I sat at the edge of the raft opening, staring out into the darkness and trying to figure out what the hell was going on with me. I hadn’t been able to sleep at all even with Raine running her fingers through my hair. Once she had finally drifted off, I extracted myself from her hold and came here to sit and contemplate…nothing.
I hadn’t known what I was going to feel or how I was supposed to feel when I revealed everything about Jillian and the baby, and I was kind of surprised that I felt mostly empty inside. Maybe it was just reliving all of that shit again – remembering everything I had tried so hard to forget while inside of a bottle or a shot glass. Maybe all I was really feeling was hatred of myself, which was such a familiar feeling it didn’t register as anything to my brain. That could be it. If I had stuck with my usual, misogynistic ways, I never would have fallen for Jillian’s scheme, and I’d be a very different person now.
Wouldn’t I?
I tried to imagine where I would be now if I had never met her or she hadn’t taken off with Ian. Again I was faced with nothingness. Would I still be fighting? I was getting a little old for that shit. I’d be thirty this summer. Maybe I’d be training other fighters, or maybe I would have retired and opened up a brothel or something to pass the time. Maybe we’d be living in a penthouse – Jillian, me, and the baby. Maybe I would have taught the kid self-defense or read books to it every night. Maybe we all could have lived on the boat together and hired a tutor to live with us. I wouldn’t be here; that’s for sure.
I wouldn’t be here with Raine.
Fuck.
I didn’t love Jillian anymore, and if I was to be completely honest, I wasn’t sure if I ever had. Maybe it was just having someone who I thought was permanent in my life was what I loved about our relationship. Maybe I was in love with the idea of love. I was happy with her, though – I remembered that. I had been happier than I ever had been before.
“She makes me feel like I’m actually worth something,” I said to John Paul. I put the free weights down next to the bench and sat up. “Besides Landon, no one ever wanted a stupid punk kid like me. Landon had his own reasons, and those didn’t have a lot to do with me. Anyway – I make him a shit ton of money.”
“Landon cares about you, too,” John Paul said. “He has a fucked up way of showing it, but he cares about both of us, and not just because of the fighting. He sees something more in you, too. If I fucked up, he’d kick me out in a heartbeat. I think you could do just about anything, and he’d still take you back like the prodigal son or something.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have thought of him as a father from time to time because he’s the closest thing I ever had to one, but he’s certainly threatened to blow my brains out more than once when I fucked up.”
“He didn’t do it, though.”
“No, but he would have. I don’t think he likes Jillian much, but he won’t say why. It’s not like she’s a gold-digger. Jillian doesn’t need my money. It’s good to know she wants just me and not because of something else.”
“It’s a good feeling,” John Paul agreed. “You guys sure do look good together – that’s for sure.”
“It’s not about that,” I said, shaking my head. “I love her, John Paul, and she loves me, too. I’m really thinking about retiring and buying her a big ass ring.”
“Fucker,” he laughed. “I should get to retire first – I’ve been doing this longer.”
“Yeah, and maybe someday you’ll do it right!”
He punched my shoulder, and we laughed before we went back to the free weights.
I didn’t know what I was now. Happy? Sad? Empty? Nothing? Yes, that was probably the most accurate way to describe me. Nothing. I glanced over my shoulder for a second at the sleeping, dark-haired woman on the floor of the raft behind me. When I looked at her, the emptiness evaporated faster than the dew from the collection sheet on the top of the raft’s canopy. I’d told her more than I had ever told anyone. She knew things I had never told Jillian, or John Paul, or even Landon. She knew me, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next.
When I looked at her, held her, and felt her hands on me, what did I feel then? I didn’t have a name for it. Happy didn’t describe whatever it was. That could be a part of it, but there was something else inside as well, and not all of it was good. I also felt panic inside when I thought of her, and I wasn’t sure why.
Because you know she’s got her barbed hooks inside of you, and if she pulls out now, she’s going to be taking a pound of flesh and then some.