Trust Me: Matty and Kayla, Book 1 of 3 (The McDaniels Brothers) (8 page)

"So, what now?"
Reid asked, dropping onto one of the stools behind the counter.

"Now we either talk it out or we pretend we're not mad at each other until we aren't anymore," Bash grumbled, shaking his head at me. "The sooner we pick one, the sooner we get to have chicken pot pie."

Reid nodded, looking as pious as a priest as he stepped in and yanked us both toward him with an arm around our shoulders. "I forgive you both. Come on now, let’s hug it out."

He squeezed us both and, naturally, we
tried to fight him off, but by the end of it, even Bash was smiling grudgingly.

“Now if you two
fuckwads are done,” Reid patted his flat stomach and pointed up the stairs. “I'm starving."

He jogged up the steps, leaving me and Bash behind. I was about to follow but I stopped and locked eyes with my younger brother.
"We good?"

He rolled his eyes at me but eventually, he inclined his head once in a curt nod. "We're good. But I want to know everything that's happening from this point forward. If he's screwing this up, we put our foot down and fight it out with him.
As a family. Deal?"

"Deal."

It wouldn't come to that. I was going to go see Kayla, apologize for pushing her on the whole ladies MMA thing and get us back on track. As much as I'd protested at first, with her on my side, I felt I could really make my mark this year. Who knew? Maybe I'd look back at this as the best decision I'd ever made.

Stranger things had happened.

I took a quick glance at my watch. It was five-thirty on a Monday. There was a good chance she’d still be at the warehouse working, and if not, maybe I could get Mickey or his secretary to give me her home address, because she sure as hell wasn’t taking my calls.

“You go eat with your girl. I’ve got to go talk to Kayla. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

When I pulled up to the
warehouse fifteen minutes later and saw her car in the lot, I had it all planned out. I was going to go in, tell her how much I wanted to keep working with her, and that, until or unless she was ready, we could drop the whole thing about her getting into the ring.

I still had high hopes she’d be willing to try it in the future, but we had a year to work up to it before she was out of my life. Suddenly, a year didn’t seem like very long.

When I reached the warehouse front door, I was relieved to find it still unlocked. Now, if I could get past the secretary, I’d be in good shape. If I got this far only to have her call back to Kayla and find out she wouldn’t see me, it would’ve been a tough blow to take. Luck was on my side, though, and when I passed the little reception office, the lights were off.

I made my way down the long hallway toward the rest of the offices, but voices coming from the open section of the warehouse caught my ear. I followed the sound, realizing the closer I got that one of the voices was Kayla’s.

When I reached wide entrance, I stopped in my tracks, anger and another emotion I didn’t want to name crashing over me like a tidal wave.

Kayla
stood in the middle of the boxing ring wrapped in Mickey’s arms, the remnants of a romantic dinner all around them. Every instinct came roaring to life, compelling me to charge at him. Take him down and beat him until he was bloody for putting his slimy hands on her.

Then it registered that she was hugging him back.

Just as I was about to turn around and walk out…go somewhere and burn off the fury pounding inside me, she lifted her head from its resting place in the crook of his neck and drew back as she met my gaze.

“
Matty? What are y-”

"Are you fucking him?" I spat, wondering if I looked as
disgusted as I felt and then realizing I didn’t give a shit. Just being around the guy made me want to take a shower he was so fucking slick, and to think of him touching Kayla made my skin crawl.

"Watch yourself, kid," Mickey muttered, his eyes going cold, like a snake.

"I'm not going to do this with you here. Go outside, I'll be there in two minutes and we can talk about this like adults, okay?" Her wide brown eyes pleaded with me, but I wasn't having it.

"We can talk about it right now.
Are. You. Fucking. Him?"

"Son, I
'm not going to tell you again,” Mickey said, crossing the ring and gripping the rope between us. “Watch your language or you're going to have a much bigger problem than Kayla on your hands."

"Don't call me son, you piece of shit. You're not my father."

He tipped his head with a grim smile. "Maybe not, but I'm hers and I'm not going to have some little prick talking to her that way in front of me."

The room seemed like it was closing in on me as his words sank in.

Her father.

Kayla James was Mickey Flynn's daughter.

"Jesus, Mick, that wasn't your secret to tell," Kayla said, her already pale face going milky white. "Look, Matty, I-"

I held up a hand and backed out of the roo
m, still shaking with rage. So she wasn’t fucking him. Great. At least that meant she wasn’t a total idiot. She couldn’t help who her father was. I was a prime example that you couldn’t choose your parents. But she had the choice to tell me, and she chose not to, over and over again. When would I learn that trusting people was always,
always
a mistake?

"I don't want to hear it. Everything you've told me u
p until now was utter and complete bullshit, so listening to you is a waste of my time."

She was still calling after me
as I jogged down the hallway and out the exit.

Matty

Please pick up the phone.

Kayla’s latest text blinked up from my phone on the bench beside me and I stuffed it into my pocket. They were coming fast and furious now, along with the phone calls. I probably should’ve turned the thing off, but for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

But I couldn’t bring myself to answer either.

After a grueling three hours lifting and pounding the bags, even my brothers had gotten sick of my miserable mug and had gone
out for drinks with Olivia. Now it was just me, alone in my gym, angry as a wounded bear and wallowing in misery. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. I knew Mickey had kids, I’d even seen pictures of them on his desk. A boy and a girl, one looked to be around seven, the other ten at most.

