Chapter 9

We woke the next morning to Dawn wanting out. I rose and took her out for her walk, letting her sniff around the backyard before I, reluctantly, ran her around the neighborhood for an hour while the sun rose.

When I got back, I set out food and water for her and got her settled before I went downstairs to shower and change for school. I wondered what had happened on the weekend while I’d been out of commission. Gina wandered into the bathroom as I was finishing my shower and she kissed me deeply before she took my place, sleepily. I let Emma, Tabby and Collie sleep for now, knowing that they’d all be back into their college classes before too much longer.

Gina and I went next door for breakfast, joining Mom, Lilly, Patty, Dan, Lana and Beck. Beck looked a little nervous about school today and I thought I knew why. She’d managed to avoid seeing Roberta on Friday between the assembly and our involvement with each other, but today was the day that she expected to have to deal with her. I sat next to her and took her hand in mine, giving it a squeeze.

“It’ll be okay,” I assured her. “Just stick with me and you’ll be fine.”

She nodded. “Two more days and we get our tests back,” she said, reminding herself of what she was looking forward to.

I nodded. “And Hanna’s back a week from tomorrow,” I reminded her. “You’ll be able to brag to her about your celebration.”

That made her grin. “She’s got no idea!” she giggled. “I want what Amber got. Twice.”

“I’ll see what we can arrange,” I said casually, but she was in better spirits because of the distraction. I knew I was going to be spending a lot of time with Bad Matt over the next week or so. I imagined that Hanna was going to want to have a rough session for her welcome home and I wondered if I could arrange something new and exciting for her.

Once breakfast was done, we all got in the cars. Today, Beck was riding with Gina. Lana and I were picking up Tricia. She bounced out to the car with a grin and a deep kiss for me and for Lana before we drove the rest of the way to the school.

Once we were there, we all marched to our lockers as a group, joined by Jessie who wasn’t shy about violating the school policy on displays of affection either.

“Girls,” I said as they dropped Beck and I off at homeroom. “Keep an eye out for Beck over the next few days?”

She looked at me, surprised. “Why me?” she wanted to know.

“Because you’re still a little upset about Roberta and I can’t be around all the time to make sure you have the support you need. Remember, we lean on each other.”

She grumbled about it, but spoiled it by smiling. She liked the idea that we were looking out for her while she was off-balance. We went to class without seeing any sign of Roberta and the morning was quiet. I got some weird glances, but that was normal for me. I think that my skin would crawl if I went a whole day without people staring at me like I was about to start doing tricks for them.

By early lunch, the only complaint I had was that people seemed to kill all conversation as I got close. I had no idea why, but I’m sure I’d find out. I sat down in my usual spot and was soon surrounded by cheerleaders like I usually was.

“Something happened at Eddie’s party on Saturday night,” Lana said as she sat down. “No one who was there will say anything, but I know Eddie’s not in school today. It sounded like it was pretty bad.”

I shrugged. “No one talks to me,” I said lightly. “Anyone else hear anything?”

“I did,” Jessie confirmed reluctantly. “I heard the party was completely legit, for starters. There was nothing like what Marlene, Vance and Patrick did, but there was a lot of drinking. There was a lot of booze and a few drugs, but none of it was forced. There was still a lot of people there, even after what you said on Friday and someone got hurt.”

I nodded. “Any idea what happened?”

“All I heard was that a girl fell down the stairs,” she said. “I heard it from one of the Seniors who just said, ‘some dumb bitch got trashed and wiped out at the bottom of the stairs’. I guess she got pretty badly hurt. There were cops and an ambulance and Eddie’s parents had to come home early from their trip. Eddie’s in a shit-load of trouble because of the booze and the dope. He’s probably still getting yelled at.”

I nodded. “No word on who else is missing from school today?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t any of our girls that had been hurt at the party. I was almost completely sure that none of them would have gone to the party in the first place, but almost sure and absolutely certain weren’t the same thing.

Everyone shook their heads and we took a quick look around, trying to pinpoint anyone we knew who was missing. Everyone was still talking about it when my phone rang. I was distracted, so I picked it up without looking at it.

“Hello?” I said, my mind still half-focused on what the girls were talking about.

