Fearless (The Solomon Brothers Series Book 3)

by Leslie North

  Henry wasn’t about to divulge where Roosevelt ducked out to most days, but he wasn’t about to leave without saying his piece.

  “You interfere with that boy’s education, his ambitions, you lay one goddamned hand on him or his sister, I’ll have you laid out so fucking fast they’re gonna hear you squealing for mercy like the fucking pig that you are.”

  The father lunged.

  Henry grabbed the guy’s shirt front, before his brain had processed the decision. He pinned his staggering weight to the metal fence, nearly toppling him over the top. Alcohol fumes wafted in the guy’s wake, and Henry was back in that alley, his body loaded, his anger gurgling just below the surface.

  Fuck.

  What had he done? He should have walked away, but he made it worse. For Roosevelt. Hell, maybe even for Layla. Goddamn it—this was why he didn’t get involved. In the gym, he was routines and control. Out on the streets, with an old man as worthless and pathetic as his own, he was nothing but a fucking sixteen-year-old. He positioned the guy back on his feet, with one last word of warning before he released his shirt front.

  “Sober up before you come home. Got it?”

  Henry gave him a shove, away from the house, down the street. With any luck, the bastard’s subconscious wouldn’t register any of it but the threat. Henry stood as a human shield to the house until the man had disappeared.

  Roosevelt stood at the porch, witness to it all. So much for your fists are deadly weapons. You don’t know how and when to use them, you’re no different than a kid packing a nine millimeter. That goes for in here and out there.

  Henry waved him closer, closer, until the kid was close enough for Henry to slip him a wad of cash.

  “Go back to Affleck-Martin. Get your grades up, work on that bridge, then come see me.”

  Layla scrambled out behind Roosevelt, a bright red ball in hand.

  Henry crouched down. Layla put her face up to the gate, nothing but chain-link steel wire between them. Where he gripped the fence, her tiny fingers clutched. They were warm and baby-soft. His stomach twisted at the thought of Layla’s light ever dimmed by her father. Henry offered her another face. She countered with one of her own. They sparred this way, an epic battle of face contortions, until a fit of giggles overcame her.

  She called him by his fight name when he waved goodbye. On Layla, Lawless sounded more like Wallace. He liked that. No child should ever believe life was lawless.

  6

  For all that Maggie could say about Henry—and had said—she certainly couldn’t argue with his results. She didn’t question what he had said to bring about such a dramatic shift in Roosevelt; she didn’t have to. That Roosevelt had come to Affleck-Martin last night, sister in tow, and stayed up until midnight working on the bridge while Maggie tucked Layla into her bed in the first-floor apartment, was the only answer she needed.

  They hadn’t come to any hard and fast rules about the arrangement, but Maggie saw Roosevelt’s time alone at the punching bags a wasted opportunity to multitask. Why not engage the brain while the bag engaged the limbs?

  The speedbag proved an exceptional challenge. Intricate facts about physics and calculus did not lend themselves to the rapid-fire answers the speedbag demanded. So Maggie switched to Roosevelt’s AP economics principles.

  “Determinants of demand. Go,” said Maggie.

  “Number of buyers.” Wham. Wham. “Income.” Wham. Wham “Price of related goods.” Wham.

  “Ho, ho. What the hell are you doing?” Henry interrupted, firing the question Maggie’s direction.

  The speedbag returned fire on Roosevelt’s temple.

  He ducked back, rubbing the strike spot with his glove. Right as Roosevelt was finishing off the list with consumer expectations. Gah.

  “Exploring the fundamentals of economics,” said Maggie, unable to leech the exasperation from her tone. They had been at Sol’s gym since school dismissal, and Roosevelt had yet to tackle the sample chapter three questions for tomorrow’s exam.

  “Unless you’re discussing how he’s going to cash-out his opponent in the cage, stop already. Enough.”

  “If he doesn’t get a high A tomorrow, he doesn’t make up the ground he lost those three days.”

