by Fields, MJ
He lifts his head, mouth crooked, the smile of a spiritually defeated man. I recognize that, too. His gaze rests on mine, and I wait to see where this goes, despite every experience in my life screaming at me from the pit of my chest. I can’t help but wait—I can’t help but fall into his eyes. I can’t help it because this man is rare—dangerous as he may be to my heart, he is rare.
“Was Ashland, Wisconsin in the box, too,” I say, with a slight waggle of my head.
Memphis laughs loudly, the sound penetrating deeper into my head, scratching at something familiar. I think it’s him—I’ve gotten so used to him, to the sounds he makes that I love, that when I hear them my body feels whole. His dimples sink and lips part. His smile is just a little crooked when it’s genuine.
“No, Liv. That’s not what was in the box.” I like the way he says my name, like we have a regular banter between us, a part each of us play. He’s gotten used to me, too.
I blink quickly and shrug, my hand now wrenched around my arm, holding tighter with each slight movement he makes closing our gap.
“There was an old registration copy in there, and I called around until I got someone dumb enough to tell me things they shouldn’t about a bike that wasn’t mine. I had four thousand dollars saved up, and a car that barely made it a hundred miles at a time without stalling out. I drove it for thirteen hours straight from Philly to Wisconsin, willing it back to life from gas station to gas station. My dad’s bike was parked in front of this old barn filled with tractor parts and backhoes. Someone got in some trouble, and it ended up there somehow after they stole it from whomever bought it from my dad. I offered the man five hundred bucks, and for a thousand, he threw in the camper.”
I turn so our feet are squared and glance at his home that I think he probably knows I went through while he was gone. Somehow, the money he paid for it seems not enough and too much all at once. My gaze shifts back to his, and he steps forward until the toe of his left shoe rests against the right of mine.
“That’s a nice story, Memphis. I’m glad you found the bike, but I’m not sure what that has to do with me,” I say, my breath catching as his fingertips trace along my jaw, his touch so faint I find myself leaning my head to encourage his palm to rest along my cheek more boldly.
He brings his other hand up with more confidence, and I’m caught. The other option I had, to walk away, is gone. I never really wanted it, though.
Memphis dips his chin, hunching slightly to bring his eyes in line with mine. We’re so close that I can feel the tickle of his breath along my lips, and they tingle at the familiar. Each experience with him weaves itself into my heart in this way that terrifies me. This is how people lose themselves.
But I let it in—each breath, each sound, the smells and words. His story. I am surviving on the very being of him, and I think I have been for a while now.
“I was eighteen when I tracked down that bike. I knew it was mine…”
“I don’t belong to you, Memphis,” I cut in, my heart pounding.
His mouth forms a crooked smile. He holds my eyes hostage in silence for few long seconds.
“Maybe it works the other way,” he says, his eyes moving over my face with a softness that feels intimate and vulnerable. His forehead falls forward until it rests gently on my own, and I let go of the grip I have on myself, exchanging it for fistfuls of his T-shirt. My knuckles run along his chest as I gather the material and close my eyes, his muscles hard from discipline.
“I can’t watch you get hurt. I can’t…”
His hand moves to my chin, and he lifts it until our eyes meet. Suddenly, breathing just got a lot harder to do.
“I won’t lose, Liv. I work too hard, and I study too much. I will never be in a ring I’m not supposed to be in,” he says, and I breathe out what sounds like a laugh, but feels like hurt.
“My fifty-year-old uncle kicked your ass in some display of alpha-male, teacher-student bullshit. I couldn’t watch that…how am I supposed to watch you step in with some guy who really wants to kill you? How am I supposed to kiss you knowing that your lips might never be the same after a fight? How—”
Memphis’s mouth takes mine before I can protest anymore, nothing like our stolen moment from earlier. His hands cup my face and his mouth moves possessively over my bottom lip, sucking it in and letting it slide loose through a graze of his teeth. He turns my head with a gentle nudge and kisses me deeper, and his hands fall from my face in long, possessive drags down my shoulders to my waist, stopping with his thumbs just above my hips and his fingers splayed out around my sides.
