Out of the corner of my eye, while I flailed around since I’d basically just scared the shit out of myself, or Jonah had, I saw the dark-haired man start to sprint forward like he was going to catch me. Before he could get to me though, the second that my instincts realized that I wasn’t about to go feet-over-ass and break my chair in half, I sat up straight, slapped my hand over my chest because my heart hadn’t beat so hard in forever, and slid him the nastiest look I could conjure up.
Stopping right in front of me, stopping right on the other side of the desk, Jonah looked at me and grinned.
That smile grew with every second that passed. One after another and then another until he was basically beaming at me. All handsome, straight, white teeth, and looking like a million-dollar asshole.
“I wish I could have filmed that,” he said way too brightly.
I didn’t even think about it.
I grabbed my stress ball and threw it at him, seeing his hands cover his balls like I would really try and hit him there, as he laughed. Laughed.
“I can’t stand you,” I hissed, rubbing a circle over my heart because it hadn’t gotten the memo that we weren’t about to die from an intruder alert. “How do you move so quietly when you’re so damn big?”
He was still laughing, but his hands were falling away from his crotch area when he replied, starting to bend over, “Practice. I move fast too.”
“If I had another stress ball, I’d throw that one at you too,” I told him as he tossed the ball back at me.
I caught it and dropped it on top of my desk.
“You all right?” he asked, smiling wide and slowly dropping into the seat that still looked too small for him.
“Besides that minor heart attack I just had, and the fact I probably pissed myself a little too, yeah, I’m fine,” I told him drily, earning me an even bigger smile that made it totally worth the fact that I wasn’t lying. I probably had peed a couple drops out. Mo’s fault.
“As long as it was just a bit of urine, eh?” the cheeky bastard asked.
“You know, I don’t remember you being this sarcastic two years ago.”
He didn’t break eye contact with me for a second. “You’re a bad influence, love.”
I smiled.
“As I was asking before I caused your palpitations,” he started. “I didn’t know you managed anyone.”
Oh. That. “Not officially or anything, and not really, but I’m a good third party. Especially when they want to get paid more for fights, the amateurs I mean, I have the connections. And I don’t mind haggling for them.”
“They pay you?”
“A little bit. I don’t know how much you heard, but this last time, one of the guys hadn’t gotten paid, and he asked me if I could call the promoter because he wasn’t getting through. So I did. I’ve known him for a long time, and he knows better than to screw around with us.”
“You mean you and your granddad?”
“Exactly, but I’ve been told I’m worse than Grandpa Gus.” I smiled. “Deep down, I probably enjoy it too much. It’s my high now.” I thought about that for a second. “You okay? Need anything?”
“Everything is good as gold,” he replied, leaning back into the too-small chair, his upper arms crowding over the armrests. “Just came to check on you.”
“Me?”
“Yes.” But that was all he said.
“Why?”
“Yesterday. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it.”
I played dumb. “What happened yesterday? Your mom asking me all those questions?” Because she had asked me a lot of questions on the ride back from the park. She went right in and laid them out one right after the other.
“Elena,” the older woman said maybe two seconds after we’d gotten inside the car after I finished speaking to Grandpa Gus’s ex-wife. “Did I hear that correctly or did you refer to the woman at the park as your grandmother?”
She’d heard that. I was still feeling pretty riled up after our conversation, but it wasn’t the time to think about it, so I’d do it later, in private. When I could really let it set in.
Or maybe I would never think about it. Who knew? I still, and more than likely forever would, want nothing to do with her.
“She is biologically my grandmother. She was my dad’s mom,” I replied, flexing my fingers around the steering wheel.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Jonah fidgeting in the seat beside me and knew without looking that he was watching me.
“Your father, where is he?” Sarah went on to ask.
I heard Jonah grunt, but I answered her. She wasn’t the first person to ever ask, and she wouldn’t be the last. “He died before I was born.”
The silence in the car for a few moments after that honestly made me feel just a little bad. I bet she hadn’t been expecting that. And she wouldn’t be the first person either to feel bad for asking that specific question.
So I decided to be the better person and not let her feel so shitty. Mostly because making someone feel guilty was kind of a cheap shot. Like Rafaela showing up out of the fucking blue just to make herself feel better.
“He was in a drunk driving accident. He wasn’t the one drinking or driving. The woman who gave birth to me hadn’t even known she was pregnant when he died, so he didn’t know I was on the way either,” I explained, and for once, I realized just how similar in a way my story with Jonah and Mo was to this.
I didn’t like it.
And I was glad, obviously, that it wasn’t tragic too.
Because maybe I hadn’t known Marcus, but Grandpa had always talked about how awesome he’d been. And if he was Grandpa Gus’s son, of course he had been that way. “I know he was my biological dad, but I’ve always thought of him as being like a brother-figure I never got to meet.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that,” Sarah said in a surprisingly gentle and honest voice that I was only partially expecting. “And your mum?”
I had glanced in the rearview mirror to take in the back of Mo’s car seat. Poor little monster. We’d be at the house in five minutes, so I hoped she stayed awake so we wouldn’t have to wake her up all over again. “My biological mom gave her rights up and let my grandpa take me. Supposedly she was only twenty years old and wasn’t ready to have a baby, so she did the right thing. My grandpa and Peter raised me, and I couldn’t have had better parents. It’s always been the three of us. Grandpa Gus didn’t have brothers or sisters, and Peter’s only sister died a while back.”
Memories of the thousands of times they had been there for me had made my heart clench up. The countless hours spent at judo, with one or both of them always there. The family vacations, the weekend trips they had snuck in as much as possible to give me a normal childhood. The infinite amount of unconditional love they had given me, even if sometimes it was tough love. I really couldn’t have had better parents. “They loved me enough for five whole families though, so I was the lucky one.”
There was more silence, and I’d bet my ovary she regretted asking that question too.
Awkward.
And because I had still been feeling pretty gracious and could only imagine what was going through her head as she tried to piece things together, I decided to just wrap up the whole story so she would know.