“Black!”
I kept going. One, two, undercut here, followed by two more combinations and a right cross.
“Black, ease up!”
Another quick combo, and I had Tommy up against the ropes, gloves to his face while he suffered an attack on his kidneys.
“BLACK!”
The throng of a bell vibrated through the gym, and it wasn’t until I was yanked off Tommy’s thrashing body by two big arms under my shoulders that I finally responded.
“No!” I shouted, spitting out my mouthguard. “What the fuck, I was winning!”
“You were going to kill him.” Mac’s voice was low in my ear as he dragged me out of the ring and deposited me onto the ground.
“What the fuck, Jester!” Tommy howled, his face streaming with blood. “I got a fight next week! You almost took out my fuckin’ eye!”
“Serves you right, fighting at our age.” I spat a bit of blood onto the concrete floor. “You can’t take a little sparring from me, how’re you gonna fight the kids ten years younger than us? You’re too fuckin’ old for this, Tommy.”
I didn’t mean it. Or maybe I did. I’d offered ten times over to give Tommy enough money to retire, but he wouldn’t take it. Pride still came before everything else in the neighborhood.
“That’s enough!” Jim was in my face, grabbing my collar and yanking me up and off the floor. For an old guy, he was still stronger than most and definitely had the ability to toss any fighter out after they’d lost their sauce.
And I’d definitely lost mine.
“Get the fuck out.” He shoved me out into the night, catching the gloves I proceeded to hurl at him.
“I didn’t do anything,” I snapped through gritted teeth. “Tommy’s seen worse. He knew what he was getting into.”
“Yeah, but my new fighters ain’t seen that shit, and they don’t need to. I let you blow off steam, and you proceed to use every illegal move in the book.”
“But I wasn’t?—”
“Who the fuck do you think you’re kiddin’, huh? I know you, Ronan. You’re a hell of a fighter—always were—but you’re too angry. Now, my gym ain’t for UFC bullshit. You want to fight like a man, you come here. You want to fight like a hooligan, you stay the fuck out there on the street, you got that?”
For a second, I thought I might say yes and fight him exactly like the hooligan he was accusing me of being.
Instead, I squeezed my eyes shut and breathed in through my nose. In seven. Hold four. Out eight. And again.
Laney’s face was the one I saw once the color of blood faded from my vision. Those glowing green eyes. That midnight hair. That starlit smile, calling me home.
I heaved another sigh, and my shoulders finally dropped. “Yeah, I got that.” The fight in me was gone now. “I’m sorry, Jim. It won’t happen again.”
“No, it fuckin’ won’t.” His tone was steel, but he was already lighting a new cigar, signaling our bout was over. “I hear you got married, kid, so lemme give you some advice. Go home and let your woman take care of whatever’s eating you.”
I raised a brow and used the back of my hand to wipe the sweat from my forehead. “You got a lot of experience with that, Jimbo?”
I was teasing, of course. Jim Lopretti was a legendary bachelor.
The silver tooth made another appearance, winking under the street lamp. “Enough to know they’re good at it. God knows why they like doing it, but they do.”
Maybe he was right,I found myself thinking as Mac drove us back to the townhouse. By the time we hit the Charlestown Bridge, the void had opened again, and I was struggling to find reasons to keep my promises to Laney. By the time we reached the house, I would have sold my soul for a drink, a pill, fucking anything to chase this emptiness away.
Let your woman take care of you.
The crazy thing was, she probably would if I asked her. Laney Fisher wasn’t a pushover by any means. I didn’t think she was the “please my liege and husband” type either. But she was the kind of woman who stepped up for people she cared about, whether it was in running a business for a dead woman, pretending to be all right with a father who had all but abandoned her, or being at the beck and call of her Bridezilla of a best friend.
But the fuck if I would take that from her. The fuck if I was going to use her, empty her out the way the others in her life seemed to do, take the goodness she had to offer only to sate my shitty black soul.
