As it always seemed to do as of late, when the sting wore off and she felt even the slightest bit better, the strong craving to go out and be with other people called Cheri’s name. At first, she resisted the urge to go to the bar. Instead, she showered, relaxed, ate, and tried resting again. When there wasn’t anything left to do in the day, nothing more she could add to the routine, she grew antsy. Even though she needed to, she didn’t feel like looking for a job. “There’s always tomorrow,” she reasoned. “First thing in the morning.”

Thomas had taken her purse and keys, and Cheri let him do so, let him think he was leaving her stranded, with no access to money or transportation. What he didn’t realize was that she had a duplicate ID, an extra set of keys, and even a second metro card. She didn’t need a car in the city anyway, because there was a dive on every corner; drinks were not at all hard to come by, even on foot. To avoid his prying eyes, she felt she had to go downtown, to a part of D.C. he wouldn’t expect her to visit. That would require public transportation.

Her mind completely forgot what it was like to wake up in the dark on the front lawn, and she dismissed the thought purposely, as simply a result of not knowing her limits. This time I’ll control it, she told herself. I’ll prove to myself and to Thomas that I’m not just some lush, a pathetic drunk. I don’t need his interference to behave.

She dressed up slightly, blew out her hair, and applied some makeup in an effort to at least feel normal, even as she struggled with the heavy fog that loomed in her mind. As her hangover was clearing, her thoughts still felt scattered, and it was a struggle to stay on track. It sort of felt good to get herself together to go out, as if she’d somehow put her troubled drinking days behind her.

Cheri walked out the door and stopped at the bank and withdrew some cash at the teller, explaining she’d left her purse at a friend’s and was taking a cab to pick it up. Then she made her way to a suitable place. She only made it as far as sitting at the bar, where she soaked in the slurred compliments of men around her, before she felt a tap on her shoulder. She rolled her eyes, expecting to spot Thomas, and her head instantly filled with thoughts of him. “Shouldn’t you be on a job site somewhere, Mr. Foreman? Why are you always trying to supervise me instead of your crew?” she said without turning to look.

“Cheri Holt?” asked a woman.

A bit startled, Chery turned and looked at the thin brunette in the business suit, quite like the kind she used to wear when she had a job. “Yeah, that’s me. Why?” she asked bluntly.

The woman handed her a piece of paper. “You’ve been served,” she said, then pivoted on the balls of her feet and walked away.

Cheri looked down at the subpoena, and her memory was instantly assaulted with dark recollections of many months prior, when the would-be mugger who tried to rob her in the metro station turned the tables on her and tried to sue her for his alleged false imprisonment. All eyes at the bar seemed to be on her as she quickly read over the document. Considering that she’d spent many years as a paralegal, the jargon didn’t baffle her; even with all the ‘wheretofores’.

It was clear that she was being sued again, this time by Thomas Graham himself.

Too angry to drink, and feeling foolish for bothering to get all prettied up for a night out, she felt physically ill. The moment was overwhelmingly humiliating, and she wanted to yell at all the drunks surrounding her to stop staring, but instead she just rushed out, subpoena in hand, and hailed a cab.

As soon as she slid into the seat of the taxi, she pulled out her phone and called Thomas. “You actually did it, didn’t you?” she hissed. “How dare you? I can’t believe you—”

“We had a deal, Cheri, and you didn’t keep your end of the bargain,” he said in a calm tone that unnerved her all the more. “You knew the consequences.”

“Well, I… screw you, Thomas! Seriously!” she spat, drawing a strange look from the cabbie in the rear-view mirror.

The cab driver said nothing and just shook his head, then continued to her requested destination.

Cheri hung up the phone, seething, as she dug a twenty-dollar bill out of her purse to give to the driver. “Keep the change, mister,” she said when he pulled over a few minutes later, even though it was far too much for the fare for such a short distance to Thomas’s office. The closer Cheri marched to the front door of the trailer, the more her rage seemed to find new life.

