The Aftermath

by R. J. Prescott

  “Of course I can help,” Sunshine told him, looking at the fire service letter he’d handed her and over all the past test papers.

  “A lot of these questions are just a matter of common sense. You have to get used to reading the questions quickly and accurately, making a decision about your answer, and moving on to the next one without panicking. There’s also a technique in working out how much time you can afford to spend on any one question. We can go over some papers until you feel comfortable with your answers, then we’ll have a go at them under test conditions.”

  Tommy smiled, looking like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “I knew you’d know what to do,” he told her, making her blush. Even from someone she knew as well as Tommy, she still wasn’t good at accepting compliments.

  “Why don’t we get started tomorrow?” Em suggested. “I’ve got classes until five p.m., but if you can meet me later in the evening, we can make a start.”

  “I should be able to meet you by five-fifteen. We can do it in the library by your school, can’t we? Or will they kick people like me out?” he asked seriously, making Em giggle.

  “I don’t know what you mean by ‘people like you’ but no, they won’t kick you out. Education is for everyone with a thirst for knowledge, Tommy.”

  “I just figured, you know, with the tattoos and all, that I wouldn’t be welcome in a place like that.”

  “Dr. Matt Taylor led the Rosetta project to land a probe on a comet for the first time, and he’s covered in tattoos. If the European Space Agency will let him do that, I’m pretty sure the maths department at UCL can handle you using the library to study.”

  “No shit, really?” he said, pulling out his phone. No doubt to see if Em was right about this doctor guy. I didn’t know his name but I was pretty sure Sunshine was right. I wouldn’t put it past her to make up shite to help Tommy feel better, but she made me watch the news now—something I never did before—and I do remember her getting excited about the Rosetta thing and the bloke with all the tats. The enormous, shitty-looking clock on the wall of our kitchenette counted down the minutes before I had to leave for the gym. Both of us hated the clock but it hid a patch of mold on the wall that we hated even more. A part of me was itching to get between the ropes but the other part of me knew what this fight meant. It was the fight of my career, and it meant relentless, backbreaking training that would take me away from my girl every day for months. Sunshine made me soft, and I couldn’t afford soft. Today was the day I went to work. Em looked at the clock the same time I did and knew what it meant.

  “It’s not forever you know,” she told me, holding the door open for me to leave.

  “Hold up, I’ll walk with you,” Tommy told me as he gathered up his stuff. Reaching for her, I threaded my fingers through her silky soft hair and pulled her toward me for a kiss.

  “I just want to make sure you’re okay,” I admitted to her.

  “I’m fine,” she reassured me. “I’ll get to come and watch you train when I’m not in class, and I’ll miss you over the next few months, baby, but this is life-changing. You’ve got an opportunity to show what I, Danny, and every one of your brothers know. That you are the best fighter this country has ever seen. And when you’re done, I’ll still be here. The woman you get to grow old with when all the fight is gone.”

  “I’m Irish, love. That fight will never be gone, but I promised myself once that I would conquer the world for you, and that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna be a legend, and when they ask me how I did it, I’m gonna tell them it was all you.”

  “I love you,” she told me with tears in her eyes.

  “Love you too, Mrs. O’Connell.”

  “For fuck’s sake. You love him. He loves you. We all love each other. Can we go now? We’re only going to the fucking gym, you know. He’ll be back tonight.” Em rolled her eyes at Tommy’s interruption but I knew why he’d done it. I ragged on Tommy a whole lot, but he worshipped my wife. Loved her like family and would lay down his life for her. He knew that no matter how much she put a brave face on it, the next few months would be hard on her, on all of us. I needed Tom to keep her safe, to keep her cheerful, to be her friend.

  “Come on then, arsewipe. Let’s see how fucking fast and cocky you are tomorrow after a few rounds with me.”

  “Done,” he agreed, and after kissing Em on the cheek and reminding her about tomorrow, he was bounding down the stairs next to me.

  “Thanks for that, Tom. I really don’t know how this shit with Frank is going to go down, but I need you by Em’s side through this. It’s the only way my head’s gonna be in any place good for the fight.”

  “That missus of yours is stronger than people give her credit for. She may well be the strongest one of us all,” he told me gravely.

  “She has to be,” I told him.

  “Listen, you do what you have to do, and I’ll take care of your girl. Ma knows what’s going down. Da’s giving me a couple of weeks off when the trial is on so I can go with her, and Ma and the family will most likely be there too. Being alone ain’t something Em’s gotta worry about.”

  “I owe you big, I know that. Not just for this but for last time as well.”

  “There’s no debt. You’re like my brother, but I ain’t doing this for you. I’m doing this for her.” He pressed my buttons and deliberately wound me up, but when it came to taking care of my wife, there was no better man I could have picked than Tommy. I knew then that I’d let him get at least one hit in when we were sparring. No more than that though. When he got one in, he usually didn’t shut up about it for days. Walking through the heavy oak doors of Danny’s gym, I breathed in the smell of home and smiled. This place was my sanctuary, my haven, and my church. Every good thing that ever happened to me, I could attribute to these brick walls. In the corner, past all the kids knocking about on bags and doing their circuits, sat the old, weathered boxing ring in all her majesty. Before this thing was over, she would bring me to my knees and remind me that, no matter how much I thought I knew about fighting, she would always show me I had more to learn. Walking over there, I placed my bag down on the floor and ran my hand across the canvas reverently.

