Chapter Twenty-Three
“You were right. I have been holding back.” Jonas sat on the ottoman facing Samiyah. After the explosive kiss at the auction, he’d taken her hand and fled the event. He drove straight to his downtown penthouse not wanting to leave her side for a moment.
She looked on inquisitively. “You must understand something about me Samiyah. I’ve never had to speak about my personal life with anyone.”
“So you’ve never been in a relationship or even had a close friend?”
“I have acquaintances. Besides my brothers who already know my past, I have no need to be close to anyone.” He peered at her. “As for women, I’ve never let one get close enough to reveal myself completely.”
Samiyah shifted in her seat. She still wore her evening gown, but it wasn’t the dress that made her a little uncomfortable. The look on his beautiful face now was sturdy and rigid, almost as if it pained him to release whatever it was that he held pinned up inside.
He loosened the tie around his neck. “My mother and I were very close. Being my father’s first born came with many responsibilities. On the eve of my mother’s thirty-fifth birthday, my father left me in charge of the house. Whenever he did this he would say, son, you’re the man of the house until I get back. Look after your mother and brothers. I would always respond, I’m on it, sir.”
Samiyah smiled a bit imaging Jonas as a young boy wanting to make his father proud.
“My mother was making dinner for us, and she needed flour from the store. Jonas, she said, ‘I need you to run down to the market and get a bag of flour. Don’t take too long now, hurry back.’ He leaned forward resting his forearms on his thighs never breaking his eye contact with her.
“She placed a kiss on my forehead and gave me some bills, and I was gone. Back then, I had a ten-speed bicycle I liked to call the hedgehog after the animated game Sonic the Hedgehog; primarily because I rode it at lightning speed. That night, I took my time going to the store. When I got there, some neighborhood kids were lingering around. One of the guys challenged me, telling me his bike was faster than mine. I could never bow out of a challenge, so I accepted.
His face lit up. “We took off down the road and as sure as my name is Jonas Rose I smoked him, left him in the wind, boy was he mad. I laughed all the way back to the store. After getting the flour, I headed back to the house with a chip on my shoulder and a smile on my face. I couldn’t wait to tell my younger brothers the story.”
“I rode into the driveway jumping off my bike before it came to a complete stop. The first thing I noticed was the front door. Not only was it unlocked it was hanging open with an imprint in the front door like it had been kicked in.”
His face darkened. “I could hear Julian crying loud, so I rushed to him to see what was wrong. He was only eight years old. When I found him, he was standing over my mother.” His jaw tightened. “She was lying in a pool of her own blood. She’d been shot.”
“Jonas—” Samiyah said.
“Let me finish,” he spoke closing his eyes tight then reopening them reliving the memory. “I remember dropping down to my knees and shaking her. I felt around her neck for a pulse but couldn’t tell if she had one. I ran to the phone and called the police. The dispatcher tried to keep me on the line but I couldn’t, I needed to find the rest of my brothers.”
Samiyah could tell he was gone by the faraway look in his eyes. Although they were trained on her, he was no longer present.
“I grabbed Julian by the hand and went to my father’s cabinet where he kept his guns. He’d taught me how to shoot them outside in the backyard and on hunting expeditions. I grabbed one, made sure it was loaded, and went room to room. I found my sister’s in their crib sleeping soundly. They were newborns barely two weeks old. I came out their room and closed the door and went in search of my brothers with Julian trailing me. I found Jaden unconscious by the back door a gun laying at his side. I called out to him, but Jaden didn’t respond, so I fell to my knees to check his pulse.
My heart was beating so fast and I feared he was dead. I ran back to the kitchen and got the pitcher of water my mother kept in the refrigerator and poured it on his face. He woke up with a heavy groan and I could tell he’d been hit over the head from the way it was swelling on one side. Jaden! I yelled, Are you okay? He just groaned and groaned then finally he said, ‘did you get em?”
No, I just got back. You have to get up. You have to help me find Jonathon, Jordan, Jacob, and Josiah!
