I HAD JUST PLATED UP A SMALL mountain-sized portion of pasta when O’Connell got on my last nerve. Walking over to him, I put both hands on his chest.
“Baby, stop,” I told him.
He’d been training relentlessly since the meeting this morning, and after the few days we had off together, one day of hardcore training wasn’t nearly enough to calm the torrent raging inside him. Since he’d come home half an hour ago, he’d dumped his training bag and jumped into the shower. He’d then spent the last ten minutes pacing the length of our tiny apartment.
“What do you think I should do, Em?” he asked me.
“I think you should sit down and eat your dinner. Then we’re going to climb into bed and talk about it.”
He nodded his head and relaxed his shoulders. After a long day of questioning whether or not to take the fight, he seemed relieved to have someone take a decision out of his hands, even if it was a minor one. An hour later, after he’d wolfed down his meal and we’d washed the dishes side by side in the tiny little kitchenette, I laid on his chest as he ran his fingers absentmindedly through my hair. At least now, he seemed calmer and a little more centred.
“What does Danny think?” I asked him.
“I had a word with him after the boys left. He thinks I can do it; he just wants me to change my game plan. Instead of wearing Calvari down, he wants me to go for the knockout. Calvari’s had losses before, but he’s never been knocked out. It’s a big gamble. If I go at him all guns blazing and I don’t knock him out, I might not have enough left in the tank for a win at all. But if I do, then I’ll be in much better shape for the second fight.”
“What does Kier think?” I asked him, knowing that he valued Kieran’s opinion almost as much as Danny’s.
“He doesn’t want me to take the Ramos fight. He thinks that the purse and the exposure aren’t worth the risk of me losing the fight and fucking up my stats. It would probably make more sense for me to cancel the Calvari fight, but I’m under contract. Even if I could get out of it, I’d get a bad rep if I tried to pull from the fight last-minute.”
“What do YOU want to do?” I asked.
“Honestly? I want a crack at them both. I’ve seen them fight, and I think I can do it, too.”
“Then take both fights. Train like you’ve never trained before and take both fights.”
“You don’t mind? We’re only just married, and I’d be training every waking hour of the day. We’ll barely see each other.”
“Look, I’ll start helping out more at the gym, maybe do a bit of cleaning to help Danny out before I go back to school. We won’t be together, but at least I’ll get to see you during the day. Besides, it’s only for six weeks. It will only be a few weeks after the last fight until half term, so maybe we can away for a few days together then. Sort of like a mini honeymoon.”
“I like the sound of that. Not the cleaning part, though. Those lazy bastards can clean up after themselves. But I like the rest of it.”
“Then get some sleep and stop worrying about it, love. You’ve decided what you’re going to do, so stop questioning yourself.”
“Kieran won’t be happy,” he told me.
“He might not agree with you, but he’ll support your decision. He’ll always be your corner man, you know that.”
We lay together trying to sleep, but ten minutes later, I could still feel the tension radiating off him. Propping myself up on my elbows to peer down at him in the darkness, I kissed his abs gently.
“What’s wrong?”
“Frank hasn’t surfaced yet.”
“Did you think he would?” I asked.
“I sort of hoped. I have a lot of pent-up rage I’d like to direct his way.”
“If he’d gotten my address from the burglary, we’d have seen him by now. We just have to assume I’m safe and move on. You’re going to have to direct all that rage into your fights. Just pretend that Calvari and Ramos are Frank.”
“That will work for the knockout,” he snorted.
“Don’t borrow worry. Just focus on one thing at a time. You know you can do this. Just be the cocky bastard that I married.”
“You’re right, sunshine. I do have this in the bag. As long as you’re watching, I can’t lose.”
He couldn’t see my face in the dark, but I made a good show of convincing him with confidence that I didn’t feel. The truth was that he took my heart with him every time he climbed into the ring, and he didn’t give it back until he climbed out again safely. I wouldn’t rest until his last fight was over, but until then I would keep my fears to myself and hold onto my faith that everything would turn out for the best.