“SERIOUSLY?!!?” Scarlett blurted into the phone. “I just finished watching the video you posted last night. You were assaulted? What happened? Are you okay? When did it happen?”

I smiled, glad for the distraction. “Hi, Scarlett,” I said and suddenly conversation skidded to a halt around me. “Yeah, I had a bad experience recently. It happened pretty much like I explained in the clip. She swore she was ready and then afterward, she started trying to rewrite events in a panic. She’s pretty messed up. I’m okay, but she needs to find a counselor that she can talk to about her issues.”

“So, she just got up, stretched and decided that she didn’t like it?” she asked incredulously.

“It’s a little more involved than that, but she decided after the fact that she didn’t love me after all and started trying to convince herself that I’d put pressure on her and that she’d hated it the whole time.”

“That’s a little fucked-up,” she said. “Are you okay?”

“Well, I’m a little hurt,” I told her. “I mean, it’s one thing for her to decide that she doesn’t love me, but I do quality work in the bedroom. I was tempted to challenge her to a duel for the insult. Say what she will of me, but the Program is beyond reproach.”

She laughed at that a little. “At least you’ve still got your sense of humor about it,” she said encouragingly.

“Like I said in the video, I don’t hold any grudges over it. I’ve had to insulate my life from her because of it, but mostly I feel sad that she’s not getting help.”

“You sure you’re okay?” she asked, genuinely concerned for what I was going through. It warmed my heart.

“Well, I DID get a lot of heated questions about why I’m sending you pictures of me half naked and no one else got any for Christmas,” I told her playfully.

I loved the throaty chuckle that got out of her. “And how do you respond when they ask?”

“I told them that I feel kind of gross at the moment, so I didn’t think they were so much of a present,” I admitted.

“The scars aren’t really that bad,” she assured me. “I mean, they’re noticeable in the pictures and in the video you just posted, but they’re not hideous.”

“That’s only part of it,” I told her. “I’ve gained some weight since the shooting and it makes me feel kind of fat. Once I’m back in shape, I’ll send you a set of updated shots. I’ll have seen Dr. Rivers by then and be on the mend from surgery.”

“So those ones are the ones you’ll think of as a gift?” she asked me with just a hint of playfulness.

“The real thing is the gift. The pictures are just a consolation prize if you don’t feel like taking me back to your lair. My trainer has orders to make Chris look old, fat, slow and weak when we do the thing in April. By that time, I hope I look like I did before Thanksgiving.”

She laughed at the flirting and then took a moment to consider what I’d said about my training. “You think you can get back in shape for it?” she asked uncertainly. “Last time we talked, you were in a lot of pain.”

“I still am,” I said lightly. “That’s normal for surgery though. The scar tissue feels different. Sometimes it feels like it’s tearing apart, but it’s just the nerves and the skin knitting back together. I’m pretty sure I’ll be in the shape I want to be in for April though.”

“Should I offer a big kiss to the winner?” she asked with that same hint of flirting.

“Only if you want to see a grown man cry,” I told her. “You offer that and I’m gonna take him to the woodshed.”

“I’ll put it on Twitter later,” she promised.

“Another reason to hit the gym,” I’m sure she could hear my smile. “Do I get to choose where the kiss lands?”

She laughed at that. “Probably not. We’ll be doing it in public after the event.”

“I’ve never done it in public before,” I teased her.

That made her laugh more. “You’re outrageous,” she accused me.

“We had this conversation. You were warned I’m outrageous. You wanna say high to the girls before you have to go?” I asked.

“You’re with your girls?” she asked, surprised.

“It’s lunchtime on the east coast,” I reminded her. “They’re not all here, but there’s a few of them.”

“Sure,” she said and I put her on speaker. “Hi, girls,” she said.

Thirty girls replied with “Hi, Scarlett!” in the most singsong voice possible. I wish I could see her face as they all broke out in giggles. A lot of the girls from nearby tables had added their voice.

“That’s a few of them?” she asked me, surprised.

I took her off speaker while the girls giggled themselves silly. “We have two lunch periods. The rest of the girls have the later lunch period,” I told her.

“I see,” she said, sounding amused. “I’ve gotta go, but you take care of yourself. I’ll want to see the results after your surgery.”

