by J. K. Coi
The pain and regret were crippling, and she wished there were someone she could turn to for advice. Her mother? If only, but Bria just couldn’t. What she really needed was someone unbiased, who could be neutral, like a judge or a mediator, except that despite all Bria’s talk about dividing assets and separating, this wasn’t a legal matter. This was a matter of the heart, of the soul.
There was one person.
She picked up her cell phone again and texted Julie.
Are you at the hospital with Dez?
If she was, then Bria wouldn’t bother her.
Almost immediately, she got a ping back.
Not tonight. At the club. What’s up?
Bria paused. She’d been to the fight club that Julie and her brothers owned only twice. Boxing had been a big part of her husband’s life growing up, and he liked to go there to watch the matches every once in a while, but she’d never seen the appeal in gathering around a stage to watch a pair of full-grown men beat the living crap out of each other like uncivilized Neanderthals.
She decided to go. Julie was the only one who would understand the agonizing push and pull inside her, and despite the fact that Julie had been Leo’s friend first, Bria trusted her and knew she would be discreet.
She remembered the fight club as a pretty casual place, so she changed into jeans and a jacket and took a cab.
When she got there, she didn’t recognize the big bouncer at the entrance, but he looked her up and down with appreciation before stepping aside. “Welcome to the Dungeon, sweetheart,” he said with a charming grin that showed off cute dimples in his otherwise intimidating mug. “If you want to wait for me at the bar, I’ll come and buy you a drink on my break in about”—he pulled a cell phone from his back pocket and glanced at the screen—“five minutes.”
She smiled and shook her head. “I’m just here to see Julie. Do you know where I can find her?”
He pointed to the back of the massive space. “Up the stairs.” Bria thanked him and turned to go. “But if you change your mind…” he called after her.
“I’ll be sure to find you,” she answered with a chuckle.
She made her way through the impossibly thick crowd. The noise was deafening. A combination of loud music heavy with bass, and the roar of voices fighting to be heard.
The boxing ring was in the center of everything. It was empty now but all lit up, and the crowd was thickest around it, like eager children standing in line at Santa Claus’s podium in the mall at Christmas, waiting for the big guy to arrive.
There was another bouncer standing guard at the bottom of the industrial-looking staircase at the back of the room. “This area is off-limits,” he said, barely sparing her a glance.
“Can you tell Julie that Brianna is here to see her?” she asked, realizing that she’d never actually responded to Julie’s text to warn her that she would be coming. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be an imposition.
The guy took a much closer look at her and pulled a walkie-talkie from a clip at his waist. He murmured into it. After a pause, he stepped aside. “Go on up,” he said.
She thanked him, which he probably didn’t hear over the background noise.
Julie waited for her at the top of the stairs. “Bria, what are you doing here?” She looked over Bria’s head into the club as if scanning the crowd. Her expression was tight.
“When you said you were here, I had to come. I need to talk to someone. It’s a bad time, isn’t it? You’re working, and I’m interrupting. I should have asked before showing up.” She was rambling. “I hoped that maybe you’d have some time to talk, but I’ll just go.”
Before she could turn back around, Julie took her wrist and ushered Bria into the little office and closed the door. It was quieter inside but the sound still filtered in. In fact, it vibrated through the floor right up her legs.
“When you texted me earlier, I never imagined that you were going to drive all the way down here,” Julie said. “I could have met you for lunch tomorrow or something.”
Bria twisted her hands together. “No, it had to be tonight. I would have chickened out by tomorrow and canceled on you. Besides, I didn’t want to take you away from time spent with Dez.”
“You really helped last night at the hospital. Thank you.”
“How is he doing today?” she asked.
“He was conscious this morning for a good couple of hours.” There was a thread of worry in Julie’s voice, overriding the positivity of her words. It was apparent that the road to recovery was still going to be a difficult one.
“If you need anything…” Bria offered.
“Thanks, but what is it that I can help you with?” That was a dismissal if Bria had ever heard one.
Bria followed Julie’s distracted glance out the big windows to the club floor below. There was something going on in the boxing ring now. Actually, it looked like a fight was about to start. One of the opponents had climbed in and was walking around the perimeter with his arms outstretched, presumably to get the crowd riled up. Tattoos crossed his shoulders and traveled down his spine to the waistband of his black shorts. His hair was buzzed short to his skull and so blond, his head looked bald.
“Are you sure this isn’t a bad time?”
“It’s just…” Julie grimaced. “You didn’t know that Leo was here tonight, did you?”
Alarmed, she swung around. “Here?” she croaked.
Julie kept looking back out the window, her gaze wary and apologetic. “Bria, just don’t worry. He’s going to be fine…”
“He’s what? What do you mean, he’s going to be fine?” Her heart started racing, pounding in her chest so hard it seemed to echo in her ears. Leo only boxed at the gym. Not in glorified bar fights while a couple hundred people cheered for someone to get killed. “Is he…fighting?”
She turned back to the window, her gaze drawn directly to the center of the room. The second opponent had arrived. He stood at the edge of the ring, bending to duck under the ropes. Her breath caught as he straightened.