  “You ready for this, son?” Danny asked, coming out of nowhere.

  “I think so,” I told him.

  “There’s no ‘think’ about it. If you’re ready—be ready. I’m gonna take you to the limit of what you know your body can do and keep going. When I’m done, Thor himself would crap lightning bolts at the thought of getting in the ring with you. That boy, he beat you once. No doubt about it. But a good fighter knows when to quit. A great fighter doesn’t know what the word means. When you’re seconds from the bell, you keep fighting. When you can’t see out of either eye cause they’re busted up so bad, you keep fighting. If you can do that, if you can give me that, I’ll make you world champion. Now I’ll ask you again, son. You ready?”

  “Yes, sir,” I answered with a big fuckin’ grin. As his speech went on, one by one the guys moved to the edge of the ring to hear what he was saying.

  “Well, then,” said Danny.

  “Let’s get to work.”

  “I got something for you that’s gonna help,” Tommy chipped in. Jumping down from the edge of the canvas where he’d been sitting he ran flat out to the office and back again. “Here,” he said, handing me a clear case with “Con” scribbled in black marker across the front.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “I made you a CD. It’s like the Rocky theme and a load of other songs to train to.”

  I grinned broadly at him. “You made me a mixtape. Does that mean we’re going steady?” I said, making Kieran laugh.

  “Fuck you!” he said. “I try and do something nice and this is the fucking thanks I get.”

  “No this is great, really. Thanks, Tom,” I told him sincerely.

  No longer caring, he walked toward the changing room, flipping me the backwards bird. “Whatever, loser,” he shouted back.<
br />
  “Let’s get this show on the road,” said Kieran, grabbing the CD off me. We changed quickly and walked back into the gym just as the opening bars to the Rocky theme song sounded through the gym speakers.

  “It might be cheesy, but it definitely pumps you up,” Liam pointed out.

  “Fucking told you bitch, didn’t I?” said Tommy, smirking. Kieran grinned at me, and I gave him a rare grin back. We all felt it. We were the underdogs, the misfits, the castoffs who wouldn’t amount to anything. Temple had state-of-the-art training facilities, and we had the Rocky soundtrack and a beat-up old gym. But we had each other. We had the fire and the drive to win, to succeed. I wasn’t alone in this. We were brothers, and we were bringing it to the fucking table.

  * * *

  The first day of serious training is always the worst. I was always in good shape but a few weeks of eating takeaway food and Em’s baking had taken its toll. The six-pack never went anywhere but my body knew the difference. My diet was so strictly regimented I didn’t dare even open one of the tins at home for fear I’d be licking cake crumbs out of desperation. I was up at 5 a.m. and running by 5:30. A five-mile jog started off the day, followed by bag work, circuits, core training, sparring, and more running. I landed more punches an hour than I cared to count. Danny pushed me to the absolute limit of what I ever imagined my body could do.

  The worst part was the mental game. Every day he waited for me to quit, to tell him that I’d had enough and needed to rest, and every day I took pleasure in disappointing him. I came pretty close a few times to caving. There were days when my arms hurt so much that I could barely lift them. I had enough energy at the end of the day to stand under the blissfully hot spray of the shower, and I let water and gravity do the rest. There were times when Em came into the shower with me. These were painful and pleasurable in equal measure. She’d massage her fingers gently into my scalp, making me groan. Despite the fact that I could barely stand some days, my cock apparently hadn’t received the memo that energy was in short supply. Every single time she stood in the shower next to me, water beading down those beautiful pale tits of hers, my cock was rock hard. After staring hard at her gorgeous body, I succumbed once and sucked one of her pert, pink nipples into my mouth and hated myself for it. I was seconds away from sinking my dick inside her and damning the consequences when, with a moan of complaint, she reminded me of the sex ban.

  This time Danny had imposed it from the first day of training, and I swear to God, he knew when I’d so much as thought about sex. The day after I’d copped a feel with Em, he pushed me harder than ever before, scowling the whole time. I swear to Christ he acted as though Sunshine really was his daughter. I tried really, really hard not to be naked with Em again or to watch her bend over or brush her hair or laugh or do any one of a million fucking things that turned me on when it came to my wife.

  When it came to my training, Em was as fierce as Danny. Maybe more so. He’d created a monster. Although she’d been back at school for a while now, there were often days where her classes would finish at three or four and she’d head straight for the gym just in time to see me hit the mental wall of pain that every athlete hits at some point in his training. That point where you feel like everything is about to shut down and you just can’t go on. Around four o’clock every day was that time for me. And my cure? The one thing that got me past the pain barrier? Sunshine.

  “Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five…” Earnshaw called out the numbers as I repeated each hanging sit-up. My legs hooked over the back of the crossbar and my hands behind my head meant that I was completely upside down between each sit-up. I’d done fifty this morning at the start of training, no problem. Now I felt like puking.

