I’ve got to get a hold of Gracie plus now I have to deal with the media shit storm, or just ignore them entirely.
But as I walk away I can’t ignore what I see and I get goose bumps when I realize what just happened.
Grady and I just had the most important talk of our lives…the one that will determine our future…on that same park bench where Robin Williams and Matt Damon sat in Good Will Hunting.
Life is imitating art.
But will it continue because like Matt Damon I’m going to follow my love. I just hope Grady’s going to come along for the ride as his sister and I share our journey through life together.
CHAPTER 13
Gavin
I pull up to my driveway at sunset and the events of the day playback in my mind.
All the things that happened today flew by. That whole period from the weigh-in until I left Grady sitting alone in Boston Common is a blur.
After that I had my manager call over to The Globe to locate Gracie only to be told they don’t give out personal information over the phone.
So I stormed over there myself and they did give me the information that I wanted, but it wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
She’d quit.
And to make matters worse I gave them another story. The press said I’d totally lost it after I stormed into a media organization, and The Globe had a front row seat to the whole thing.
Little did they know that was only the beginning.
I went over to Hassan’s camp, by myself, and showed up threatening to kick everyone’s ass if they didn’t tell me where Gracie was.
Hassan had closed up his camp with the fight imminent, but I was able to have a few words with the security guard there and the security guard at the hotel where he is staying.
It pays to be from Southie, that’s for sure. Those blue-collar guys remember me from the time I was coming up in the fight game, and they were happy to give me all the information they had.
But none of it led back to Gracie. They hadn’t seen her and didn’t know anything about where she might be. Equally as important they assured me Hassan didn’t either. Before he closed up camp Hassan had read the morning paper like everyone else. The security guard saw him do it and heard him make a comment about how he’d use the information at the morning weigh-in. Thankfully it was nothing more than that.
If Hassan or his henchmen knew where she was, or laid a finger on her, we would have had our fight a day early and it sure wouldn’t have been sanctioned nor would it have been in an octagon.
It would have been on the street where anything goes. And I would have gone right ahead and ripped him apart limb by limb if he’d done anything to Gracie.
I don’t care if I’m already in breach of my contract or anything like that. No amount of money, or ticket sales, or any of that stuff matters.
All that matters is finding her and making sure she’s safe.
I swung by her apartment for the second time but she wasn’t there.
I don’t know where else to look at this point. I even tried all the places her brother and I used to hang out as kids, and I swung by the library just in case. I know she grew up reading books there.
But still nothing.
I round the curve on my motorcycle and prepare to stop at the gate shack in front of my house in Brookline.
And just as I type in the code she steps out of the bushes.
I quickly park the bike and wrap her up in a big hug.
“Where were you?” I ask.
“Here. Waiting for you. What happened?” she says.
“My phone is dead.”
“I was worried. I couldn’t reach you.”
“I was worried about you,” I say and I give her a big kiss.
We get back on my bike and ride up to the house where we park and immediately go inside and then straight to the bed.
Where we both collapse from exhaustion, but I can sleep peacefully because she’s finally in my arms…right where she belongs.
CHAPTER 14
Gracie
There’s a strange peace in the house when we both wake up the next morning, but in no way can I say it’s unexpected.
I’ve never slept better than I did last night. Being in his arms, feeling the warmth of his body behind me and those few breaths on the top of my head that I felt just before I passed out comforted me. He makes me feel safe, secure, and without worry.
And although we hadn’t planned for this moment to come until a few days later we’re ready to deal with it now, as we leave his house in his Mercedes G-Wagon and head to The TD Garden where the fight will be held.
My phone is filled with text messages from The Globe asking me to come back, and his phone is filled with text messages from his camp asking where he is.
“It’s funny,” he says.
“What’s that?”
“Everybody is looking for us, but none of it matters because we already found each other.”
His hand comes across the center console and he places it in my lap. I take his hand in mine before placing both of my hands in his palm. Yes, they fit. I think he could basically close one of his hands around both of mine.
I caress his hand gently and can’t help but notice the scrapes, and scratches, and cuts, and calluses that cover it.
This is a modern day gladiator. A warrior. A real man who knows what he wants and will fight to get it and keep on fighting to protect it.
I start to explain to him how my boss released the piece early yesterday. How I didn’t know.
