost and wanted to make amends.”
“Jay was furious at not being a part of it all. And I did try and include him a little. He was the one who encouraged me in the beginning. But I didn’t want to be his girl anymore and he didn’t want to just be friends. He wanted everything; at one point he was demanding to be my manager even though he has no experience doing that at all! I told him in no uncertain terms that I wanted whoever managed me to have experience and that when it came to a relationship . . . that part of our lives is over.”
Her voice sounded sure; her eyes . . . not so much.
“You should know that as my client, your protection and reputation is a high priority. We’ll make sure that you’re not harassed by him, or anyone else.”
“I appreciate that, Michael, but my personal life really isn’t any of your concern.”
“I’m making it mine.”
Both Michael and Shayna looked toward the sound of a side door closing. Seconds later one of Michael’s assistants, Keith Byers, rounded the corner with Shayna’s freshly cleaned suit in one hand and her car keys in the other.
Glad for the diversion, Shayna stood as quickly as her injury allowed and walked over to Keith. “Thanks for picking up my car and bringing these from the cleaners,” she said, taking the car keys and cleaners bag from Keith’s outstretched hand. She turned to Michael. “Thank you. I think I’ll go change.” Resisting the urge to flee from the room, she instead walked calmly out of the living area and down the hall to the guest bathroom. Taking a shallow bath here, as Michael’s brother Gregory had suggested, was out of the question. It didn’t matter that the thought of Michael’s hands on her body had made her wet. She’d just gotten out of a crazy relationship. She was trying to establish her career. Hadn’t she learned what could happen when things went sour with someone you worked with? No, better to keep the line of demarcation clearly drawn. So instead of following doctor’s orders, she took a quick sponge bath at the sink, hurriedly slipped into the suit,
retrieved her shoes from Michael’s bedside, and, after closing her eyes to inhale the woodsy cologne scent that lingered in the room, she turned and left.
“You sure you’re okay to drive?” Michael had stood and walked toward the hallway when he heard Shayna approach.
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’re welcome to stay another night if you’re not up to traveling.”
Shayna shook her head. “The bandages help, and I’ll stop and get the ibuprofen that Gregory recommended, but otherwise, I’m fine. Plus, my roommates are home and have been blowing up my phone. I’ve texted them that I’m on my way and if I don’t show up they’ll surely report me missing.”
“Okay. I’ll walk you outside.”
They reached the red Hyundai where the two stood in awkward silence, not meaning to stare at each other but not able to look away. Michael wanted to hug her, but the whole cracked rib situation made that gesture unwise. Actually, he wanted to kiss her, to bury his tongue deep inside her mouth . . . and other places. But their business relationship made that unwise as well. He reached for her door handle and after she’d carefully sat down, reached over for the seat belt to buckle her in.
Was it his imagination, or had the whisper of a kiss touched his cheek as he stood back up? As he watched Shayna’s car until he could no longer see it, the question remained.
9
She couldn’t resist and yet still couldn’t believe she’d done it. Touched her lips to Michael’s temple before she could even think about it, let alone stop it. It had been a natural act, a reflex really. Or at least that’s what she’d told herself all the way home, and even now, as she stood at her front door, her fingers pressed to where Michael’s head had been. He didn’t feel it. Something else she chose to believe. No more time to ponder the consequences now, however, because Shayna had barely opened the door when her roommates bum-rushed her and the comments started.