Going the Distance

by Meg Maguire

  “But you’ll be that somebody again. You’re him now. Just minus a foot.”

  “I know that...but I—” He stopped himself, seeming to hit some invisible wall. “Anyhow. It just made me understand him, for a second.”

  Clearly, it wasn’t a revelation he relished exploring further.

  “I don’t want to talk about all that, with us finally naked in a bed.”

  She blushed.

  He turned onto his side and kissed her shoulder. “I knew we’d be good together, but I hadn’t expected...”

  She squeezed his hand at her waist, waiting and hoping to hear the rest of that thought. But in the end, he just laughed soundlessly, smiled and sighed against her neck.

  They lay in silence for a time—five minutes, twenty, an hour? Rich’s breathing deepened once more, muscles going slack against her as he fell asleep, snoring softly. She cuddled closer, content simply to be sharing this space with him.

  Eventually her body cooled and reality intruded, clearing the happy fog from her head and uncovering worries. She gently pulled away, trying and failing not to wake him.

  “Don’t,” he said, clasping her wrist.

  “My sister’s going to notice I’m gone.”

  “I have to leave here at five to catch the bus—surely she won’t be up by then.”

  “Well, no.”

  “Plus, even if she was, she’d know exactly where to find you if she really needed you. Right?”

  Her blush returned. “Yes, I suppose she would.”

  “So stay.” He tugged, and she submitted, rolling back against him. Rich made a lazy, triumphant noise, wrapping his arm tight around her middle and kissing her ear.

  As nice as the contact was, it was the surprise of his insistence that had her flushed and happy. Even with their mutual itch scratched, he still wanted her close. She wanted the same, though she’d been careful not to let herself expect it would be the case.

  But here she was. In Rich Estrada’s bed. The man she’d obsessed over for ten months straight and whose career she’d stalked with the fervor of a teenage superfan. But that wasn’t the man she’d just made love to.

  No swaggery facade. Not a celebrity or even the man she’d been so infatuated with, but a friend. A friend who happened to have a cage fighter’s body, granted, but she’d connected with so much more than his physique or persona. This was a man those women on the message boards could never hope to meet, or likely care to. A human being, as fragile as he was strong. Surely a fact he’d never admit aloud, but the helpless look in his eyes, the trembling in his arms as they made love, the need in his voice when he’d asked her to stay...

  She knew this man, in some way she couldn’t articulate.

  And she knew, as well, she was in deep trouble.

  10

  FOR A LONG time after they crawled under the covers and Lindsey dropped off to sleep, Rich held her. He listened to her breathing, felt the faint muscle twitches as she dreamed, reveled in her warmth.

  He ought to be dead asleep, conked by his orgasm. But a restlessness kept him alert, a sensation like the one he sometimes got from his broken foot, a fidgetiness deep beneath the plaster and skin.

  He’d never had sex like that.

  Well, mechanically he’d had sex pretty much every way there was, but still—nothing like that.

  It was as though Lindsey had used that trick of hers—used her eyes to crack his heart open like a piñata so all his emotions tumbled out onto her lap. Except this time she’d used her hands and voice and the warmest, sweetest shadows of her body, and the way it made him feel was all the more intense.

  It scared him. It made him wish he were the one being held, so that maybe this unnerving, exposed sensation would ease.

  It scared him...but he liked it. Nowhere else in his world would he make room for this feeling. Not in the ring, not in front of his guy friends, not even with his family. His mom and sister were stuck with him during his good spells and bad ones, but Lindsey...she could see through the man he presented to the world, stared through that mask to the uncertainty and the dark thoughts and the loneliness, and she wanted him anyway. He swallowed, throat tight.