“I promise, as soon as I’m healed, you’ll get the first topless Skype session,” I said with a chuckle.

“Dirty-minded,” she accused me and then we hung up.

The girls were ridiculously cute for the rest of the lunch period, having gotten to talk to a famous actress, even if it was just to say hi in a group. They all lined up to give me the deepest kisses that the school policies would allow before they all marched off to class when the bell sounded.

I was left with a slight smile on my face and feeling pretty good. I was meeting Diego at the gym today and working with Naomi after he stretched me out and evaluated my shoulder. I was looking forward to it and I realized that what I missed most was that sense of normal that Victoria had been wanting for me since August.

I was roused from my musings by Lilo and Stitch joining me. “Hi!” I said brightly. “How was your weekend?”

Janice took one look at my neck, still bruised from my Friday night with Jessie and smirked. “Not nearly as good as yours was,” she said certainly, falling into fits of giggling with Liz.

“How far down do those bites go?” Liz asked coyly. She was normally shy, but she knew that my hazing was coming, and I suspected that she was looking forward to it.

“Would you believe me if I told you that there’s one that sits a couple of inches below my belt buckle?” I asked dryly.

“I think I’d want to see that,” she countered.

“Ask me at practice,” I told her with a chuckle. I glanced around the room and frowned suddenly. I didn’t see Tricia. Normally I could FEEL Cheryl’s laser-beams boring into my skull, but she wasn’t here either. I wondered if she’d talked Tricia into eating somewhere else in the school so I wouldn’t even see her at lunch. That thought soured my mood some and I missed a few minutes of the conversation.

Janice poked me hard in the ribs. “Earth to Matt!” she said sharply. “I asked if you heard anything about Eddie’s party.”

“Sorry,” I said, trying to clear my head. “I heard someone got hurt, but that it wasn’t another setup. It was just a lot of drinking. Someone fell on the stairs, from what I heard.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Liz said in reaction to the news that the party was on the level. “Do you know who got hurt?”

“No,” I admitted. “Except for you ladies, no one talks to me. I’ve noticed that everyone’s conversations have been cutting off when I get close enough to overhear.”

They both looked concerned, but not overly worried. After the word had gotten out, none of our girls would have gone near the place. They looked around, wondering aloud who they might be able to find out the details from.

That’s when Tricia finally appeared in the door the cafeteria and beckoned to me. The look on her face told me that something was wrong and I was out of my seat in a flash. I left my backpack with the girls and went to her as she ducked outside.

“What’s wrong, Babe?” I asked right away.

“I just talked to Cheryl’s parents,” she said. “She had an accident on the weekend. Her mother said she had a bad fall.” Her face twisted as she started to cry. “She lost the baby!” she choked out.

I thought I’d been over it. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I couldn’t be part of the baby’s life, but to hear that no one would ever be able to hold her, that she was taken before she even had a chance? I put my arms around Tricia and we wept there in the hall, thinking about the baby and hoping that whatever came after this life, that she was there and safe and happy. I wasn’t a religious guy, but I DID believe that life didn’t stop when we breathed our last.

I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but I took her to the teacher’s lounge when we were a little calmer, looking for my mother.

I knocked on the door and asked for her. When she heard my voice, she came to see what I was doing here and took one look at us before she ducked out into the hall with us.

“What’s wrong?” she echoed my first question.

“Cheryl lost the baby,” I said quietly. “I think Tricia should be excused from classes for the afternoon to go see her.”

She nodded and told me that she’d let the office and Frank know and that I should call home for someone to pick her up and take her to the hospital. I made the call and Emma told me that she could pick her up and take her to see Cheryl.

That put my mood into free-fall and Mom and Tricia could both see it. “Go home,” Mom said gently. “Take some time and mourn for the baby. I’ll let them know in the office.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said slowly. “I appreciate the thought, but I cut Cheryl out of my life and her baby was part of that too. It sucks, knowing that she didn’t make it, but this is where I need to be.” I hugged Tricia and then she shocked me.

She wrapped her arms around me for the hug and then slapped me across the face hard. “STOP IT!” she snapped at me. “You’re staying here because everyone here needs you. Today YOU have needs. You march into that cafeteria and tell them you need to go.”

