Hard Hitter

  Not today, though.

  The very last person to enter the room was Patrick. Whoever is late to yoga class always ends up in the front row, dead center, and it was no different for him. He strode into the room purposefully, as if he’d shown up on a dare. But he didn’t look anyone in the eye either. And when he took the last spot right in front of Ari, she could swear that she heard a crackle of tension in the air.

  That was odd.

  “Good morning,” she told the class. Fewer than the usual number of attentive gazes raised to meet hers. “Let’s open our practice in a seated position.” She sat down on her mat, crossing her legs. “It’s cold outside, and I really feel the chill.” Not just from the weather, either. “So we’re going to raise the temperature of our practice today, and sweat out our tensions.”

  A couple of the players shook their heads. Not everyone loved hot yoga.

  Ari asked her students to close their eyes and relax. She walked them through a brief meditation on the subject of inner focus. Then she hit play on her iPod. A drum rhythm started up, lending the room its heartbeat. “Rise into mountain pose, please. On the exhale, forward fold. Hang there and gently roll your head for two breath cycles. On the next inhale, rise to Utkatasana . . . Good.” She walked over to the thermostat and nudged it up to eighty degrees, just as an opening gambit.

  “. . . Arms up, offering the heart,” she said, lifting her hands in the air. “On the exhale, dive into forward fold.”

  As a room full of bodies dropped forward in perfect sync, Ari was full of gratitude. The power she commanded in this room was only hers because her students gave it to her. For an hour every other morning, they handed her the reins, and she held them gently.

  It was an honor.

  “Inhale, rising to half lift, finding length in your back. Exhale, hands planted, feet float back to high plank.” On their mats, she took them through a quick series of push-ups, and then into the basic vinyasa. “Exhale, rising into downward dog. Now walk it out. Stretch those hamstrings.”

  Butts in the air everywhere—that was her view. Two dozen guys warming up their powerful bodies. Just another day at the office.

  Next, she took them through a long series of sun salutations and warrior poses. But there was still so much tightness in the room. And the tightest of all was Patrick. His shoulders were tense, and his movements short. He was the epicenter of the morning’s stress. She could almost feel the others leaning away from him, as if his aura were poisonous.

  She nudged the thermostat’s temperature even higher. Maybe she could burn away the tension. There was no complaining, even as sweat began to drip off the players. One by one they shed their shirts, until the room was full of rippling abs. To think that they paid her for this.

  “Well done,” she encouraged them as their muscles began to shake in Ardha Chandrasana, or half-moon pose. “Balance is the key to all strength. Notice how your breath moves through the body in this pose. And at the bottom of the next breath, bring it back into a forward fold.”

  She guided them into pigeon pose next, a hip opener. While they held it, she moved around the room suggesting corrections to make the stretch feel more natural.

  “I never saw a pigeon do this,” Castro muttered when she stopped beside him.

  “Mmhhmm,” she said, easing the position of his back leg.

  Then she knelt beside Patrick, touching the fold of his hip. “Take it easy here,” she whispered.

  He turned his chin so she could see his sharp, blue eyes, and she almost wish he hadn’t. That piercing gaze was unhappy. And even worse, it regarded her as a stranger.

  “Are you okay?” She meant his hip, but it came out sounding like a bigger question.

  “Sure,” he grunted.

  “Are you on my schedule later?” she whispered. She’d glanced down the list of names on her phone in the elevator and had been surprised when his wasn’t there.

  “Not sure it matters,” he said cryptically. Then he dropped his chin toward the yoga mat and ignored her.

  Yikes. She knelt there a beat longer out of confusion. Then got up again to resume the class.

  By the time it was over, everyone was sweating fountains, yet they appeared no less tense or unhappy than beforehand. She didn’t have many classes with the team that felt like utter failures, but this was going to go down as one of them.

  “Namaste, class,” she whispered at the end.

  “Namaste,” came the muttered response.

  She’d hoped to catch Patrick and give him his present. But he bolted from the room immediately.

  Ariana ducked into the empty women’s locker room for a quick shower. She changed into clean clothes and then set up for her first massage appointments of the day. In the treatment room she set up her iPod and fetched a stack of clean sheets and towels.

  As usual, before a massage, she pulled out her phone to shut it off. Right on the front screen she found a text from Vince. Your boyfriend is in trouble now, he’d written.

  The hair stood up on the back of her neck. What the hell had Vince done? She unlocked her phone and looked at her texts. There was one more: You think this is bad, just tell him I have video. I can make it look like the whole team is involved.

  There was a link to a newspaper article in the Post.

  BROOKLYN BRUISERS CAPTAIN ADDICTED TO PILLS

  Ari gasped. “What the fuck is this?” Scrolling down the story, her eye zoomed right in on the name of the club where Patrick O’Doul supposedly bought drugs. It was Vince’s club. “This is bullshit,” she hissed aloud.

  But there was even a picture—sort of. It showed a man who might or might not be Patrick taking something from one of Vince’s minions. She tried to zoom in on the man, but the resolution of the picture quickly went to seed.