But as I do his hand simply comes up from my lap and he places it on my cheek and just says, “It’s okay.”
“You’re not angry?”
“No. How could I be angry when I got to wake up next to you this morning? And now I get to look into your eyes and see how happy you look? There is no anger here, only love.”
He said love. I get tingly and kind of nervous at the same time and my face pulls back a bit because it was just so powerful.
“Yes, I said it. I love you. And after tonight I’m going to show you just how much I love you…for the first time” he says.
“Won’t you need to relax after the fight?”
“I’m Zen-like. I’m good.”
“But…”
“But nothing. He won’t so much as lay a finger on me. He’s going to come out overaggressive with that right hand. It’s the one that was twitching at that press conference that you walked into. It was the last thing I needed to know about the fight, and my MMA career, before you walked in and flipped my world upside down.”
“The last thing about your MMA career?”
“This is it. Tonight. I’ve got a new reason to live now. There are no challenges for me to pursue.”
“I don’t even have a job and at this point I might be considered unemployable.”
“By who?”
“By all the other media outlets that know I quit.”
“When one door closes another one opens.”
“I hope so.”
“I know so. Don’t worry. The media landscape has changed. The walls the gatekeepers spent years erecting are crumbling. People create their own content these days as you know.”
“But I don’t have a following online.”
“You may not have a following yet, but that’s not important. The whole world is looking for you and they want to know your story.”
“Only because of you,” I say.
“And because of you we have a story to tell.”
“But I already told that story.”
“And now we have those followers. The people not just here from Boston but from all over the world. People who we can positively influence. Kids lives we can change. We can create our own narrative and it can change the world. We can build MMA gyms to give kids a chance to get off the street and build self-confidence. Boys and girls. And you can be in charge of the media, marketing, and PR. We’ve got a budget. And that’s just one idea. There are so many more.�
��
God I love this man. We’ll sit down and talk about everything after the fight for sure, but he’s already thinking of ways we can work together to make our lives, and the lives of others where we grew up, better.
“And of course we already know who the first member of our gym, if that’s the route we go, will be.”
“Who?” I ask.
“Our first born.”
“What if it’s a girl?” I ask.
“Even better.”
“Even better?”
“Get her in there young and get her self-confidence going in the right direction right away. Show her she can do whatever she wants. Be whatever she wants. Just let her try. If she doesn’t like it then that’s totally okay. We can let her try softball, piano, running, cooking, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is making our community better, giving more kids a chance to pursue their dreams, and the most important thing…doing it together.”
“Together,” I say as he strokes my cheek and I lean into his gigantic palm.
“Champ! Champ!” someone says as they tap on the windshield. He rolls it down and signs their autograph, but never takes his eyes off of them.
Then he takes what they gave him, which appears to be an MMA program for tonight’s events, and hands it to me.
“What’s this for?” I ask.
“You’re in luck, kid,” he says. “You’re getting the very first autograph of the person who is about to become the most famous journalist ever to live.”
“Who’s that, champ?”
“You’ll see…real soon. Just don’t be putting this up on eBay, all right?”
“Never. That’s not how we do it in Boston.”
“No it’s not. We honor and respect our own.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy who appears to be about high school age says.
“How would you feel about an MMA gym where you could train round the clock.”
“Ahh man. That’s my dream,” he says.
Gavin winks at me as I carefully sign my name on the program and hand it back to him.
He hands it back to the boy and then they shake hands.
“Win this one for us, McGregor,” the boy says. Gavin gives him a fist bump and then his window goes back up.
“For us,” Gavin says looking into my eyes.
“For us,” I say.
CHAPTER 15
Gracie
The fights leading up to the main event are entertaining and many come down to the wire therefore putting the crowd into a ruckus well before the main event.
But now it’s time.
Hassan makes his entrance to some song I’ve never heard before and the stadium is almost completely quiet as most of the stadium turns their back to the stage.
The crowd is packed with people wearing white and green and they’ve all come to see one man and one man only.
“I’m Shipping Up To Boston,” by Celtic punk band Dropkick Murphys bellows out from the speakers and the crowd goes absolutely berserk as Gavin comes from the tunnel.
I’m ringside and I watch as Gavin and his posse make their way right towards me.
I’ve never felt so much energy in my life. You hear sportscasters use the word “electric” to describe the atmosphere, but the term always seemed a bit overdone and impossible to me.
