by Meg Maguire
Stay off your feet, he’d been told and told and told.
“Shit.”
Maybe this was comeuppance, karma biting him in the ass for turning his back on Wilinski’s, no matter that he’d never meant the exit to be permanent. The gym hadn’t changed aside from those few modest improvements, but it felt worlds different. There were the rings where he used to stalk and pounce, the treadmill he wouldn’t be running on anytime soon.
He could pound on the bags at least. Those might be the key to his sanity, these next few months. His arms worked, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much angst to vent.
Still, he thought, you paid for the surgery. You did more than your old man ever—
“Hey.”
Rich turned to find Mercer crossing the threshold. “Well, well. You’re in early.”
Mercer flipped on the rest of the lights. “Same to you. Didn’t expect to see your ugly face this soon.”
“You’re one to talk.”
Unwilling to let Mercer come to him, Rich met him halfway, arms aching. Mercer’s hug felt as it should have—nothing about it softened by sympathy. It was a relief Rich hadn’t expected to register, not this deeply. He’d never been great at feeling close to guys, but this man was surely the nearest thing Rich had to a brother.
“Look at you,” Mercer said, grinning with obvious pride. “Frigging undefeated pro. How about that?”
“Anybody wants to steal this crown off my head, they gotta do worse than break my foot.” He cast his gaze around the space. “Looking good down here.”
“It’s getting there. Give it a few months and the Rich Estrada Memorial Women’s Locker Room’ll be up and running.”
He had to smile at that. “Memorial? I’m crippled, not dead.”
“You’re not crippled, either. By the time we start welcoming women, you’ll be back to your old self.”
“Yeah. We’ll see.” Four months to get back into fighting shape...sounded like a life sentence with this depression dogging him, making it so hard to see the bright side of anything.
“I got plans for you,” Mercer announced. He was doing his best to act as though Rich’s homecoming was no walk of shame, but there was strain behind the blasé attitude.
“What plans are those?”
“Keep you off your feet.”
He shook his head. “If I hear that one more frigging time—”
“Keep you off your feet and work on that broken-down game of Twister you call grappling,” Mercer interjected.
Rich mustered a grudging smile. “Not the worst idea.” If he was careful with his foot, maybe that wasn’t such a bad use of his time off.
“Got a new jujitsu trainer lined up,” Mercer said. “Nearly a done deal.”
“’Bout time. He’s guaranteed to be better than either of us.”
“She,” Mercer corrected.
Rich raised a brow. “Oh-ho. You tell her she’s stuck changing in the lounge until the spring?”
“I’m sure she’s dealt with worse on the road.”
“Who?”
“Penny Healy.”
Rich laughed. “No. Way.” He’d met Penny—or Steph, as she preferred to be called outside the ring. She was a kick-ass fighter, and a Massachusetts native. They’d hit it off when they’d both had matches in Vancouver. She’d told him she was looking to retire and get into training full-time. He’d given her Mercer’s number, never imagining anything would come of it.
“That girl can do better. How’d you talk her into joining the Basement of Misfit Toys?”
“She wanted to move back to Mass. And I think she likes the challenge of coming on board during the whole coed transition.”
“Lucky us. I’ll be delighted to roll around with her.”
Mercer gave him a look.
“Training-wise. Though I’ll remind you some of us still have a pulse, even if Jenna’s made a decent man of you. You gonna take her last name, by the way?” he teased. “Monty’d be dancing in his grave to know you wound up a Wilinski in the end.”
Mercer checked his phone’s clock. “Lemme show you the new computer system before the early birds show up.”
Rich trailed him to the office. It looked less dreary than it had when he’d last been here, and their ancient software for tracking dues and schedules had been upgraded to something vastly better.
“You’ve been busy.”
“Thanks to a boost in membership. Thanks to you.”
“And Delante. Watched his fight in Reno. That kid’s a frigging force.”
“I think we’ve lost him forever to L.A.”
“He was too big for this place.”
“So were you.”
A fresh stab of shame caught Rich in the gut. “Then what am I doing back here?”
“Gracing us with your majesty’s presence,” Mercer offered, then smiled. “Hope you can cope without a nutritionist and masseuse and whatever space-age equipment they got out west.”
Rich cast the gym a long look through the office door. “Nah. This’ll do.”
“Bread and water,” Mercer said, echoing their late mentor. “Anything more and you’ll start mistaking the prison for a spa.”
“And then what incentive is there to escape?” Rich finished. He sighed, some darkness lifting, making room for grim resignation. “Fine. Let’s get my goddamn sentence started.”
* * *
THE DAY DIDN’T start off too badly. Routines hadn’t changed much, and Rich had never been a morning person. In the old days when he had to open, he’d shouted a lot and sipped his coffee until his muscles woke up around ten or eleven. This felt much the same, only on crutches, plus with every goddamn member who came through the door clapping his arm and wanting to rehash the title match.
He slapped a grin on his face and took it like a man.