  “And what will happen? Global economic systems will fail? The markets will tank?”

  Roosevelt gave an appreciative laugh.

  “Cute.” Maggie squeezed Henry inside a curt, flippant half-smile.

  “So I’m told.”

  Ugh. Meanwhile, Roosevelt was witnessing the total breakdown of what should have been a no-brainer alliance. Physical, mental, like yin and yang.

  “Roosevelt, would you excuse us for a moment?” Maggie said.

  Henry nodded to Roosevelt. “Cal just brought some take out into the office. Why don’t you take a break and fuel up?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Maggie waited until Roosevelt was out of earshot to launch into her protest on the imbalance of their first session. Henry beat her to it.

  “For Chrissake, the kid wants to come in and hit a bag. His brain cells aren’t going to leak out along with his sweat.”

  “He’s been here for two hours, and I’ve gotten him one-on-one, one time. He has to fit in his school work here so late evenings he can finish his model.”

  Henry swung the nearby punching bag toward her. She caught it and stumbled forward on the return swing. The stuffed casing was heavier than she expected. She skimmed her fingertips over the duct tape holding in the padding, oddly satisfied that she had maneuvered a sensible barrier between her and the object of her dream on the great room couch last night—he had worn baggy sweats and a knit cap. Really it hadn’t mattered. Not one bit in the drool department. But she barely had time to bat an eyelash, much less dally on the physical merits of an individual hell-bent on raising a generation of impulsive brutes.

  “Don’t you think you’re putting too much pressure on the kid?” said Henry. “He’s done everything you’ve asked, met all your stringent conditions. He just wants to unwind, hit a bag. It’s not the end of the world.”

  “You would say that. It’s not the end of the world because it is your world.”

  “Maybe if you spent a little more time trying to understand that world and a little less time complaining about it, you’d take the edge off.”

  “I am not edgy.” She caught herself—fingernails digging against the bag’s seams, knuckles blanching white. She released the bag. “I’m not.”

  “You haven’t taken a breath in three sentences.”

  Come to think of it, she was a bit winded. She inhaled deeply, slowly so he wouldn’t notice.

  “What’s your first name?”

  “Margaret.”

  “Fits.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “What do you do to relax?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “To take the edge off. Unwind. Let loose.”

  She mentally catalogued possible answers: watching the Game Show Network; knitting—because the kids at Affleck-Martin were forever losing winter wearables; making protest signs down at the community center for one cause or another; collecting rare, free-trade coffees from around the world. None of her activities struck her as the kind of relaxation that Henry Lorenz, voted MMA’s most eligible bachelor after his title fight and Mr. March in the electrolyte-drink-sponsored MMA calendar—every month with a guy sporting nuclear green-tinged sweat—would find appealing. Like it mattered.

  “I write letters to editors. Local newspapers. National publications.”

  “About?”

  “Everything. Anything that bothers me.”

  “And that relaxes you?”

  Maggie nodded.

  “Bullshit. Admirable, but bullshit. Tell me something else, Margaret.”

  “Maggie.”

  The admirable part kept her from wanting to shove the bag in his face. She really didn’t want to tell him about her chess rivalry she had going with the veterans who
hung out near the fountain in Point State Park. Or her ham radio license. Or her work as chairwoman of the Dickcissel Preservation Society. Not only would he not give a dick about the yellow-throated bird once native to the area, but his plebeian mind would hang up on the word dick and make a vile joke.

  “You’re not answering, Maggie.”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “That much, huh?”

  Something about his probing gaze inspired a confession. Maybe it was the way he hugged the other side of the apparatus, the way he rested his cheekbone against the bag like a pillow, the way the very edge of his bottom lip skimmed the worn red leather.

  “Not really, no.” She wondered if this was part of his secret weapon in the cage—stare his partner into submission. Her temple submitted to the bag.

  “Show me your fist.” His voice wasn’t a command, not even close. More a secret.

  “What?”

