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  I didn’t argue with her because she was speaking the truth. I couldn’t remember when my dad and I had switched roles. I had been taking care of him since I could remember.

  “All right then, that’s settled. Now, why don’t you run to your room and work on your homework or whatever,” she said, dismissing me with the wave of her hand, as she turned to the fridge.

  I didn’t need to be told twice. I slammed my door behind me and leaned against it and slid down.

  After I wrapped my arms around my raised knees, I rested my chin on them. I was so angry and upset at my father, but I had no one to talk to about it. I closed my eyes and banged my head on the door.

  “It’s not fair,” I said to my barren bedroom.

  Vivian had only given me a mattress on the floor to sleep on and a three-drawer dresser.

  I had boxes sitting in the corner of things I used to have in my room, but I didn’t want to take them out of the boxes. Taking all my pictures and possessions out of the boxes made this real. As long as I lived out of those boxes, this was all just a bad dream.

  I thought about how putting everything in boxes made things better and decided to start putting everything I didn’t want to feel into a box. The first thing I put in my little boxes was my anger with my father.

  Opening that box in my head and placing that anger inside and then slamming the lid on top helped. I didn’t have to feel that anger anymore.

  Every day, for the past twelve years, I filled my tiny little boxes. Sad because I was all alone? Put it in a box and don’t think about it. An “A” on my math test and Vivian ordering me to go to my room when I tried to tell her? Put it in a box and don’t think about it.

  All through my teenage years, I had probably thousands of tiny boxes that I neatly put on a shelf and never thought about again. It even worked well into adulthood. Things always fit nicely into the boxes.

  Everything except for Nickel. As much as I tried to shove his gorgeous smile in the box, I could never forget about it.

  Almost a year ago, his grandmother was transferred to the nursing home I worked at as an RN. Every week, on Tuesday at nine o’clock, he would come in and visit her like clockwork.

  I still remember the day he appeared in her room while I was checking her blood pressure. He waltzed in as if he owned the place, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him since. His grandmother was one of my favorite patients. She was sweet but had a smart-ass streak to her.

  Every Tuesday, he would hold up a bakery bag and insist on me staying and having a snack with them. He would track me down if he didn’t see me in her room and ask me how my day was going.

  He always had a leather vest on that had his name, Nickel, on it and a huge patch on the back that was the insignia of the Fallen Lords. All I knew about the Fallen Lords was that they were a motorcycle club, and they rode bikes everywhere they went. I was seriously oblivious to everything he was.

  The only thing I wasn’t oblivious to was his gorgeous smile and dark blue eyes. Whenever he was done talking to me, he always winked and smiled as he walked away. That wink and smile drove me crazy.

  That man was everything I didn’t want in my life, and that was the exact reason I needed to find a box big enough to fit him in. I needed to slam the lid down on him and never think of him again.

  If only things were that easy.

  **********

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  Dropkick My Heart

  Powerhouse MA

  Book 1

  Chapter 1

  Kellan

  “Left, Ryan.” I shook my head and watched Ryan punch to the right. “Your other left, Ryan.” In my fifteen years of teaching martial arts, I discovered left and right was a concept that was hard learned by anyone under the age of ten, especially when they were just excited to be punching and kicking the shit out of stuff.

  “Okay! Lock it up.” I stood in front of my class of twenty-five under belts and watched them all fall to the floor, eagerly looking up at me. I waited for all eyes to fall on me. “Good job today, guys. We need to work a bit longer on delta, but for only working on it one day, you guys are killing it.” Clinton raised his hand eagerly, and I tipped my chin at him. “Go ahead, Clinton.”

  “Mr. Wright, when are we going to get to put all of the combos together?” he asked meekly.

  “As soon as we learn them all,” I assured him. Clinton asked the same question every class. The kid was the most eager to learn, but he had the attention span of a squirrel. I surveyed the class, then looked over the crowd of parents waiting to pick up their kids. “Now, remember that belt graduation is in three weeks, and you need to have your homework turned in before. Otherwise, you don’t graduate.” Everyone groaned at the word homework, and I couldn’t help but smirk. They didn’t have any clue how much homework I had done to reach sixth-degree black belt. “Everyone up,” I said, motioning up with my hands. “And bow,” I ordered, placing my hands at my sides and bowing.

  All the kids started running up to me, giving me high fives and then scurrying off to their parents.

  “Is Mr. Roman going to be here next time?” Carrie asked me as she high-fived me.

  “He should be. He had a couple of things to do today and couldn’t make it to class.” Like sleeping until noon and screwing me over completely. Thankfully, it was the last class of the day, and I could hopefully find some time to sit down for five minutes.