Jaden was still in a daze, but alert enough to mention they went to the lake. No sooner than he said it, I spotted them walking through the back yard laughing and pushing each other.
Someone yelled, Freeze! And I turned around with the gun lifted in my hand. Chicago P.D. had their guns trained on me. ‘Put the weapon down son,’ they said. It took me a second to snap out of it, but I dropped the gun.”
Samiyah moved from her place on the sofa and crouched between his legs on her knees trying to soothe him from the memory.
“We were questioned over and over again. Jaden being two years younger than me had tried to stop the intruder. He’d done the same thing I did which was grab one of our father’s guns. Unfortunately, he was knocked out before he could use it. My mother,” he held his tongue, “she died.”
“It was ruled a robbery-homicide.”
“Jonas, I’m so sorry for asking. I never meant to make you relive such a horrible incident. Please accept my apologies.” She reached to touch his face, caressing him with her soft hand.
“You deserve to know,” he said. He reached for the scotch that was sitting next to him and knocked it back. “The intruders were caught some days later with items they’d stolen from the house. But the one thing I could never have back was gone forever. Needless to say, I blamed myself for it. I should’ve never left the house that evening. I was in charge.”
“You couldn’t have known that was going to happen. If you’d been there you might have died yourself.”
“Then so be it. I was in charge.”
He gritted his teeth, and Samiyah’s eyes watered. “For the next few years, everything in my life changed. I started acting out in school, my grades dropped, I picked fights.” He poured another glass and took a huge gulp.
“My father seemed to think I needed to find a way to let go of my frustrations. Imagine that? A teenager and already I felt like the world was on my shoulders. When I was seventeen, he took me to the gym and introduced me to Ned Clayborn. ‘Son,’ he said, Ned’s going to help you relieve some of that stress.
He put gloves on my fists and put me in front of a punching bag. For the first couple of weeks, I didn’t take anything Ned was saying seriously. I just showed up and repeatedly hit the punching bag, over and over. One day he walked up to me and said, ‘how would you feel about fighting in a match?’ I was cocky, arrogant, and I told him I’d win hands down. He said follow me. We walked over to a match that was going on in the center part of the gym. I observed the fighter’s movements, completely lost in a trance. Ned was watching me, then he said, ‘If you follow my instructions you’ll be better than them.’
From that day forward I was doing whatever he said. He had me doing everything physical. I jumped rope for hours some days. He put me in front of the punching bag and yell, ‘stand up straight your spine shouldn’t be bent, forget everything you saw on TV or heard about boxing and listen to me.’”
“And I did. My training became fierce. Night and day, I was there seven days a week. My grades began to improve. I wasn’t picking random fights anymore, and my attitude at home was much better. That’s all my dad cared about. He saw me spiraling and thought boxing would help, and he was right. I trained for years before I had my first match and when I did, I came out the victor. My father and brothers were proud and so was I. Boxing became my new love. I fought for ten years straight never losing one fight and profited handsomely from it.”
“That’s amazing,” Samiyah said.
“I never expected to win as much, but it was a combination, of skill, dedication, training, and stress. Anytime I stepped in the ring I relieved the stress from that day, and every year on my mother’s death date I made sure I had a match.”
“Sounds like you had a good thing going,” Samiyah said.
“It was a great thing.”
“So, why’d you retire?”
His face fell grim again. “On November 13, 2009, I was set to fight D’Angelo Santarus. On the night of the fight, the crowd was huge. The announcer called us both out one at a time. We entered the ring. The match started, and we tapped gloves and separated. It took one round and ten minutes for me to get a K.O., which in boxing terms is a knockout. It was the quickest fight of my life. The crowd cheered and went crazy.”
Again, he traveled back to the night in question. “I was declared the winner. D’Angelo was still on the ring floor. His trainers and medical team had surrounded him. I watched from the sidelines as they checked him out. I heard one man say I can’t find a pulse. The emergency team came in and worked on him until they found one. From there they airlifted him to the closest hospital. Before I left the changing room, I asked Ned how he was doing. His face was long and somber, and he didn’t respond. Ned, I said, he looked up at me. Ned said, he was pronounced dead at nine fifty-three p.m.”