My hands roam up his chest and neck until my thumbs run along the roughness of his chin, and my touch seems to somehow make him hungrier.
“My god.” He breathes the words against my lips, restraint giving way as his hands slide around my ass and lift me to him. My legs wrap around his waist and my hands move into his hair. I hold on with the short strands threaded through my fingers, and our lips part as his head tilts forward, resting on mine.
He’s walking, and the brief break from his kiss gives me a few precious seconds to think. Thoughts are muddled, though. My body is fighting rigid rules I made a long time ago, and with every step Memphis takes, my pulse radiates heavier until my back hits the door to his trailer. I think my heart may tear its way out through my ribs.
“Promise me,” I say, the words coming out more pleading than I want, but the tone is necessary. This decision right now is everything to me—this is either a leap of faith or the recklessness of a foolish heart.
Memphis loosens his grip on my legs until I slide from him and stand on my own, his arms caging me as his eyes work from one of mine to the other.
“I will win for you, Liv. I promise you. And I will never lie.”
His words squeeze at me, and my lips tremble because I’m afraid.
“You need to promise me that you won’t break me,” I say.
I breathe in deeply to center myself, and Memphis lets his hands slide down the doorway until they’re resting at his sides. His chest rises quickly with deep, but rapid, breaths as his eyes seem to ache, a heaviness drawing down his face.
It’s as if my words were familiar, like some spell he’s been waiting to hear, and now that I’ve spoken them, somehow everything has changed. I start to panic internally, wondering if I’ve messed up—if my pride, my failures, my parents’ terrible character has ruined me and doomed me never to feel anything good again.
Before I can speak, though, Memphis steps into me, his hand gentle against one cheek as his lips press a tender kiss to the other. I tremble as he lingers there in this small, intimate space. I grip at his shirt once more in desperation. His other hand covers both of mine, and he squeezes them, halting me. I would feel like one of those desperate groupies I used to see cling to my dad if it weren’t for the tender way Memphis’s lips were now brushing along my ear.
“I have been waiting to kiss you like that since I saw you looking down at me from that window up there, and goddamn, Liv, was it ever worth the wait.”
He breathes out and his shoulders relax, but his grip on my hands remains steadfast. My eyes flutter closed, and I nestle my face into the crook of his neck, somehow feeling safe by this small little inch I’ve removed between us.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Don’t be.” His answer comes fast, and I feel a slight shake to his head that matches his words. Here, in his arms, sheltered between his body and his patched-together home, I feel strangely at peace. It’s the first time since I answered a Seattle apartment door to a throng of vicious and invasive gossip reporters that I’ve been able to fill my lungs completely.
“This…whatever it is we are doing or becoming,” he says, pausing as his chin lifts and his hands finally free mine so they can both caress my face. He presses a kiss to my forehead, then holds my gaze to his. “This is too important for doubt. I want you, Liv. I want you because when I touch you I feel it in every square inch of my body.
I remember where you were, how you smelled, every small sound you made. I have dreamt about the time I simply touched this hand.”
He reaches down and threads our fingers together, then brings my knuckles to his lips, holding them there while his chest fills once more.
“And I will remember tonight,” he says, stopping as his mouth curves on one side and his shoulders lift just a little. “I will remember the almost, and I will wait for the what ifs. Because this is too important, and you don’t get into the ring with someone unless you know who they are and how they can hurt you. I will wait for you to really know who I am, Liv. I’m confident in the man I am. I’m not those men upstairs who disappointed you, but I understand your guard. And I will wait until you believe I won’t break that promise. Breaking you, Liv, would be one of the biggest regrets of my life. And I just don’t do regrets.”
I feel weak, maybe even dizzy. My head and heart work together to process what Memphis said with what he’s doing as he steps back down to the ground and tugs me toward him where our hands are still attached. He kisses my head again then steps around me, letting our hands drop apart.
