Hometown Hero

by Cate Cameron

  “Okay,” Zane said after a moment. “That’s a bit crazy, but okay.”

  “I’ll go back and forth, probably, for work. We can get together when I’m in town, and keep in touch with texts and e-mails and stuff.”

  Zane snorted. “Zara would kick your ass if you skipped out to be with her and I went off the rails back here all on my own. Is that what you’re worried about?”

  “I’m just worried that you’ll miss me. I am very good company. All others will pale in comparison to me.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’ll live through it.”

  “You’re being brave. I appreciate that.”

  “I actually wouldn’t mind a slightly longer leash,” Zane admitted. “When you and Zara hooked up, it was great—I could just live, without having her worried little face staring at me all the time.”

  “She cares about you.”

  “I never said she didn’t. But it was a bit claustrophobic, and it was good when she got distracted.”

  “She’s not much good at subtlety, is she?”

  Zane snorted into his beer. “No,” he said, making it clear that he was understating the case.

  Cal smiled into his own drink. It felt good to have a decision made. Even if it was a strange decision, a wild jump into an unknown future, at least he was going to be doing something, not just sitting around and fretting.

  He thought about how to approach Zara and his enthusiasm faded a little. It wasn’t like she’d invited him, or even hinted that she’d like him to come.

  She didn’t own the city; he could find a short-term rental somewhere, or stay in a hotel even, and that was really none of her business. And then if he was in town anyway, they might as well spend some time together. . . .

  Yeah, that was weak. But it was the best he had, so he’d better just hope Zara was in a charitable mood when he arrived.

  * * *

  “IT’S bullshit, Andre.” The bastard had put her off for almost two days, saying he was out of town and couldn’t make a meeting and wasn’t this really something they should discuss face-to-face, and now that he was finally back, he was telling her it wasn’t an issue. “If it was no big deal, why didn’t you mention it?”

  “Zara, we don’t normally discuss my business. We discuss your business. That’s my role.”

  They were in a corner of the gym, somewhere quiet enough for a conversation but still not exactly private. So Zara tried to keep her voice down. “You didn’t think it was my business to know who coaches my next opponent? You didn’t think maybe I should know that she’s thinking about dumping her management and is being recruited by half the guys in the business? Bullshit.”

  “So you’ve said. And I’m not sure what I can say to change your mind. So let’s let it go for now and move forward. Your training is going well?”

  “Should I give you the canned answer I give to the press? The one that I want my opponent to hear? Or do I tell you the truth?”

  “Is the truth something problematic? Are things not going well?”

  “Things are going great! It’s a short camp, but I’m lucky that I really held on to my conditioning, even during a break, so I’m really just fine-tuning at this point. And I’m really looking forward to the fight—Anna Cade is a great young fighter with a lot of potential and it’s inspiring to see her dropping a weight class to make the matchup happen!”

  “That’s your canned answer, I assume.” Andre did not sound amused.

  “It’s the only answer I’ve got, as long as you’re trying to recruit someone I’m scheduled to fight.”

  He stared at her and there was something in his expression that reminded her that he’d come from the streets, just like she had. He might have a better smooth polish, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t rough underneath. “You might want to think twice before asking me to choose between you and Anna Cade. She’s just as good looking as you are, she hits like a damn sledgehammer, and she likes doing promotion. She loves the modeling, and does a good job at it. That girl is the future, Zara, and if you’re not careful, you’re going to be the past.”

  It stung, but she didn’t let him see her wince. She knew too well how vulnerable her career was without hearing him remind her of it. She made her voice cool and level as she said, “Okay. I don’t think you actually have a lot to do for me in the next few weeks, do you? My sponsors are all lined up and the fight time is set and I’m not going to be looking at any new deals right before a fight. So let’s take a break. You focus on the future. I’ll focus on training myself to knock the future’s damn head off in the ring.”

  He nodded ruefully. “There’s that old fire! Now, if you could just channel that drive, and use it to give you energy outside of the ring—”

  But Zara didn’t need to hear the rest of whatever he had to say. She pushed to her feet and headed back to her training. Like most of the fighters, she worked out twice a day, and she and Damon had figured out a coaching schedule that would keep her and Anna apart for most of the time. And this was Zara’s time. She worked out, pushing hard, and maybe there was a little dizziness a few times but she was able to get past it. Whatever the issue with her head was, it was getting better. Nothing to worry about.

  She walked back to the apartment with Bonita, bitching on the way, and Bonita was more sympathetic than usual. “He’s a sleazy bastard. No loyalty at all. If I’d known he hadn’t told you, I would have called and let you know, but damn! Who’d have thought he wouldn’t have told you?”

  “Yeah,” Zara agreed glumly. Andre was sleazy. That part was annoying, but not a huge surprise. The troubling aspect of it all was that he thought Anna was better than her. Maybe just at the promo side of things, but if he really was trying to sign Anna, he’d want her to win her fights. He wouldn’t have let the company set up this card if he hadn’t thought Anna would be able to take Zara down. Wouldn’t have been so willing to piss Zara off if he thought she would be the winner. A lot of the money in women’s MMA came from sponsorships, sure, and a lot of that was based on crowd reaction and looks. But crowd reaction came from good fighting. From winning. It was all connected, and apparently Andre thought Anna was better than Zara at all of it.

