“God…Lucie,” he cried, his muscles tensing and quivering with his release. And as he poured himself into her body, she imagined him pouring his love into her heart as well.
Chapter Seventeen
Reid held a sleeping Lucie against his body and willed himself to remember every detail. How she fit perfectly in the crook of his shoulder. How, in the middle of the night, she hiked her leg all the way over his hips as though she was afraid he’d somehow escape if she didn’t. The way her hair draped over his arm and her hand rested lightly over his heart.
They’d made love and talked for hours last night, exploring each other in ways he’d never done with anyone else. Even after realizing he loved her he’d known his time with her was limited, but he decided to let his fantasy play out in the shadows of the night. He’d wanted to stay awake, to take advantage of every second he had with her, but eventually they fell asleep in the early predawn hours. Now the morning sun streamed through the bedroom window, chasing away the fantasy and leaving him with the ugliness of reality.
“Hey there.”
The scratchy sound of her morning voice made his heart skip a beat. But when she lifted her head from his chest with an impish smile, it might have stopped altogether.
She rested her chin on the top of her hand and seemed content to watch him. Those long, spiky lashes hung at half-mast and her lips were swollen from sleep, or maybe still from his kisses and bites mere hours ago. Her dark hair was tousled and even looked snarled in some places, but it framed her face beautifully.
“Hey there, yourself. Did you sleep well?”
Her smile went from imp to Cheshire cat. “Incredibly well.” She inched up and placed a tender kiss on his lips before snuggling back into his side and groaning. “Can we take the day off and stay in bed?”
She couldn’t have had a better request to drive home the fact that he didn’t live by normal standards where the occasional day playing hooky was okay. He shut his eyes and placed a kiss on the top of her head, giving her one last squeeze before letting her go and getting out of bed.
Retrieving his jeans and yanking them on, he said, “Sorry, sweetheart, but I don’t get days off, and we slept in pretty late already.”
“Ugh, I suppose you’re right. Okay, here’s the plan,” she said, crossing to the bathroom. You go for your run and by the time you get back I’ll have already done my yoga, downed the necessary amounts of caffeine to make it through the day, and made my phone call.”
Reid picked up his shirt and looked over to the open bathroom door, where he heard the water running in the sink. “What phone call?”
She emerged from the bathroom in a short robe, brushing her teeth and smiling. Pausing long enough to speak with a mouthful of toothpaste she said, “I have to cancel my date tonight with Stephen before I forget. Can you imagine if he showed up and then I canceled?” Then she added in a fun singsongy voice, “Awk-warrrrd,” as she returned to the bathroom.
He indulged in the idea of her calling off her date with Mann…But only a selfish asshole wouldn’t want the woman he loves to be happy, even if it couldn’t be with him. Shit. Clearing his throat he prepared to say the hardest three words he’d ever spoken.
“You shouldn’t cancel.”
She poked her head around the half-open door, her brows creased in a frown. She pulled the toothbrush from her mouth again. “What do you mean I—” Light blue foam dripped down her chin. “—ick. Hold on.”
When she ducked back in to spit and rinse he caught a glimpse of himself in the dresser mirror and almost threw a punch to shatter his reflection.
“What do you mean I shouldn’t cancel?”
He turned to see her standing several feet away, holding her arms across her chest as though trying to give herself a supportive hug. She was preparing to hear what he suspected that loser ex of hers had said to her. Preparing to get hurt all over again.
Reid swore a hot knife plunged deep into his gut when he looked into those big, dove gray eyes of hers. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t have this discussion yet. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what kind of discussion it needed to be. He had to get out and clear his head, a.s.a.p.
Crossing to her in just a couple of strides he placed a chaste kiss on her forehead and did his best to sound upbeat. “I just feel bad for the guy is all. I mean, only one date and then dumped on the day of the second?” Reid put his hand over his heart. “As a fellow dude, let me just say, ‘Ouch.’ Eating dinner with the man a second time just seems like a small price to pay to prevent an ugly suicide.”
She did a combo chuckle-snort that made his heart ache, and then pushed at his chest playfully. “You’re too much. Go for your run and we’ll talk when you get back,” she said before heading for the kitchen.
Reid blew out a big breath. Disaster averted…for now.
He changed into his running gear and was pounding the pavement in record time. The heat of the midmorning scorched his body as he pushed it harder than usual. The rhythm of his shoes striking the ground wasn’t meditative for him today, but instead felt like a countdown on a ticking time bomb. Counting down the seconds until he had to present Lucie with his decision.
The idea of leaving her made his stomach turn and his muscles knot up.
Before he’d gone to see his dad he’d been toying with the idea of asking her to come back to Vegas with him. And although he knew his dad was just a bitter old man with a narrow point of view, Reid couldn’t discredit everything he’d said.
Lucie definitely didn’t fit the description of the kind of woman who loved the lifestyle of a fighter. His mom had fit into that category, but not Lucie. She liked her somewhat small city and being one of the few PTs in the area, which gave her the opportunity to really get to know her patients. And even though she was one of the most disorganized people he’d ever met, he’d come to learn that she liked routine. She liked knowing what to expect and when to expect it. Trying new things and spontaneity—two things Reid took incredible pride in—were not easy for her.
