Page 278 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection

Mac sweeps his hand up into my dreads, tips my head to him and kisses my forehead. “Yeah, they did.”

“You don’t believe it, though.”

“It’s hard to when I had Amy constantly telling me that everything was my fault.”

That sounds just like all the crap my father’s family used to lay at my door. If my mother hadn’t been so careless, if she hadn’t had me before she finished high school, if Dad hadn’t given up his dream of playing football to marry my mom, if, if, if, yadda, yadda, yadda. So much bullshit.

“I get that, Sir. I really do. I’ve had people in my life who told me everything I did was wrong, too. But I stopped believing them. I realized they were trying to tear me down to build themselves up. You must have stopped believing her at some point.”

Mac nods slowly. “Deployment was good for me that way. Being away from her helped me gain some perspective. Being separated for nearly seven years didn’t hurt, either. But I’m still stupid about her, Bren. I still believe in her. I was her Dom. I shaped her; how can I not believe in her? Even when I know she’s wrong, even when I know she’s lying to me or herself, I still believe in her.”

“That’s admirable, Sir. But I can see how it would fuck you up.”

I honestly don’t know what else to say. I came into this conversation believing that Mac’s a good man, and a good Dom. Nothing he’s said has changed my mind. He clearly feels a hugeamount of remorse for the way he treated his ex when they were teenagers. I won’t hold that against him.

But I also came into the conversation believing that Mac was over his ex, and now I’m not so sure. Is he trying to recreate their relationship with me? Did he want someone so much younger than him because he thinks he can mold me, make me the submissive he wanted Amy to be? Because I’m no one’s damn substitute.

It’s something I chew over long after we return to my shop and I sit down to work on the cityscape designs.

I bounce on my toes, once, twice. Loosening up, finding my center. Then I settle back into guard and brace myself. Mac pounds the combination into the pads I’m holding. Left cross, right cross, left body hook, left hook, duck, left cross, right cross.

As he goes to do the kick, he does the same thing he keeps doing: putting his weight on his left foot before he rocks back onto his right.

I sweep his leg.

Mac lands on his ass on the mats for the third time tonight.

“Fuck,” he hisses through the mouth guard.

“Weight on your back leg, Sir,” I remind him, with a grin through the pads I’m still holding up, because Kru likes nothing better than to whap my face with his damn pool noodle as soon as I let my guard down.

Showing Mac consideration, because of his age or because it’s his first time at the gym or because of that mantle of authority Mac always wears, which Krunevershows me, Kru offers Mac a hand up off the mats.

“She’s a smartass,” Kru says with a huge smile splitting his round, brown face. “But she’s right. Weight on your back leg.”

Mac rolls his shoulders and lifts his gloves again. I brace and absorb the impact as Mac hammers the combination into the pads again.

The lesson lasts for ninety minutes: long enough for our Kru to beat us, or have us beat each other, into sweaty, jelly-muscled submission. Although I like Kru a lot and have taken weekly lessons from him for over three years, I don’t know him outside of his gym, so I don’t know if he’s a Dom in his personal life, but he’s a complete and utter sadist in the gym, so he’d be a fearsome one if he is.

As the class of twelve lines up to bow at the end of the lesson, even Mac is looking fatigued and that man has insane amounts of stamina, as my ass can attest. Once we’ve shown respect, Kru dismisses us and walks toward Mac. He holds out his hand and Mac shakes.

“Happy to have you back any time. Anyone who can get a ‘sir’ out of the smartass over there is good people.”

Kru throws a wolfish grin at me, which Mac echoes. Fuck. I do not need the two of them ganging up on me.

I roll my eyes, and from the thunderous expressions I get back, I’m not sure who the gesture annoys more.

“R-E-P-E-C-T,” I say. “That’s how I spell respect,sirs. Meet you out front in ten.”

Mac unwraps a sweaty towel from around his neck and snaps it at my ass as I scamper off to the women’s locker room as fast as my noodle legs can carry me. I hear Kru’s bass laugh boom out behind me as Mac lets him in on the joke.

As I reach the dubious safety of the locker room, Scary Manda, as everyone calls her under their breath, steps out of one of the two showers. I don’t think Mac will come in here to teach me a lesson, but I’m not entirely sure and the uncertaintymakes my pulse race faster than the previous ninety minutes of kickboxing. I nod to her as I shed my T-shirt, boxing shorts, and underwear, toss them into my “Fight Like A Girl” bag and step into the stall she’s just vacated.

She leans against the plastic shower door and props her chin on her fist, which she can do because she’s six-two, the tallest biological woman I’ve met. Her height makes her punch-reach absolutely terrifying and I’ve never sparred with her personally, thank the Benevolence, because I probably wouldn’t be standing here today if I did.

“Is he taken?” she asks without preamble.

Is that a trick question? “Uh, yes?”