By lunchtime, he was restless. He hid in the office under the pretense of finding his feet with the new system, but really he was fed up with everybody. At one-thirty he sneaked out in search of food, hopping up the steps to the ground floor. Twenty-two steps. Funny how he’d never counted before. And funny how he’d never appreciated how many that was.
In the foyer, his angst shifted. From frustration to uncertainty in a ragged heartbeat as he swung himself toward the exit. He slowed as he reached the glass windows that fronted the Spark offices—Jenna’s territory. Lindsey’s, too. He’d known he’d be seeing her, but... He was feeling too much already, without piling that old tangle of emotions on top of it.
The blinds were open and he glanced in.
Oh, shit. There she was. In profile, facing away, talking to Jenna.
She was just as he’d remembered. And what a kick in the nuts it was, the way simply seeing her affected him. A glimpse of her smooth blond hair, her pink cheeks. That smirk, even directed at Jenna as it was now, did crap to his brain. What he’d give to see her gazing up at him in bed, wearing that smile.
Rich was used to women looking at him. Tall and built as he was, he had a polarizing effect on the fairer sex, and their stares nearly always said one of two things. It was either, Sweet Jesus, take me now or You are ridiculous. The funny thing was, Lindsey’s eyes said both those things at once. Skepticism and lust all jumbled together, as if she wanted him, but wished she didn’t.
And he understood why she wouldn’t want to. That reason’s name was Brett, he’d heard in passing.
Maybe a few drinks had had her ready to ignore such a technicality that night in the cab, but Rich wasn’t nineteen anymore. He’d found some semblance of honor, somehow, from someplace. All was fair in love and war, but only between single parties. It burned him to think he’d come close to being nothing more than a slip of her better judgment.
Part of him wanted to mar
ch in there and sit right down on the edge of her desk.
You owe me a drink.
That’s what he wanted to say, but that couldn’t come before So, you still with somebody? And indelicate though Rich was, he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Couldn’t even bring himself to wait for the eye contact, not from those blue ones that drilled inside his skull and sucked all his vulnerabilities out through his mouth. And he had way too many vulnerabilities just now.
He locked his gaze at the exit and headed for the street, as fast as his crutches could carry him.
4
DEAR GOD, WHAT a week. And it was only Wednesday.
Lindsey glanced at her laptop’s clock. Okay, technically it’d be Thursday in an hour. Which made it even worse that she was still hiding at work this late.
The preceding weekend hadn’t been much better. Rich’s televised injury had kicked it off on Friday, then she’d spent Saturday and Sunday avoiding Brett, searching fruitlessly for affordable places for August and fielding a lot of frantic calls from her parents.
Her little sister had gone missing, and no question it was a teenage rebellion disappearance, not an abduction. Wouldn’t be the first time. At seventeen, Maya was shaping up to be the wild child Lindsey’s parents had dodged with their first eight kids. She’d tried to reach Maya herself, but none of her calls had been returned. That worried her—usually if anybody could calm the girl down, it was Lindsey. Boring, dependable, middle child Lindsey. But she wouldn’t be much good if she couldn’t even reach her sister.
Then yesterday...
For days she’d been queasy, knowing she’d likely see Rich this week, for the first time in months. Only, when she did see him, she got nothing more than a glance at his back as he swung past the windows on his crutches, not taking the time to so much as wave. And today she hadn’t spotted him at all.
Not that she cared.
Except she so completely did. She sighed at her own ridiculousness and went back to trolling the apartment listings.
“Knock knock.”
Lindsey started, jerking upright so fast her chair rolled backward. But her panic morphed to shock in an instant to find the man she’d seen only on TV and YouTube since the spring suddenly framed in her office door. She grabbed the edge of the desk and wheeled herself back into place, managing a flustered smile.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
She rubbed at her heart. “Rich. Hi.”
He returned her smile with a deeper one. One that turned all that shock into something different, something all warm and gooey and foolish. His hair was wet from a shower, flashing the memory of everything that had happened between them after that match.
“Hey, you remember me,” he said.
“Of course I do.” Jeez, had he forgotten they’d even made out? Or had he been drunker than she’d realized? She certainly hadn’t forgotten about it, not the forceful sweep of his tongue or the heat of his hand on her neck. Her body blushed equally from arousal and embarrassment.
“Long time no see,” he said, looking around the office. Goddamn, those dark eyes. “Late night?”
“Yeah. Um, have a seat, if you want.”
Rich wheeled over the guest chair and straddled it backward. He set his crutches aside and crossed his forearms along the seat back, just as he’d done fifty times before, back when he’d stopped by to annoy her and Jenna the previous fall.
“I heard you’d be returning to us. Welcome home.”
He shrugged.
“How’s your foot?” She offered a sympathy frown.
“Fractured.”
“I know. Oh, crap—I didn’t even say congratulations. Well done, Mr. Champion. How long till you can accept that rematch Moreau’s gunning for?”
“Realistically? Six months or more. A couple while my bone heals, then a bunch more to undo all the atrophying the injury’s going to saddle me with.”
