The Silencer: A Bad Boy MMA Romance (7 page)

Shelly

I don’t remember Detroit looking like this.

I remember riding through with my daddy on Saturdays when he would go to the Chrysler plant where he worked to pick up his paycheck.

I was always in awe of that factory. It was so big and when we pulled into the parking lot, I felt like I was entering another world. There were so many new and flashy cars parked throughout the lot, as discounts on vehicles were a big perk for everyone who worked there. Whenever I would bring up the idea of us getting a new car, my dad would scoff at it.

“What do we need a new car for? What’s wrong with the one we have?”

“Nothing daddy, but look at how nice all these cars are.”

“I know they’re nice, sweetie, I build them. Even though this place provides me with a good living, I would rather save my money for important things rather than throw it away on a new car when the one we have drives perfectly fine. When this one starts giving us problems, then we’ll look into new ones. It’s important to be smart with your money because you never know what might come up.”

Since that day, I took the conversation my daddy and I had to heart. Because of him, I save as much of my money as I can. As much as I would love to buy a new car every couple of years, I remember the words he told me and put any extra money I have into savings.

Detroit had changed so much since then. It had even changed a lot in the last five years, which was the last time I drove up for a hockey game. When going to Joe Louis, you don’t see all of Detroit. You just see the highway and the little bit of downtown around the stadium, which the city takes great pride in looking nice.

I certainly wasn’t downtown as I drove to Jason’s apartment. There were more abandoned and boarded up buildings than there were houses that actually had people living in them. The streets were filled with homeless people, and my heart ache for them.

Pulling up outside of his apartment, I noticed the neighborhood may have been even sketchier than the ones I drove through. There were a couple of thugs hanging out by the entrance to the building that were glaring at me as I sat in my car. I didn’t feel safe passing them to get into the building so I called Jason.

“Hey, there are a couple of questionable looking guys hanging out by the front door. Would you mind coming out and getting me?”

“Oh, those are just our friendly neighborhood drug dealers,” he laughed. “I’ll be right out.”

He showed up outside my car door within seconds, ready to whisk me away to his apartment. I got a good look at the two guys as I passed them, you know, just in case.

We got inside safely, even though I wasn’t particularly fond of the looks the men at the door were giving me. I hoped they wouldn’t be here when I left but I had already decided that I was going to have Jason walk me back to my car at the end of the night.

Even though I was already there, he seemed hesitant to let me into his apartment. Looking around, I could see why he might not have wanted me to come over. I took a seat on his couch as I looked around. He wasn’t much for decorating, that was for sure.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

“What do you have?”

“Well,” he said, opening his fridge to survey what was inside. “I can pretty much offer you a beer or water. I don’t recommend the water, though. It tastes like lead. I think the pipes are a couple of hundred years old or something,” he half-heartedly teased.

“I'm all right then,” I said, definitely not wanting to test his water theory.

“I got some news after I got off the phone with you. My promoter landed me another fight. I’ve got about two weeks to get ready.”

“That’s good news, right?” I asked.

“Very good news. I need to stay as loose for my big fight and the best way for me to do that is to actually be inside the cage. The only problem is that this is going to be my opponents first professional fight so I’m not going to be able to watch any video of him to prepare.”

“I see. Is this the first person you’ve ever fought that hadn’t had a fight before?”

“No, I’ve fought a few guys in their debuts. I’ve just never had to do it with so much on the line. It’s like I’m psyching myself out for some reason.”

“You’ve got this
.
I saw the doctor with your brother today,” I continued. “He’s impressed with the progress he’s been making. I know it’s all baby steps but he’s talking about getting Casey set up with some basic physical therapy to see if we can make something work.”

“That’s fantastic. The other place I had my brother in didn’t even have an option for physical therapy. Does he think there’s a chance he may be able to walk again?”

“It’s highly unlikely but first, we’re going to want to focus on basic cognitive skills before moving on to any type of motor skills.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. I’m glad he’s got someone to work with him, though. It makes me feel a little better about having him in there.”

“He’s in excellent hands, I can assure you of that.”

