Shadowboxer

by Cari Quinn

  “She set up the fight with Costas.” I didn’t phrase it as a question because I already knew the answer.

  “Yeah. She swapped it out with your fight and booked him instead.”

  “Why did he agree? What the hell kind of man is he?” One that didn’t give a shit about gentlemanly ethics, that was for sure. Costas had built his reputation on getting down and dirty with anyone who asked. He was a talented fighter, I’d give him that. Mia ranked as a strong competitor against anyone, male or female, but I didn’t like how easily she had convinced him.

  Maybe she’d used other ways to persuade him…

  As quickly as the sneaky thought arose, I shut it down. Nope, no way. This wasn’t about that. Whatever her reasons for wanting to fight Giovanni in my place, I didn’t believe she’d resort to anything shady to get him to agree to a bout. Didn’t want to believe it.

  “I don’t know why he agreed, but he did. I was stuck pulling doubles for the last few nights. If I’d known she’d go right down there and corner him—”

  “It’s not your fault. She’s a grown woman. She makes her own decisions.”

  “Looks like the time you spent bare-assed helped you get your Zen back. I thought it was gone forever.”

  “Yeah, well, dealing with my parents for the last week tested it, that’s for sure. But I’m trying to find some new perspective.” I was trying. Slater didn’t need to know I hadn’t succeeded yet. “I appreciate you calling them when I got hurt, man. Even if they drove me crazy.”

  “I didn’t call them. Mia did. I told you when you first woke up, but you were still pretty out of it.”

  I pushed a hand through my hair, grasping for the memory. “Yeah, that’s right. Sorry. Between the concussion, the eye thing, being dehydrated, and all the other crap they said I had wrong with me, they pumped me full of so many drugs and electrolytes it’s amazing I don’t glow in the dark. I still feel like ass.”

  “And aww, you have a stuffy dose.”

  I had to laugh at his imitation of how I sounded. “She really called them?” Mia hid her uncertainty and anxiety behind bravado most of the time, but calling my folks out of the blue had to have been hard.

  “She did. And she freaked out about getting to you after you were hurt. She held your head in the ring, man. Got your blood all over her and she wouldn’t wash it off.”

  I nudged Vey from his sleeping position draped over my feet and swung my legs down so I could brace my elbows on my knees. I’d known I would have to see her soon, no matter how I tried to resist. Part of me had been relieved she hadn’t returned to the hospital, because that justified my desire to stay away. I didn’t mean to her what she’d come to mean to me in such a short amount of time. That was reality.

  But what Slater had said skewed that reality, turning it just enough to change the view entirely.

  “Then there was your jacket,” Slater continued. “She demanded I get it dry cleaned before I came to the hospital then she took off running toward Brooklyn Presbyterian. I seriously thought she’d run all the way to you. She was like a woman possessed. Or a woman in—”

  “No. Don’t go there.” It might be a joke to Slater, but my suddenly racing heart wasn’t fooling around.

  I could pretend all I wanted that I could turn off my emotions. When she wasn’t near me, I could rationalize this—whatever it was—being about her hot as hell body and the fact that I’d never met a woman even a fraction as fierce. We had definite chemistry. If I was conscious, I was thinking about fucking Mia. End of story.

  But that didn’t explain the rest. I wanted to hold her after we were together. Would never grow tired of holding her. Hell, just holding her hand made me happier than I’d ever been, and that scared the shit out of me.

  I wanted to battle her demons. No, fuck that. I wanted to kill them for her—and I was beginning to think I wouldn’t just stick to the ones in her mind. I’d kill for her in reality, maybe because no one else ever had. She’d been on her own for so long, and so had I.

  Neither of us needed to be alone anymore.

  Every cell of my body recognized her as mine. My Mia. And I didn’t care about timetables or common sense or why her, why now, when it hadn’t ever been anyone else. Even her horrific background bringing out some long dormant protective instinct inside me didn’t explain my feelings. Nothing did, other than the possibility that my gut and my heart were a hell of a lot smarter than my head.