  Was he right? Was she washed up? Not just because of her concussion, but because of her attitude?

  She didn’t want to think so. She wasn’t quite as hungry anymore maybe, but she was just as tough. Hell, maybe she was tougher. When she’d been starting out, she’d let Andre push her around more, been more willing to do his stupid promo stunts. Now she was strong enough to say “no” more often. And he was going to dump her for it.

  “Ooh, hot man alert,” Bonita said as they approached the apartment. “Maybe he’s a little clean cut for you, but I like the preppy type.”

  Zara followed Bonita’s gaze and found Cal, leaning against the hood of his car, watching them approach. Her breath caught. Cal. He was here. He’d . . . She caught herself. She couldn’t leap to conclusions. She didn’t know he’d followed her. Not for sure. Maybe he’d just . . . just . . . no, damn it! He’d followed her. He’d come for her.

  He watched them approach and she could feel his trepidation. He wasn’t sure how she was going to react.

  “Nobody’s dead or anything?” she asked as she stopped in front of him.

  He swallowed. “Everybody’s fine. I just missed you.”

  She was vaguely aware of Bonita standing behind them, but didn’t let it slow her down. She stretched up and wrapped her arms around Cal’s neck, and he grinned and lifted her a little, and then there they were, making out in public again. And everything was absolutely perfect.

  Twenty

  IT WAS KIND of scary how well things went after that. Cal found a short-term rental apartment about ten minutes from Zara’s place, and when Zara was at the gym, he’d be at his apartment, catching up on work. She’d call him when her workout was over a
nd they’d meet up somewhere and spend the middle of the day together. Long lunches, walks around the city, lazy hours in bed, making love and napping and waking up to do it all again. It was paradise.

  Or damn near. Sure, there were things they couldn’t talk about. Zara’s head was the main thing they avoided. No questions from him and, after the time he offered her an aspirin as she massaged her temples, no signs from her. And they didn’t talk about the upcoming fight. Or about how long Cal would stay in the city. Cal told himself they were both just focusing on enjoying the moment. No worries about the past or the future.

  Cal was in love. He knew it, and didn’t even try to fight it. Most days they stayed close to home so they wouldn’t miss Zara’s gym time, but she took one day off a week and they were more adventurous then. They decided to do all the tourist stuff that they’d been too cool to explore as permanent residents of the city, and it felt like they were on vacation together. No, it felt like they were on their honeymoon.

  They took the subway into Manhattan and walked through Central Park, bundled up in warm sweaters, scuffling their feet through the fallen leaves. Whenever Zara got excited about something, she’d skip ahead and turn around to walk backward so they could have better eye contact, and his heart sang at her enthusiasm and her boundless grace and energy.

  They visited the Museum of Modern Art, and Zara tried hard to hide her yawns, faking polite interest in whatever works Cal stopped in front of. After an hour or so, he gave her a lengthy treatise on the imagery of the red fire alarm against the stark grey brick of the wall, the way it invited viewers to examine the role of danger and excitement in their mundane lives. He suggested that she should reflect on how the work might speak to her, and how she might be the red fire alarm that people living grey lives in Lake Sullivan could admire. When she finally realized it wasn’t a work of art at all, just a regular fire alarm on an otherwise empty wall, she punched him in the shoulder, but not hard enough to leave a bruise.

  At the Bronx Zoo they watched a baby gorilla climbing all over his mother, clearly showing off until the silverback wandered over and the baby suddenly got shy. Cal looked at Zara and wondered if she wanted to be a mom herself, with a little one crawling all over her. He wondered if they could be parents together. He wrapped his arms around her as they stood by the glass, watching the family within, and she lifted her hands and rested them on his. Was she thinking the same things he was, or was it just a cute scene to her? But asking her would have meant talking about the future, and he didn’t think he could risk that. Well, it would have been too early to ask anyway, he told himself. They were still new, still figuring things out. The future would come in its own time.

  He spent a lot of time at the gym, watching her. Admiring her. She was strong, sure, and fast and balanced and tough. But he was most impressed with her focus. When she watched the other fighters, looking for weaknesses, she watched with her whole body, her whole being. And when she practiced her technique, she moved with a fierce grace, a strange mix of unconscious ability and deliberate concentration. She’d warned him he’d be bored, but he never was. He was absolutely, completely content.

  It wasn’t always easy to find food that fit Zara’s training diet, but Cal got used to that, and found himself searching for recipes online, trying to find ways to spice up the endless lean-protein, low-fat fare. He was on his laptop at Zara’s while Zara was in the shower when Bonita snuck up behind him and looked over his shoulder at the screen. “She doesn’t like rye bread.”

  “Oh.” He squinted at the elaborate sandwich on the screen. “Probably wouldn’t be good with white or wheat.”