  He reached for her hand and tugged it between them. She expected the cold, granite touch of someone used to harming others; she got warm, nimble, with the strength to knock her off-balance merely by its gentleness.

  “Make a fist.”

  She gave it her best shot.

  He smiled then manipulated her fingers and thumb. God Almighty, if she wasn’t breathing before, she was in danger of hypoxia at his touch now. He skimmed the fleshy pads near the middle knuckles of her index and middle fingers.

  “Here’s where you strike. Keep your fist clenched but not so hard you lose circulation.”

  “You want me to hit something?”

  “The bag, preferably.” His smile telegraphed that he had read her mind.

  “This is ridiculous. I’m not a fighter.”

  “Sure you are. You’re just expressing it in a new way.”

  It went against everything inside her, hitting for the sake of hitting. A waste of energy. But he was pressing her to do it as if his suggestion had already suffocated the protest from her muscles, from her brain. Once. What would once hurt?

  Maggie reared back and punched the bag.

  “Good.”

  It wasn’t good at all. Needles of heat traveled through her bunched hand and up her arm. Turns out once hurt quite a bit.

  Henry released the bag and came to stand behind her.

  “Feet shoulder width, diagonal, so you can draw a straight line between the toe of one and the heel of the other.”

  She should stop now, tell him this made her uncomfortable, but he set his firm hands at her hips, as familiarly as if he had done it a million times in his bed, her moving over him, and the image of them entangled made her body ache from his touch.

  “Best punches are from the hips. Every time you hit, the body rotates.”

  He moved her, his hands splayed wide, his fingers curled against her hipbones. She opened her mouth to protest, but he stepped away then and circled the bag to where he had stood before.

  “Now.”

  Maggie threw a punch. This time, with her hip rotation, the hiss of air leaving the bag, leaving his lips from the impact, along with his words of encouragement—nice, good strike, elbows in—the sensation was heady, addictive.

  “Give me ten.” He counted them off.

  Her exhales became labored.

  “Now yell.”

  Maggie’s rhythm stumbled. “No.”

  “Yell. Curse. My name. Whatever you want.”

  She sampled a few grunts, her face heating at how much they sounded like sex noises. So she switched to his name and found it a deliciously satisfying marriage—Henry plus a strong right jab with hip rotation. He reached a ten-count. The contact, the repetition, the release was unlike anything she had ever felt—forbidden, without thought or consequence, totally fucking liberating. It barely registered in her mind until she heard his inflated count.

  “Fifteen. Damn, girl.”

  She dropped her arms at the same time blood rushed her cheeks.

  “Better than sex, yeah?”

  Her capacity for speech flatlined.

  “Hey, Henry,” Roosevelt called.

  At half the distance to Henry’s office, he had been close enough to eavesdrop, close enough to wonder how a solo punching bag had somehow become a pairs event. Henry and Maggie moved apart like two magnets with the same polarity.

  “Cal told me to tell you to come sign for a delivery,” said Roosevelt.

  “Thanks, man.” Henry tangled Maggie in another side-glance, vaguely like the one in the article, wholly skewering her rapidly failing ability to remain committed to her principles about the man and his pastime, then made his way to his office.

  “We can run through economics now, Miss Kavanaugh,” said Roosevelt.

  “Sure.” Maggie plastered on a smile. Just when she had been introduced to the novel concept of a physical advantage, she had to reverse course and talk comparative advantage. Unfortunately, the phrase better than sex had effectively obliterated her concentration. “Determinants of…”

  “Supply?” Roosevelt offered.

  “Yes. Go.”

  Weekends were made for quiet morning runs, a visit to Caliano’s for the best meatball sub on the planet, catching up on NBA highlights in Chase’s luxury apartment, or headbanging in a mosh pit and getting a fresh dip of ink afterward. Weekends were not made for this.

  Henry glanced around at the Smithfield Street Bridge, closed to traffic and swarmed with hundreds of protesters, some sitting, some walking in formation. Picket signs read Save Our Bridge! History over Capitalism! Don’t be on the wrong side of progress! Our future is our past!

