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“I don’t know if I can do that…” I sob, bringing my good hand to cover my mouth. “I can’t watch him with another woman. I don’t know how I would even function.”
“Then why push him away?” He asks softly. I shake my head, sincerely unsure as to why I do anything at this point. There’s no real reason why I pushed him away besides my own feeling of not being good enough. I know I’m not enough. “You didn’t trust him to talk to him, which caused you to end up here. Tell me about it.”
“I just hate the constant thoughts of never being good enough…” I whimper and sniffle. “He’s done so much in making sure that I’m okay, that I’m cared for…when I saw that, I figured he finally decided that I’m not worth the hassle.”
“Who told you that you’re the hassle?” He counters, his brow poised in question.
“Well, no one, but I feel it. The shit I have gone through, Scout picking up every single piece of me that’s been shredded and gluing them back together…”
“Birdie,” Rich tsks almost fatherly and my head snaps straight to look at him. “You’re more than worth it. That man,” he pauses and points to the door, “is more dedicated than you give him credit for. He’s been at your side since the moment we gave him permission. When we weren’t sure what your status was, he called the doctor’s directly to get the update. He wasn’t afraid to get kicked out or called out because he wasn’t worried about them. He was worried about you. I know you’re hurting, but put yourself in his shoes for a moment. Think about what he endured when he got the call that you might be dead? Saw the car upside down and partially crushed knowing that you were inside? The threat on your life? The threat on your unborn baby’s life?”
More tears leak from my cheeks and I immediately blame them on the hormones from the baby. Reaching down to touch my stomach, I cradle the non-existent bump.
“How do I make this up to him?” I whisper with need. If there’s anything I can accomplish in this lifetime, it will be to ensure that Scout knows just how much I trust him and how sorry I am.
He tilts his head to the side as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Once he realizes that I have no idea what he’s trying to imply, he sighs softly. “You need to show him you love him.” He looks like he wants to say more, but he’s cut off by a loud knock on the door followed by Sofia and Vivanna barging into the room. He nods at them, waiting until I catch his gaze. I immediately decipher the look as fatherly disappointment, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize I need to get my act together.
“We’re so glad you’re okay!” Sofia says, walking around Rich to give me a hug.
“Sof and I thought you were dead,” Viv cries out while she wipes her nose with a tissue. I chuckle at their overdramatics but realize that they are right. That just makes my situation of pushing Scout away even worse.
I could have died.
I know Scout made that perfectly clear, as did Rich. Yet, for some reason it’s just now sinking in that I may not be here right now had Scout not found me. The girls chatter at me about their fears, their conversations with their spouses, and they go into what has happened while I have been cooped up in the hospital.
All I can think about is how I hurt Scout, and what the best way to fix it would be. Since I’m being completely honest with myself, I have no clue how I’m going to make this better. All I know is that I have to. End of story.
Chapter Nine
My fist lands on the punching bag as the whole thing heaves away from me. “Fuck!” I roar as another jab pushes it away. Heavy metal blasts through the speakers as I take my aggression out on this hanging sandbag. No matter how many times I try to relieve the pent up tension inside of me, it’s like another wave of agony decides to take over instead.
“Scout,” Massimo shouts over the music, tapping on my phone to pause the music. Rolling my eyes I walk over to the bench and unwrap my hands a bit. My shirt lays on the bench where I discarded it earlier, and I use that to wipe the sweat as it drips into my eyes. “Where the fuck have you been?” He barks as he swaggers closer to me. I narrow my eyes at him, my own irritation blooming in my chest.
“What the fuck do you mean?” I retort, spanning my arms around to motion where I have been all afternoon. It’s not like I had anywhere else to be.
“You were supposed to meet me at the vineyard, dumbass,” he scoffs. He shrugs his suit jacket off and comes over to where the gauze and tape are. I eye him cautiously. He barged in here, barked orders at me like I’m his fucking puppy, and now he’s wrapping his hands. “We will do this your way. If I win, you will get your ass to the fucking vineyard with me. If you win, you will haul ass back to the hospital and talk to Birdie like a grown ass man.”