  He remembered her news, that article she was going to do: Boston’s Most Eligible Bachelorette. For the first time in ages, jealousy registered. Rich didn’t get attached to women—not enough to feel this ugly, hot sensation licking at the back of his neck. But dumb as the impulse was, he didn’t want Lindsey advertised as a single woman. He didn’t want hundreds of men’s eyes on her on a magazine cover. He wanted her right here. His. But that wasn’t something he could ever ask for, not when he wasn’t willing or able to offer it in return. Or brave enough to even admit it out loud.

  Emotion was welling in him, a deep and expanding mass, more than he knew what to do with. But his brain didn’t need to know how to handle it—his body had the answer. And that answer lay in his arms.

  “Linds.” He rubbed her neck with his nose and whispered a little louder. “Lindsey.”

  “Mmm.”

  He urged her to turn. When she was on her back, he straddled her beneath the covers, arousal already sharpening at feeling her bare skin on his, cock growing stiff against her hip. He lowered himself and kissed her collarbone and shoulders, waiting for signs that she wanted what he did, for the sexy, rasping way she breathed when she got excited, the strokes of her curious hands. After a minute’s soft kisses he was rewarded with a low, hot sigh and the drag of her fingertips down his back.

  “I want you,” he murmured.

  She made a noise, an amused hmm. “You just had me.”

  “I need you. Are you too sore?”

  She stroked his hair. “No. I’m fine.”

  He pushed up on straight arms and stared at her face in the low light. “I’ll be gentle.” Not as a favor, either. It was what he craved right now—to go slowly and deep and savor every second.

  She smiled. “Be however you want.”

  He left her to don a condom and wet his fingers with lube, then settled between her thighs, finding and parting her lips, gently slicking them with his fingertips. He stroked himself with the excess and angled his crown to her heat, pushing in slowly, slowly, slowly.

  The hands on his shoulders tensed along with her breath, then she softened as he eased past a point of resistance.

  “Okay?” Jesus, he sounded as if they were losing their virginity together. Felt like that, though. As if he was about to do something he never had before, something profound that would change who he was.

  “You feel good,” she assured him, smiling and grazing her palms over his face, down his neck, his chest. Her legs hugged his waist.

  Then Rich did something he never had before. He reached back and pulled the covers over them.

  That was how people had sex on TV and in boring romantic movies—under the blankets. Nobody did that in real life, did they? Why would you? It covered up all the good stuff.

  But right now he didn’t care about the view. He just wanted to feel wrapped up with her. Inside her, against her. He looked in her eyes and felt that scary magnetism as she dragged the sincerity and insecurity right out of him, and he didn’t fight it. He let the awe wash through him in waves, let it rock him, let it make a sloppy lover of him for a minute or two, until he found a balance. He did exactly what his body asked. His strokes were tight and graceless, surely not much to look at, had the covers been shed, but none of that mattered. All that mattered was that he was here, in his bed, being offered Lindsey’s warm body, with those eyes bearing witness.

  Soon enough, she went from welcoming to something else—piqued and antsy.

  “Tell me what you need,” he said.

  “Can I be on top?”

  “Of course.” Yes, good. If she was going to make a vulner
able mess of him, let her drive. Let her own his body the way she seemed to possess his mind.

  They turned over, Lindsey straddling, covers slipping to her waist. She moved against him as she had that night in the gym, with short, muscular strokes that built friction between the root of his cock and her clit. Hypnotized, he held her thighs, rubbing with his thumbs. Her hair slipped from behind her ear, glowing golden in the light from the hall, casting her face in a shadow. Like some devious sex angel sent from heaven or hell to test him or reward him or God knew what.

  There was so much he wanted to say. No one’s ever made me feel this. What the hell have you done to me? Does this feel special to you? Can you hear me thinking all this stuff? Are we making love? Is that even a thing?

  But uttering those thoughts would take far more courage than stripping down and offering another man the chance to draw Rich’s blood with an audience of millions. He let his body speak. Let her see the way his hands trembled and his hips shifted, all this evidence of what she did to him. What this felt like...

  Surrender.

  It was too foreign a concept to wrap his mind around. He shut his eyes and ground his head into the pillow, arched his back, gave himself over to her purposes.

