Fast & Hard (The Fast 1)

I didn’t even sleep on the plane. I dragged Mallory next to me on the couch and laid next to her the whole flight while she watched an old vampire movie and slept, daring Matty or Jack to say one word about it. They took one look at my face and knew better.

It should be Celeritas upsetting me, and it is, to an extent. The two hour debrief in which I got reamed out for daring to out-qualify DuPunk pissed me off, sure. The fact that they turned my engine mode down during the race when I toyed with passing him infuriated me. The post-race photos where I had to put my arm around Dingleberry and smile for the cameras, I almost snapped his neck.

But it’s her next door.

All morning I’ve made out bits and pieces of her on the phone with her brother and Aria about her father’s latest threats against her. I can’t wrap my head around it. And for reasons I can’t come to terms with, I need to fix it.

Something has changed. I’m always a bit overbearing but I’m stuck on irrational thoughts of running away from all of this and locking her in my dungeon forever. Primitive, even for me I know, but I just want away from all of this. The absurdity of the situation doesn’t escape me either, the woman sent here by the corporate devil himself, sent to make me toe the line, says words identical to those that slam around inside my skull every day.

It killed me when she called herself a disappointment. Watching her in the same endless pursuit of validation you work your ass off to get just so people can throw up roadblocks to kick you back down. The injustice of it all sickens me.

Pacing around the kitchen, I throw some protein powder and bananas into the blender and mash the buttons. Watching everything get pulverized to bits is hypnotizing and oddly satisfying. Reaching for a glass and turning the blender off, I hear a shaky voice from the hallway, “Don’t touch me. I said stop!”

My brow furrows and my heart rate picks up. But when I throw my door open, my vision narrows and the only thing I see beyond white-hot anger is DuPont with his hands on Mallory, running his filthy fingers up and down her arm.

Before he can even turn around, my body has acted of its own accord and thrown him up against a wall, his head cracking into a brass sconce lighting the hallway. He screams something, I don’t hear the words, as he clutches the back of his head, plaster crumbling to the ground.

I grab the neck of his shirt in my left hand and pull back my right arm with visions of destroying his smarmy face flashing before my eyes when Mallory’s screams register to my brain and she wraps half her body around my right arm.

“Stop it! Stop it!”

It allows half a second for my brain to catch up to my body and allows DuPont time to get a few steps down the hallway backing away and holding his head. He looks up and laughs, his sickening weasel voice, “Perfect, that’s just perfect, Gibbes! You’re done, this time!”

“Stay the fuck away from her,” I bellow and take a step toward him but Mallory is standing in front of me trying to block my path. “Did he hurt you?” I ask her, not looking at her but staring down the oxygen thief slowly backing his way down the hallway toward the exit.

“No!” She yells back at me.

“Au contraire,” DuPont cackles, “I’ve only come to offer her an alternative, a real man. You remember how that went last time, don’t you Gibbes?”

“You motherfucker,” I start but Mallory screams at the top of her lungs for him to get out, standing in between us like a bloody referee.

DuPont continues his backward walk until he reaches the stairwell, a seedy smug grin on his face, then tears down the stairs and the exterior door slams.

“What is wrong with you!” Mallory roars at me.

“Me?” I cry. “I heard you tell him to leave and he had his hands on you!”

“So what! I can take care of myself! You can’t go around throwing people into walls!”

“You don’t understand,” I start.

“No! You don’t understand! He’s going to get us fired! You’re going to cost me this job acting like a wild animal!”

“He cannot get me fired,” I try and calm her down, even as my chest is still heaving and my fists clench, but she isn’t having it. Her eyes are huge and filled with rage and glass- eyed as tears start filling up inside them.

“That’s great for you, Lennox! What about me? He can have me fired! Then what? Do you ever think about that? What’s going to happen to me when I get fired from this job?”

“That’s all I…,” I pause and suck in a breath, “he won’t.”

She darts back to her flat and opens the door.

“Mal,”

“No, leave me alone,” she says before slamming the door in my face.

Hours pass. Hours of berating myself and listening to Mallory slamming things around in her flat across the hall. All I’ve thought about for days is how not to screw her life up more, how to get both of us out of this vicious circle.

And I’ve made it worse.