  Finally, the last parents left with their kids, and I locked the door behind them. I loved classes on Saturday, but they were exhausting when I was the only instructor.

  The phone rang on the desk, and I knew it was Roman with some lame-ass excuse for why he didn’t make it in today. Roman and I were business partners with Dante and Tate, but most of the time, it was all on me to make the school a success.

  Roman’s name flashed on the caller ID, and I picked up the phone. “So, what’s your excuse this time?”

  “Ugh, I’m fucking sick, man.”

  I shook my head and sat down behind the front counter. “That’s called a hangover, Roman. Drink some fucking coffee, and get out of bed.”

  “Nah, man. This is worse than a hangover. I think I got food poisoning from the burger I ate last night at Tig’s.” Roman moaned into the phone, and I sighed.

  Food poisoning from Tig’s was a definite possibility. “I guess you should stop eating nasty shit while you’re getting shit-faced every night.”

  “It’s not every night,” Roman grumbled.

  “Sure, keep fucking telling yourself that.”

  Roman sighed. “Look, I was just calling to tell you sorry about not coming in today. If you wanna take off next Saturday, you can. I’ll take care of the monsters all by myself.”

  “Nah, don’t worry about.” I made the mistake once of trying to take off a Saturday. Roman had called me halfway through the day, and I could barely hear him over yelling parents and screaming kids. I ended up coming in and spending most of the day putting out fires he had started between yelling at the kids and telling the parents to shut it while he was teaching. “Just get better, and I’ll see you Monday night.”

  “What time do classes start?”

  I closed my eyes and counted to ten. “Four. Same as every Monday,” I reminded him.

  “Got it. I’ll be there.”

  I hung up the phone and sighed. Roman was one of the most talented guys I knew when it came to karate, but his adulting skills were severely lacking. At the age of twenty-eight, he should have his shit figured out.

  When Roman, Tate, Dante, and I opened Powerhouse, we expected to help kids the way we were taught when we were young and just starting karate. Roman, Tate, and I began karate at the same time and worked our way through the belts together. Dante was a red belt when we were white belts, but he took us under his wing, and we all became close friends.

  While Dante was almost ten years older than most of us, I was the highest black belt. Dante was a second-degree bla
ck belt, while Roman and Tate were fourth-degree. I was going for my sixth degree this year.

  We all came together to start the school, because we all had our own specialties that, when put together, created a karate studio unlike any around. Dante was an international sparring champion six times over, while Roman and Tate were geniuses when it came to kamas and bo staff. I rounded us out with my expertise in forms and people skills the three others lacked at times.

  The school had only been open for six months, but Dante and Tate already thought we needed to open another location. Not only had Roman bailed on me today, but so had Tate and Dante to go look at a space two towns over for a new studio.

  I was in the minority when I said we should just focus on the Falls City school. Dante and Tate had decided between themselves that if we were doing so well here, another studio would be a goldmine. I didn’t think they were wrong, I just wanted them to slow down, and wait for all of us to agree.

  I threw my phone on top of a pile of new student paperwork and propped my arms on my head. I pushed off on the floor and spun around in the chair. Most days, it was hard to believe this was my life, and today was another one of those days. Dante, Tate, and Roman were my closest friends, but sometimes it felt like everything rested on my shoulders, while they were off somewhere enjoying life, and spending all the money we were making.

  The days we didn’t have classes, I was giving private lessons, or working on lesson plans for each class. Most of the time, the Kinder-kicker class was like herding a pack of cats that were all hyped up on catnip, and the Little Ninja class wasn’t much better. Although, I still tried to teach them forms and basic karate to help them get to white belt. Once the kids hit white belt, things became more serious, and I buckled down on the curriculum.

  The highest belt level we had right now was an orange belt, but in the stack of paper on the desk, there were three kids wanting to transfer over to Powerhouse. One of them was a purple belt, and the other two were red belts. I was rather shocked the two red belts wanted to transfer schools when they were close to being black belts, but I knew it was because in the short time we had been open, we already had a reputation of being the best.

  If you were even a little bit into karate, you would have at least heard of one of us. We were the best, and we had the trophies and medals to prove it. That reputation was bringing in students left and right, but I couldn’t keep doing this on my own anymore.

  But, I wasn’t going to stress about that right now, because a knock on the front door made me jump, and I turned to see my next private lesson through the glass.

  My five-minute break was up, and it was back to the grind.

  Someone had to make Powerhouse a success, and that someone was going to be me.

  ******