Maria

 

“This might sting a little bit,” Brawn said as he dabbed a moist cotton ball on the side of my face. I winced as the rubbing alcohol stung against my cuts.

 

I sat on the toilet in the bathroom of my room at the clubhouse. Brawn had pulled out everything he needed to take care of me and patch me up. I leaned forward and let him play nurse.

 

“This reminds me of the cabin,” I told him. “You remember that night, don’t you?”

 

He laughed, not taking his eyes off my cuts and bruises. “Yeah, I remember. That was an interesting night. Nothing like this,” he said.

 

“No, but you were kind and helpful that night, too. I knew right away you weren’t the type to go kidnapping someone. I knew you were a good guy,” I mused.

 

“I beat your dad with the butt of my gun tonight. I’m not sure that qualifies me as a good guy,” he argued.

 

“What if I told you he wasn’t actually my dad?” I asked slowly.

 

“What do you mean, he wasn’t your dad?” He sat back and looked at me. “Are you telling me you were adopted?”

 

“Not quite, but close. No, apparently my mother slept with another man, and Kelly decided to keep me and raise me as his own. He decided to tell me because he realized I was never going to run his business.”

 

“Damn, I’m sorry, baby,” Brawn said. He put his arms around me and gently hugged me, like I was fragile and likely to break.

 

“No, it’s better I know. Now I don’t have to feel guilty for walking away or for what happened to him tonight. You know what else he told me?” I asked him.

 

“Oh God, I don’t want to know,” he said, laughing. “Tell me it doesn’t get worse than telling you he’s not your dad.”

 

“No, it doesn’t, but this next bit might be of interest to you. He told me Carlisle came to him for help getting reconnected once he was out,” I stated.

 

Brawn raised his eyebrows in surprise. “He said what?”

 

“Yeah, that was sort of my response, too. This whole time I’ve been thinking he was this part-time, sort of connected associate of the mob, but he’s apparently in it pretty deep. He never came out and said it, but he kept implying that he uses the company to launder money for the mob. And apparently, a lot of that money is his,” I added.

 

“No way. I always thought he was a front for someone else. I never assumed he was more than just a cover,” Brawn said as the revelation sank in.

 

“Brawn, it was pretty scary tonight,” I said, leaning towards him.

 

“Come on,” he said, putting the cotton balls back on the bathroom counter. He stood up and took me by the hand, pulling me up with him. “Let’s go sit down,” he said as he led me into the bedroom.

 

We walked over to the bed and climbed onto the soft, smooth sheets. He took me in his arms and pulled me close to his chest, kissing the top of my head while he hugged me. “Tell me everything that happened,” he said.

 

I took a deep breath. “That’s a lot,” I warned him.

 

“Tell me anyway. I’ve got all the time in the world to listen to you,” he told me dreamily.

 

So I told him. I told him everything from the moment I walked into the house after work until he showed up at the warehouse to get me. He listened quietly, occasionally squeezing me tighter or kissing me. I told him about the kidnapping

 

“You just can’t seem to get away from that, can you?” he asked, laughing.

 

“What can I say? I’m very kidnappable.”

 

We talked long into the night about everything that had happened. He told me about how it felt to lead the guys to the warehouse to find me and how it felt to be the one calling all the shots for the evening. My heart swelled with pride for him.

 

“When all of this started, you didn’t even want to take money from your brother. When you finally did, you even took it as a loan instead of as a gift. Now, you’re talking about leading a group of guys on a mission to save your business partner from the man everyone thought was her dad,” I reminded him. “You’ve really come a long way.’

 

“I couldn’t have done it without you,” he admitted.

 

I laughed. “You wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for me, so I guess that evens out somewhere.”

 

“It evens out right here.” He squeezed me again.

 

My body was still sore from being tied up and stuck in the same position for so long, but I let him hold me close anyway. I nuzzled his chest with my aching face. The pain was softer in his presence, and I definitely appreciated that. I snuggled up to him, burying myself in his embrace. His smell surrounded me. It smelled like strength, care, and the leather of his kutte.

 

I lay there next to him, listening to his breathing, relishing in the fact that he’d rescued me. He’d handled Lucas on his own there at the end. He had as much to be proud of as I did.

 

“So, what’s next for Maria Kelly?” he asked sleepily.

 

“A name change,” I told him.

 

We laughed.