Until now.
I feel like I’ve stuck my finger in an electrical socket with all the charge and none of the bad parts.
I feel like I can do anything…and I’m not even the one about to fight a man who wants to absolutely destroy me.
By the time Gavin enters the ring people are stomping their feet in rhythm to chants of, “Mc-Greg-or! Mc-Greg-or!”
I can’t help but to join in and the unity that I feel being surrounded by the hard working blue collar people I grew up with makes my eyes water.
And I know Gavin’s going to deliver.
The ring announcer goes through the formalities and before I know it both men are in their corners waiting for the opening bell.
And once that bell rings they both move quickly towards the middle of the ring, but in a calculated way.
Gavin moves in closer and sticks his chin out unprotected, practically begging Hassan to punch him in the face. He’s baiting him and as I saw in my research leading up to this point it’s not the first time he’s implemented this strategy.
But still it’s hard to watch. The thought of Gavin getting hurt is always real, no matter how amazing of a fighter he is. I just want him to get out of here today with the win and not having taken any hard punches, and preferably none at all.
I want to be the first one to get my hands on that incredible body of his…later.
And apparently I might be the first one, because Hassan wisely doesn’t take the bait.
Gavin sticks out his right hand, trapping Hassan’s jab hand. Usually Hassan will throw a jab with his left and then follow it up with a big punch from his dominant right hand.
Gavin is shutting off that left hand of Hassan’s, which seems to have him off balance. But Gavin’s chin is still sticking out right there for the taking for Hassan.
Gavin touches Hassan’s face with his left hand, which agitates Hassan.
Hassan cocks back and comes with that big right hand, the one Gavin said he saw twitching at the press conference and the one he predicted would be Hassan’s downfall.
The whole crowd gasps, but Gavin’s upper body leans back and the big right hand from Hassan misses his nose by what looks like less than an inch.
But before you can say “off-balance” and “exposed” to describe Hassan, Gavin lands his big, powerful left hand to Hassan’s jaw and dropping him like a ton of bricks.
Gavin quickly jumps on top of him delivering two blows to Hassan’s face.
I’m a peaceful person and this barbaric violence shouldn’t turn me on but it does.
I see the animal come out in Gavin and I know he’s avenging the words Hassan said about me, and avenging is an understatement.
Quickly the referee jumps in-between Gavin’s fist and Hassan’s face and waves his hands over his head signaling that the fight is over.
Gavin knocked him out in thirteen seconds!
He truly is a man amongst boys in the octagon and most importantly he’s my man.
He turns and looks at me and motions me toward him just as he did a couple weeks ago when he was out in-front of my office on his motorcycle.
I may not have an office to go to anymore, but it doesn’t matter.
Because I’ve got him.
I enter the octagon, but before the referee can even raise Gavin’s hand there are bunch of men flashing FBI badges.
“It’s over Abad and Hassan,” they say and lead them away!
What the heck? We knew about Abad and his apparently on and off “relationship” with the FBI, in addition to being late on his child support, but Hassan is somehow involved in this too?
“Looks like you’re ready to break another story,” Gavin says as he puts his arm around me as the referee takes his right hand as the announcer starts to speak.
“I’m ready for another big story alright. Really big,” I say glancing down at his green trunks. “The next story in the chapter of our lives,” I say.
“And that starts tonight,” he says. Just as his lips meet mine I feel the referee bring his hand high in the air as the announcer announces him as the victor.
And when I open my eyes I see my brother standing at the side of the cage.
“Grady!” I say and Gavin’s eyes lock on him as well.
“You made it,” Gavin says as he quickly moves to help him up into the octagon.
“You said it was my move…chief,” Gavin says.
“What?” I say.
“And?” Gavin says.
“I decided to move my butt over here because I knew you’d never be able to forgive me if I missed this moment…and I’d never be able to forgive myself either.”
“Good, because you’re ju
st in time.”
“I was here. I saw it,” Grady says.
“That’s nothing. This is the real moment…brother,” Gavin says to Grady before he turns to me and smiles. “Being here to share this final victory with my adopted family. My best friend and my new best friend.”
Possessive Boston Irish American MMA Fighter: An Older Man Younger Woman Romance (A Man Who Knows What He Wants Book 77) Page 6
