Ringside Page 7

  “Are you okay?” Kellen asked tightly.

  I took a deep breath against my damp palm, my lungs filling with hot, wet air. I let the breath out slowly in an attempt to slow my hammering heart.

  “Jenna?”

  “Jesus, Kellen, you scared the shit out of me!” I cried.

  I could see his outline through the white curtain, blurry and indistinct. Huge and imposing, but somehow unsure. Hesitant.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you in here?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Can’t we talk when I get out of the shower?”

  “I might not be able to talk then,” he replied cautiously.

  I paused, afraid to move. Afraid to breath. To stir the air and shift the wind from this odd moment where Kellen was actually open.

  “What do you want to talk about?” I whispered, not sure he could even hear me.

  He must have because I watched his shadow move. His right arm lifted, probably to rub his hand against the back of his neck the way he did when he was uncomfortable.

  “I want to know what’s wrong,” he replied reluctantly.

  “Why do you think something’s wrong?”

  Silence. His shadow didn’t move but I could feel the heat and steam and angst in the room amping up, thickening the air to an almost unbreathable degree.

  I ran my hand over my eyes, clearing the moisture from my face. “I—I’m fine, Kel. It’s okay.”

  “Don’t do that,” he warned darkly.

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t lie to make it easy for me. You’ve never been a liar. Don’t start now.”

  I felt my shoulders slump. “What do you want from me then?”

  “I want to know what’s wrong,” he demanded impatiently.

  “What do you think is wrong?”

  “If I knew I wouldn’t be asking, and asking was pretty fucking hard for me, so maybe cut me some slack and give me a straight answer.”

  “I’m scared!” I shouted, surprising both of us. Not with my words. I think the words were exactly what we both expected. It was the tone. The anger. Kellen and I didn’t fight. At least we hadn’t as friends, but we were different now.

  His head fell, his shadow loosing height. Losing strength. “Are you afraid of me?”

  “No,” I answered immediately. I started to speak but thought better of it. Then again. Three times.

  Kellen waited silently through all of it.

  “I’m not scared of you physically,” I clarified.

  I heard the sound of the toilet lid closing, coming into contact with the bowl below it. Kellen’s shadow sank into a dark mass in the corner of the room. “Then what are you scared of?”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Honestly? No. I’d rather be doing just about anything than having this conversation, but I’m really asking because a wise man told me that if I don’t listen you’ll stop talking. Or maybe it was the other way around.”

  “My dad?”

  “Ben.”

  I paused, assessing that. Rolling over the idea of Kellen discussing feelings and listening and talking. Wondering what it took to light this fire under him that sent him into a steaming bathroom asking me about my feelings.

  “You’re scared too.”

  He sighed tiredly. “Yeah.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “You can ask me anything.”

  “But it doesn’t mean you’re going to answer.”

  “I’m going to try.”

  “Why?”

  My question was met with stillness and silence. If I couldn’t see him I’d be worried he left the room. Left the apartment, probably left the state of California. He was that kind of cagey. He was that kind of runner.

  “I’m scared I’m going to lose you,” he confessed slowly, quietly. “That all the things I need to fix inside me aren’t going to be fixed in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “To keep you from leaving. Because I’m pushing you away.”

  I pursed my lips hard until they hurt. Until the ache in my mouth matched the ache in my chest. In my gut. In my head. I hurt all over and the hot water suddenly wasn’t warm enough to keep me from shivering there in the shower. I curled in on myself, containing my tears and my fears and the truth of what he said – the dead on accuracy of what I was feeling. What I was afraid of as well.

  “Jenna?”

  I swallowed hard, blinking the unshed tears free from my eyelashes. “That’s what I’m afraid of too,” I croaked.

  He didn’t react right away and the truth is that I would have been shocked if he had. Discussing feelings wasn’t Kellen’s strong suit, even about the little things. We’d had an argument just a week ago about where I hung my car keys in his apartment. Apparently I kept using his hook but instead of telling me he let it fester and piss him off day after day until finally it bubbled to the surface and he couldn’t hide it anymore. He was in a shitty mood all day and when I asked him what was wrong he kept telling me nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Finally I asked one time too many and he cracked. He told me how pissed he was at me. Over keys on a hook. All because he hated talking.

  Kellen cleared his throat, standing from the toilet and moving until his shadow nearly blocked out the light of the room. Until the black mass that was the man I loved hovered in front of me, dark and unfamiliar.

  “I need you to tell me what’s wrong with us,” he said solidly. “I only know what’s wrong with me. I need you to fill in the rest. To tell me how I can be better, how I can help make us better, because I’m not sure if you know this about me or not but I’ve never gotten close to people. I don’t have a lot of friends, I’ve never had a family, but I’ve always had you. I’ve only ever wanted you.” He paused, his head drooping again, his stance almost contrite. “How do I keep you, Jenna?”

  Chapter Eight

  Kellen

  I hated Ryan Gosling. Him and all of his movies. All of his lines and his smiles and his good looks. His effing effortless ability to speak to the mind and heart of the woman on screen in a way that made her swoon and gush and kiss him in the rain, promising all their troubles were over. Easy, like it was nothing.