Leo. Leo naked from the waist up. Leo in the middle of a boxing ring, standing there cracking his neck from side to side in the opposite corner from a muscle-bound meathead twice his size, who sneered at him like he couldn’t wait for the bell to ring so he could jump over there and tear his face off.
Bria bolted out of the office. She almost tripped and went tumbling down the iron stairs in her haste but grabbed on to the handrail in time to right herself. As she raced past the bouncer still standing guard, Julia called down over Bria’s head. “Get Mac!”
He pulled out his walkie-talkie again, but Bria didn’t stop. He reached out to restrain her, but she jerked away. Julie yelled, “It’s okay, just get Mac.”
The crowd closed in tightly against her, a wall of arms and legs like vines crawling up out of the floor to keep her away. The bell rang, and she stopped short. She was too late; the fight was starting.
Someone took her arm. She whirled around. It was Mac. She sobbed, and surprisingly, he put his arm around her shoulders and drew her in tightly to his side. He leaned down. “Why don’t you come back to the office with me until this is over?” he yelled into her ear.
She shook her head. She should. She didn’t really want to see this, but she couldn’t just turn around and walk away. Couldn’t. She squeezed Mac’s arm. “Get me up there.”
He grimaced like he doubted the wisdom of her request, and he was probably right, but she didn’t care. “You don’t want to see this—”
She pushed herself free of him and struggled to get ahead. “I have to.”
She heard his muttered “Fuck” behind her but then he took her hand again. She stubbornly stood her ground, and finally, he nodded and moved them forward. He kept one arm around her and used the other to sweep aside the bodies yelling and cheering in front of them, until the stage was right in front of her face.
Mac stayed glued to her side. She felt him sway against her as someone jostled him, but nobody else t
ouched her.
Her first glimpse of Leo in action was him feinting to avoid the wide swing of his opponent. He countered as he was still righting himself again, with a swing of his own. Tattoo guy managed to avoid it.
The crowd was more like a mob now, the kind that gathered to watch a hanging. It swelled and bulged with avid glee when the first hit landed. It was Leo. He’d caught his opponent with a hard clip to the chin, following that up before the guy could recover with a direct shot into his gut. It bowled him over and back a few steps, but he came up quickly and lunged for Leo with a chilling roar of fury.
Leo managed to avoid the first swing, but the second caught him hard in the ribs.
Bria screamed; she couldn’t help it.
Leo immediately swung around and she jammed her fist into her mouth, but it was too late. He’d seen her. His gaze widened in shock, and he took a step forward.
“Watch out!” she yelled. Beside her, Mac tightened his grip on her shoulder.
Leo turned back to face his adversary, but he still took a hit to the face, and his head snapped back so hard, she swore she heard the crack from where she stood. She groaned and her stomach leaped into her throat, but she refused to cry out again, worried about distracting him.
Tattoo guy pressed his advantage. He was quick and strong, and pushed Leo back into the ropes. He started hitting him with both fists in the ribs as Leo put his arms up and tried to block.
Why would he put himself through this? What had possessed him to lock himself in a square cage for the sole purpose of being pounded on?
Of course she’d always known that Leo liked to box; she’d picked him up at the club often enough over the years. She’d seen the bruises and the scraped knuckles…but that was exercise. This was…
This was punishment.
Chapter Thirteen
The hits kept coming, but all he could see was Bria’s horrified expression. Why was she here? How had she known?
He hadn’t even known what he planned to do until he’d walked through the door earlier and demanded that Julie arrange a fight with whoever was on the docket for the night. She’d balked. He hadn’t been in the ring for a real fight in a long time, and tonight’s fighter was Nelson—the biggest, meanest dude she had on the list.
Mac had seen the manic tension in him and tried to talk him into taking out his frustrations on a speed bag instead, but Leo wouldn’t listen. He’d climbed into the ring with every intention of staying there until he was completely empty. Empty of this feeling of defeat and the heart-ripping agony tearing him up inside.
He grunted and jerked as Nelson got him with another hard shot to the ribs. This wasn’t going well.
“Leo!” Bria screamed his name. He opened his eyes. She was there, looking worried. She winced as he took another punch, and another. Looking so small standing beside an unrelenting Mac in the crowd, but she wasn’t lost in the throng. He would always be able to find her, no matter how thick the crowd, how dark the shadows, how murky the waters.
He blocked the next shot and fought to get out of the corner, away from the ropes. He hit back, strength coursing through him. Suddenly, he just wanted this over. He met Jared’s every punch with a harder one of his own until he could sense the bigger fighter’s strength waning. Leo’s last shot put the man down.
He stood back and waited for Jared to get back up, but after a tense moment, the guy spit out his mouth guard with an oath and shook his head.
The bell rang to signify the end of the match, but Leo was already across the mat and ducking under the ropes.
He jumped down in front of Bria and nodded his thanks to Mac as someone handed him a towel and Mac shoved it at Leo before stepping aside.
Leo hesitated before touching Bria, expecting anger and disgust and maybe even fear, but she threw herself into his arms, her purse thwacking him in the back of the head as she did. He closed his eyes and buried his face in the fresh, clean scent of her hair, but the crowd was closing in on them both, and he couldn’t bear for any of them to touch her.