I rubbed my cheek irritably. She really knew how to get the most out of a slap. “I’m staying because I have cheer after school,” I told her with a sharp look. “I worked too damn hard to move on from Cheryl. So no matter how much I sympathize, I can’t do anything to help at home. I can’t go to the hospital to talk to her. She hates me. What I CAN do, is go to the rest of my classes and then go to practice and concentrate on getting myself back in shape.”

She still looked at me suspiciously. She was about to argue when Mom laid a hand on her shoulder and shook her head. “We’d be here most of the afternoon arguing with him. When he gets that look on his face, he’s decided to be stubborn.”

She growled and then punched me in the shoulder before she hugged me again and the two of them left. I returned to the lunch room after a quick stop at the washroom to splash some cold water on my face.

“Everything okay?” Janice asked when I sat down again. “You ran out of here like you were on fire.”

“Cheryl lost her baby,” I said. “Tricia’s upset about it, so I got her excused for the afternoon so she could go see her.”

“She did?” Liz jumped in, surprised. “What happened? She looked so healthy last week. Pissed at you, but healthy.”

“She took a bad fall on the weekend and the baby didn’t make it,” I said dully. “It’s sad, but there’s nothing we can do about it now except hope the baby’s happy in Heaven or her next life or whatever happens after this.”

They both took one of my hands and the three of us had a moment of silence for the child that none of us would ever get to see.

The bell rang just then and we each got up to trudge to our next class. The afternoon was uneventful, mercifully. I worked a little on the family portrait for Emma’s parents and contemplated death in a way that I never had before, even when my own survival had been in question.

At the end of the day, I went out to the cars and found that the news of Cheryl’s weekend had traveled fast. They all came and hugged me, knowing how much losing the baby had weighed on me when she’d left and how much it must be killing me to know that the baby hadn’t made it.

“It’s cool,” I said, trying to set them at ease. “Tricia went to visit her today. Hopefully she’s doing okay.”

Jessie had more to say, though, and I really wished she hadn’t put the thought in my head. “Liz said she fell on the weekend,” she added. “You wanna make a bet she was the one that got drunk and wiped out on Eddie Bishop’s stairs?”

I looked at her, shocked, but realized that she was probably right. I remembered the look of spite on her face after she’d been warned about the party. I wondered if she hated me so much that she’d go to the party just because the warning had come from me. That was a sobering thought. I turned it over in my head and wondered if I should go to the hospital and try to talk to her doctor about getting her into counseling. I finally shook my head, banishing thoughts of Cheryl putting her baby at risk to spite me.

“Well, that’s a thought I didn’t need,” I said dryly. “Thanks, Jess. I’d have put that together sooner or later and probably wouldn’t have handled the revelation well if I’d gotten there on my own.”

“Sorry,” she said sheepishly. “Maybe I should have waited to mention it until after practice.”

“Nah,” I said, making my tone a little lighter than I felt. “At least now I have Cheer to distract me. Besides, the announcements aren’t over for the day, are they, Jessica?” I asked pointedly.

“Uh...” she blinked, not sure what I was going to say.

I approached her and slipped my arms around her from behind. “I know everyone thinks that Gina got her fangs into me again this weekend, but that’s not what happened,” I told the rest of the girls. “Jessie’s been dressed VERY modestly today, hasn’t she?” I pointed out with a smirk. “Almost like she’s hiding something.” I reached up and hooked a finger in the collar of her turtleneck to tug it down, showing off some bite marks of her own, with a dramatic gasp, as if I didn’t know exactly how the marks had gotten there.

That got some surprised exclamations. “So that’s three down, fourteen to go?” Janice asked with a playful smirk.

I was about to say something to try to put that thought out of her head when Lana ended that.

“Gina’s team captain. Sign up with her,” she grinned at me. “Be sure to let her know if you want to be a regular or a one-time guest.”

I gave her a dirty look. “When your results come back, you’re in for it,” I told her.

“You gonna start Sorority hazing us?” she asked playfully. “I’ve always wondered about Bad Matt.”

“Bad Matt?” Liz asked, looking back and forth between the four of us that she knew were involved.