  I couldn’t wait any longer to see her. To look in her eyes and know for myself if what had happened on Friday had changed anything for us, or if it had just pushed us even further apart.

  “I gotta go.” I shifted Vey back and rose unsteadily to my feet. Now the room was revolving. Just lovely. I was really enjoying all the new special effects from my busted eye.

  “All right. Take it easy, man.”

  I clicked off and scrolled through my dialed numbers, selecting one I’d called a little more than a week ago.

  Three rings later, Kizzy picked up. “I thought you were dead.”

  Her flat tone made me laugh. If I didn’t watch myself, I’d end up liking this chick. “So sorry to disappoint you.”

  ”I figured you had to be to let that little shined-up prick get the best of you. What the fuck’s your problem?” Then she made a sound like she’d snapped her fingers. “Ah, I got it, Foxy. Too much sex. You know you’re supposed to hold back before you fight.”

  “Believe me, that’s not my problem.”

  Apparently my dry tone amused her, because she barked out a laugh. “She makes you work for it, though now she might take pity on you. You got an eye patch?”

  I glared at the silky black item I tugged out of my jeans pocket. “Yeah. Haven’t worn it yet. Looks fucking stupid.”

  “Dude, you’ll be swimming in babes. Chicks love pirates.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. Gently, to avoid jostling my eye. “I’m a pirate if I put on an eye patch?”

  “Nah, but we can pretend. Assuming the size of your sword is worth the fantasy. Hang on.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear as she bellowed a series of commands heavily laced with expletives like you silly fuckflap and you scrawny ballsucker.

  She came back to the phone. “These people don’t want to work.” She sighed. “I don’t put up with laziness on my watch.”

  “You’re not at the gym?”

  “No. I’m at Misty’s House of Beauty. Some of us have to work for a living, Foxy.”

  I tried to imagine Kizzy in anyone’s house of beauty and gave it up as hopeless. Not that she wasn’t attractive, but her hair needed its own zip code.

  “Uh yeah. I’ll let you get back to it. Can you just tell me—”

  “She’s working today until six. Then she’ll be at Mark’s. She has a fight in two weeks so we’ll be training hard. Which means if you swagger in there and try to distract her, I’ll pop out your other eye and use it to play pool. Capiche?”

  “How about if I walk in and observe quietly?”

  “That is acceptable.”

  I grinned and hung up then called Carmine. I’d been out of work over a week already and I needed to get back to it. He put me on the schedule for Sunday and I settled on the couch for some one-eyed web surfing. After an hour, my good eye was blurry and I’d found another school with a combination online/residency program in sports medicine that sounded promising. I emailed to get more information then fed my dog and rolled over to take a nap.

  Getting hit in the head taxed a man.

  By the time I woke up, darkness had fallen and the dog was whining to go outside. Out we trudged into the cold. I had trouble getting my bearings thanks to being half blind, so instead of hauling ass all over the neighborhood, Vey got to pee on the garbage cans three houses down and I got to come back inside and take a shower.

  The shower didn’t relate to my eye. That had to do with me visiting Mia. Though the whole double vision thing added an extra element of fun in the shower, I hav
e to admit.

  I walked into Mark’s at eight. The stupid eye mask had itched the entire train ride over. Normally I would’ve walked, but I still wasn’t used to dealing with my new vision issues and the dark made them worse. The glare of the gym lights wasn’t much better.

  I didn’t see Mia or Kizzy and had to suffer through even more stares than before. This time they were even above the neck. Happily, I ran into that hard-edged chick who’d called me a dumbass about five times in a five minute period. She was riding an exercise bike while flipping through some girly mag, though when she caught sight of me she had some choice words. Most of them were in Spanish.

  Two loops of the workout rooms later, I was ready to call Kizzy and ask her if Mia had cut out early. I could’ve called Mia herself, but I preferred the middlewoman.

  Maybe the knock on the head had harmed me more than I thought.

  Then I saw someone kicking the holy hell out of the heavy bag, jerking it on its chain, and I grabbed a seat a few feet away to watch.