He pulled her with him across the club and through the double doors leading to the back rooms. Mac was following them, but he stayed behind when Leo took Bria into the fighters’ changing room.
She stopped as soon as they were alone, pressing her hand to her chest and breathing heavily. He stopped himself from pulling her into his arms again, aware that his hands were still trapped in his boxing gloves and the sweat had yet to cool, leaving his skin slick.
“Jesus, you shouldn’t have seen that. What are you doing here?”
“How long have you been doing this?” Still-damp tear tracks marked lines on her cheeks, and her voice cracked, making him wince. “The fighting. How long?” she repeated.
“This was the first time,” he admitted with a sigh, tearing into the tapes of one glove with his teeth.
“Why?”
Shit. “Why do you think, Bria?” The fight was supposed to give him an outlet for his frustration and pain, but it had also been a way to atone for his failure. He flung the glove into the open locker where he’d stashed his bag earlier and started on the other.
She stepped closer. She put her hands on his arms. She whispered his name. His gut tightened with need, and it had nothing to do with the adrenaline still surging in his bloodstream.
“Don’t.” He clenched his eyes shut and took a step back, although it killed him to retreat. It killed him to admit that he’d failed in the most important fight of his life—the fight for his wife. “After this morning, I finally get it, okay?” he bit out. “You’ve made your feelings crystal clear this entire time, and I didn’t listen. You accused me of needing to win at all costs, and you were right.”
This was the time. If he didn’t get this out here and now while he was still winded from the fight, he might not be able to do it later. Pride or self-preservation would get in the way. “I owe you better than that, so I’m listening now.”
“You are?” she whispered.
“I want to give you what you need. I want to give you the ability to heal and move on.” The words tasted bitter and got stuck in his throat. “And I’m willing to accept that you have to do it without me, but you’ve got to stay back, or all this restraint I’m fighting to show you is going to be for nothing.”
Her gaze widened. “You’re giving up?”
“Fuck, Bria. You haven’t given me any damn choice. I can’t keep being the only one here standing up for us, fighting for us.”
“Is that what you think you’ve been doing?” she snapped, crossing her arms. “Because the way I see it, you’ve been fighting so hard…not to keep me with you, but to push me away.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Is it? I needed my husband by my side. Instead, I got a robot, and every time I tried to reach you to prove that I wasn’t alone feeling what I was feeling, I felt the wall go up. Why? What are you so afraid to show me? Whatever it is, it shouldn’t be easier to get into a boxing ring and have the crap beat out of you than telling me how you feel.”
He threw a glove, and they both winced at the startling leather smack as it hit the wall. “I’ve done the best I can to be strong for you through this ordeal. I thought that’s what you needed. Why do you keep pushing? Why do you want to see me unravel so fucking badly?”
She frowned. “Oh, Leo. That’s not what I want at all. This is not about me rejecting your strength or trying to make you fall apart just so I’m not alone on this nightmare roller coaster.” She wanted to reach for him but couldn’t, not until they did this thing, not until she tried one last time. “I get it; you’re a rock. But, Leo, rocks are hard and cold. I don’t need a rock. I need a man.”
His jaw tightened. Moisture beaded across his brow, and she didn’t think it was from the fight. She realized that this conversation was ten times more difficult for him than any boxing match, but she still didn’t understand why.
“When I realized that our little girl would never call me Mama, or screa
m with laughter as you blew raspberries into her belly, all I wanted to do was talk to you about how beautiful she would have been,” she whispered, her voice breaking on the word “beautiful.” “I wanted you to tell me that she would have had my hair and eyes, and your stubborn nose. I wanted the two of us to experience the joy of knowing her, together…even though we never would.”
He jerked back and shifted to move past her, but she grabbed his arm. “Please don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me here alone again.”
He stiffened. “Bria,” he rasped, his hard mask crumpling.
She squeezed her fingers into his clenched fist, forcing him to release the death grip he held on himself and hopefully on his emotions.
“I’m sorry I was so hard on you,” she said. She’d expected trust and vulnerability from him, but hadn’t admitted that his strength and dedication also had worth. “But I want to understand. Can you trust me to help ease your pain, like you’ve helped ease mine?” It was true. As withdrawn as he’d been, she’d always known that he loved her, and she’d always known he would climb mountains for her. She only worried that they were on separate mountains, moving farther away from each other.
“Bria, I…” He took a deep breath and clutched her hand tightly. “Every day I imagine our little girl growing more and more like you. She’d have deep brown eyes and a laugh like sunshine. I can see her standing on one of the kitchen chairs to reach the counter, trying to bake cookies with you, and I can feel her soft breath on my face as she jumps into bed with us in the morning to wake us up.”
She closed her eyes to see it all and couldn’t help the sad smile pulling at her lips. “I can almost hear her begging you to come seek as she hides behind your desk in the office, and tearing around the house like a whirlwind. She would have been a holy terror. I probably wouldn’t have been able to keep up with her.” Bria leaned against him, her soul settling as Leo’s arms came around her. Not strong and still like a statue, but shaking with the depth of his emotion.