by Meg Maguire
He cleared his throat. “I can’t be that for you. Anything more than this,” he added, nodding to mean the bed. Never had words left his mouth and made his chest hurt so acutely. Was this guilt? It didn’t feel like guilt.
“I know you can’t. I knew going in. That’s why I feel so stupid for even being upset. You were supposed to leave thinking I was as blasé about our hooking up as you are.”
Not guilt, he realized—grief. I can’t be that for you. It was the truth, but he wished it wasn’t.
Rich bit his tongue, so close to admitting it was different for him, as well. But that was a luxury he couldn’t afford. “If I come off like I don’t care, it’s nothing personal. I can’t be anything extra to anybody at this point in my life—not aside from my family. I can’t make room for anything else, not until I know I’ve done my job as a provider.”
Her smile was limp and void of surprise, twisting his aching heart. “And when will you feel like you’ve succeeded at that?”
The question spurred a different pang. “I’ll just know. I’ll know when I’ve done enough that I can make room for other things. Other people.” He had to believe that.
She cast her eyes down and took a deep breath.
“Sorry,” he offered, rubbing the back of her hand.
“Don’t be sorry. I’m not sad for myself, not beyond feeling really dumb. Not the way I feel sad for you.”
“For me?”
“It sounds so...lonely. Only letting yourself be one thing. Like you’re hiding behind your role as a provider.”
A new feeling surged, one that jabbed with a hot, sharp finger. Hiding. Lonely. Rich knew isolation. His father had modeled it for him perfectly. “I’m not hiding from anything. I’m stepping up and doing what needs to be done. I’m not hiding.” So why on earth would the allegation sting the way it did?
Lindsey’s hand slipped from his as she stood. “You’re cheating yourself, acting like you’ve only got one dimension.” She hopped, pulling on a sock.
“Has it never occurred to you that maybe I do? I’m good at exactly one thing.”
She gave him a long, peculiar look, as if translating what he’d said from another language. “There’s a lot more to you than that. And it hurts to hear you say the opposite, since that means you must think I was only ever interested in you because of your job or your money—”
“Linds.”
“Because it was never about that for me.”
What had it been for her at the start? Sex? Surely not—Lindsey struck him as too complex a woman for such a simple answer. “What then?”
“I guess...just you.”
“What do you mean?”
She sat and pulled on the other sock, thinking. “If I needed anything from you...I don’t know what to call it. But it’s not something that could be taken away by an injury or a loss.”
The words jabbed him anew, discomfort churning.
“It was how you made me feel, maybe. When it was just us, just being with each other. There’s this fire in you. This...energy. This thing that made me forget who you were, outside the body in my arms, or the man standing across the room from me.” All at once she looked mortified again.
Rich didn’t know what to say—he wasn’t even 1 percent as good as she was with all this emotional, self-awareness stuff. He needed labels, simple names to assign to who he was and what he felt. Angry, horny, triumphant, exhausted. Tidy, black-and-white terms that reduced his emotions to on-off switches.
She sighed. “I get that we see the world differently. I’m not trying to get you to change your mind, or saying you should. I guess I just want to say, don’t sell yourself short. You’ve got more to offer than the things you give yourself credit for. And you deserve to feel valued for those things.”
Nobody ever said stuff like this to Rich, no one except his mom and sister. The women who knew him. He felt a bone-deep shiver and had to look away from those searching blue eyes. How she managed to peer right through his skin and into his heart, he’d never know. And it was yet another unnamed sensation he couldn’t handle right now.
“Anyway,” she said, slipping into her shoes.
He opened his mouth but nothing came out. Only one thought wanted to be aired, but he couldn’t go there.
Are you in love with me?
Even if she was, Rich would have no clue what to do with it.
He’d been told that by women before. Tipsy women, more often than not, with that starstruck heat in their eyes, right before or after he took them to bed to cap off a fight. That shallow adoration. I think I might love you, he’d been told, and he’d smiled as if he believed it. But in his brain, all that echoed was You don’t know the first thing about me. About who I am, where I’m from, what matters to me, what goes through my head before I fall asleep. You don’t love me. You haven’t even met me. But he let them believe they did. Let himself believe it for as long as it took to bed them, because the truth was too lonely to contemplate.
But Lindsey.
She did know him, as much any lover ever had. And those moments when his walls had slipped and he’d told her things...she had actually met him. Peeled him open like a banana, when all these years he’d imagined his defenses were impenetrable.
She offered a weak smile. “Thanks for everything you did for my sister.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I’m sure I’ll see you around, next time you’re home. Sorry if I just made it awkward.”
He froze, throat too tight to reply.
“Have a safe flight.” She mustered a smirk, some of the sadness gone. “Kick Farreira’s ass.”
He returned her smile, but still no words came.
Grab her hand. Pull her back. Kiss her until you know what to say to keep her from going. But the surety that let Rich step nearly naked into a cage...it was nowhere close to the courage he needed now. He let her turn. Let her walk out, watching the shadows in the hall flicker until she’d gone.