  Mia made a complete circuit of the bag, kicking her way around its circumference. She wore black shorts and a white tank, and she’d braided her hair. Sweat ran off her pale skin in rivulets. When she tired of kicking, she started punching, coming in high before jabbing low, her back muscles flexing with each strike.

  What seemed like hours later, she stopped to guzzle a bottle of water. She drank half then dumped the rest over her head. The water soaked the front of her shirt. And when I say soaked, I mean her freckles showed beneath the thin fabric.

  I swallowed, hard. Up until that point I’d done my best to view her coolly, as one might survey a competitor. Judging strengths, identifying weaknesses. But with that one action, my mind took a one-way trip to dirty town.

  She went back to kicks. Her enthusiasm had clearly waned and her movements slowed, exhaustion taking over.

  Time for me to step in.

  I rose and leaned against the wall, crossing my arms over my chest. “You call those kicks?” She didn’t react to my voice at first. So I tried again. “You aren’t kicking from your hips. There’s way too much force coming from your calves.”

  She propped her hands on her thighs and bent at the waist. “You’re out of the hospital.”

  Kizzy had sounded happier to hear from me. “I am. Miss me?” I’d meant the question to sound teasing and instead it came out as a rasp.

  Mia rose and tugged off her gloves, tossing them on a nearby mat. Water still dripped from her hair and starred her lashes. I didn’t look any lower. I couldn’t take seeing the wet outline of her nipples. I knew my weaknesses.

  She strode toward me and I didn’t move, every muscle going tense at her approach. Then she folded herself into my arms, hugging me so tightly that my body went numb with relief. I couldn’t speak. All I could do was hug her back.

  “You smell the same.” The choked sob in her voice had me tightening my hold.

  I lowered my face to her hair. “So do you.”

  “Yeah, like sweat.” She gave a little hitching laugh and gripped a handful of my hoodie as she peered up at my face. “Your jacket…”

  “Slater told me it got bloody. It doesn’t matter,” I said gruffly, giving in to the urge to rub my thumb over her cheekbone. She looked so fragile and so strong at the same time. I didn’t know how both could exist in her simultaneously, but they did.

  “He took it somewhere and they tried to get it clean. They didn’t do a great job, so I went to another place. Then another.” Another hitching laugh, softer now. “Finally the third guy tried this experimental spray and it’s almost like new.” She shocked the hell out of me by stepping back and offering me her hand. “Want to see?”

  Don’t fuck this up. Be cool. “Sure.”

  She led me down the hall to the locker room and bit her lip. “Wait here.”

  I propped my foot against the wall and waited until she came back out, coat and backpack in hand. She handed over my jacket without a word.

  I checked it over, surprised to see only faint questionable smudges on the front of the jacket. I didn’t know how bad it had been, but this just looked a little more weathered than when I’d given it to Mia. “Seems like they did a good job.”

  “Yeah. They really did.” She fiddled with her wet braid. “I want you to take it back. It’s yours.”

  “It’s not mine anymore.”

  “Tray—”

  I laid my finger over her lips. “You didn’t call me Fox.”

  Rather than toss back some retort, she kissed the tip of my finger. The jolt reverberated through my entire body.

  “Your name is Tray.” She swallowed hard. “Just like mine is Amelia.”

  My standard response nearly sprang to my lips. No, it isn’t. You remade yourself into Mia. She’s who you are now. But unless I was prepared to tell her what I knew, I had no right to do anything other than listen. And since this was the first time we’d had anything remotely close to a breakthrough, you can bet your sweet ass I wasn’t saying jack shit. Maybe that made me a coward.

  Fine. I’d admit it. It definitely made me a coward.

  “I like Mia,” I said instead of everything else I should.

  She gave me a hesitant smile. “You never knew Amelia. She was a cheerleader.”

  I gasped. “No.”

  “Yeah. Even worse, she was co-captain her freshman year. My school had the middle school and the high school in one building so I got on varsity early.”