“She’ll tell you later,” I interrupted. “We need to get to practice.”

We broke up, me going with Jessie and Liz getting in the car with Lana. I suspected the locker room talk was going to be graphic and probably involve talk of Amber. That was another headache that I had to face in the near future. Grandmother was trying to shake the branches on the family tree. I wasn’t amused by that.

“You’ll have to face the questions eventually and from more than these girls,” she told me. “By next week, Beck will look like you beat her half to death. The rest of the girls will need to know that she wanted it like that.”

“Seriously?!!?” the girls from the backseat looked startled. Jessie just shrugged at me like it was for my own good.

“Beck likes the rough stuff,” I told them gently. “There’s some girls that like soft touches and gentle movements. Beck isn’t thrilled unless we’re in free-fall, approaching terminal velocity and might not have parachutes.”

“So you’re gonna hit her?” Suzie Hicks said, shocked.

I grimaced. “Probably. It’s the way she likes sex.”

“How could anybody like that?” Annie Reynolds asked, confused and concerned by the news.

“Well, sensory processing in the brain is a complex set of variables,” I said, repeating from psych texts for the moment. “Some people process pain as being less unpleasant than others. Athletes tend to feel euphoria and satisfaction from intense workouts that would leave other people feeling like they never wanted to move again. Beck’s like that. Other people would go through what makes her smile and would shake their heads and swear never to do it again. Beck, on the other hand, wants more. It’s also possible that neurologically, she’s hard-wired to take pleasure from pain receptors firing. Some people are like that. The pain center of their brain is cross-wired to activate their pleasure center too.”

“So she gets off on pain?” they exchanged looks.

“Yup. She also likes the thrill of getting me to punish her. She knows I don’t want to and she says that it’s a big pay-off for her to get me to cross that line and do it for her.”

“Wow!” they said in unison and I chuckled.

“We started off small. She liked to have her hair pulled and wanted me to call her names, so I think that she just gets a thrill from being treated like that. She’s never been a girly girl, so being treated like she might break is probably a turnoff for her. She probably got her hands on some dirty porn at some point and liked what she saw.” I turned and looked at Jessie. “Remind me to punish her for that. She was my best friend. She should have shared.”

That made Jessie laugh. “You think you’re gonna need someone to remind you to spank Beck?” she asked me pointedly. “Tell HER to do it. She’ll be only too happy to ask.”

“Tell me about it,” I snorted dryly.

“So what’s it like?” Suzie asked. “You take her over your knee or something?”

“We’ve never done that before,” I admitted. “Beck likes me to be rough and demanding and in control. She likes me to fuck her hard, get carried away and swear at her a lot. She also likes to have me stand her up and punish her with whatever looks like it would leave welts and bruises.”

“Fuck!” Annie breathed.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “She knows that I love her, and she trusts me to keep her safe, but she loves that moment where I get into what we’re doing enough that she doesn’t have to give me encouragement. She calls that side of me ‘Bad Matt’ and she loves it. It means that I’m not hesitating to give her what she wants.”

“Don’t you worry that you could really hurt her?” Suzie demanded.

“Not as much as you’d think,” I said with a shrug. “I keep a close eye on her and make sure not to hit her so hard that she’d need medical attention. I don’t hit her with random shit either. We have some stuff that’s meant for that kind of game so it’s not gonna break skin unless you misuse it.”

I wasn’t telling them about the genuine torture devices that we’d inherited from Miranda. Seriously, who keeps a cat-o-nine-tails with stone barbs on the end? Okay, I suppose that I had one, but I never intended to use it. I kept it as a cautionary tale about the dangers of power. Miranda’s abuse of her position had left me focused on the lesson that corruption happened. Part of me still wondered if she’d been damaged by someone abusive along the way or if her mind had been twisted slowly by the seductive quality of her own power.

“You have bondage stuff?” Annie asked, surprised. The question caught me off-guard. The idea that she might be familiar with the concept of bondage hadn’t occurred to me.

“How much do you know about bondage?” I asked, looking over my shoulder. I expected an answer that started with Fifty Shades of Grey and didn’t go much farther.