“It’s late, and we both have full days tomorrow. And you have now missed two lessons.”
My lips pucker into a timid smile, my cheeks burning from embarrassment. I feel like a tease, but he’s right—this mountain I’ve made between me and a man like him is built on a lot of shit from my past. I want him, too. I want him in a way that’s not temporary, and if that ever has a chance, then I need to start forgiving some really old wounds, and letting go of a whole lot of hate.
“Goodnight, Olivia,” he says, his brow raised flirtatiously. I shake my head and roll my eyes at my formal name. I start to slide my feet toward the corner of the building and Leo’s back door, but then it hits me—I still don’t know.
“What were you…before Memphis?” If I’m going to know him, I need to know every bit. Even the parts he doesn’t like to share.
He smirks and looks down at his feet, kicking the back of his heel against the metal first step to his place. When he glances up at me, a few strands of hair fall along his forehead. This is how I want to dream of him later.
“Michael Parrish. They named me at the Catholic church that helped place abandoned babies at the precinct. It was on Parrish Street.” He shrugs, and the ease of it all lets me exhale.
The corner of my mouth curves as I fall back toward the edge of the building.
“I like Memphis better,” I say, satisfied with the way his eyes settle on mine.
I turn around and walk back into one of the suffocating homes that made me how I am, but I feel the remnants of electricity everywhere. His mouth—his skin and hair and chin. His breath and eyes. It’s invaded me. But that part he let me see inside—his character—that’s what inspires me most.
Memphis Delaney is rare. He also might be worth it.
Ten
Memphis
There’s this not-so-secret secret in the boxing world about sexual frustration helping a fighter in the ring. Maybe it’s a myth. Whatever the fuck it is, it’s done something to me today. My fists are bombs. Fast and wicked, though—not sluggish and heavy. They land with precision, they land with speed, and they sting and punish. It’s like I can see things before they happen, my body working one heartbeat in the future.
It isn’t that I held out. It’s not that at all because that…that…knocked me on my ass for the entire night. Liv put on a show, taking her time undressing just out of reach from my gawking, pathetic eyes. The smirk on her lips when she stepped in to close her blinds crawled down my chest and stomach and there was no stopping it. There are fantasies, and then there are the things I imagined last night.
Morning greeted a new man, however; one with an edge on everybody else. It’s like suddenly I have something that I’m fighting for—something real, that I can touch and hold and feel next to me one night. I’ve always fought for myself and for the Delaney name that I want to earn, even though there isn’t a living soul who cares about that legacy. I know, because I’ve looked. My dad was it, a man with no living parents and no siblings, no aunts or uncles. He cruised the world with friends just like him. Their names are mysteries. They all may as well have been made up.
“How’s that eye healing?” Leo spits, taking a potshot at me as an excuse to back up and pull the pads from his hands. I’m hurting him today, which pleases him, because he thinks he knocked me into shape just in time. The irony of how very opposite it is only makes my lungs feel stronger, like tired isn’t a thing.
“Three stitches, old man.” I pull off my gloves and slide through the ropes to grab my water. I would give anything for a beer right now. Hydration has been my weakness before, though. This time I started weeks before the big match.
“Memphis, I’ve got a few things to show you…minute?”
Angela likes to announce her entrances. She always has, and I used to think it was just a personality flaw—a need to draw the room’s attention to her and whatever it is she’s wearing. Last night clarified a lot of things, though. Angela and Leo play into each other’s worst parts, all to put on little shows for each other. You’d never know from the outside, and I’m nearly positive Liv has no idea.
It’s so clear now, though. The reason she dresses up the way she does, when the only person she really sees outside of that house is Leo. His blatant sexual harassment is practically expected, and a week ago, I wondered why Angela had put up with it so long. They’re performing. That’s what this is. She’s showing off for him, reminding him she’s here, of what he can have but can’t tell, and he’s putting on a show to make everyone believe something like this could never be possible.
