She got up and followed me. “Hey,” she called, grabbing onto my shoulder to gather my attention.
“Ahh, fuck,” I mumbled while trying to pull away. Maybe I had spoken too soon about her easing some tension. Her grip on my arm sent shards of pain screaming through my body, thanks to Vinny’s thorough work.
“Whoa,” Goldie said while backing up a step. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I replied, holding on to my cup of coffee a little tighter while the burn in my arm started to settle.
“Don’t lie to me,” Goldie said with her hands on her hips.
“Mind your own business,” I shot back, not wanting to get into it with her.
“You are my business. You’re my employee.”
“I’m you’re employee? How do you figure that when I’m the manager of this damn place?”
I was actually rather interested in hearing Goldie’s explanation.
She bit her lip while she tried to nail down her train of thought. Her eyes lit up the minute she realized what she was going to say. I geared up for what I could only imagine would be an obnoxious response.
“You might be the manager, Kace, but Jett is the boss of this facility, and do you know who owns Jett? I do,” she said, pointing at herself. “That man can’t function without me turning his head in the right direction. Therefore, I control Jett, and that means I control you—”
“You control me, little one?” Jett asked, walking up behind her undetected.
“Gahh.” She gripped her chest, startled. Whipping around, she pushed Jett and said, “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“I have to if I’m going to keep you in check.” Jett smiled at her while he pulled her in by the waist.
They were so fucking nauseating.
“Keep me in check? As if I’m a loose cannon?”
Jett just raised an eyebrow, letting Goldie know he meant what he’d said. Surprisingly, she didn’t oppose but instead agreed and pulled him into her embrace.
She turned to me and said, “Still, I want to know what’s wrong even though you might not be my employee,” Goldie succumbed.
“You’re damn right I’m not your employee.”
I’d started to walk away when Jett called my name. I stopped and waited for him to say something to me. “See Vinny last night?”
“Who’s Vinny?” Goldie chirped.
“Don’t worry about it, both of you,” I responded and then took off to the Haze Room.
The lights were off, and the room was silent, almost eerie looking after the day we’d had yesterday. Outside of the room, kids bustled around me, their mothers chasing after them, throwing out warnings that were sure to be forgotten.
The smell of leather and wood hit me first. My senses were knocked to the ground, memories clouding my mind, vivid images of my boxing days flashing in an instant. That smell would always break me. It would always send a pang of regret, of what could have happened if I hadn’t put all my trust in another human.
“Why did you see Vinny?” Jett asked, shutting the door behind him. I turned around to see that he was sans his little minion and let out a long breath as I walked toward the bleachers, feeling every little ache and pain.
“Needed to get lost. Seeing Madeline yesterday was too much.”
“Did you make an agreement to stay away from your face?”
“Couldn’t entirely scare the new members of Justice, now could I?” I joked, but Jett didn’t find it the least bit funny.
“You still look like shit.”
“Tell me how you really feel,” I responded, sitting and sucking in wind when my side tightened around my ribs.
Jett sat next to me, resting his arms on his legs with his head bent as he spoke. “When are you going to stop beating yourself up?”
“Christ, Jett. Give it the fuck up. Just let me do my own thing. I promised I would be different around you guys, but what I do on my own time should stay my business.”
“You’re killing yourself,” Jett’s voice caught in his throat as his hands ran through his hair. “I can’t fucking lose you.”
Silence filled the room as Jett’s confession sunk in. He was the reason I was still on this earth, the reason I kept moving forward, but how much longer could I really go on? I felt my days were numbered.
“You need to let me go,” I admitted. “Life has become too much. My time is just around the corner. My fucking grave is calling out to me.” I dipped my head as my throat choked up and my eyes burned with tears.
“I can’t,” Jett whispered. “It’s selfish of me, but I can’t let you go, Kace.”
“Don’t you see I’m a shell of the man I used to be? Fuck, look at me, Jett.” He did as I said as a lonesome tear fell down my cheek. “Why would you want a sorry excuse for a man like myself to hang around? You’re hanging on to the past, to who I used to be.”
“You’re hanging on to the past.” Jett got up and stood in front of me. “If taking your life is what you want to do instead of fighting back, then do whatever the fuck you want. I understand what happened was a mistake, I know that your boxing career was stolen from you, and I know you’ve been seeking justice, but at some point you have to let it all fucking go. There is a beautiful girl waiting for you, wishing to be a part of your life. There are friends who want to see you happy. You’ve done your time. Live your life.”
I was about to respond when the door flew open and Madeline strode in with a towel over her shoulder and a water bottle in her hand.
“Hi, Mr. Kace,” she shouted, waving at me, not picking up on the awkward silence between Jett and myself. Quickly, I wiped my face and cleared any remnants of sadness.
“I got to go,” Jett said over his shoulder as Madeline stepped up in front of me.
“I’m ready for a workout, Mr. Kace,” she said while taking her water bottle and squirting it on her face and then wiping the water with the towel. She was outrageous.
“I can see that,” I replied, wiping my cheek one last time.
“You’re sad,” she stated, placing her hand on my knee, looking past my fake veneer.
I looked at Jett and he shrugged and took off, leaving me alone with Madeline.
“Where’s your mom?” I asked, ignoring her question.
“She dropped me off. She wasn’t having a good morning. She was sad like you.” Madeline draped the towel over her head and started swaying back and forth. The girl had too much energy. “She was sad last night too. I heard her crying.”
I shouldn’t have asked. I needed to distance myself, but morbid curiosity won out. “Why was your mom sad?”
Madeline started doing the boxer shuffle I’d taught her yesterday while holding her tiny fists up next to her face. “I don’t know. When I asked her, she said something about the past and how she was thinking about it.”
Bingo.
Fuck!
Of course Linda was upset. How could she not be? She was putting her daughter into boxing and self-defense classes so the past didn’t repeat itself, so she didn’t lose another person she loved to violence.
“Are we going to box?” Madeline asked, shaking me to my core.
“Yeah, uh, let’s wait for the rest of the group.”
“All right. Can I do some cartwheels?”
“Get at it, kid,” I responded while I headed over to the stereo to turn on some music. It was going to be a long day, especially with Madeline at my side.
Chapter Twenty Six
My past…
The melodrama between Jett and Goldie was really starting to get on my nerves. Jett was so fucking in love, but he had no clue how to handle his feelings. Instead of talking to Goldie like a normal boyfriend would, he tried to protect her from harm, but all that had led to was miscommunication and a frustrated Goldie.