  “Probably not,” Bonita agreed. She flopped onto the couch opposite him and he watched her warily.

  Cal had been in the city for almost a month and had spent a fair bit of time in Bonita’s presence, but couldn’t really say he knew her. They’d both been friendly enough, but just casual greetings, no real conversations. Something told him that was about to change.

  So he waited, and finally Bonita said, “She’s not training hard enough.” It was strange how something could be phrased so neutrally and still sound like an accusation.

  “Are you sure? She’s putting in a lot of hours.”

  “Not as many as Anna is.”

  “Maybe she’s working harder while she’s there. Being more intense.”

  “She’s not. She takes breaks, more than she ever has.”

  Because of her head? Judging by the expression on Bonita’s face, she thought there was a different explanation. “Maybe she just doesn’t want to fight anymore,” he tried.

  “Well, that’d be great. Really, it’d be super. If she’d found something else she loved just as much? And if she was good at it? Hey, I’m not a hero—it’d be great for my career if she quit. One less person above me in the rankings. But there’s one little problem with that plan.” She waited, then snorted in disgust when he didn’t supply her with whatever she was looking for. “She hasn’t quit. She’s scheduled for a fight in two and a half weeks, and she’s not fit for it. That doesn’t just mean she’ll lose—it means she could get hurt.”

  Well, Bonita certainly knew how to get his attention. “Why are you telling me this?”

  She frowned as if he was stupid. “I look at how she’s trained for other fights, and how she’s training for this one, and I try to figure out what’s different between then and now. . . .” She raised an eyebrow in his direction.

  “Maybe she’s different,” he said.

  “Then she should get the hell out of the game.” There was a firmness to Bonita’s voice that was hard to deny. She knew what she was talking about; Cal didn’t. There was no point in arguing with her.

  “Is anyone else seeing this, or just you?”

  “Not Andre, if that’s who you’re hoping will save you. Well, he probably sees it, but he’s not going to do anything about it. He’s too busy kissing up to Anna.”

  “What about her trainer? Her coach?”

  “They’re confused. In the past, she’s been so motivated herself that they’ve had to spend half their energy trying to slow her down and keep her from peaking too early. Now it’s like she’s following their advice, so they can’t really complain too much, you know?”

  They heard the door to Zara’s room open and Bonita settled back on the couch, trying to look casual. So whatever solution she had in mind for Zara’s situation, she obviously wasn’t planning on being part of an intervention, at least not then and there.

  Cal leaned back and smiled as Zara slid a cool hand inside the collar of his shirt and along the tops of his shoulders. It would be so easy to be distracted by this, to trust Zara to look after herself and go back to their easy life of enjoying each other and falling in love. So easy, but maybe not right. “You want to go for a walk?” he asked, and she nodded easily.

  “We should be outside as much as we can before it gets really cold.”

  So they bundled up and headed out, and walked hand in hand through streets that were becoming familiar, if not quite homelike.

  “What was Bonita after you about?” Zara asked after they’d gone a few blocks. He braced himself, but she didn’t pull away. She just shrugged and said, “Thin walls. I got the tone, but not the actual words.”

  Well, this was either going to be easier than he had any reason to expect, or she was lulling him into a false sense of complacency. He carefully said, “She’s worried that you’re not training as hard as you normally do. She thinks you might be unfit for the fight.”

  “So you’re worried about my brain, and she’s worried about my body.”

  It was an invitation. It had to be. Cal had no idea why, but it really seemed like Zara was willing to talk about this, at least a little. “Yeah,” he admitted. “Something like that. Well, I guess now I’m worried about your brain and your body. And the way they could go together. Like, if you
’re overpowered and can’t control the fight, it might be hard for you to protect your head the way you want to.”

  “My training is fine. I’m fit.” She said it with such certainty.

  But Bonita had been just as certain. Cal was torn. “Bonita said you weren’t putting in as many hours as you used to. She said you were taking more breaks.”

  “I’m not, and I am.”

  “You’re not putting in as many hours, and you are taking more breaks?” She nodded, he frowned. “But you’re still fit. As fit as you usually would be?”

  “I will be in two and a half weeks, yeah.” She raised her chin, ready for a fight. But there was no heaviness to her, no jagged edge that might cut him if he dared to disagree. She’d fight him, but she didn’t want to hurt him, because she trusted that he didn’t want to hurt her. These past weeks—not talking about what she didn’t want to talk about—had done that, he realized with a start. They’d built up enough trust that they could have this conversation now.

  “Okay,” he said. “I believe you. Your body will be fit.”

  She smiled at him, and then was gracious enough to explain herself. “I’ve been working on explosive strength, not long-term endurance. My strategy is to take her out hard, right away. A fight is, maximum, five five-minute sprints. There’s no marathon, so there’s no point training for one. I used to train for both, the sprint and the marathon, and that was fine. I was young and had too much damn energy anyways, so it wasn’t bad for me to channel it into training. But I didn’t need to. Most of my fights last less than a minute. That’s how long this one will last, too.”