  When he knew she was close, he turned them onto their sides, legs tangling. Their lips touching, eyes open, he slipped a hand between their bellies, teasing her clit until she cried out, shuddering against him. He chased her with a dozen quick, shallow thrusts, falling into an orgasm as long and sweet and exquisite as he’d ever felt, a perfect and pleasurable collapse, his world crumbling to pieces as her name fled his lips. She held his head, her palms covering his ears so it echoed in his head like a secret.

  Lindsey...

  * * *

  THE NEWS CAME Monday morning.

  Rich was just logging on to the gym’s computer system, having promised Mercer he’d take on the annoying task of calling to harangue MIA members.

  “I’m about as enticing as a schoolmarm,” Mercer had said. “But if Rich Estrada tells people to get off their asses and come for a session, they will.”

  Normally, he’d dread the assignment, but today...

  Nothing could touch him today. Not with memories of his night with Lindsey pleasantly clouding his mind and body. He was so...relaxed. As relaxed as he liked for the world to believe he always felt, but so rarely did for real.

  His phone buzzed and he checked the screen. Those other calls would have to wait.

  He hit Talk. “Chris.”

  “Rich, hey.” His manager’s voice filled him with a mix of curiosity and fear. He hadn’t been expecting a chat.

  “Bit early in San Diego to be checking up on me, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe, but I’ve been in Vegas all weekend and I have absolutely no clue what time it is anymore. But if you’re awake, I got news.”

  “Wide-awake. Whatcha got for me?”

  “So I met with the big man, and we’ve been talking about you.” The big man could mean only one person—the president of the MMA organization Rich fought for. “Got a present for you, bro.”

  “Who?”

  “Vicente Farreira, if you want him.”

  “Whoa.”

  Farreira had been a big deal a while back—the org’s heavyweight champ for the better half of a year. He’d ripped a tendon and gone quiet for a time, but he was only thirty-three or four, still ripe for a comeback, with a massive Brazilian following.

  “If I want him? Does he want me?”

  “Apparently his rehab’s done and he’s slimmed down, and he wants a new belt. Yours, to be specific. And he wants... Hang on, I can quote it for you.” After a pause Chris read, “‘I bleeping hate that guy. Every win a bleeping fluke, and I hate his bleeping attitude. He’s a bleeping wannabe Colombiano and I want to mess up his pretty face and make all the girls cry.’”

  “He does want me. How sweet.”

  And frigging exciting. This match would be by far the biggest promotion, dramawise, that Rich had yet been offered. A comeback title bout with a near legend. Even if he lost, it would propel his career to a new level.

  “The org wants this to go down at the biggie event Thanksgiving weekend.”

  “Oh, shit.” That was just over three months away. “You know I got a broken foot, right?”

  “I talked to your doc yesterday. He says you’re healing right on schedule and that cast can go by mid-September.”

  “That still only gives me two months to get back in condition. Plus Farreira’s jujitsu is light-years ahead of mine.”

  “Last fight before the main event, Rich.”

  “Goddamn.” Too good an opportunity to pass up. And if he did pass it up, he’d lose the respect of the bigwigs. Guys would happily take that fight still wearing a cast. In fact, that’s exactly what Rich would’ve done, had this opportunity come a month ago.

  So why was he hesitating now? “Of course I’ll take it.”

  “Excellent.”

  “I respect that guy’s game, but I’ll be more than happy to show him whose title that is. How much?”

  “Dunno yet. I’m gonna ask for one-fifty.”

  Rich blinked. A hundred and fifty grand. The figure was so surreal, he couldn’t even process how it made him feel. Just...numb. From his head to his shattered foot. “Well, damn.”

  “Farreira’s comeback? It’s gonna be a ratings maker. They might drag us down to one even, but I’ll see if there’s a knockout bonus in it for you. That’s your signature, after all.”

  “And I sure as shit don’t want to go to the mat with that guy.”