  He scrubbed a hand down his face. Fuck.

  The city was as wide-eyed as Roosevelt.

  “Unreal, isn’t it?” Roosevelt charged head-long into the masses.

  Henry jogged to catch up. “Too many people, man. Not what I had in mind.”

  “Just think—this is the oldest steel truss and the longest lenticular truss bridge still in use in America and all these people rolled out of bed this morning because they got wind that the city might want to scrap it and start over with something modern. Their parents and grandparents probably rode the streetcar across it to go Christmas shopping in the city every December. It’s a National Historical Landmark, but because one engineering firm in some city supervisor’s back pocket deemed it unfit, the city considers throwing away nearly a hundred and fifty years of history.”

  To Henry, the bridge was merely a way to get from Point A to Point B in a city that exploded in population around far too many waterways. The crowd swelled around him the farther onto the bridge they pushed. He wasn’t a fan of the logistics of it—hundreds of hot-headed, righteous people pressed in close to railings that were the only thing between Henry and a ridiculous drop into cold waters. But Roosevelt needed this—needed someone he could count on, someone to care about bridges simply because that was the thing that moved him. Henry did his best to tag along, to keep up.

  “The Monongahela Bridge Company used to own it and charge tolls to cross it—something only the rich could use. Course, it didn’t look like this back then. But the city bought it in 1895. Said everyone should have the right to use it. Made it a free road to connect the city’s north and south sides.”

  Henry veered a bit toward the railing and peeked over. “How long is the drop here?”

  “No idea,” came Roosevelt’s response.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Henry snagged Roosevelt by his sleeve, stalling the kid’s insane pace. “You mean to tell me that you know how many times people have gotten married on these bridges and the role each of these bridges played in the African-American history of the city, but you don’t know the height of the most famous bridge in the city?”

  Roosevelt shoved his hands in his pockets. His eyes shifted to the throng around them as if Henry had busted him lifting something.

  Truths.

  “Oh my God.”

  “What?” Roosevelt frowned.

  “It isn’t about the bridges at all. It’s what
they represent. You don’t care about the bolts or the gauge of steel used in construction or the gross tonnage each can withstand. You care that they join neighborhoods, people who wouldn’t normally interact.”

  Roosevelt shrugged. “So?”

  “So have you told Miss Kavanaugh that?”

  “Nah, man. She’s all hung up on this math and science thing. Says those subjects are the gateways to whatever I want to do.”

  “And what is that? What do you really want?”

  “Fight.”

  “Beyond that.”

  Roosevelt drifted to the railing, hands joined, gazing out over the Monongahela River. Fifty unstable protesters at Henry’s back made him queasy, but he approached the railing beside the kid.

  “My mom collected bridges. Dad destroyed most of them, but when I was little she had so many. She used to tell me a story about an old man who crossed a ravine, swollen with flood water. He made it safely to the other side then spent days constructing a bridge over the ravine, even though his travels would never again take him in that direction. On the third day, another traveler came upon the ravine. The stranger asked him why he had wasted his time constructing a bridge he would never use again. The old man replied, ‘I built it for you.’”

  The story had lulled Henry into a place of peace, a place where he was no longer worried about the crowds around him. Rather, he felt oddly connected with them.

  “She wanted me to live a life in service to others.” Roosevelt glanced at Henry. “Kinda like you.”

  The sentiment was a dull-edged blade carving around Henry’s heart. It wasn’t true. He wasn’t like Sol at all. He was simply a placeholder in someone else’s dream who couldn’t get past the inertia of his own grief. None of it was meant to be permanent. Henry was a competitor and a fighter and someone who had assaulted a grown man and left him disabled. Nothing more. His throat pinched closed. He didn’t know what to say.

  “Come on. I told her we’d be there twenty minutes ago.”

  Henry cleared the emotion from his throat. “Who?”

  “Miss Kavanaugh.”