When he heard the pounding on the door, Thomas calmly looked up from his desk. He made a face but remained rather unimpressed by her annoyance, even as she stormed into the trailer and beat her palms down on his desk. When she launched into her rant, he just sat there and calmly and quietly listened.

“You insisted, Thomas. You freakin’ insisted on being in my life, made me fall for you, and…” Choking up, she had to pause.

He waited, just staring at her and steepling his fingers under his chin.

“Then you just blew me out of the water,” she continued, biting back tears. She was utterly frustrated with herself, because she had so much to say and couldn’t seem to bring herself to say it. Stupid emotions! All the drama with Thomas had driven her to drink, robbed her of far more than that idiot in the metro ever would have, and nearly finished her off. Now, it was even stealing the words right out of her mouth, and she just stood there, silent and pissed.

“I wasn’t much happier about, uh…what I did than you were,” he replied softly.

“Don’t you mean who you did?” she sniped.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“So that’s supposed to make it all better?” She shook her head. All the anger from today and the past burned together. “It wasn’t just the woman, although I get sick to my stomach every time I think about you with her. I won’t even begin to suggest that I understand you completely, Thomas, because I don’t, but I know you just can’t handle being emotionally challenged. You were horrible to me when you heard about your father’s death. You didn’t even have the balls to tell me you couldn’t talk about it. Or why. After everything we’d been—we’d meant...” she trailed off, not sure what she was trying to say or how to say it.

“I did ask you to leave,” he defended.

“Really? That’s your comeback? That was supposed to solve things? Telling me to get the fuck out, after you invited me—no, insisted that I stay? You treated me like a pest, like I had no right to be there, even after you asked me to move in. You treated me like a stray dog you just grew tired of and wanted to kick back out to the street!” she practically screamed.

“We’ve been through all this.” He ran his hand through his hair. “There’s no sense in rehashing it.”

“You’re one to tell me about sense,” she snapped. “No sense in rehashing it? Do you get how you made me feel? What you did to me?”

“Have you been drinking, Cheri?” he interrogated, arching a brow at her as if he expected and dared her to lie.

At that point, Cheri exploded. “Don’t put this all on me! It’s not all about my drinking.” She was furious.

A security guard rushed into the trailer, his eyes wide and his hand on his holstered gun. “Everything all right in here, boss? I heard yellin’…”

“It’s okay, Bill, but stick around,” said Thomas coolly.

Cheri’s face scrunched up and she stared at Thomas in disbelief, as if he’d sunken to an all-time low. “You’ve got an armed guard on me now, Thomas? Nice,” she spat.

“I told you what I would do if you got hammered again,” he said.

“I didn’t get hammered, you ass,” she retorted. “That’s just it. You left this morning and took my purse and car keys with you. I thought we were good, but you still had some jack-off follow me. I’d barely sat down in that place before some uppity bitch was serving me with legal papers. As far as I know, these aren’t even legit!” she screamed, waving the subpoena in his face.

“Surely you can figure that out, right? I mean, you did work in a law office before you—”

“You’re just so cool, aren’t you? So freaking full of yourself,” she interrupted. “You know, whatever! If you intend to sue me, go on and get it over with. You’re nothing but a bully, an antagonizer who likes to stir shit up, cause unnecessary drama,” she hissed. “Honestly, I’d love nothing better than to tell a roomful of people what a controlling, heartless, arrogant motherfucker you are!”

“Is that what you really want, Cheri?” he asked, a tinge of hurt and shock in his eyes, as if no one had ever dared to say such things about him before. “Are you really looking for a courtroom fight?”

“Is it what you want?” she countered. “To look foolish? The judge will laugh at you and dismiss the case, if he isn’t tempted to hit you over the head with his gavel first, just for wasting his time and being a colossal prick.”

He slapped his hand down on the desk near hers and looked her straight in the eye, furious and red-faced. “I guess we’ll just have to find out, won’t we?”

“You have been nothing but heartache and headaches since I met you,” she said bitterly. “I know what this is, Thomas. It’s all part of your game, another wild scheme to control me.”

“Take it any way you want,” he said.