I paused for a moment, not sure how to breach the topic that I really wanted to talk about. I finally figured that the best thing to do was just jump right into it.

“Speaking of Casey, I never did get any more information about him for his charts. Why are you his guardian and not your parents? Did something happen to them?”

“No, but I wish something would.”

“Excuse me?” I said, a bit surprised by his reaction. “I take it you and your parents don’t get along.”

“I am just counting the days until they die. The world will be a much better place without them in it.”

I saw a side of Jason that I’d never seen before. I could see the rage in his eyes as he spoke but I also saw a hint of pain that he was trying to keep hidden.

“I’m not trying to be nosy, but what happened with your parents?”

“Where do I even fucking start?” he asked. “For as long as I can remember, my dad used to beat the shit out of me on a daily basis. I remember coming home from school every day and praying that he wouldn’t be there. If he wasn’t, I would do my best to avoid him all night, hoping I wouldn’t do anything to get on his radar. It didn’t matter, though. He’d start drinking and, eventually, he’d come into my room to whip my ass for who knows what? It never failed.”

My heart was breaking for Jason but I could tell that he was only just beginning to give me the whole story.

“One day, I came home from school and neither of my parents were home. My dad was in a holding cell at the Detroit PD and my mom was in the hospital. Apparently, she had told him that she was three months pregnant that afternoon. Instead of being happy like a normal person, my dad went off on her about how she was a whore and that there was no way the baby was his. He beat her ass pretty good and the doctors were worried that she had lost the baby.”

He stopped talking just long enough to get up and grab another beer out of the fridge.

“The baby was okay but my mom refused to press charges against my dad. Throughout her pregnancy, he continued to beat her on an almost daily basis. On one hand, I was glad that I wasn’t getting hit on every day but I was also confused as to why she would let him continue to treat her like that. Eventually, he beat her so bad that she went into labor. It was almost three months before her due date and my little brother had to spend the first months of his life inside of an incubator. Because of the beatings he gave her, he was born disabled. He wasn’t mentally retarded then, but everything was much more of a challenge to him.”

“But he seems much worse off now. What happened since then?”

“My dad always yelled about Casey not being his, despite the fact that he looks just like him. He didn’t care that he was disabled, either. He’d beat on him the same as the rest of us. Anytime I thought he was going to give it to Casey, I’d step in and make sure I got his attention. It meant that my dad fucked me up even worse, but at least it spared my brother. When Casey was twelve, my dad got more than a little carried away and knocked him down a flight of stairs. It broke my brother’s neck and compressed the nerve.”

“Oh my God, that’s terrible.”

“Yeah, but that’s not even the worse part. Those two pieces of shit didn’t call for an ambulance or take him to the hospital. They were both afraid of what kind of trouble they were going to be in. I was 18 at the time and just happened to come in and found him in the basement. I called 9-1-1 and had my dad locked up while my brother was sent to the ER.”

“So what happened to your parents?”

“It was a long process but the judge sentenced both of them to fifteen years in prison. They’ve still got over a decade to finish their time and so help me God, if they ever come around him—either one of them—I’ll kill them both. I made a promise to myself that I’d never let anything happen to my brother again. That’s why I’m so particular in the care that he receives.”

Nobody could ever say that Jason Stark didn’t love his brother. I’d never realized that either one of them had it that bad, and honestly in my entire career, it was the most heart wrenching story I’d ever listened to.

I was beginning to understand the reason behind his fights: it was a way to take out his anger and aggression on his opponents. Almost as if he were getting revenge for his brother. It was no wonder why he hardly lost. Jason was one of the best in the biz.

CHAPTER NINE

Shelly

I liked the fact that Jason had been willing to open up to me. It takes a lot for someone to truly open up to someone and let them in, especially when they’d had such a horrific childhood. My heart broke for him. I wished that I would have been able to tell him that I understood but I would have been lying. I came from a loving home so hearing about what went on in his was devastating for me to hear.

