“Luckily you’re good in bed—or wherever.” He shrugged. “Don’t you have any frozen pizza?”
Still scared, she realized, but she didn’t feel like crying anymore, didn’t have to fight off trembling anymore.
“I do, but I also have a menu from Mama Mia’s. They’ll deliver for me.”
“That works.” He started to move by her, into the house, but she turned, stepped into his arms, held hard.
“Simon.” She murmured it as she relaxed against him. “I have no idea why, but you’re exactly what I need right now.”
“I don’t know why either.” He tossed the duffel through the open door, then stroked a hand down her back. “You’re really not my type.”
“That’s because I defy typing.”
He studied her face when she laughed and leaned back. “Yes, you do.”
“Let’s take a walk before we order dinner. I need to shake off the last of the jitters.”
“Then I want a beer.”
“You know what, so do I. Two walking beers coming up.”
Later, they sat on the sofa with a second beer, the fire chasing the evening chill, with a pepperoni pizza in the delivery box between them. Fiona crossed her ankles on the coffee table.
“You know, I keep telling myself I’m going to start eating like an adult.”
“We are eating like adults.” Simon blocked Jaws’s attempt to scoot under his legs for a stab at the pie. “Get lost,” he told the dog. “Kids have to eat when and what they’re told,” he continued. “We get to eat when and what we want. Because we’re adults.”
“That’s true. Plus, I love pizza.” She bit into her slice. “There’s no food to match it. Still, I was actually thinking before... before you came by that I’d ask you over to dinner.”
“Then how come I paid for the pizza?”
“You got out your wallet; I let you. I was going to ask you over to dinner that I cooked.”
“You’re a lousy cook.”
She jabbed him with her elbow. “I was going to make an attempt. Besides, I can grill. In fact, I’m superior on the grill. A couple of good steaks, Idahos wrapped in foil—some vegetable kabobs as a nod to a balanced meal. That’s where I rule.”
“You cook like a guy.” He picked up a second slice. “I admire that.”
“I guess I owe you a steak dinner, since you paid for the pizza, and you’re keeping me company tonight. Tell me about leashing the crazy.”
“It’s not that interesting. Why don’t you have a TV down here?”
“Because I never watch TV down here. I like to watch it in bed, all sprawled out or nested in. The living room’s for company and conversation.”
“The bedroom’s for sleeping and sex.”
“Until recently sex wasn’t that much of a factor, and watching TV in bed helps me fall asleep.” She licked sauce off her thumb. “I know when you’re changing the subject, and it won’t work. I’m interested.”
“I’ve got an ugly temper. I learned how to keep it under control. That’s it.”
“Define ugly temper.”
He took a pull on his beer. “Fine. When I was a kid and something, someone pissed me off, tried to push me around, I’d go off. Fighting was my answer, the bloodier the better.”
“You liked to brawl.”
“I liked to kick ass,” he corrected. “There’s a difference. Brawl? There’s something good-natured about that word. I wasn’t good-natured about it. I didn’t pick fights, I didn’t bully other kids, I didn’t look for trouble. But I could find a reason to swing, I could find trouble, no problem. Then the switch would go off.”
He turned the beer around, idly read the label. “Seeing red? That can be literal. And I’d wade in, and when I waded in, it was to do damage.”
She could imagine him wading in—his build, those big, hard hands, the hard line of heat she caught in his eye now and then. “Did you ever hurt anyone seriously?”
“I could have. Probably would have eventually. I got hauled down to the office in school more times than I can count.”
“I never did. Not bragging,” she added when he turned his head to eye her. “I sort of wish I hadn’t been such a good girl all the damn time.”
“You were one of those.”
“Sadly, yes. Keep going. Bad boys are so much more interesting than good girls.”
“Depends on the girl, and what it takes to bring out the bad.” He reached over, released the top two buttons of her shirt until her bra peeked out. “There you go. Pizza slut. Anyway,” he continued when she laughed, “I got in some trouble, but I never started the fight—and there were always people around to back me up on that. My parents tried different things to channel it. Sports, lectures, even counseling. The thing was, I got decent grades, didn’t smart-mouth teachers.”
“What changed?”
“Junior year in high school. I had a rep—and there are always going to be the type who need to challenge the rep. New guy comes along—tough guy. He goes after me; I take him down.”
“Just like that?”
“No. It was vicious, on both sides. We hurt each other. I hurt him more. A couple weeks later, he and two of his buddies jumped me. I was with a girl, making out in the park. Two of them held me while he took his shots. She’s screaming for them to stop, screaming for help, and he’s laughing and beating me until I don’t even feel it anymore. At some point I blacked out.”
“Oh my God, Simon.”
“When I came to, they had her on the ground, holding her down. She’s crying, begging. I don’t know if they’d have raped her. I don’t know if they’d have gone that far. But they didn’t get the chance. I went crazy, and I don’t remember any of it. I don’t remember getting up off the ground and going after them. I beat two of them unconscious. The third ran off. I don’t remember any of it,” he repeated, as if it still troubled him. “But I remember coming out of it, out of that red zone, and hearing the girl—a girl I was half in love with—crying and screaming and begging me to stop. I remember the look on her face when I pulled in enough to see her. I’d scared her as much as the ones who jumped me and nearly raped her.”
Then she was a wimp, in Fiona’s opinion. Instead of screaming and crying, she should’ve run for help. “How badly were you hurt?”
“Enough for a couple days in the hospital. Two of the three who came at me spent longer. I woke up in the hospital—a world of hurt. I saw my parents sitting together across the room. My mother was crying. You had to practically cut her arm off with a hatchet to make my mother cry, but tears were just running down her face.”
That, Fiona saw clearly, troubled him more than the memory lapse. That had been the mark that had turned his path. His mother’s tears.
“And I thought, That’s enough. It’s enough. I leashed the crazy.”
“Just like that?”
“No. But eventually. Once you learn how to walk away the first time, or realize the one baiting you is an idiot, it gets easier.”
So, she thought, that’s where the control had its roots. “What about the girl?”
“I never made it past second base with her after all. She broke it off,” he added when Fiona said nothing. “I couldn’t blame her.”
“I can. She should’ve found a big stick and helped you instead of crying. She should’ve grabbed some rocks and started throwing them. She should’ve kissed your goddamn feet for saving her from being mauled and raped.”
He smiled. “She wasn’t the type.”
“You have faulty taste in types.”
“Maybe. Up till now, anyway.”
She smiled, leaned over the take-out box to kiss him—and flipped open another button on her shirt. “Since I’m tonight’s pizza slut, I say we take the rest of this upstairs, where it’ll be handy if we want some after.”
“I’m a fan of cold pizza.”
“I’ve never understood people who aren’t.” She rose, held out a hand for his.
Fourteen
Simon woke with the sun in his eyes. At home he slept in a cave, shuttering the bedroom windows so he could wake up, get up, whenever the hell he wanted. He considered it, like eating whatever and whenever, a perk of adulthood aided by being self-employed.