Chapter 16
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Mackenzie’s eyes were glued to her computer screen as she sat on Eli’s couch reviewing the footage that Theo had taken that day.
When she’d arrived back in Hope Falls, she’d stopped at Sue Ann’s Café to grab take-out. While she waited she checked her phone and saw she had missed calls. The first voicemail was from the infamous Crazy Jay saying that the cottage was not going to be repaired for another week and that he would be refunding her for the entire stay. The next message was from Eli, he was going to be on duty for the next two days, but there was a key under the mat and that she was welcome to stay for as long as she wanted.
So here she was, alone in Eli’s house, curled up on his comfy sofa, working. Everything Theo shot was automatically uploaded and accessible in their shared iCloud account. She made it a rule not to let too many days of dailies add up before she reviewed them and got a feeling for where they could fit into the narrative of the project.
Sometimes it was boring, watching hours and hours of things they would never use. This wasn’t one of those times. Today’s footage was of Eli and Gabe sparring in the octagon. Theo had a real talent for capturing angles that made you feel like you were right there in the middle of the action. That was where Mackenzie was transported to now. She was on the mat with Gabe and Eli. All she could see was muscled arms, legs, abs, and backs twisted around each other and she was, in a word, captivated.
Over the year they’d been documenting Gabe’s journey, Mackenzie had learned more than she ever thought she would have about a sport that she’d initially written off as barbaric and not her cup of tea. MMA wasn’t just about sheer strength or savagery. That was part of it, but only a small part. It was more mental than anything else. It took strategy, instinct, and talent.
Unlike other sports that were much more straightforward, MMA required mastery of several different disciplines including boxing, kickboxing, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and Muay Thai. It demanded that its competitors have speed, agility, power, strength, flexibility, and stamina.
Gabe Maguire was at the top of his game. She’d seen him dominate everyone that stepped into the cage with him. She’d also studied all the film on him from when he competed before he got sick. From what she’d seen, his time away from the sport and his battle with cancer hadn’t slowed him down. His conditioning, form, and technique were at an elite level. And Eli was holding his own.
She knew that if they were to compete, Gabe would beat Eli. But it wouldn’t be a total blood bath. Eli would give him a run for his money.
“Oh my…” she breathed at a close up of Eli as he maneuvered Gabe into a half guard.
She knew that she might be biased, but in her eyes, Eli truly was the perfect male specimen.
A kernel of popcorn from the handful she’d grabbed and stuffed in her mouth dropped on her lap. She snatched it off the plaid blanket that she was snuggled beneath and ate it because she had a firm No Snack Left Behind policy. Binging junk food may not be the healthiest way to deal with stress but since she didn’t do drugs, smoke, and barely drank she figured that she was allowed one vice.
Plus, she’d earned it. She’d ordered a salad from Sue Anne’s instead of her famous roast beef. And after she choked down the lettuce and sprouts she’d busted out her Yoga mat and had done an hour of practice. Her goal had been to feel more centered, balanced, and calm. She hadn’t achieved those goals, but she did feel like she’d earned a pass to eat her feelings without worrying about fitting into her jeans tomorrow.
Tonight’s Snack Fest was the first she’d ever put on with co-headliners. Usually, either stress or happiness were the sole star of the show. But tonight, both were sharing the stage. Being with Eli again had been better and worse than she’d dreamed possible and she’d spent a lot of time dreaming what it would be like.
Physically, it had surpassed her wildest fantasy. He’d always had mad skills in bed, but she hadn’t appreciated just how amazing he was, how incredible they were together, because he’d been her first. She’d honestly thought all sex was like what she shared with Eli.
During college, she’d learned that wasn’t the case. The way he seemed to instinctively know what her body needed when her body needed, it wasn’t a gift that all men had. Her post-Eli experience taught her that most guys had no idea what it took to please a woman.
She would chalk it up to her just having bad luck in the sex department, but all of her friends echoed her sentiments. Most of the women she knew would prefer a hot bath and a bottle of wine to sex. They used words like uncomfortable, painful, awkward, embarrassing, and horrible when describing their first times. But thanks to Eli none of those words had applied. Her first time was the opposite. It was a night she’d always remember as one of the best in her life.
Last night would be in that same category if it weren’t for what she was feeling now. Emotionally she was a mess. Today had only made things even more confusing for her. Her grandmother’s words were haunting her and although things had gone well during her visit with her brother, all he’d wanted to talk about was Eli.
The three of them had spent so much time together She wasn’t sure if that was the reason that Kenny often associated Eli with her or if he’d just wanted to reminisce. Either way, her brother had spent hours talking about him and seeing Eli through Kenny’s eyes made her fall even more in love with him.
Just this morning she’d been sure that last night was a mistake but now…now she wasn’t sure. She was more confused than a cow on AstroTurf. So, she’d done what any sane person would do. She’d busted out her secret snack stash.
The video ended and she moved her mouse to start it again when she saw another file beside it that was unnamed.
“That’s weird,” Mackenzie commented out loud.
Theo was anal about naming each and every file. He hated having to sort through footage to find what he needed. In the ten plus years that she’d been working with him she’d only found one file that was unnamed, and it turned out to be a personal video featuring Theo and his flavor of the month. She’d promised herself and Theo that she’d never investigate another unnamed clip again, but this one had Eli’s face in the thumbnail, so she clicked.