When you grow up in a community such as mine, with families always out and about doing things together, you are naturally shielded from some of the things that others have to go through. I always assumed that my family dynamic was normal and that everyone else had the same kind of love and affection in their own homes. It’s kind of a wake-up call to find out about how the other side lived and what they had to go through.

Even though there was no way I would ever be able to relate to things that Jason and Casey had to endure, I assured him that I would always be there for him if he needed someone to talk to. I could tell that everything he told me had been weighing on him for years. I didn’t ask but I was positive that I was the first person he ever shared those stories with.

I was exhausted when I walked into work the next morning but I was ready to do my job. Of course, a normal day would be nothing more than wishful thinking. When I got to the nurse’s station, Candace went out of her way to avoid eye contact with me. I thought that was odd until Angie rushed out of her office as soon as she saw me.

“Shelly, I’m going to need to see you in my office at 11:00,” she demanded.

“Okay, is something wrong?” I questioned.

“I think you already know that there is but you can play dumb if you’d like. I don’t have time to deal with you right now so just be there at 11:00.”

Candace, who had been watching the exchange over her shoulder, went back to trying to look busy when I turned to face her.

“Do you know what any if that was about?” I asked her.

Instead of telling me what she knew, she just shrugged her shoulders with her back facing me.

Cowardly bitch.

“Okay, well I have a meeting with Maggie so you’re going to have to take care of all the meds today. I’ll be back out here to help when I’m finished.”

I lied. I didn’t actually have a meeting scheduled with Maggie but I sure as hell intended to go into her office to talk to her. I could almost guarantee what Angie wanted to talk to me about and I would go nuts trying to sit there next to Candace while I waited.

“Are you busy?” I asked Maggie as I knocked on her doorway.

“I’m always busy,” she replied. “But you can come on in.”

I slid into her office, closing the door behind me. I was doing my best to avoid showing the frustration on my face but I wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I just got here and I can already tell it’s going to be a bad day.”

“Is there such a thing as a good day around here anymore?” she joked.

“Well, they are few and far between but almost as soon as I got here, Angie came out of her office and told me that she and I have a meeting at 11:00.”

“Did she say what it was about?”

“No, but Candace wouldn’t even look at me this morning so I’ve got a pretty good idea that it has something to do with the guy I’m dating.”

“Is that the guy that Candace was talking about in the lunch room the other day?”

“That would be him.”

“The only thing I can say is just deny, deny, deny. She doesn’t have anything on you or I would have heard about it already. Whatever she says to you or tries to accuse you of, act like you have no idea what she’s talking about. She may not believe you but it will, at least, put some doubt in her mind as to whether or not her precious Candace is telling the truth.”

“Ugh, Candace is something else altogether. I’m so tired of dealing with her crap. I’ve never done anything bad to her the entire time she’s been here. I do most of her work and she still treats me like this. I just don’t get it.”

“If I were you, I would focus on trying to stay calm and don’t even worry about Candace too much. Just walk into that meeting with your head held high and listen to what Angie has to say. No matter what happens, walk out of that meeting with your head held high.”

“I’ll do my best. Dealing with this all the time starts to get to you after a while. Everyone else here seems to get along with me just fine so I don’t know why she can’t do the same.”

“Oh, her time is coming. I can promise you that,” Maggie’s upper lip curled.

“What does that mean?”

“Let’s just say that I’ve been catching a ton of inconsistencies in her work and I’ve been documenting every single one of them. You come back and see me after your meeting and let me know what is said. If you’re getting into trouble over something she said, then I’m going to file an official report to bring all of her mistakes to light. If she’s trying to get you in trouble so you don’t get my job, I’ll have it spelled out that she certainly isn’t qualified. Let’s see how she’d deal with getting in trouble for once.”

I liked the sound of that. It would be nice if Candace would be held accountable for her own actions for once. I knew it wasn’t likely to happen but it sounded good. I looked up at the clock on the wall and realized how long I had been in her office. I hadn’t gotten anything done and it was already time for my meeting with Angie.

“All right, I better go to my meeting. She’ll lose her mind if I’m not in there on time.”

“Good luck. Let me know how it goes.”