Liv could have just as easily caught them yesterday, though. They’re getting careless, and that makes me wonder if they want to be caught—if they want Liv to be the one to do it.
It’s all so sick.
“You see that outfit in one of those red-carpet movie star photos in one of your magazines, Ange?” Leo whistles then purrs like a tiger, and when I glance to Angela, she rolls her eyes.
“He’s such a fucking pig. He’s good at his job. It’s why I keep him,” she says to me as we move to the table and chairs tucked in a corner. She takes a seat, then gestures for me to join her; so I do.
“That’s not the only reason you keep him around,” Liv says behind me.
I’m a little surprised to hear the words myself. They were in my head, but they came out in Liv’s voice. When I turn, Angela is better at her reaction—she’s perfected the performance. I’m still new at this.
“Oh, I suppose you’re right, him being family and all,” Angela says, laughing it off and waving a hand at her daughter, who is still paused at the vending machine a few steps away from us.
“I kinda meant that he owns half of everything,” Liv says, a tiny smirk inching up her lip. I wonder if only I notice it.
“We both know you don’t give a shit about family.” Liv mutters that second part as she walks away, but it makes it to Angela’s ears. Pretending she doesn’t hear isn’t something she’s practiced, and Liv’s words make a direct hit at her pride.
I kinda wish Liv didn’t do that, though. She gets so easily sucked into their game. This is her baggage, and words like that don’t help her free herself from the burden she carries around at all. They just make it heavier.
“We have some sponsorship opportunities. You thought the purse was big for Vegas? Wait until you see some of these deals I’ve been able to nail down. First, you are going to be getting some wardrobe items.”
I must look confused, because Angela pauses when her eyes meet my face and she begins to laugh.
“Suits, maybe a few nice shirts and ties, pants. Good lord, you would have thought I signed you up for Miss America by that look on your face,” she says, sliding over a packet of material that I flip through and pretend to care about until I get to that last page—the one full of numbers.
“Hey, Liv?�
�� I call out for her, and Angela noticeably shifts in her chair.
I fold the top pages underneath while I run my thumb down the grid of dollar signs and decimals, doing my best to figure out how the percentages add up. I’ve been diligent with every deal I’ve ever made, and it’s because of the system I grew up in. Good guys are always balanced out by the bad, and products of the state foster system see a mix of both. It makes me question everyone when it comes to money.
“Yeah?” she says.
I feel her next to me before I hear her. She purposely stood close enough to allow her hip to brush into my elbow. I want to let my hand fall free to the side so I can run it up the leg of her blue leggings that contour around every muscle and curve decorating her. It would make her uncomfortable, though, and that’s why I don’t. It’s the only reason.
“I’ve never really had someone around to ask about these things. You think this looks like a good deal?” I turn the pages slightly so she can see them better, and Liv glances from me to her mom. A few breathless seconds pass before she finally looks down at the contract.
“I don’t really deal with things outside of the operations. You should maybe have a lawyer—”
“If I win this fight, I’ll get a lawyer,” I cut in. “For right now, I can afford asking a favor of…” I let the end of that sentence trail off, letting her imagination insert the word. I could have said friend, I could have said woman I’m seeing; it could have been girlfriend or colleague. The way her lips purse, but bend, signals that she knows she gets to fill in that word.
Whatever smile was there, fades when she looks back at her mom, and I glance over just in time to catch the hard stare she’s giving her daughter. This isn’t about questioning what Angela does for me as a manager; it’s about letting her daughter lend advice on something that she’s territorial about.
It’s stupid. And it’s a big part of the problem.
Liv clears her throat and slides into the open chair to my right, her eyes flitting to me a few times before she gives all of her focus over to the numbers. She holds a finger by one line of digits for a few seconds, closing her eyes and moving her lips silently like a human calculator. It takes her seconds to do what I spend a long night and three Red Bulls doing on legal pads and phone apps.