  “I don’t want that, either, bro.”

  “You gotta quit calling me bro, Chris. I didn’t rush for your frat.”

  “Anyway. I’ll tell the big man you’re in, see what kind of payday I can get you. They’re gonna want you back in San Diego, stat. I can get you on a plane Wednesday morning, if that works.”

  “Wednesday. This Wednesday? Two days from now?”

  “No time like the present.”

  “Right.” A thought struck Rich like a punch, but it wasn’t some vision of pushing too hard and refracturing his foot, or dropping Mercer back in the lurch, or even the look of worry and sadness on his mom’s face when he announced he was leaving again. It was a flash of that heat he felt every time Lindsey smiled at him. That look, shot from across a room or beamed up at him in bed last night.

  He gave his head a shake. “I’ll be ready.”

  They hung up and Rich stared at the computer screen. He felt...concussed.

  He scribbled figures on a Post-it note. A hundred grand, minus taxes and Chris’s cut... That still left plenty to sock away for Diana’s wedding, pad out their emergency fund, maybe even enough to do what Rich had been hoping to, his pipe dream of the past few years. A nice, fat down payment so he could make their aging landlord an offer on the house.

  Rough memories or not, that place was where they belonged. Even if Rich could afford to move the Estradas into some giant-ass waterfront McMansion in Manchester-by-the-frigging-Sea, it wouldn’t feel like home. Plus the rent on the adjoining units would mean regular income, probably enough to cover his mom’s exorbitant health insurance.

  It was all happening. Things he’d dreamed about for years. Even sitting here, having just gotten the news that could make it real...

  Where elation should have been was emptiness. And when he imagined all those goals accomplished—the deed to the house, his mother’s happy tears, his sister’s wedding—every box checked that he’d always assumed would make him feel worthy...

  The numbness lifted, and beneath it was panic. Everything he wanted was within his grasp, yet all he could imagine was a mountain. He was nearing the final push, but after he reached the peak and thrust his arms into the sky, triumph
ant, what then? Only the descent. And what lay at the bottom? An absence of debt and stress, yes, but also an absence of purpose. And a long trek down, for the rest of his life.

  He could feel the storm clouds gathering now, cold grayness pooling heavily around his shoulders.

  * * *

  LINDSEY WAS A WRECK all morning.

  A happy wreck, a jumble of excitement and nerves, tossed between hope and pragmatism, suspecting last night had meant something, but knowing she’d be foolish to blindly assume Rich agreed.

  But it sure had felt like something special, and job title aside, Lindsey wasn’t a hopeless romantic—not after this past year. She had the odd flash of ridiculous romanticism, of course. And sure, on her train ride into the city, she’d fantasized about Rich winning his next fight, and adding a new name to his thank-yous when the announcer interviewed him, those shoulders still gleaming under the bright lights.

  “Thank you, Mamá. Thank you, Diana. Thank you, Lindsey, love of my life.”

  She had to snort, the vision was so corny. So corny, yet so damned intoxicating.

  Their parting that morning had been hazy. She hadn’t heard an alarm, and had no time to panic before Rich woke her saying, “I gotta head out.” She’d mumbled an “Okay,” and he’d kissed her temple and squeezed her knee, adding, “Don’t forget your laundry.” Then he’d been gone.

  For ten minutes she’d rolled this way and that, stretching, marinating in the sheer pleasure of being wound in Rich Estrada’s sheets, in his bed, in his room, surrounded by his smell. Then all too soon she’d been wide-awake and feeling silly. She’d dressed quickly and resisted any urges to snoop. The odds were rock-solid she’d find something in his drawers or closet that would burst her happy bubble. The room held practically his entire history, and he wasn’t exactly a saint. Plus she didn’t want her bubble burst. She’d spent too long already trying to know the man through secondhand scraps. The only facts she wanted to learn were the truths he murmured against her skin, brash voice rendered soft by intimacy.