  I fucking hated him.

  Never did I hate him more than now, though, as I stood separated from Jenna by a thin sheet of white fabric. By fifteen years and the dark bars on cracking cages. By the endless void where I sank into myself when the world was just too much for me.

  I had that feeling now. That scared, anxious feeling that begged to be put down into the blackness where it was quiet. I wanted to run to the gym and hide behind the animal. To let it close the doors on the memories in my mind and make my world safe again. And I would. More than likely this night would end with my lungs burning from exertion and my knuckles bloodied by the bag, but not yet. Not now. Now was Jenna and the silence between us that made my breath stick in my chest like molasses, thinning the air and making me lightheaded.

  “I know better than to ask you to stay with me… when…” she tried haltingly.

  “During sex,” I supplied blandly.

  “Yeah. I know that’s off limits. It’s never going to change. But afterward… I wish you would…”

  I sighed, nodding my head even though she couldn’t see it. “You want me to come back faster.”

  “Yes.”

  When I didn’t reply she shuffled on her feet, the sound of the water shifting with her body. I wasn’t looking at her but I could track her by her sound. I could hear her breathing over the rush of the fan and the tumble of the water. I could smell her shampoo in the air. I could imagine her under the hot spray, pink and glistening. The animal growled inside me at the sight. He paced expectantly as my stomach knotted with nervous energy, torn between a growing desire and this need in my heart to square things with her. To know what we needed and hope like hell I could be that for her.

  “I don’t know how to do that.” I cleared my throat, su
cking in hot air that did little to help me. The dizziness worsened. “I’m gonna try, though. I’ll talk to Ben and figure out how.”

  “What’s it like when you’re gone?”

  I blinked in surprise. She’d never asked anything like that before. No one had. Not even Ben. “What does the darkness feel like?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s nothing. It feels like nothing. That’s why I do it.”

  “You can’t feel anything?”

  “I can feel my body. I can feel the world. I feel you.”

  “But you don’t feel anything for me,” she said clearly, her voice full of understanding and empty of judgement.

  It gutted me – her acceptance. The fact that she knew me and didn’t hate me because she should have. More than anyone in the world Jenna Monroe had every reason to loathe me, but she didn’t. She loved me, no question. No reservations.

  It was the single most fucked up thing I’d ever encountered.

  And I grew up in L.A.

  “No,” I admitted roughly. “I don’t feel anything for anyone. Ben says it’s a coping mechanism to distance myself from what happened.”

  “But when it’s over, when you start to resurface… do you…”

  “I love you,” I told her plainly. I lifted my head and my hand, pulling the curtain aside until she stood in front of me, tall and naked and beautiful as anything I’d ever seen. I held her eyes as I told her firmly, “I never stop loving you. It’s there when I hide and it’s there when I come back, and whether I know it or not it’s there when I’m running from it. From everything. It’s like going to sleep. I’m on autopilot but I’m still me.”

  “Like when you’re in the ring?”

  Like when I let the animal have control, I thought morosely.

  One side of me was ruled by fear. By terror and horrible memories that threatened to break me in two. The other was angry. It railed against the abuses, all of them, and delighted in doling out punishments to others. I only let that side loose in the ring when I was boxing and the person who stepped in front of me asked me to hit him. And I did. Over and over until the animal was quiet and my body was mine again. Until the fear was pushed aside and the itch in my palms was erased and I could be myself, be a man for two seconds.

  The relief never lasted as long as I would have liked and as the frequency of my trips to the gym increased I wondered if I was more animal than human. If they hadn’t trained me as a boy to be a dog, rabid and wrathful, full of fear and fight.

  I ran my hand over my hair quickly, letting out a breath of air in a rushed burst that I wanted to follow. I wanted to dissipate and disappear in the steam on the air and filter out through the apartment. Through the window.

  I wanted out of my body.

  Out of the cage I’d built for myself that kept me from her.

  I caught sight of a dark gray towel out of the corner of my eye and I snapped it off the bar. Carefully I reached around Jenna with my other hand to turn off the water, then I gently pulled the towel open behind her. I was so close to her I could feel the heat coming from her body. Her naked, wet, warm body, and I had to close my eyes for a moment to keep my hands to myself.

  I wouldn’t go there tonight. I wouldn’t bail on her. I’d stay with her as much as I could and I’d make it my norm, I’d learn it the way I once learned to walk, to breathe, to box. I’d make being with her my every day until I didn’t have to think about it anymore, until it simply was and then maybe, just maybe I’d be able to find this place in the dark. It’d be a light I could feel even when I couldn’t see it and it’d guide me home to her.

  “What I am in the ring,” I explained slowly, my eyes carefully trained on my hands wound tight in the towel, “is anger. That’s it. I think of it as an animal that’s pure primal instinct. He likes to hit people. He likes to hurt people because that’s what was done to him. I’m a cornered street dog snarling and feral.”

  “He’s your passion,” she said gently.