A distant squeak, a click and a minute later, muted footsteps above him as Lindsey retired to her own room.
Rich lay back and held his hand up toward the ceiling, opening and closing his fingers. Her body was no more than ten feet from his.
Yet he’d never felt so alone in his entire life.
12
HE KISSED HIS MOTHER and sister goodbye outside the terminal, promising to call when he landed in San Diego. His mom had wept the entire drive to Logan, ten miles that felt like fifty between rush-hour traffic and the cloud of Catholic guilt.
A security runaround was inevitable with the crutches and cast, but Rich made it through the gauntlet with time to spare. And as he relaced his sneaker on the other side, he was free.
He sat quietly for a minute, straining to manifest what he ought to be experiencing.
This is where you feel happy, asshole.
Or at least relieved. Grateful to be done with everything except fighting. No coaching, no cleaning, no secretarial duties, no more strangers wanting to rehash the injury with him. He was back to being the center of his own universe, 100 percent focused on the thing he was good at.
Maybe he’d skip the happy relief stage and jump straight into the blind focus. Yeah, that was a plan. No time for excitement—he had to get his head where it needed to be, mind on nothing except the moment he’d be in that ring, staring Farreira dead in the eyes.
He swung toward his gate and fetched a coffee with much awkward juggling, sipping as he sat and stared out the windows at taxiing planes.
You’re the light heavyweight champ. You’ve got the fight of your life in three months.
You’re waiting for a plane to fly you across the country, to Rio come November, and maybe this spring
it’ll be England or Japan or Australia. This is what you’ve been dreaming about, the thing thousands of guys would kill for but only a handful ever get.
So why did he feel so...
Empty? Exhausted?
Depressed.
That’s the word you can’t even bear to utter in your head.
He shut his eyes, leaning back in the seat.
He hadn’t felt this last year. But last year he hadn’t known what he did now. He hadn’t known how much his mother missed him, or indeed exactly how much he’d miss her. He hadn’t known he was valuable to Wilinski’s as anything more than a body willing to show up at six and do his part. He hadn’t realized how much he’d miss the cold bite of winter and the salt crunching under his shoes, or how those skeletal trees were so much more right than any swaying palm.
Last year...
He swallowed and opened his eyes, staring at the city skyline. It was just past ten. His heart sped. He felt a weird tug, knowing exactly where she was amid all those buildings. Sitting only a few feet above where he’d spent hours and days and years, nearly two decades. And tonight she’d go to sleep one floor above the room he’d called his nearly his entire life.
She’ll still be in those places the next time you touch down.
Likely. She’d still be where he lived, where he worked. But where he felt her was far closer to home. Like a sliver, sharp and barbed, lodged in his heart.
A selfish part of him wished he’d ended things differently. That he’d let her know she meant something to him. But self-serving as Rich could be, that would’ve been a step too far. Admit he cared for her as more than a friend or lover, leave her waiting in patient, lonely fidelity. Then come home, pray they hadn’t dreamed that connection, then what? Gone again a few weeks later.
She deserved a man who’d put her first. Rich might even have wanted to be that man in some alternate reality where he was free to care. He might have grown to love that scary sensation, the way her eyes cut through his armor to let the anger and fear escape, making room for him to take a deep breath.
But wishing didn’t change circumstances. And emotions, unless diligently corralled and harnessed, served only to drag a man down. A legacy he’d sworn never to inherit.
So when boarding commenced and his zone was called, Rich joined the funneling crowd, aware of the curious looks he earned—his build and scars, the crutches and cast hinting at a story he was too weary to recount. He was relieved when no one asked.
His boarding pass was scanned, the young woman on duty flashing him a smile she hadn’t gifted his fellow passengers. He returned it, feeling lonelier still as he made his way through the gate.
Self-pity’s a luxury, he reminded himself, gaze locked on the next step, the next step. One you haven’t earned yet.
But a soft, clear voice echoed in a darker corner of his mind, lighting up shadows he preferred not to look upon.
Will you ever feel like you’ve earned it?
Would the prize money ever feel like enough of a safety net? And what happened when his body simply couldn’t do this any longer?
If I needed anything from you...it’s not something that could be taken away by an injury or a loss.
What that thing was, Rich had no clue. No clue how to label it, or how to offer it.
And there was no place in his world for anything but the concrete. Money. Contracts. Family duty. The next fighter who stood in Rich’s way and the skills to conquer him. Lust and the physical acts that satisfied it.
No shapeless feelings, no indefinable something. No ache in his chest or restlessness in his bones from these emotions. Pain only from injury, wounds treated with ice and ointment and time.
He felt too much in Boston.
And the sooner the city slid away beneath him, the sooner he’d remember who he was.
* * *
DEAR GOD, WHY had she ever agreed to this?