She blushed and looked uncomfortable. “Never mind,” she said suddenly.

Suzie wasn’t going to let it go though. “You KNOW about this stuff?!!?” she gaped at her. Suzie and Annie were best friends, sort of like Lilo and Stitch were. For Suzie to find out her friend had this secret was huge.

Annie blushed a little, but sighed. “I promised I wouldn’t tell,” she tried to reason with Suzie.

“Suzie,” I said. “If it’s not her secret to tell, we should respect that. Kind of like I hope you won’t tell our secrets.”

Annie shook her head. “I don’t think they’d mind me telling you guys,” she said slowly. “I need to ask though. I want to talk to you about it,” she looked at me. “There was always stuff I didn’t want to ask, but with you, I think I could.”

I nodded. “Talk to your source and get their permission before you share their details. You can tell them about me, if it helps, but do NOT bring Beck’s name into it. That’s for her to decide.” I paused and then added dryly, “Not that she’s shy about bragging.”

Mercifully, we were at the gym at that point, so it was off to practice for us. The girls were all giving me some interesting looks. I’m sure they had questions about Bad Matt and Beck and a hundred other things that I probably didn’t mind answering, but wasn’t interested in holding up practice for. I got my gear from Lana who’d taken it out of the trunk when she got to the gym and went to get changed.

Work got underway and I was stretching with Diego before he handed me over to Naomi to do more tumbling. “So what got you to cancel on me Friday?” he wanted to know as he stretched me out and checked my range of motion.

“Diego, I’m not gonna lie to you. I picked up a new girl on Friday and we spent the weekend together,” I told him.

“Sure you did, white-boy,” he chuckled.

“You wanna meet her?” I asked knowing that we were just about done.

“She’s here?” he asked, starting to wonder if I was telling the truth.

“Three of my girls are cheerleaders,” I told him. I pointed out Jessie to him. “Her bite marks match my new ones,” I told him. “The girl she’s working with? She gave me the scratches on my back.”

We watched Jessie and Gina work together for a moment and he shook his head, flicked my ear. “You brag too much. One of these days, it’s gonna get you into trouble.”

I shrugged. “I’m proud of my girls,” I said simply. “You’d brag to anyone who’d listen if you were dating one cheerleader, let alone three.”

“Probably, but I’d probably wait ‘til they were in college first. Less jail time,” he admitted and pushed me off in the direction of Naomi. “Go see if you can make time with someone legal to fool around with.”

I didn’t bother to respond, just trotted over to where she was working with a couple of the girls on tumbling and acrobatics. I watched and waited for her to have time for me. Once she had the girls working on their activities, she started working me over. After Diego had stretched out my arm and tested it, she went to work on the rest of me, pushing my ballet stretches and then getting me ready to work out for the day.

“You training a new puppy?” she asked as she pushed me in the splits, making me feel like something was going to snap if we kept it up.

“Sort of,” I admitted, thinking about Dawn. “How’d you know?”

She tapped my neck. “That would explain the biting.”

That got me laughing. “Oh, that. That’s not from the puppy. That’s from the new kitten.”

“She’s not the first kitten you’ve been bitten by,” she said, remembering my marks from after Gina’s first night with us.

“No,” I agreed, “and she probably won’t be the last. Biting hadn’t occurred to some of them until they saw for themselves and thought it would be fun.”

“Uh-huh,” she smirked. “So, have you given any more thought to trying to compete?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “I wasn’t sure how serious you were about that. I mean, I enjoy my time in the gym, but I don’t know that I have it in me to compete.”

“Anything’s possible,” she told me. “You went from needing a wheelchair this time last month to being here, working out with me. By most standards, that’s quite the miracle, but none of the ladies expected any different. They were surprised when you started working out with me, but they all told me that you’d be back. You keep working with a good coach and you could be working at the next level.”

“You really mean it, don’t you?” I asked, surprised, but considering what she was telling me.

“For sure. You’ve got a strong work ethic, you’re focused, resilient and have the right body type.”

“You been checking out my body?” I asked her suspiciously, but with a little smile.

“You had a good look back when I first started coming, but you’re still coming back from injury. Another month or two and I’d put you in some regional competitions,” she replied, evaluating my chances.