  “Ari?” Becca stuck her head into the alcove. “Are you okay?”

  “No! This . . .” She held up the phone. “It can’t be him. Where is Hugh Major?” She had to explain what was happening to the GM. Vince had drummed up a smear campaign to make Patrick look bad because of her.

  She didn’t even wait for Becca to answer. She ducked past the massage table and jogged through the players’ dressing room. Pushing open the door to the hallway, she spotted Hugh and Patrick in a tense conversation. “Guys, this is bullshit,” she said, holding up her phone. “He’s making this up to get back at me. You can put me in front of that reporter. She should know that the owner of that club is just pissed off at Patrick because of me.”

  Neither man said anything. They both stared back at her with tight expressions.

  “Am I not speaking English right now?” she asked, her voice sounding high and squeaky. “This is all my fault.”

  As if he hadn’t even heard her, Hugh turned back to Patrick. “We’ll talk in a little while.” Then he walked away.

  “What the fuck?” Ari hissed. “Let’s just fix this.”

  “Ari, has he tried to contact you today?” Patrick asked, his voice low.

  “He texted,” she admitted. “But it’s ridiculous.”

  “What did he say? Show me.”

  “Why?” she demanded. “It’s just a smear campaign. He’s using you to hit at me. That’s not even you in the picture.”

  Patrick leaned back against the wall and sighed. “Ari.” He looked over his right shoulder and then his left. “It’s me in the fucking picture.”

  “You . . .” She tried to make sense of it. “Really? When? And what were you doing at Vince’s club?”

  His expression flattened. “I was there just randomly with a bunch of team members. It was Massey’s birthday, I think. It doesn’t matter why.”

  “The Post thinks it does! God, I’m so sorry. This is awful. It’s all my fault.”

  He stood up to his full height and lifted her chin toward his face. Those cool blue eyes looked bo
th tired and intense at the same time. “There is nothing about this that’s your fault. That’s all I can tell you.”

  “But . . .” Of course it was. First, that photograph of their kiss. Vince had practically advertised his capacity for jealousy and vengeance. The only way this wasn’t her fault was if the drug buy was real.

  Oh.

  Oh, shit.

  “Wait—seriously?” she hissed. “You went to a club to buy drugs?”

  His eyes closed, as if he was in pain. He dropped his hand from her face and winced.

  “Jesus, Patrick.” Her mind tilted with panic. “So when you punched Vince at my house, you already knew him. He was your dealer.”

  “We are not talking about this . . .” he began through gritted teeth.

  “Oh. My. God,” she spat, taking a step backward. “This whole time you were sticking close to me because you needed to know what Vince was up to.”

  “NO!” he bellowed. “That is not what happened.”

  “Wow,” she said, her throat constricting. “People told me that you never got close to anyone, and how unusual it was. Now I know why.” She choked on the last word.

  Patrick clenched his fists at his sides. He closed his eyes and forcibly banged his head back against the wall. “That’s all the faith you have in me,” he said to the ceiling. “At least now I know.” He shook his head and started to move down the hall, away from her.

  “Thanks for lying to me. When I asked you to be my friend, that’s not what I had in mind.”

  He halted in his tracks, and she held her breath, wondering if he would turn around.

  But he didn’t. He just kept going, leaving her there, mouth open in shock, wondering what the hell had just happened.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Ari worked her way through four massage appointments, feeling absolutely numb.

  The feeling was mutual, apparently. The men on her table seemed sad and subdued. A scandal was bad for everyone. And if O’Doul got thrown off the team, their chances at the play-offs suddenly looked grim.

  At the first gap in her schedule, she decided to step outside. Maybe a walk around the neighborhood would steady her. When she grabbed her jacket, the coffeemaker in the corner mocked her. She and Patrick were never as close as she’d imagined they were. In fact, the entire scope of their relationship began to look dubious. The moment they’d started spending time together was the same moment Patrick punched Vince outside her house.

  He’d chased her ex away, and then he’d brought her home and made her feel safe. And the whole time, he’d had entanglements with Vince, too.

  Yet he had never said a word.

  Walking down the sidewalk, she tilted her face up to the cloudy sky. “I am so done with liars in my life!” A mother pushing a stroller down the sidewalk in the opposite direction gave her the side eye on her way past.

  Yay. She was actually frightening people, now.

  She went home to her own kitchen and put the kettle on. Her mind was whirring with anxiety. She should call the lawyer and tell him this new development. She should call Georgia and offer to speak to the reporter anyway, just in case it helped the team stay out of the tabloids. She should meditate, or take an aspirin for the headache that was just starting up at the base of her skull. Or both.

  But first, tea.

  She was just turning off the burner under the boiling kettle when her Katt Phone rang.

  Vince.

  Shit.

  She poured the hot water over her tea bag and considered her options. The phone stopped ringing, but then it started up again a minute later.

  Feeling impulsive, she answered it. “Vince,” she sighed. “This is no way to get what you want.”

  “Yeah, it is. And you need to hear exactly why.”

  Fear prickled at the back of her neck. “What are you saying?”