Samiyah gasped, and Jonas fell silent. He reached for his glass and took the final sip of his scotch and continued.
“To make matters worse, rumors were going around that D’Angelo didn’t weigh enough to fight me. His handler had fabricated his weight because he thought he had a winner. But he wasn’t blamed for it, I was. People thought I was showing off and took things too far by fighting him when I didn’t have a clue. I fought for two years after that before I finally decided to give it up. The nightmares I had were extreme. Not only was I seeing D’Angelo but my mom, too, and boxing was no longer my haven.”
He looked down in her face his eyes glossy, his jaw tight. “So you see, my love, I’m a broken man. It took a lot of counseling for the nightmares to stop and the pain to lift and I’ve never talked about it until now.”
Tears rolled down Samiyah’s cheeks. She felt utterly horrible for bringing up his past. “You couldn’t have known,” he said reading her mind and seeing the guilt on her face.
“I’m so, so, sorry…” he captured her lips with his, her hands caressed his face and their kiss intensified. Jonas pulled Samiyah into his lap, and they consumed each other. Her hands moved to his tie completely undoing it; working her fingers down the buttons on his shirt. It opened easily, and in haste, she removed it off of his brawny shoulders and muscular arms.
He unzipped the back of her gown and peeled it off of her smooth mocha skin. Clothes went flying across the room, and Samiyah eagerly jumped back on his lap kissing his neck and shoulders as tears continued to flow from her eyes. She felt entirely responsible for making him relive such a horrible time in his life, and she wanted to make it all better.
“I love you, I love you,” she repeated as she kissed his skin. He pulled her face to his and worked her hips on him. Samiyah shut her eyes tight.
“Look at me,” he commanded. Her eyes opened with sadness still in them. “I love you too, Samiyah,” he rotated her hips grinding them into him. “Don’t close your eyes, stay with me.”
Samiyah placed her feet on the ground and moved up in down in steady rotation, picking up a momentum that had tears streaming down both of their faces. Their passionate kisses picked up once again and his strong arms encircled her, holding on so tight they became one. Samiyah’s head fell back, and she moaned in an overabundance of pleasure.
His lips dropped to her breasts, and he licked and sucked her nipples like he’d never taste a piece of chocolate before. Samiyah rode and rode until they both erupted in volcanic fashion, their bodies succumbing to the desire that overtook them. With her body still trembling against him, he rose, and she wrapped her legs around him as he carried her into the master bedroom. With the moon casting night light across the bed, they made love and whispered sweet endearments to each other until they lacked any energy.
At four a.m., Jonas shifted in his bed and was awakened by the emptiness that settled there. He slid up to his elbows and looked around the room. The sliding doors to the patio was peeled back, and the moonlight cast a shadow across the floor. He removed the sheets and crept to the balcony.
“Is everything okay?”
Samiyah stepped into his arms. “You were not supposed to wake up.”
“If you want me to sleep, you have to stay with me. What’s on your mind, love?”
“Everything, well…” she peered back into the night. “Us mostly. My mother would never approve. She’s very hard on men. She thinks there’s not a good one left alive. It’s understandable I guess, but sometimes I wish she would just give someone a chance.” He rubbed her shoulders.
“Maybe she needs to be in the presence of good men to feel like they still exist.”
Samiyah cackled. “It’s not like I just know a gang of good men I can introduce her to.”
“I may know a few.”
She turned to him. “You’re not insisting your brothers are you. They are too young! She would rip them to shreds.”
“Yeah right, I know a cougar when I see one.”
Samiyah punched him in the gut, and he pretended to be hurt by her jab. “Okay, I deserved that.”
“Yes, you did,” she said matter of factly.
“No, I only meant maybe she needs to experience what it is like to be around good men.”
“Well, I don’t know how you plan to make that happen. If I know anything about my mother, she is impossible when it comes to men.”
“We’ll see, in the meantime come back to bed.” He pulled her inside and shut the door. It didn’t take long for them to start up another round of love making.