“She’s the one who fucking pushed me away, man. What more do you want from me? She wanted to fuck, that’s what I did. I wanted to figure out what exactly was going through her thick skull when she thought she could run out on me instead of talking with me.” The more I talk about it, the more my anger escalates. She can make her own grown up decisions, I get that. What I don’t understand is her lack of thinking that shit through. “She not only gave me a reason to walk away, she shoved me out of the fucking door. If she would have fucking talked to me, we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“Maybe,” he pauses, jerking his head from left to right with a resounding crack. “But that doesn’t divest from the fact that she is suffering and you showed her that it’s easy for you to walk out. Whether or not that is true, actions will always speak louder than words. She was shown a photo of you kissing another woman.”
“That was staged,” I grit out.
He holds his hands up in a hold on motion. “In any case, actions speak louder. Then when you do show up, you fuck her, display your anger, and leave her there by herself. If it was me and I was in your shoes, there wouldn’t be a single soul or deity that could keep me from that room. There will be a time to discuss why she left but this isn’t that time. You are a dumbass and don’t deserve her if you think otherwise.”
“You know what, fuck you and this fucking game you’re playing.” I throw my hands up in the air with final defeat, stalking toward the door with my shirt in tow. “We’re both hurting right now, yet I need fucking space. She wanted that when she ran away, and now I’m honoring it. God for-fucking-bid I do what she wants!” I shout. I don’t realize until I’m mid punch and slam my knuckles into the metal door. Anticipating a throb, I shake out my hand. When it doesn’t come, I smirk with glee. Maybe this is the relief I need right now. Rearing back, I do it again and again until two hands grip my elbows and throw me backward. I swear I fly for a moment until I crash land on the boxing mat. The fall knocks the wind out of me and stops me from being able to stand back up right away.
“I get you’re pissed off, I really do. But here’s the thing,” he walks toward me with zero hesitance, grabbing me by the arms to hoist me back to my feet. “You’ve had time to process your shit. She hasn’t. It went from one extreme to the next, then she was out for however long she was. Then whatever shit hit the fan today surely didn’t seem to help either one of you. Don’t get my shit twisted and think I’m letting her off the hook. What she did was fucked up. She could have died. If that were me, I would have had Sofia’s neck on a platter, but that’s not me. It’s you and your girl. She’s got some fucked up trauma, I can see that shit clear as day everytime I talk to her. Give her a bit of grace, man.”
Shaking my shoulders out, I seem to deflate. “What did you want to talk about? I swear I didn’t know we were meeting today.”
“I figured as much. You never seem to miss meetings or anything, so I knew it had to be bad.” I nod to confirm everything he said. I don’t have the mental capacity for anything else right now, but here I am. Thinking about how I’m going to convince Birdie I’m fucking serious about her staying in my life. “It was actually about the dude who wanted to kill her. Eye for an eye from what it seems like. Though, we were able to trace some other shit back to him…” he paces off, his brows dipping enough that I can see his silent distress. If you didn’t know him, you might think he was just being weird and mysterious. Instead, that’s the look of thinking. Usually the topics that draw his brows down aren’t good ones.
Edging closer to him, I prod, “I don’t know what you’re trying to get at, man.” He nods silently, swallowing thickly. “Why would he go after Birdie? That all seems to be based around Sofia?”
“He was connected with the mafia who took Sofia hostage a few years back.” Well that’s definitely not what I thought he was going to say. “We had to track her all the way to fucking Alaska. I thought we got them all, but this is clear evidence that we didn’t. He told you that you kissed his beloved, or whatever. When he took Sofia, it was for a similar reason. Different, but the principle is the same. I think it makes sense...”
“So, what are we going to do?” I ask, flopping down onto the bench next to the arena. He sits next to me, his phone in his hands as he scrolls through texts quickly.