Candace was sitting at the nurse’s station as I walked by. I wondered how she could have possibly handed out all the meds before lunch and was worried whether or not she had taken care of everyone but I didn’t have time to focus on her. I only hoped that I’d make it out of the meeting in time to check on the diabetics before it was lunch time.

As I suspected, Candace refused to even look up at me as I walked by her, cementing my belief that this whole meeting was something she was responsible for. That was fine. She had no idea about the conversation I’d just had with Maggie. Her time would come. For the moment, I took a deep breath and knocked on Angie’s door.

“It’s about time,” she scowled as I opened her door.

Early for our meeting, I wasn’t sure what her problem was. Before her niece came to work here, she was a lot more tolerable but these days nothing made her happy. It was better to not even try.

My fears were confirmed when she started in on me.

“Do we need to have a discussion about the policies of this institution?”

I always hated when she called the center an institution. The assisted living center we worked in was far from being an institution in any sense of the word.

“No, I’m pretty sure I’ve been here long enough to know all the policies and rules around here.”

“Oh? Is that right? Are you sure you don’t want me to go over our policies about dating family members of our residents?”

“You can if you’d like but I’m well aware that it isn’t allowed. Why do you want to go over that? Is someone around here dating someone? It’s Candace isn’t it?”

I knew I should have kept my mouth shut but I couldn’t help it. It would have been much better to keep Candace’s name out of my mouth, but it was too late. Angie’s brow arched and her eyes grew wide as her lips snarled.

“You think you’re so cute, don’t you? I’m very much aware that you have something going on with the brother of Casey Stark.”

“I do? Who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter who told me that. I just know that the two of you were spotted together and something is going on between you two.”

“I’m confused. We were spotted? Where were we spotted exactly?”

“Does that matter?”

“Yeah, if you’re going to accuse me of something, the least you can do is tell me what you’re accusing me of.”

“Didn’t his brother touch you inappropriately in the hallway? And then the two of you scampered off into Casey’s room behind closed doors?.”

“What?” This was all Candace’s doings. I was so sick of her shit.

“I know what goes on around here. I’ve got eyes everywhere.”

“None of that happened. Your ‘eyes’,” I threw up finger quotes, “are mistaking in what they saw. He never touched me inappropriately, but yes, we did go behind closed doors.”

“See?”

“Yeah, I had a conversation with Casey’s brother in Casey’s room but for privacy reasons, I closed the door behind us. I always do that when talking about a resident’s care with their family members.”

“Hmm,” she said, mulling it over in her head.

“What’s strange is that I only have these conversations in private without any other staff around. We were alone in the room when the conversation occurred so there was no way anyone else could have heard anything we were talking about, and nothing bad or inappropriate was said.”

I tried so hard to keep my mouth shut when all I wanted to do was go off on her and let her in on what a little bitch Candace was. Angie was pissed off but she knew she was defeated. There was no way in hell I was going to admit to anything, which would have been the only way she would have anything definitive. In the end, she had to let me go with a warning that she was watching me.

Even though I had acted calm, cool and collected in the meeting, it had truly shaken me. All I wanted to do was run home into Jason’s arms so he could melt away all of my stress. Instead, I was stuck here working with dumb and dumber, though I hadn’t decided which one was which.

It was lunchtime so I decided to give Jason a call while my lunch was in the microwave. His phone rang but he didn’t pick up. I thought that was strange but figured he was just getting ready for his fight. Even though he tried to get his running done in the morning, he may have found someone to work on techniques with or something. I figured I’d just call him when I got off.

While I was making my final rounds of the day, my phone was ringing in my purse. It wasn’t until I got out to my car and pulled my phone out to call Jason that I realized I had a voicemail.

“Hi, Shelly, I hope I have the right number. This is Damon, Jason’s promoter. I was calling to let you know that he was involved in a pretty bad car accident and he’s been taken to the emergency room at Memorial Point Hospital. You can give me a call if you have any questions.”

I threw my phone down on the seat next to me and raced out of the parking lot. I didn’t know what happened and I didn’t care. I just had a feeling that I needed to get to that hospital, and fast.