Uprooting her to Vegas would be a huge culture shock for her. Sure, she’d be able to get herself on a routine like she was here, but the routine would include almost never seeing him when he was preparing for a fight. He spent the majority of his time training, cutting weight, and studying how to beat his next opponent. There was little time left in his daily routine other than falling into bed, only to get up at the crack of dawn the next morning to do it all over again.
And then there was the traveling, the publicity. The bullshit stories the tabloids printed. All of it was a bitch on relationships. He’d seen it happen with several of the guys. The stress caused fights and the women turned bitter, resenting the sport that consumed all their men’s time, and eventually, the men themselves.
It would kill him to see Lucie’s sweet disposition turn into something jaded and resentful, all because he couldn’t stand the idea of living without her. Just because she was perfect for him, didn’t mean he even came close to being right for her.
She deserved so much more. She deserved to come first not only in a man’s heart, but in his life. Someone who could take the occasional day off just to lie in bed with her, who had a successful career that didn’t involve the possibility of getting concussed or choked out.
Someone so very not him.
As he rounded the last corner to the apartment he slowed to a walk, procrastinating as much as possible. He anchored his hands on his hips and drew in deep breaths as if they could cleanse him of the sickness taking root in his gut. But with every step he took it only grew worse. He’d be lucky if he made it through his shower without dry heaving over the toilet.
For the first time in his life, Reid was dreading a fight.
…
Lucie sat at her kitchen table, head resting on one hand while the other drummed the theme song to The Lone Ranger while waiting for Reid to emerge from his bedroom.
After his run he’d given her a halfhearted wave on his way to the
shower and now he’d been in his room for at least twenty minutes, which was about eighteen minutes too long to change into a pair of shorts and T-shirt. So now she was, of course, paranoid. It seemed being in love had turned her into a neurotic teenager. Yippee.
Finally she heard the door down the hall open. Picking up her pen she pretended to concentrate on the Sudoku puzzle in front of her that she’d randomly written numbers on. Thank goodness they’d never discussed math puzzles or he’d know she was full of shit. She couldn’t do one of those correctly if her life hung in the balance.
When she pretended not to realize he stood in the doorway of the kitchen—she’d die before she let him know how crazy his absence made her—he cleared his throat.
She looked up from the newspaper with a smile…that died when she saw the bag in his hand and the look on his face.
“What’s going on?”
“I got a call from Butch. Scotty’s back, so he wants me to come back to camp to finish my training before the Diaz fight.”
“Oh.” Ignoring the twinge of slightly crushed pride from the insinuation that she couldn’t do as good of a job as the other guy, she looked at the situation logically. “Well, that’s good. It’s important you get back to your normal routine and people.”
“It has nothing to do with your capabilities, Lu. You’re an excellent PT. You’ve already worked miracles with my shoulder. I couldn’t have been this successful this quickly with anyone else. I mean it.”
“Thank you.” Pride: soothed. She offered him a warm smile. “I understand, really. And since I still have the vacation time, I can finally see Vegas!”
“I don’t think that’s such a hot idea. I’m not going to have time to be with you like I had here. It’s a totally different ballgame there. I won’t be able to take you around. You’d be stuck in my place all day, every day.”
Something was wrong. Was he really that worried that she’d be upset he wouldn’t have the time to entertain her? “That’s okay. I can go sightseeing by myself during the day.”
He brushed a hand forward over his hair and dragged it down his face. “I’ll be too tired at night to spend any time with you, Lucie. It’ll be like not seeing me at all.”
No. No, no, no. He was not doing what she thought he was doing. She stood up and crossed her arms, narrowing her eyes in warning. “What the hell is really going on here, Reid? You’re trying awfully hard to get me to stay home. With really lame excuses, I might add.”
“Look, please don’t make this any harder. You know I care for you, but this”—he pointed back and forth to each of them a couple of times—“was only temporary. Remember?”
“Remember? Yeah, Reid, I remember. I also remember last night when all of that changed. You’re not honestly going to stand there and deny that, are you?”
He didn’t say anything for several minutes—seconds? Hell, it could’ve been an hour, she didn’t know—with nothing moving on him except the ticking of the muscles in his jaw. So he was aggravated. Big flipping deal. She was about to go nuclear.
At last he cut through the silence with words that could’ve been samurai swords for as sharp as they were. “Last night was great. Just like all the other nights. But the arrangement is over now. You wanted Mann to notice you and be interested—which he has, and he is—fulfilling my part of the bargain. Your part of the bargain to get me healed in time to fight for my championship belt has also been fulfilled. So that’s that.”
“No that’s not that! You’re running away like a damn coward, that’s what this is. Not any bullshit excuse about following the terms of our so-called deal.” Adrenaline buzzed through her veins, making her slightly lightheaded, but she just grabbed onto a wooden chair for balance and pressed on. “Things changed between us, Reid. You know it, and I know it.”