  I caressed her cheek with my thumb. “This entirely changes my opinion about you.” Words poured from me, ones I couldn’t stop. “I don’t want you to fight Costas.”

  Her smile faded, blinking out like a light. “It’s not your call.”

  I disagreed with that with every fiber of my being, but I’d tried insisting before. Tried demanding. In the end, the only way I’d find a place in her life was by letting her live it, her way. No matter how much I hated imagining her in the ring with that asshole, it was her choice to make.

  Swallowing hard, I circled my thumb over her velvety skin once more. “I could argue the point up and down, but I’m not going to change your mind, am I?”

  “No. You’re not.”

  “Then I guess I’m going to have to live with it.”

  She gazed down at the jacket she clutched to her chest. She’d gone from holding it carefully to fisting the material. I doubt she even realized. “Can we go somewhere private?”

  I’d come down to the gym partially to light into her for fighting Costas. Now that was the least of my concerns. If she insisted on fighting him, I’d make sure she was ready. I’d will her to beat him if I had to. But this…this was so much more important right now.

  “Anywhere.” I covered her hands with mine.

  “There’s something…” She blew out a breath. Took another. Shut her eyes. “I need to tell someone. I need to tell you.”

  The tremor that went through me made her eyes pop open. I hadn’t expected this day to come for a very long time, if ever. Our accelerated timeline was holding true.

  What if I couldn’t be the man she deserved? Christ, I hated the “what ifs” and they just kept coming.

  “Tray?” Already she was retreating, that cool mask of indifference slipping over her features. I hated that mask. I wanted her—the real her—so badly.

  I could do this. I’d be whoever she needed. I’d love her that much.

  “Yeah.” Gently, I tugged the jacket out of her hands and held it open for her to slip on. She hesitated, either because she didn’t understand the gesture or maybe she was surprised I didn’t expect her to shower first.

  Considering what she was about to tell me, I figured the shower could wait until later. I’d probably need one too.

  “It’s cold out. You’ll catch a chill.”

  She slid her arms into the sleeves, still smiling faintly. She’d smiled more in the past few minutes than ever before in my presence. “You already did.”

  “Hospital crud.”
Right on cue, I sneezed.

  She winced when I cupped my eye. God, that mothereffer hurt.

  “Carly’s at the gym tonight so if you want to come over, I can hook you up with some chest rub.” She blushed as if she’d offered me a blowjob. “I mean, if you want. You don’t have to. We can just go to a coffee shop. Or somewhere else.”

  “Mia.” Her nerves would’ve been adorable if I hadn’t been caught between a migraine and a wave of nausea myself. And only one of those things had a physical basis. The other was purely for her and what I knew she’d relive in order to tell me something I’d so selfishly unearthed on my own. “Let’s go to your place. I’ll just pick up Vey on the way if it’s all right. If I’m going to stay over…” I shifted my feet uncomfortably.

  Way to go. She hands you an olive branch, you offer to screw her. Stay classy, dude.

  Although that wasn’t what I’d meant at all, I knew how it sounded. I wouldn’t have blamed her for telling me off.

  But she only murmured her agreement and took my hand. Her fingers were so soft and cool around mine. Her trust, no matter how tentative, made my breath stutter.

  Just like that, she went from borrowing my heart to flat out owning it. It was hers to do with what she wished. Hers to stomp on or hold.

  Hers to break.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Mia

  We were both quiet on the train ride to Tray’s house to get Vey. As soon as we arrived, the puppy tried to scale my legs. We’d bonded over the weekend. I loved dogs. Loved this dog already.

  “Hey there, boy.” I knelt to plant kisses all over Vey’s soft gray and black cheeks. “You want to go on a sleepover?”

  Tray came to a halt. “It was you.”

  “Hmm?”

  “You came here while I was in the hospital. You cleaned.”

  Since he said it almost accusingly, I pressed my face into Vey’s fur to give myself an extra moment. “Yeah. I didn’t go through your stuff, if that’s what you’re worried about. I just had some extra energy and I wanted to do something. So I fed the dog.”