  “I have video of your boyfriend making the buy. Check your e-mail. I sent you a clip.”

  Just as she was choking on the word video, he hung up.

  With shaking hands, she opened her email inbox. The subject line of his email was,

  Watch me make it worse.

  She clicked on the Play button for the video. And the twenty-seven seconds of footage she saw made her angrier than she’d ever been. It was Patrick on tape, and although she had no way of knowing what it was that the dealer handed him in that little baggy, he looked guilty. Before he took it, he looked over one shoulder and then the other, his eyes darting around to check who was watching.

  It made her want to shake him for being so stupid.

  Her phone rang in her hand. The caller was Vince again. “Look,” he said into her ear. “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. I know you think the dicks you work for are the second coming of Christ. Maybe you think I’m a loser for getting mixed up with some drug dealers, Ari, but I don’t swallow that shit.”

  She was shaken to the core but she wasn’t about to let him hear it. “What do you want from me?”

  “Give me my property and I’m gone. You’ll never hear my name again. But if you don’t help me, tonight I’m giving the reporter a bunch more material. Here’s the thing—with a little creative editing I can also make it look like he bought the stuff to share with the rest of the team. They’ll all know it’s bogus, too. And they’ll blame you for it. Bye-bye job. So open your front door.”

  “I’m not home right now.”

  He laughed. “Really? You have a twin I don’t know about? Just saw you walk through your front door two minutes ago.”

  Fuck.

  “I need to get into your house, and right now. One thing is all I need. It’s smaller than a breadbox.”

  “What is? What are you after?”

  He sighed into her ear. “A gun, babe. You want a handgun in your house? It was used in a crime scene.”

  “Jesus,” she gasped. “Why the hell is there a gun in my house?”

  “It’s evidence, and it’s protecting me from some grade-A assholes. I need it right fucking now, Ari. It will take ten minutes. Or less if you help.”

  “Help? You can’t be serious.” Someone knocked roughly on the front door, and Ari jumped a foot into the air.

  “Let me in. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Pick easy, babe. Ten minutes and it’s done.”

  Later, she would wonder why she opened the door. Was it bravado? Stupidity? Being rid of him sounded awfully good, though. Even if she should have known better.

  The first thing she realized when the door swung open was that Vince looked like shit. His hair was greasy, he hadn’t shaved in days. Yikes. There were bags under his eyes as he looked past her to scan the room.

  “There’s nobody here,” she said, her voice so flat that he didn’t bother checking the truth of it.

  Vince kicked the door shut with the heel of his shoe. “It’s upstairs,” he said, pointing up the stairway.

  Ari felt nauseated by the idea of walking up that staircase with him again. The last time she’d done that, she’d ended up with a broken bone. “Where?”

  “The bedroom. Go on.”

  She turned quickly away, if only to hide her stricken face. Ten minutes, she reminded herself. And then, finally having a moment of self-preservation, she snatched her purse off the bottom step and brought it upstairs with her. The panic button still clung on its discreet metal loop to the strap. Walking up the stairs in front of Vince, a tingle of fear clung to her spine. How many hours had she spent alone in this house with him? Thousands. But this didn’t feel the least bit familiar. Not at all.

  At the top of the stairs she went into the bedroom and paused in front of the dresser, waiting to see what he’d do.

  “We’re moving the bed,” he grunted. “It’s underneath.”

  Lovely. I’ve been sleeping above a weapon. Ari dropped her purse, knelt down and pu
lled her suitcase out of the way. Not much light shone underneath the hanging quilt, but there didn’t seem to be anything at all under there.

  What if it wasn’t here? Would Vince flip out?

  “Come on,” Vince prompted. “We have to move this so I can get under the floorboards.”

  Jesus. During the last awful months with him, she’d worried about his bad attitude toward her job. When she really might have worried that he was prying up her floorboards to hide illegal activity. She put her hands underneath the crosspiece on the side closest to the window and waited for him to do the same on the opposite side.

  “Ready? Toward me,” he said. “Go.”

  Ari shoved the heavy bed toward him. “Don’t lift with your back,” she cautioned.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. But it was just instinct that had made her say it—a yoga instructor’s reflex to watch out for body strains. It wasn’t affection, it was self-preservation. If he injured himself she wouldn’t be rid of him as quickly.

  As soon as they’d shoved the bed aside, Vince pulled a screwdriver out of his back pocket and wedged it under the molding along the wall. With a yank, he pried it up.

  Ari stopped herself from protesting the destruction. She could fix it all later. If he’d only leave. She studied his profile as he frowned down at his work, prying the end of the floorboard up next. She looked at his haggard face and tried to feel something. There had once been a smiling Vince who called her “my girl” and liked to dance. That guy was long gone, though. And this one looked like a stranger to her.

  Three boards were levered up before he reached into the darkness below and pulled out a ziplock bag with something heavy inside.

  She turned her head away, as if it wouldn’t be true if she didn’t see it properly.

  He gave a dry chuckle. “Yeah, I know. Stay in your Zen bubble, girl. You think you’re better than me.”