“Must be nice to have some downtime, though.”
“Yeah,” Rich said, nodding. His agreement was transparently hollow. Nice clearly wasn’t the word. See also aggravating. Maybe stressful. Or, knowing Rich, a string of cusswords, most of them starting with an F. “I guess. I’m not great at sitting still.”
Lindsey’s phone pinged. She checked the screen and declined Brett’s call. They could resume their argument in person. He’d hit below the belt that morning, low enough to keep her out this late, praying he’d be asleep by the time she got home. He’d pretty much implied it was her fault things were so uncomfortable now, since she’d done the official dumping. Easy for him to judge—he could afford to pick up and move, but Lindsey couldn’t swing their rent by herself. She’d been tempted to ask Jenna if she could crash upstairs in her and Mercer’s guest room. But the line between best friend and boss was wide and fuzzy, plus Jenna had hired her as a so-called expert in the field of healthy relationships.... Jesus, she felt like a fraud some days.
Another ping, and Lindsey set her phone to vibrate and shoved it into her bag.
“Don’t let me keep you from your work.”
She shook her head. “Not work. If my clients start thinking they can call me at eleven at night, I’ve got some serious boundary-setting issues. And even if it was business hours, they can wait a few minutes while I hail the conquering hero.”
“What are you doing here so late?”
“Just catching up on some admin.” You know, avoiding my life. “You?”
“I swapped for a closing shift so I could meet with a physical therapist this morning.”
“Will you have to do that a lot?”
“No, thank God. Clean break. All my ligaments and tendons and shit are fine.”
“I really am sorry. I was like, screaming, all excited you’d won. I had no idea anything was wrong until the announcer explained.”
“You enjoy that? My little Kerri Strug moment?”
She smiled at the parallel, comparing this huge man to that tiny gymnast from however-many Olympics ago. Though as infamous broken feet went, there was a handier reference to make.
“More like Jens Pulver. And he only won by decision.”
He blinked at her. “You become some kind of MMA expert since I last saw you?”
“I guess you could say I’ve gotten educated.” Gotten quite good at cyberstalking you, that is. “Not enough that I followed what happened when your foot broke, but I’m literate. And it’s more interesting now that I’ve watched enough and heard some of the guys talk about their fights and where they’re from.... More personal.” The grudges between fighters were as intense as infatuations, the way some interviews made it sound. Both had that consumptive, physical desire like a growling hunger, only with fighters that desire was to hurt another person, not bed them.
“Your big fight was great, broken foot aside. I watched with Jenna and my...my sort of ex-boyfriend. No,” she corrected, needing to draw the line herself once and for all. “My actually ex-boyfriend.”
One of his shapely eyebrows rose. “You don’t sound too sure about it.”
“Our relationship’s been like a cockroach. We kept stomping on it but it just kept twitching back to life.”
“That’s very poetic. Remind me never to hire you to oversee my love life.”
She had to smile at that. “It’s over now, for sure. But we live together, so...”
“I can guess why you’re ‘working late,’ then. Bummer. That’s why I don’t do relationships. Not worth the trouble.”
She touched the mug on her desk, spinning it idly to distract herself from how disappointed his words made her. “That’s an awfully lonely philosophy.”
“Nah, I got family. Family comes first. And there is no second.”
“How very simplistic.” She sighed, suddenly feeling rather depressed b
y this heart-to-heart. “I guess that’s why I’m the matchmaker, and you’re the prizefighter.”
“Plus, no offense—I’d rather be single than sharing a cockroach with somebody.”
She laughed. “I don’t know why I had you pegged for some Don Juan romantic type.”
“Wishful thinking.”
Indeed. She threw a pad of Post-it notes, hitting his shoulder. And just like that, they were back to how they’d been the previous fall. Dammit. Why’d it have to feel so good?
“Sorry. Guess you’re not in the mood for my particular brand of charm.”
She shrugged. “Everything’s just such a mess right now. I’m not in the mood for anything except finding an affordable place, ASAP, so I can get the heck off Planet Awkward.”
“Ah.”
“I was going to stick it out, since there’s practically nothing until September first, but I can’t take it. I’ve spent the past three hours scouring the web.”
“Any luck?”
“A few nice places, but too expensive. And a few I can afford but that either look like shitholes or are practically in New Hampshire. I may have to bite the bullet and shell out for a real estate agent.”
“I know of a place. My mom’s got a neighbor who’s been trying to sublet her unit. She moved in with her fiancé and can’t keep paying rent on an apartment she doesn’t live in.”
“Oh. Where?”
“Lynn. Two-bedroom place, top floor of a three-family house, not far from the train. Okay neighborhood. I dunno what the rent is, but more reasonable than Boston proper, I guarantee you that. Good landlord. Save you the finder’s fee.”
“Lynn, huh?”
He smiled drily. “It’s not as bad as people make out. We just let that rumor perpetuate to keep wusses from moving in.”
