Reckless

“No, not like that. But I’m a guy who’s been in jail enough times that it’s normal. I’m on a first-name basis with more criminals and corrections officers than I can count.”

“What have you been in jail for?”

“For racing and doing crazy shit on my motorcycle, some of which has caused other people to get seriously injured and in one case, killed.”

“Oh my god,” Samantha gasped, holding a hand in front of her mouth. “Wuh—what happened?” she stammered. “Did…did you, I don’t know, run him off the road or something?”

“No. But I may as well have. Guy tried to keep up with me on a canyon road, but he didn’t have the skills to follow. High-sided his bike right over a guard rail at sixty miles an hour. Tumbled down a rocky hillside. He was probably dead by the time he hit the bottom two-hundred feet below.”

Her face knotted with horror as she backed up a step and hugged her elbows against her chest.

Who wouldn’t be horrified? I know I had been. I couldn’t sleep for three days after the guy died.

“Oh, no,” Samantha said. “That’s…that’s awful, Christos.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “It is.”

“But you didn’t cause the accident, right?”

I clutched my fists in front of me, squeezing the air in frustration. “You’re missing the point, Samantha. The thing is, I was watching the guy in my rearview for three miles. He was lagging farther and farther behind after every turn. He started trying to make up lost ground by coming into the corners too hot. All I would’ve had to do was slow my bike down, let him catch up, keep a pace he could safely manage. If I’d done that, we would’ve been toasting beers at the end of the day. But I didn’t. I had an ego about the whole thing. I wasn’t gonna let some hothead beat my shit, no fucking way.”

Holding fingers against her lips, Samantha searched my eyes. “When did this happen?”

I could see her wheels turning. She was desperately trying to make sense of this. But there was no sense to be made.

I indulged her. “Three years ago,” I sighed.

She took a step toward me, resting one hand on my arm. “Oh, Christos. You were nineteen. You were just a kid. I’m nineteen. I still do stupid things all the time. If that guy hadn’t followed you that day, the next time, he would’ve followed someone else he shouldn’t have been following. It wasn’t your fault.”

“But that’s not what happened,” I argued, shaking my splayed hands in front of me. “He died when he was following me,” I sneered, dropping my arms to my side in defeat, “because I got too competitive. Not some other rider. I wasn’t thinking to myself, ‘Oh, this young fellow is terribly outclassed. The responsible thing for me to do as a grown-up is take the poor boy aside and set him straight before he injures himself. Teach him to mind his own limits, and follow the rules of the road responsibly.’ Nope. I was just thinking that his sorry ass wasn’t going to catch me. Now he’s dead.”

Samantha chewed on her bottom lip and frowned. She was silent.

Because there wasn’t a good argument in this case, was there? That’s why they called it reckless driving and criminal negligence.

I rubbed my hand across my face and tipped my head back in frustration.

“And that’s just the tip of my iceberg,” I sighed. “I’ve been in so many punch-ups, I’ve lost count. I’ve hurt a lot of people, put them in hospitals countless times. Broken bones, knocked out teeth, all because deep down,” I was seething now, “I’m a fucking hot-head who didn’t know how to control my shit for years before I met you.”

A pained, disgusted grimace stretched across Samantha’s face. Her arms dangled uselessly at her sides.

I’m sure any desire she’d had left to hug me or tell me everything was going to be all right evaporated when the truth came out. I couldn’t blame her. I was disgusted with myself too. Because I knew that beneath my shiny, chromed-up good looks, I was a monster.

She took a hesitant step back, toward the coffee table. If she was backing away from me, I couldn’t blame her. When you smelled trouble, that’s what a smart person did.

“But you never started any of those fights, right?” Samantha asked seriously.

I had another can of disappointment for her. I pulled it out of my back pocket and popped the top.

I huffed out a laugh, “Yeah.”

She was frowning and chewing her lip again. “What do you mean, yeah?” she asked.

“I mean, I’ve started tons of fights. Shit, even the ones I didn’t? I could’ve walked away. But I decided to stay and fight. I wasn’t going to let anybody out-man my shit.”

“Christos, that isn’t like you,” she frowned sternly.

Sadly, she was in total denial. Because I knew the truth. I could be a fucking prick when I was trying to deal with the rage that had boiled in my veins for a decade…since my mom…

Mom…

Samantha shook her head definitively. “That’s not the man I know,” she said passionately, “the man I fell in love with.”

And there went my silver lining, my hope that this would all work out. Because she hadn’t fallen in love with the real me. She’d fallen in love with the thin veneer I’d pasted over my brutish past in the last two years. She didn’t want to know about my shit. Fuck, I didn’t want to know about my past, but I was fucking stuck with it. I chuckled to myself. What difference did it make if I got locked up after my upcoming trial? I would forever be chained down by my history.

I sneered at her. “That’s because I’m really not the man you think you know. I’m a fuck-up, Samantha.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s not?”

“No,” she protested softly. “I know you.”

“No you don’t,” I laughed. “I’m not a Boy Scout, Samantha. I’m the bad guy.”

“But you never start fights!” she pleaded. “You’re always protecting me.”

I chuckled. “Maybe now. Two years ago? I was the asshole. I was the guy starting shit everywhere I went.”

“I can’t picture you doing that,” she whispered.

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t.” I was ready to jump out of my skin.

I wanted to ram my head into the wall. I should’ve told her sooner that I was a Class-A fuck-up and let the chips fall, instead of jumping into a relationship with her. Then she could’ve calmly decided to keep her distance. That would’ve been okay. I could still have mentored her. But I’d been too much of a coward to tell her. A fucking yellow-backed coward.

Samantha had needed a guide through her art career when I’d met her, not a fucked-up lover.

But I had been so head-over for her after only a few short weeks, I’d let my heart overrun my good sense. I’d let my greedy need take over. The next thing I knew, after spending a month or two with her, I loved her so much, the idea of scaring her off by telling her the truth about my past and my impending trial had freaked me to the point I just buried everything.

For the last five months, it had felt so good being the good guy she thought I was. Maybe I thought her love for me as the good guy would make my bad guy go away, like he had never existed.

How wrong I was.

Now I had the most amazing woman I’d ever met staring at me like I was the fucking monster I’d always been.

At least now she knew the truth.

I was Jekyll & Hyde.

Too bad Samantha had fallen in love with Jekyll, because I was Hyde to the core.

I couldn’t hide my Hyde anymore.

I took a deep breath and stared at her. May as well put the final nail in this shit and bury it. She didn’t need me bringing her down.

I said, “Remember when you were talking about Jake’s surprise Valentine’s Day plans for Madison?”