She called him Mickey, not Dad, and they didn’t look alike. At least, not enough that I noted a resemblance. And at least two times she mentioned mee
ting him when she was thirteen.

If I’d missed the clues it was only
because there weren’t any. There was no denying Kayla had done her best to make sure that I stayed in the dark about her relationship to Mickey. I had to wonder if she ever planned to tell me. And then I had to wonder what I would’ve done if she had.

I stood and punched the bag one more time for good measure. Maybe tonight would be a night of discovery for me all around. I’d go out and discover what it felt like to get rip-roaring drunk for the first time
in my life.

I swiped the sweat from my forehead with a towel
just as the phone in my pocket buzzed again. Ignoring it, I took the stairs two at a time, pausing at the top when I heard a loud banging noise from downstairs. Backtracking, I could feel my blood-pressure rising. Maybe Mickey had decided to revisit an old favorite and sent his goons to break in again. I’d been so caught up in my feelings and the look on Kayla’s face, I hadn’t even considered how old Mick was handling things. He could easily have decided that I’d overstepped my station. That blood was thicker than money and now, instead of wanting to be in business with me, he’d be better off if I disappeared. For good.

I probably should’ve been scared, but I was so over Mickey Flynn and all his bullshit, part of me relished the thought of sending his flying monkeys home with broken wings
just to see what he would do.

I reached the bottom of the steps and the sound came again. Banging, but like fists on the door. Just in case, I grabbed a baseball bat
I kept behind the front desk and made for the door. My phone buzzed again right as I reached it and peered through the glass. Kayla stood there, rain pelting her red head as she hunched over her cell phone. She was damp and shivering, and when she looked up at me through the pane, I could tell she’d been crying.

Fuck.

I stood there for longer than I should have before setting down the bat, unlocking the door and opening it to let her in.

She closed the door behind her and wrapped her arms around her waist.
"I was wrong,” she blurted, before I could say a word. “And I’m sorry.”

Her breath smelled like wine and I looked over her shoulder into the parking lot. “Did you drive here?”

She shook her head and pushed a wet hank of hair from her cheek. “No. I took a cab.”

“And you had him leave?” I snagged my phone from my pocket and thumbed in the number for the local cab company.

“Can’t you at least hear me out?” She grabbed my wrist and gazed up at me through bloodshot, puffy eyes. “I’m here. I’m admitting I was wrong. I’m begging you to listen and at least let me apologize. What else do you want from me, Matty?"

I squeezed my eyes closed and
leaned back with my ass against the desk. That was a great question. What did I want? I wanted everything to be like it was before I'd ever met Mickey Flynn or his fucking daughter. I wanted to run my little gym and work toward being a fighter on my own, with my brothers at my side. So unless she had a time machine, I was shit out of luck. I pressed the red end button on my phone and yanked my wrist from her grasp.

"You have nothing I want. Not anymore."

She flinched and I couldn't even muster any sympathy. This whole thing was a nightmare of my own making. I'd told her I didn't want her around. That she'd be nothing but a distraction and I was right, but I let it happen anyway. I should've put my foot down with Mickey right then and there, but I let my dick do my thinking for me, whether I was willing to admit it or not. And look where it had gotten me.

"You don't know me. You don't know my l
ife," she whispered. The pleading in her eyes was gone, and now they were empty except for dull resignation. "You don't want anything to do with me anymore, that's fine. No one does after a while. No one except Mick. So if you can't handle me and the baggage that comes with me, then I’ll go because you know what? I don't want you either." She turned, shoved the door open and then walked out, leaving me there with my head in my hand.

I didn't chase her
—because what was there to say, anyway?— and then I did. Because she was outside walking alone in the rain, and as much as I wanted to hate her guts, the thought of something happening to her made my stomach churn.

By the time I caught up
with her in my car a few minutes later, she was five blocks away and soaked to the skin. I leaned over and pushed open the passenger’s side door and called her name until she stopped and looked my way.

“Get in.”

I half expected her to fight me because that was all we seemed capable of doing, but she climbed in without hesitation, taking the towel I handed her with a soft “thank you.”

I wanted to tell her that I was just there to make sure she got home safe. That I didn’t want to talk about anything and I sure as fuck didn’t want to listen, but she never gave me a c
hance. She just started talking.

"When I was thirteen, my mother went to jail one last time. She never came out. Died five years ago of ovarian cancer after four years in prison for drug trafficking. She'd gone from hooker to drug mule, and got caught her first time moving product.
”

Her voice was monotone, which made it all the harder to listen to.
I kept my eyes pinned on the road and willed myself not to picture Kayla as a little girl, living through that. Forcing myself not to draw comparisons from my past to hers or empathize with how hard it must have been for her to lose her mother at such a young age.

Having her in my life was a mistake and had been from the beginning. She was Mickey Flynn’s daughter.
The daughter of the man who had made my family’s life a living hell these past few months. Nothing she said now changed that.

“
There was no one at home to care for me,” she continued, staring blankly out the windshield as she spoke. “I didn't know who my real father was other than that he'd been a john, and the state called my aunt to take me. She came from Wisconsin and picked me up in her station wagon. Her husband was a preacher at their local church and they had two little boys.”

She shifted restlessly in the seat and clutched the towel to her chest.
“It was okay at first. I liked the space. The quiet. The cows. But that summer, I hit puberty. The country air and the three squares a day…I stopped looking like a coat hanger and suddenly Uncle Cal start ed paying attention to me.”