When the screen populated, a smile spread on her face. It was as involuntary as her knee jerking when a doctor taps for reflexes. Seeing him in this context, twenty inches high and in HD caused her to notice details that she hadn’t before.
In the years they’d been apart, he’d somehow managed to grow even more handsome. He still retained his boyish good looks, but now there was an added edge to them of rugged, grown-man appeal. His forehead now had a line or two that hadn’t been there in his youth. His jaw was just a little squarer and covered with sexy scruff. And there was a scar above his right eyebrow that gave him a dangerous edge.
Eli was seated on a stool against a brick wall in the room that Lucky had cleared out to let them use. The muscled contours of his shoulders, biceps, and forearms were on full display thanks to the lighting and the position he was in. His feet were on the first rung of the stool. He was leaning forward with his elbows resting on his knees.
He didn’t look happy to be there, and she wondered two things. First, why Eli was being interviewed today instead of next week when he was scheduled to. And two, how Theo was going to do since she’d always done the on-camera interviews. It wasn’t like they’d ever officially outlined her role, but in all the years she and Theo had been doing this, he’d never conducted an interview.
“Okay tell us your name and what you do.” Theo’s voice sounded from off screen.
Eli lifted his head. “I’m Eli Bishop. I’m a firefighter paramedic with Station 23.”
Theo continued, asking questions about his background. She hung on every word as Eli spoke about his time in the Marines and his MMA training.
“And what first got you interested in martial arts?”
A lop-sided grin tugged at Eli’s lips. “It was a run-in that I had with bullies.”
“You were bullied?” Theo followed up.
“No. Not me.” Eli shook his head. Mackenzie could see the battle of indecision waging behind his clear blue eyes over whether or not to continue talking about the subject.
Theo remained quiet, which was exactly what she would’ve done. In her experience, it was best to give people time to collect their thoughts instead of just bombarding them with questions.
After several moments, Eli took a deep breath. “I was leaving school, and I saw a group of older kids, big guys, all circled around a boy they thought couldn’t defend himself. They were calling him names, pushing him. I was ten and a small ten at that. I’m the youngest of four, and my family still calls me runt because I was puny compared to my three older brothers.
“Anyway, I knew I had to do something. I jumped on my bike and rode as fast as I could to the corner they were at. The entire way there I was shaking, terrified. I was sure that I was going to get my ass kicked when I confronted them. Four against one was not good odds. I was picturing myself with broken bones, a black eye, maybe a fat lip. I was coming up with how I could explain my injuries to my mom.
“Thankfully I walked away unscathed. I threw a punch and they backed down and ran off. Not because they were scared of me, if it was just me they would’ve jumped me. They left because one of them recognized me and knew my brothers. My oldest brother Evan was huge, is huge, and they knew if they messed with me they’d have to deal with him.”
Mackenzie was stunned. She’d never heard Eli talk about that day. She’d never even considered that he was scared. Thinking about Eli being scared as he rode toward what he assumed was going to end with him in a cast and a busted face only made her love him even more for doing it. He’d been her hero before, but now he’d just been upgraded to superhero.
Eli’s shoulder lifted in a shrug. “That day I promised myself that I would never feel like that again. I knew that I wouldn’t always be able to coast on my brothers’ reputations. I needed to learn to protect myself if I was ever going to be able to protect anyone else.”
Hearing that that was the reason he’d started taking classes might’ve been the sexiest thing she’d ever heard. That he’d been motivated by his desire to stand up for people that couldn’t stand up for themselves was just one more thing that she could add to the ever-growing list of reasons she loved him.
The problem was the other list she had to keep of the reasons why she shouldn’t. While it had much fewer entries than the former, the entries that were on it couldn’t be ignored.
More snacks were needed.
She was stuffing another handful of popcorn into her mouth when her phone rang. Her heart skipped like a rock across a smooth surface of water at the thought that it might be Eli. Now that he had her number, she would bet dollars to donuts that every time anyone called or texted her, her reaction was going to be, is it Eli?
This time the answer was no. It was Theo.
“Hey, I was just—” She was about to tell him that she was looking at the footage he took today and that it was great, but stopped when she heard sirens blaring in the background.
“I’m with Gabe!” He was shouting to be heard “He’s going out on a call about a woman in distress. I’ve got the camera. I’ll text…address. Meet us there.”
The phone went silent, and the first thought that entered her mind was that she might see Eli. Her pulse thundered at the prospect. She closed the computer and pushed off the sofa with renewed energy. It had been less than twenty-four hours since she’d left Eli sleeping in his bed but it felt like a year.
A niggling voice in the back of her head asked her how she was going to deal with it when she left Hope Falls and an actual year passed that she didn’t see him. But she ignored it because she couldn’t answer that question.
The only thing she had any power, any control, any say in was right now. And right now she had a smile on her face as she quickly changed out of her yoga pants into jeans, pulled on a sweatshirt, and grabbed her keys as the text came through with her destination. At that moment, the cloud of confusion lifted. She knew where she was headed and that there was a good possibility she’d see Eli. That was enough. For now.