  “Forty-six, forty-seven…” that quiet, gentle voice I’d know anywhere took over the count and I no longer thought about the pain. I thought about impressing my wife. What was she wearing? How had her day been?

  “Forty-eight, forty-nine…” With me still upside down, she gently held my head and kissed me deeply. With Em there, everything was instantly better. Unhooking myself from the bar, I dropped down and kissed hard, telling her without words just how much I missed her. Once upon a time, Danny had frowned on having Em in the gym. Once he realized how much of a motivator she was, she became a permanent fixture. Now it was an unspoken rule that I had five minutes alone with my wife when she arrived. It was precious little of the day to be spending together but I’d take whatever I could get when it came to Em.

  “Hey, Sunshine. How was your day?”

  “Really good. I’ve been doing a couple of hours with Nikki, and she’s totally getting a hang of the module now,” she told me gleefully. My wife was a fucking genius when it came to math. Well, when it came to most things actually. I loved seeing that dreamy, spaced-out look she’d get when she was trying to work out some freaky-hard equations. How one girl could have the same look reading a romance novel as she did doing math baffled me. But I didn’t need to work out what made her tick, or understand any of the shit she was talking about when it came to her degree. I just loved her, and that was all that mattered. I didn’t give a shit that she was smarter than me; most people were. She was the brains and the beauty, and if I was the brawn in our little family, I was happy with that. As long as she was happy too, that’s all I cared about.

  “You ready for tomorrow?” I asked.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be. They’ll be digging over all that shit in court soon anyway so I guess it’s better to go over it first with someone who’s on my side at least.” Tomorrow was her first rape counseling session, and Danny was ending training at five o’clock so I could take her. It still stuck in my gut that I couldn’t be with her in court and as much as I burned to fight Rico Temple again, I suspected that this was something else I’d have to learn to live with. I tilted her face up to look at me.

  “We’re gonna get through this, baby. Whatever happens, whatever shit goes down, it’s me and you forever now.

  Chapter 13

  As I sat in the cheap plastic chair, I imagined that this was how families of patients in the hospital felt. My girl was next door crying over shit I didn’t think I could stand to hear and tearing open old wounds I had no way of healing. She’d had a nightmare last night, and it was fucking brutal. I felt like I was standing in the corner of the room as Frank raped her. Fucking unable to do anything other than to listen to her endure it. If there was anything more emasculating than experiencing that, I didn’t want to know what it was.

  The counselor was one set up by the Crown Prosecution Service. Apparently they weren’t just there to help Em deal with what had happened, but to support her through the trial. Given the brutality of what Frank had done, they’d offered her the option of giving evidence by video. I wished desperately that she’d chosen that option, but I should have known better. As terrified as she was, my girl was too strong for that. She’d read somewhere that juries were more supportive of a victim when evidence was given in person. Something about seeing and hearing their emotional responses humanized them.

  Everything that was going down now terrified me and pissed me off in equal measure. Here in this plastic chair I might as well have been back in the changing room at the fight, unable to process any of this shit. The only thing inside stronger than hate and rage was my love for Em and the overwhelming and fundamental need to protect her. So instead of beating the crap out of someone, I sat here in this shitty plastic chair watching the clock tick by painfully slowly. Waiting for my wife. I ran through everything Father Pat had told me about how to control my temper. The things he taught me didn’t change who I was or what I felt but they helped me pretend to be a better man, so by the time the door in front of me opened, I was ready to deal with whatever condition I found Em in on the other side. Her face was a mess, and it looked like she’d spent the whole hour crying. She blew her nose loudly into her tissue as she walked out followed by her counselor. The second I saw her, she was in my arms, her face burie
d in my chest.

  “You must be Cormac. I’m Nora,” she said to me smiling warmly. She was an older lady, maybe me ma’s age, only unlike me ma, she wore very little makeup and had a kindly look about her.

  “Nice to meet you,” I told her without offering her my hand. They were wrapped firmly around my girl and weren’t going anywhere.

  “Will you be bringing her back on Wednesday?”

  “As long as she wants to come, I’ll be here,” I told her.

  “Well, I’ll see you both then. Have a safe journey home.”

  “Thank you, for everything,” Em told her, twisting in my arms.

  “You’re welcome,” she said with a smile.

  “See you soon.” I tucked Em into my side and held her tightly all the way down the stairs.

  “How was it?” I asked.

  “Brutal, like I expected,” she admitted. “But good too. Cathartic, I think. I thought it would hurt to talk about it, and it did, but it also felt like I was taking some of the power away from him by telling someone what he was really like.”

  I swallowed hard and squeezed her arm in support as she blew her nose again. I was right about it being hard to hear. Em was dealing a lot better than I was. We walked outside, and I automatically scanned the road for a taxi. There was no way I was letting her get on a bus like this. When Em elbowed me, I realized I didn’t need to bother. Across the road from us, Liam and Kieran leaned against Liam’s truck chatting. We hurried across the road to meet them.

  “What are you doing here?” Em asked, throwing herself in Kieran’s arms, then Liam’s for a hug. I knew exactly why they were here. Giving Kieran a fist bump and back slap, I spoke quietly to him while Em spoke to Liam.