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I blew out a breath. “Being blindfolded while you drive my car is not exactly what I had in mind when I taught you to drive a stick.”
Then I heard the sound of my car door opening, and she was urging me inside.
“This better be one hell of a surprise. I’m hoping it doesn’t involve clothes.”
I heard the sound of the engine a minute later, and Anna reached over and patted my leg. “Don’t worry, love,” she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. “I’ll get us there in one piece.”
“Mm. Hm.”
“It’s a five-minute drive. Relax.”
“Five minutes with you behind the wheel could give me a heart attack. Maybe it’s a good thing I can’t see.”
“I’m not that bad of a driver,” she yelped.
“Not that bad, hm? Maybe you should stick to riding horses, love.”
A playful slap on my chest had me shaking my head, biting back the laughter. “Or just stick to riding me.”
“Adam,” she warned.
I held my hands up in submission. “Okay. Okay.”
I attempted to relax as she drove. Moments later, I fumbled around with the controls for the music. She brushed my hand out of the way.
“Are you serious?” I said as she settled on a station. “Justin Bieber? Now this is officially torture.”
“The fact that you even know this is a Bieber song means you listen to him!”
“You tell anyone, and I’ll—”
“Uh huh. Sure.” She chuckled.
A few minutes (and one Bieber song) later, she stopped the car.
Anna came around and opened the door, helping me out. Not being in control was something I wasn’t quite used to.
“You ready?” she asked, wrapping an arm around mine.
A soft blast of heat greeted my skin. We must’ve been inside. The smell of fresh paint met my nostrils, and I pinched my brows together, trying to figure out where we were.
“Okay. I’m going to untie you now.” Her voice was shaky, but why? What had her so nervous?
I kept my eyes closed as she removed the tie.
“Open your eyes,” she said softly.
It took me a minute to figure out what I was looking at. Several kids from the center were standing before me with smiles on their faces, and so were my brothers, my sister, Ma, and Da . . . and we were standing in a boxing studio. There were mats on the floor, two fighting rings, heavy weight bags, free weights, and other equipment, throughout the large space.
“What’s going on?” I took a step back in surprise when my eyes landed on the back wall. Painted in red letters were the words McGregor’s Gym; beneath it, in ancient Gaelic, were the symbols that matched part of my tattoo. Family.
Anna came around in front of me and slid her hands over the sleeve of my jacket, resting on the spot where I had marked myself, long before. “You see? I don’t think you need to choose between family and fighting. I think we had it all wrong. I think you can have both.”
My mouth parted open, prepared to reject her words, but she swept a finger up to my lips. “I’m not saying you should fight competitively.” She shook her head. “But when I saw you training at your home that night, well, you were moving so gracefully. It was actually kind of beautiful. Martial arts doesn’t have to be brutal. It can teach respect and discipline, and I was thinking that maybe you’d enjoy sharing your knowledge with others.” She cleared her throat and took a step back, opening her palms in the air. “After some heavy persuasion, your sister agreed to help me, and we had this studio built for you. It took a couple months, but we thought this could be another haven for the kids.”
A martial arts studio as a haven? I wasn’t so sure about that. But if kids were going to learn to fight, maybe it was better they did it here under the supervision of an adult. They could learn how to assess an opponent, to know when it was appropriate to fight.
I dragged my palms down my face and looked over at my family. “Are you serious?” I looked back at her. Part of me was excited, but I was also terrified. In the last three months, I hadn’t even gone near a boxing studio. I didn’t need fighting because I had Anna. But . . .