“I’ll admit things went from clinical to personal, but it would’ve been impossible for it not to. Sex with someone you care about is personal. But that’s not enough to base a long-term relationship on, you know that.”
Their voices were rising, and somewhere in the back of Lucie’s mind was the warning that much louder and she’d have Mrs. Egan knocking on her door. Or worse, calling her brother. But she didn’t care.
“What about love, you big dumb jerk? Isn’t that enough? Because I do. I am totally and utterly in love with you!”
The world fell silent. Not even the ticking of the clock on the wall dared make a sound as the two of them stared at each other. Maybe time had stopped. Maybe this was one of those moments where an angel would suddenly appear to give her sage advice or the chance to rewind life a couple of minutes so she could take back the words that made her more vulnerable than she’d ever been in her life.
His eyes were strangely cold, much like she imagined they looked as he stared down an opponent before the ref called for the fight to begin. She’d never seen them like that before, and they were killing her. Then he spoke and she realized she was wrong…
“You loved your ex-husband, too, Luce. Look what that got you.”
It wasn’t his eyes that ended up killing her, but his words.
“Get out,” she managed around the lump in her throat. She blinked, trying to keep the hot tears at bay. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”
No apology. No hesitation. He spun on his heel and six steps later was out of her life. For good.
Chapter Eighteen
Weeks, not years. Reid had to remind himself it had only been a few weeks since he’d walked out of Lucie’s apartment. It felt like a lifetime ago. Sometimes, when he was alone at night, lying in his California king—which now seemed obnoxiously empty after loving the way Lucie wrapped herself around him in her smaller queen—he wondered if he hadn’t dreamed the whole thing.
But then he’d remember their last night together. The way she responded to him as he made love to her slow and gentle like he’d never done with any other woman. Like he’d never do again with any other woman.
Their month together had been all too real…and now his life without her was all too empty.
As soon as he returned to Vegas, he’d fallen into his usual routine of training sessions mixed in with some specialized PT sessions with Scotty. Though the man was an excellent doctor and Reid’s shoulder was as close to perfect as he could get it before the big fight, he’d practically had to gag himself so he didn’t verbally compare everything Scotty did against Lucie’s techniques.
He thought about her constantly and he caught himself mentioning her practically every time he opened his big mouth. It got to the point where he decided it was safer to rely on nonverbal communication like grunts. Hell, it had worked for cavemen, why not him?
It was the day before the fight. Physically, he was golden. He was in great shape, his shoulder was decent, and at the weigh-ins earlier that day he registered at a perfect two-oh-five.
Mentally, however, he’d never felt more fucked up. Normally this close to a fight the only thing running through his mind were mental images of him overtaking his opponent. But the only image running through his mind now was the stricken look on Lucie’s face when he purposely ripped the heart from her chest.
Reid growled, his frustration quickly escalating to pure anger, until he was yelling like a battle-ready Spartan. He picked up a medicine ball next to his feet and hurled it across the gym at the wall where a couple of his teammates stood next to his imaginary target.
“Whoa!” Brian said as he pushed off the wall. “What the fuck is your problem, Andrews?”
The right thing to do was apologize and walk it off. Too bad his Right Thing-ometer was irreparably damaged. “Maybe it’s you, Harty,” he said as he got in the man’s face.
“Or maybe you’re pissed off ‘cause you’re too much of a pussy to go after the girl you keep talking about till you’re blue in the balls.”
Reid’s brain went on instant standby mode as his body took over. The last thing he remembered was seeing red and shooting in at his friend’s hips
, taking him down to the mats with a mighty roar to match the sound of the blood pumping in his ears. The next thing he knew there were arms everywhere peeling him off Brian and men shouting different things all at once so he couldn’t decipher anything.
“That’s enough! Break it up and hit the showers before I add a few more hours of cardio to drain the piss and vinegar outta ya’s.”
Butch. Finally a voice of reason. Reid shook off the last few hands holding him and went to gather his things.
“Andrews! In my office, now.”
Reid spun on his heel and glared at his coach. “I don’t need a lecture. Cool my heels. Got it, message received. I’m going home.”
“Hey! I don’t give a good goddamn what message you received. Get your ass in my office.”
Clenching his hands and grinding his teeth, Reid stalked into the coach’s office and dropped into one of the guest chairs. Butch followed him in, closed the door and sat in the chair next to him, leaning forward with forearms on his knees.
“What’s eatin’ you, son?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Reid said as he crossed his arms. When all the old man did was stare at him, he threw an arm out in the direction of the gym. “I’m trying to focus on my fight and they wanna bust my balls about shit. They know better than that, Coach.”
“I saw what happened. You nearly took Harty’s head off with a medicine ball.”
Reid turned his head away, unable to look into the sky-blue eyes of the older man. He knew he’d acted like an ass—and he’d apologize to Brian later—but he didn’t know what to say.
“Reid.” The tone Butch used told him he’d wait there all day until Reid gave him what he wanted. With a resigned exhale he turned his attention back to his coach. “When you came back from Reno I was impressed with your physical condition. I was worried that without your normal routine you’d let yourself get soft around the middle, but ya did good and came back to us healthy as a horse and strong as an ox.
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