  I shook my head, meeting her eyes hard. “Don’t dress it up. It’s not pretty. It’s fucked. Every part of me is fucked, Jenna.” I pulled on the towel, throwing her off balance until she tumbled into me. Into my arms where her body ran the length of mine so soft and warm and sweet. “Every part but you.”

  Her eyes searched mine sadly and silently as her arms wound around me. Her feet slipped on the bottom of the tub and I lifted her easily, carrying her back to my bedroom while she buried her face in my neck and clung to me gently.

  I laid her down next to me and pulled the blanket over us in the dark room. I let her look at me with no mask. No hiding, no void. No lies. All fear.

  It was a scary thing being real with Jenna because no matter how much she loved me I harbored a voracious fear that she would find out the truth about what I really was, what I’d been through, and she’d leave me. It hunted me day and night, consuming me from the inside out until I worried there was nothing left. No muscle, blood, or bone inside my body. Only hollow, aching fear.

  ***

  Ben grinned at me from behind his thick-rimmed glasses. His puffy white hair was flying in every direction as always, standing at odds with his perfectly pleated pants and polished shoes.

  “You know what I’m going to ask you,” he told me.

  “You ask every time.”

  “Gotta do it, Captain.”

  I nodded, refusing to speak. Afraid I’d vomit if I opened my mouth.

  “Are you ready to talk about your past?”

  “Yes.”

  He stared at me impassively, silently. He didn’t blink, he barely breathed, and as the seconds ticked by I worried I’d broken him. That I’d mentally shattered my therapist.

  “Really?” he finally asked quietly.

  My palms itched angrily and I rubbed them together to calm the burn. It didn’t help. “Yes. Really.”

  “Okay. Why don’t we start at the beginning? With your introduction into foster care.”

  “No,” I protested. “Later. After that. I already talked about that.”

  “In the session with Jenna?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was hardly talking about it. We barely brushed the surface of the problem. We have to delve deeper.” He eyed me critically, noting the rise in my shoulders. The curl of my knuckles. “And I believe you know that.”

  I flexed my jaw, trying to loosen the tension that always started there.

  “We’ll talk about something else,” Ben suggested lightly, sitting back in his chair. “Let’s talk about what made you finally decide to speak about your childhood and then we’ll circle around to the main event.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you’re asking.”

  “I’m not,” he answered frankly. “So what’s on your mind today? What brought about this change in attitude?”

  “Jenna.”

  “Have you discussed the sexual abuse with her since the session she attended?”

  I flinched at the boldness of his words. They were so blunt, so on the nose that they made me sick.

  “No,” I ground out, my throat coated in gravel.

  Ben made a note as he nodded, unconcerned by my tone. When he was done he looked up at me expectantly.

  I glared back.

  He sighed. “Kellen, I’m not going to pretend I don’t know you were sexually abused. I’m also not going to avoid using that term and speaking honestly with you about it. Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we?”

  I pulled my lips in between my teeth and bit down hard, just south of puncturing the tender flesh with my teeth. I stopped myself, pushing my lips out on a loud burst of air from my lungs and settling back into the couch. “Fine.”

  “You’ll never face the act if you can’t face the words.”

  “I said it’s fine,” I snapped.

  “Good,” Ben agreed pleasantly. “Let’s talk about Jenna then. What’s troubling you about her?”

  “Sex.”

  He blinked once, his eyes magnified
in his glasses. “Go on.”

  “The thing that I do… the running.”

  “The fact that you emotionally shut down during sexual intercourse?”

  “Yeah. How do I stop that?”

  “How do you—“ Ben sat forward in his seat. “How do you stop removing yourself emotionally from sex?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Kellen, I have no idea.”

  Ben had never given me a non-answer before. He was packed full of quips and wisdom and ideas. Full of help and hope. But this, this nothing, floored me.

  “What do you mean?” I insisted tightly.

  “I mean I don’t know. I can’t say how to fix a problem that I don’t fully understand,” he explained. “You wouldn’t take your car to a mechanic, tell him the oil is leaking but never let him under the hood. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t tell me we can’t talk about the root of your problems and still insist that we resolve the symptoms. It doesn’t work like that.”

  I groaned a curse, looking away toward the window. Toward an escape.

  “Why is this an issue now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why is it bothering you now? You’ve used that coping mechanism for how long? Nearly fifteen years? So why fix it now?”

  “Because it’s Jenna,” I answered simply, because that’s all there was to it. Jenna mattered. “She’s not like Laney was, she isn’t okay with ignoring the empty shit, and I’m worried…” I took a deep breath that burned in my lungs and made my eyes ache with a sharp sting I could barely comprehend. “I’m worried I’m ruining her.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “How are you ruining her?”

  “I’m making her run. I’m pushing her away. She used to stay with me afterward and we’d deal with it together. She waited for me to come out of it. She’s not doing that anymore. She’s started leaving.” I shrugged, turning my eyes back to his, the motion overly jerky. “I don’t know what to do about it. I don’t know how to stop doing it.”

  “You have to make amends with the abuse, Kellen,” Ben said simply. “You’re smart enough to know that.”