 

“I’m only half kidding. I need to drop Kelly for something else. But, I also need to return to work and to school, as long as I haven’t been dropped from my classes.” I was mainly thinking out loud, not really trying to answer his question.

 

“You can come back to work whenever you’re ready,” he said. “As for school, I’ll keep helping you out with that. No problem.”

 

I sat up. I didn’t know if it was because of everything that happened earlier that night, or if it was because we were sharing our feelings, but I felt emboldened enough to say something finally about school.

 

“What if I decided I wanted to do something besides nursing?” I asked him.

 

“That’s up to you, but I thought that was your dream job.” He still lay on his side without me.

 

“I thought so, too, but I hadn’t really done anything else before I decided that was what I wanted to do,” I continued.

 

“What changed?” he asked, propping himself up on his elbow.

 

“After working with you for a little while, I decided I wanted to do something like business management or marketing, something like that,” I told him.

 

“That sounds great. I mean, really, that sounds more up your alley than nursing. Nursing seems like it would be a stretch for you.”

 

“Are you just saying that?” I asked.

 

“No way. I’m just making an observation. From what I’ve seen, you run an office really well, and you know how to sell a business, so maybe something more along those lines would be better for you. I’ve thought so for a while now,” he answered, laying it on thick.

 

I sighed. “I guess you’re right. I didn’t want to do it sooner because I was afraid you’d be mad that you were paying for me to go to school for nursing but I was working on something else instead.”

 

He laughed. “Come on. I’m helping pay for your school. I don’t care as long as you go back. Discover yourself. Hell, rediscover yourself. Either way, do what you want to do, not what you think everyone else expects from you. That’s what it’s there for.”

 

I lay back down on the bed. “I guess you’re right. I’m just not used to not having expectations for what I’m supposed to be doing with my life.”

 

“You just do what feels right to you,” he said as he put his arms around me. “The rest of us can deal with it and work around it.”

 

“Well, this is what feels right, right now,” I told him as I pressed my back against him.

 

“I can get down with this,” he said, pulling me close and kissing the top of my head again.

 

“I bet you can.”

 

We lay there again for a little while in silence, just breathing and holding each other. The events of the day had left us speechless, finally. We had said everything that there was to say, but our bodies and our hearts were still talking in the way we held each other.

 

I started to think there was something to all the talk about us being involved more deeply than just as business partners. Business partners didn’t spoon at the end of the day. They didn’t hold each other and drift off to sleep, slowly, in a deep embrace. Business partners didn’t usually sleep together at all. Our connection ran deeper than running a shop together.

 

It was time for us to acknowledge it, I felt, but Brawn had begun breathing more deeply and rhythmically. His grip on me had relaxed slightly. He was asleep already. I wasn’t about to wake him to tell him I had finally realized how I’d felt this whole time. I knew there would still be time to talk the next day, and I knew we would.

 

I had thought it through so many times in my head, but I had never found the time to say anything to him about it. I felt we had both avoided it for so long. Everyone else saw it. I’d been called on it so many times over the course of the day that I had actually almost called him my boyfriend, just out of habit.

 

I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the room. I heard his breathing, felt his hard pumping behind me. I listened deeper.

 

I listened to the sounds of the building beyond the walls of the room we were in. I could hear the guys who were still awake downstairs, listening to music, drinking, and talking over pool while someone ran the table. Outside, traffic occasionally passed by. Most of the guys had gone home.

 

It started to feel like the bag was back over my head, and I opened my eyes wide with a jerk. I gripped the arm around my waist and looked around the room to make sure I wasn’t back in the warehouse or the house I’d grown up in.

 

“What’s wrong?” Brawn asked drowsily behind me.

 

“Just a bad dream,” I told him, rolling over and burying my face in his chest again.

 

“It’s okay now, baby. Go back to sleep,” he said flatly, already halfway back asleep, himself.

 

He wrapped me in his arms again, and I closed my eyes with my face and hands pressed against his firm chest muscles.

 

“Goodnight,” I breathed onto his skin. With that, I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, forcing my body to relax against his in the familiar bed of the room at the clubhouse. I’d slept here a few times over the last several months. It should have felt like home, but it still felt more like a hotel room.

 

Then, with my eyes closed and my breathing measured, the room drifted away from us. Soon, it was just the two of us in the bed, with nothing around us, no one to worry about but ourselves. The world floated away as I finally, peacefully, drifted off to sleep.