The Fighter and His Tiger (Unexpected Love #1)

4. Monday Evening Week Two

4. Monday Evening Week Two

My anger didn't really dissipate until I got home and saw my baby brother, Tyler. I had got the night of off work tonight because I was so exhausted from working those ridiculous hours hungover on Saturday. Nan was still pretty annoyed about Friday night/morning and my way of dealing with it was to just avoid her as much as humanly possible; so far so good.

We lived in a quaint little bungalow, just big enough for the three of us and even though my Nan insisted it wasn't, it was definitely big enough for a dog as well.

Ty and I had lived with my Nan since I was twelve. He was two weeks old when they died. It was a house fire. I tried my hardest not to think about it; about what we lost, about everything I had that Ty never will, about all the things I have yet to have that won't be the same without them. It was just them at home, Nan had taken the two of us for a walk to give them a breather and when we came back there were police, firemen, paramedics everywhere. It had been the three of us ever since and Nan had never made us feel like we had missed out on anything; I loved her more than anything for it.

"Ty! I'm back bro," I yelled out as soon as I stepped into our little house. I heard his teeny tiny footsteps and then he came hurtling out of his playroom and jumped into my arms. I ruffled his hair and started attacking his face with kisses.

"Ewwww, Lyni, that's disgusting, stop, stop, stop!" I grinned as he started trying to wiggle out of my hold whilst screeching at me to let go. He still hadn't got the hang of the 'r' sound and so he had resorted to a nickname which I found completely adorable.

"Lyni, stop it wight now!" He demanded. I placed him on his feet and held my hands up in mock surrender. He turned to look at me all proud until I grinned and started wiggling my fingers at him.

"You'd better run baby bro, you know what happens when I don't get my kisses; TICKLEMONSTER!!!," I screeched.

And then I started chasing him around the house like a crazy person. We were both laughing like crazy and when I grabbed him and started tickling him like crazy he let out an animal like screech.

"S-to-p, L-yniiiii, I-I-I, c-c-ca-n't bweathe." Floored by his adorable pronunciations (I'm a sucker for cute kids) and taking pity on his breathless state I halted my attack and turned him towards me whilst indignantly sticking my cheek out in his direction. He reluctantly kissed my cheek and I beamed at him as he ran off to play with some stupid, mindless toy; see, was that so hard??

I made my way into the kitchen to fix up a Nutella sandwich and then went down the hallway and turn right into my Nan's room deciding I should try to apologise again for breaking curfew but the sight that greets me stuns me into silence for a moment.

"Nan, what the fuck are you doing?" She spun around to look at me standing in her doorway with my delicious Nutella sandwich.

"Damn it Rei! What have I said to you about swearing? Don't do it is what I've bloody said!" She responded exasperatedly. Nan was one hundred per cent British but moved out here when mum got pregnant with Ty because she wanted to be more involved in her 'grand-babies' lives.

"Okay, A, you just swore yourself. B, why ask a question if you are just gonna answer it anyway. And C, what the fuck are you doing?" I repeated. She raised both of her hands in the air and then let them flop to her sides in a fluid motion as if to say, why do I even bother? I don't know Nan, I really don't, I think it's safe to say that there was basically no point.

"I am just trying something new out" she replies flippantly as if her hair wasn't dyed bright orange. I don't know why I was so surprised, Nan was quite young at 63 and she often experimented with new styles and hair colour; this was a new though.

"Nan, blonde would be considered new," I explained, "that," I pointed at her hair, "is a whole fucking disaster."

Brief annoyance flashes in her eyes at my swearing but she chose to ignore it, that's right Nana, just accept the swear words. She then picked up a lock of her tangerine inspired hair and looked up at me with a complete bullshit look of disbelief on her face.

"Huh," she mumbled, "will you look at that, I didn't even notice."

I rolled my eyes and told her to hand me the hair dye box. I scarfed down my sandwich as I read over the instructions and then proceeded to drag my Nan into the bathroom opposite her bedroom, in order to at least try to make her look like anything but the Lorax.

As I stood behind her, combing the correct amount of dye through her hair, I decided to ask her advice on something.

"So Nan, I have this old crone of an English teacher. Actually she's not that old, nowhere near your age." I 'hmphed' as she elbowed me in the stomach, wow, abusive much, "she asked me to tutor some of the younger kids for extra credit but I don't know if I can be ass-," another elbow, "sorry, I mean bothered."

"I can't believe you are even asking me, Reillyn. Don't you want to be a teacher? Yes, you do, so why would you not do it?"

"You answered your own question again Nana and I don't know. I guess I just don't want to miss out on anything else because I'm tutoring some snotty kid."

She tugged out of my grasp and turned to face me with understanding on her face. I hadn't told her about what happened last year but she saw the shell of myself that I became; it nearly broke her and that was without knowing the reason I was like that. She had never pushed me to tell her what happened but she believed I would tell her when I was ready; to be honest, I don't know if I ever would be.

"Sweetie, I know you felt like you didn't live your junior year like you should've but who's to say how you're supposed to live it? You, that's who." I smiled a little as she answered her own question, again. "Rei, you love kids and you are great at teaching, it's something you love. Tutoring doesn't mean that you will miss out on anything honey. It just means that instead of doing some things that you love for your friends, you'll be doing something else that you love for you."

See, my Nan just got it, she always knew just what to say. She smiled up at me and turned back around to let me finish off fixing her volcanic eruption of hair. She was right of course. Just because I couldn't do everything I wanted to my junior year of high school, doesn't mean that I couldn't do it all and more in my senior year.

After dinner made by Nan, who by the way was the best cook in the world, I laid on my bed and felt my anger rising again as I thought about my encounter with Elias Ryker earlier.

It was safe to say that my judgement of him was in fact correct; a gorgeous asshole. The nerve of that guy to talk to me that way when I hadn't even done anything wrong. I mean, if I'd gone around sharing his secret with loads of people then yeah, his anger would be totally justified, but I hadn't and so it was completely uncalled for. All he had to do was ask me politely to not tell anyone about what I saw and it would've been done, but no, he had to be a dick and threaten me. But then my thoughts took a different turn.

 A turn down the road of how physically perfect he was, and he was, there was no denying it. His black hair was wavy with a few strands falling across his forehead, a dark contrast against his eyes which seemed to be ablaze with constant anger and aggression; made you wonder what had made him so mad at the world. He had a scar in his eyebrow and a nose ring which glinted in the right light, I'm also pretty sure he had one of his ears pierced as well but I wasn't too sure.

His yumminess aside, I wanted to get back at him for the way he treated me and not by sharing that he was Hood Guy, that wasn't my secret to share. But with something else, something that would benefit me also. And then I figured out what I was gonna do.

He was so screwed.

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1560 words^

Edited ✅