Lindsey watched the activity swirling around the Spark office from the threshold—assistants moving her and Jenna’s desks, adjusting the placement of plants and bookshelves to create the perfect backdrop for Lindsey’s photo shoot.
It was Monday and Jenna had closed the office, treating it like a holiday, arriving early to let the magazine people in. She was playing maid of honor in what she kept calling Lindsey’s “big day,” a hyper bundle of excitement.
In her brain, Lindsey was grateful Jenna was so supportive. But in her heart...
The editor had emailed the cover copy the night before, so Lindsey might “get into the vibe.”
Boston’s Most Eligible Bachelorette:
Why this matchmaker and wedding planner is in no rush to say “I do.”
A couple weeks ago, Lindsey would’ve been only too happy to play that role. She’d been freshly single and happily so, free to be with Rich after mooning over him for practically a year. Except she’d blinked, and it was over. And after this shoot, she’d head home to a cranky teenage roommate and have to call her parents and report that, if anything, this experiment in Boston living had made things worse, as far as getting Maya back in school went.
“Hi!” A beaming young man with perfectly styled hair swept in from the meeting room, a swath of tulle heaped over his arm. Enthusiasm radiated off him in waves. “You’re Lindsey! You’re even prettier in person.”
“Oh. Thank you.” She shook his hand, shoving the worries to the back of her head.
“I’m James, the creative director for this shoot. We are going to have so much fun. Are you ready for your cover-model debut?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
He patted the heap of fabric. “So the visual concept is that you’re a fairy godmother to your clients. A young, hip, sexy fairy godmother.” He grinned, clearly wanting Lindsey to be equally delighted by this idea.
“That’s so cool,” she hedged, smiling through her nerves. “But exactly how sexy?”
“Don’t worry, not too sexy. This isn’t a men’s magazine.”
“Is that a wedding dress?”
“It is!” James unfurled the gown, an outrageous explosion of gauze and crepe and oversize sequins. “Betsey Johnson! Isn’t it a scene? Custom couture job, then the wedding gets called off. Her loss, our gain.”
“It’s very...funky. I love it. But doesn’t that contradict the whole concept about me not being in a rush to say ‘I do’?”
“We’re going to tint it digitally so it won’t scream bridal in the final image. Want to try it on? It’s probably too big, but we’ve got clamps.”
“Sure.”
In all honesty, she didn’t want to be in the same room as a wedding dress, let alone wear one. The last time she had, she’d been trying on gowns for her own supposed special day, back in Springfield. The special day that had never arrived, the nonrefundable dress she’d never ordered, thank goodness.
But it’s not a wedding gown. It’s just a spangly, fun dress, and it won’t be white, and why on earth can’t you just let loose and have fun and be the center of attention for once? Because her heart hurt. Hurt as if somebody had cut it out and sewn a fistful of nails in its place. And she didn’t feel at all like celebrating her singlehood.
Still, a lot of women would kill for this chance. And not too long ago, Lindsey would’ve counted herself among them.
“Are there shoes?” she asked, faking the excitement she wished she were feeling.
“Seven and a half, righ
t?” James rifled through boxes and withdrew a pair of heels—silver and strappy with a stiletto that could murder a man.
“Whoa. I probably don’t get to keep those, huh?”
James smiled. “Sorry. On loan from the designer.”
“Oh, well. I’ll always have the pictures.”
Jenna arrived with an artsy man in tow, both of them carrying coffees. Her face lit up at the activity. She introduced herself to James, and Lindsey to the photographer, Ari.
Maybe if Lindsey could sell this idea that she was stoked to be single to the camera, to every person who walked past the newsstand... Maybe when she saw this cover... Maybe then she’d start to believe it herself. While the men strategized about the photo shoot, Lindsey showed the heels to Jenna, mustering a grin.
“Oh, wow.” Jenna snatched one, nearly salivating.
“I know. Sadly, no chance I get to steal them. They’re ‘on loan from the designer,’” she added in a snotty, self-aggrandizing whisper. “So don’t drool on it.”
Jenna handed the shoe back. “Even if you did steal them, I’d steal them from you for my wedding.”
“Speaking of weddings, check out what I’m wearing.” James had draped the dress over a chair, and she held it up for Jenna.
“Hot damn.”
“Not something I’d ever have picked, but yeah. Hip fairy godmother indeed.” She clutched the bodice to her chest and let the skirt swish and flare. “Better make sure it fits.”
She closed herself in the bathroom and stripped to her panties. With a deep breath, she unzipped the dress and stepped into it.
It was too big in the bodice, but she reached behind and clutched the extra fabric, watching herself in the mirror.
“Wow.” The lights glinted off the clear and pearlescent sequins, and the wide satin ribbon around the waist shone like silver. Lindsey never wore strapless dresses, but now she wondered why—the cut made her shoulders and neck look terrific. She looked terrific. She looked...she looked like someone worth sticking on the cover of a magazine.