Cheri picked up a cup of pens and pencils and threw it at him, and one particularly sharp pencil lodged itself in the fabric of his pants, dangerously close to puncturing his manhood.

The guard lunged for her, and Thomas didn’t interfere as the guard drew her hands behind her back and cuffed her. “We can’t have that in here, little lady,” he said as she struggled and spat a series of four-letter words at him that would have made a sailor blush.

Thomas waited for a moment for her to calm down, then leaned close to her face. “Cheri, you aren’t stupid. Use your head. Let me guide you until you get on your feet again.”

“No thank you,” she said curtly, trying to salvage some shred of pride in the extraordinarily humiliating position she was in.

“We agree this is all my fault, correct?” he said dryly, his eyebrow arched.

“Yes!”

“Well, if that’s true, I owe it to you to make amends, right?”

She stared at him and wanted to punch him and kiss him at the same time. Damn him for being so…him, she thought. If he was a homely man, short, overweight, or bald, without that perfect symmetry of his unforgettable facial features, the stuff of romantic paperback covers, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion. She was crippled by the fact that he was beyond beautiful, tall and perfectly muscled.

Not only that, but Thomas was the owner of very successful construction company, hired for jobs all over the nation’s capital to remodel and repair everything from high-end residential to commercial buildings, even restorations on historic sites. He was the boss, yet he also was willing to get down in the trenches with his crew of both men and women. While they’d never really discussed his wealth, Cheri knew he had it. When she snooped through his desk while alone in his house, she found a whole pile of high-limit credit cards. The ones she ran up weren’t even previously used, so she was sure he had lines of credit she couldn’t even imagine.

Despite his success, he looked like an everyman. His work attire consisted of humble t-shirts and jeans, even the occasional cut-offs. He wore his hair in a longish, shaggy, carefree style and traveled in either a very large black pickup or on the Harley-Davidson she had grown to love. There was something so wondrous and dreamy about riding on the back of that motorcycle with her arms around the most passionate man she knew she would ever meet in her lifetime.

“Go on and let her loose, Bill,” said Thomas.

“You sure, boss? Looks like you got a wild one here.”

Cheri looked at Thomas with venom in her eyes and crazily donkey-kicked behind her, pummeling the security guard’s shins.

“On second thought,” said Thomas, “maybe it’s better this way.”

“I think you’re right,” the guard said, pulling the keys away.

“This is false imprisonment!” protested Cheri.

Once again, Thomas leaned close to her. “You physically assaulted me in my office. It’s perfectly legal for my security personnel to detain you if necessary to stop further assault and battery.”

“What do you plan to do with me, Thomas? You can’t keep me handcuffed forever.”

“Well, for now, I’m taking you home,” he said. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt,” he said, peering down at the small hole the pencil had made in his pants.

“Oh? You didn’t seem to mind hurting me before,” she jabbed. “You’re pyscho. One moment you want to help, the next you’re horrible, then you want to fix things, then you want me arrested. You’re impossible!”

“So are you, Cheri!” he yelled. He inhaled a long breath and lowered his voice. “Stop acting like this.”

“Like what? You want me tied up, don’t you? Plan on screwing me this way, too, Thomas?” She was pushing it, and even she knew she’d gone to far.

“Knock it off,” he said, on the brink of losing his temper. “I’ll take you home, and then I’ll see you in court. If you insist, we can part ways after that.”

In all the ways she imagined that the two of them would split, which they’d done for a while on more than one occasion, she had not considered it would be after a court battle. She quickly thought up another snide remark and started to blurt it, but he cut her off before she made a sound.

“I don’t wanna hear it,” he said, holding up his hand. He then took the key from the guard. “As much as I like the idea of you wearing these,” he mocked, “I’m going to take them off now. Do you think you can behave?”

“Sure, Thomas. I’ll be a perfect little angel,” she said, rolling her eyes.

“Good, because I’d really hate to add assault and battery to the lawsuit.” With that, he removed the handcuffs but held her hands together as if they were cuffed, and walked her to his truck.

I’d like to show you battery, mister, she seethed as he led her across the pavement.