Hold Her Close

There are rumors floating around that Jack is out of prison and trying to start the whole thing over again. I’m not sure what would possess a man who’d been caught to try to pull off the same scheme that landed him in prison, but Jack Singleton is as single-minded as his name. He knows what he wants, and he wants the adrenaline and the money that comes with running something as illicit as dog fighting.

Two minutes alone in a ring with him and I’d show him what I really thought about him now. It would have a different outcome than the way our fights always ended as kids, that’s for sure. I am a very different man now.

The air is crisp, as it always is in the fall around Nashville. Perfect weather. In a few weeks it will get colder, and I’ll be tempted to skip these early runs and stay inside. Preferably with a warm companion in bed.

In this case, I’m not thinking about my dogs, but about the woman that I never thought I’d see again. My Cinderella.

The way she looked behind that desk wasn’t even close to the way that I’ve imagined her in my mind this past month. In the back room of the club, she’d been unrestrained and wild. She took control, and she let me have control as well. Honestly, if I’d known that she would leave without giving me her phone number or even her name, I would have held on to my pleasure harder and let her mouth tease me more.

I have dreams about those moments and what it might have been like to come in her mouth, feel her sucking me through my orgasm.

Fuck. No boners while running. That is just uncomfortable, and if I ran into anybody, gym shorts aren’t exactly the type of clothes you can hide behind. I push her out of my mind and continue my run.

But as I finish my loop and slow to a walk back up my driveway, I let her into my thoughts again as I shut the gate and release the dogs from their leashes so they can run around freely in the yard.

Sadie Crawford.

Even though she didn’t give me her name, I have it now. And I didn’t have to stalk her to get it. It was purely an accident. I bet she thought that I lived in Atlanta when we met, a safe wager for something without strings. It was the same thing I had thought when I walked down the stairs toward her in the club.

But what we did? The chemistry we had? Those were strings that I didn’t anticipate and that I can’t seem to let go of. Now that she is here, and we are living in the same city, I want to see her.

I will take Cinderella her damn shoe and see if she wants it back.3Sadie“Thank you for watching,” I say. “Tune in tonight for more news from WNSV, your local news source.”

The red light turns off on the camera, and the production assistant announces that we’re clear. I breathe a sigh of relief. Even though it’s been two weeks since I started being on air full time, I still get a flurry of nerves being live.

“That was good,” Bill says. “Though you might not want to wear that color again. Not the most attractive on you.”

I struggle not to roll my eyes. So far the worst part of my job has been my co-anchor. I wish there were a more delicate way to put it, but he’s a pig. Misogynistic to his core. There hasn’t been a day where he hasn’t commented on my appearance or my performance. And I’ve been holding myself in check, smiling because I’m the new girl. But I’m tired of it, and so I smile tightly at him.

“If I need your opinion on my clothes, Bill, I’ll ask you for it.”

He raises one eyebrow, surprised that I’m talking back to him this way. “Whatever. I’m just trying to help you. You know female anchors have to look good to get views, or else…”

Or else they’ll replace me, is what he’s saying. Fucking asshole.

Gathering my notes, I head back to my office. It’s hard not to feel defeated when he says things like that. All in all, the first couple of weeks here haven’t gone as smoothly as I’d hoped they would. I came prepared with a list of stories that I wanted to investigate and present—since WNSV prides itself on the journalism of their whole team. But every story I’ve pitched, the producers have taken and given to Bill.

Clearly they were good stories if they gave them to him, but I can’t exactly crack why I’m running into this wall of blatant sexism. Everything I’ve heard about this station was that it is a great place to work.