DANNY FOUND ME THE NEXT day cleaning out the bathrooms at the gym. To be fair, they weren’t quite as disgusting as I’d feared they’d be, but they were still pretty grim. I’d always been able to use the bathroom next to the office, which wasn’t nearly as much of a health hazard.
“What the feckin’ hell do you think you’re doing?” shouted Danny.
I turned back to look at him but didn’t stop scrubbing.
“Cleaning the bathroom,” I explained though I would have thought it was patently obvious from the bucket of hot soapy water and scrubbing brush.
“Yes, I can see that. But why?” he growled.
I leaned back on my heels and dropped the scrubbing brush back into the water.
“Look, O’Connell has training every day for the next six weeks. He’s already getting nervous and jumpy about not seeing me for so long, let alone about the fights. I don’t have any uni work until I go back after the Calvari fight, so I told him I’d hang around the gym more so we could at least see each other.”
“And you think he’s gonna be happy when he knows you’re in here cleaning the jacks?”
“Well, he wasn’t over the moon when I mentioned the idea of cleaning to him, but Danny, I can’t sit around and do nothing,” I moaned.
“This shit is for the kids to do. All my boys paid their dues with cleaning over the years, and their chores subsidise their fees. If you want to be useful, you can help me train Con.”
“How? I don’t know anything about boxing. Besides, wouldn’t I be a distraction?”
“You’re not a distraction sunshine, you’re motivation. Before you, he wasn’t interested in turning professional. Now, he’s giving it everything he’s got. To impress you, he’ll train longer and harder than for any of the other lads. You’re the fuel to his fire, so I reckon it’s time that we start putting that to good use.”
I was gobsmacked. How could I motivate him to go harder? It seemed like he was pushing his body to the absolute limit as it was.
“I don’t like it, but I’ll do whatever you think is best,” I told Danny. “But I’m finishing these toilets first. I hate seeing a job half done.”
Danny rolled his eyes and mumbled something about how strange I was. At first, helping to train O’Connell meant sitting by the side of the ring watching Danny bark orders. On one particularly strained afternoon, Danny challenged them all to see who could bench press me.
“No one else is touching my fucking wife,” O’Connell growled back at Danny. Instead, he lifted me up, and with a very girly yelp and squeal from me, he bench pressed me until I got a cramp. As the days wore on, I would learn how to massage and rub him down after training. Even when he was so tired that he could barely keep his eyes open, we didn’t dare do the rubdowns unsupervised. Danny had imposed the sex ban again, and the minute that my oily hands would touch his slick, hard body, we would both be on fire. The only thing that killed the feeling was having Danny standing over us and barking out everything that I was doing wrong. Day after day of seeing each other, and night after night without touching was taking its toll. We didn’t dare do more than kiss because once we opened Pandora’s Box, there would be no closing it. O’Connell thought the sex ban was a joke now that we were married, but he didn’t see what I saw. His testosterone levels were through the roof. I only had to walk past him now, and his nostrils flared like a bull in heat. If Calvari so much as looked at me before the fight, O’Connell would knock him out in the first round. As Danny suspected, O’Connell trained harder and longer around me, possibly because I spent most of my time and energy willing him on. After twenty-five one-handed press ups, I’d push him to change hands and do another set. After thirty minutes on the bag, I’d tell him that he had at least another ten minutes still left in him. I’d encourage and push him in any way that I could. By the time the rest day before the fight rolled around, I was as tired as he was restless. I woke up to a string of tiny kisses along my spine.
“Mmm... don’t stop,” I begged as he moved away and lowered my t-shirt back down. I’d taken to wearing his t-shirts to bed with sleep shorts because they were huge and much more comfortable than mine. He never let me sleep without holding on to some part of me, but it still wasn’t the same as sleeping with all of his body pressed against all of mine.
“I have to stop, sunshine, or I won’t stop at all.”
I was tempted to say that it was fine with me, but it wouldn’t be fair to test his resolve this close to the fight. I rolled over groggily, not fully awake yet. O’Connell sat next to me, looking insanely hot in just a pair of half-buttoned jeans. It didn’t escape my notice just how much his body had changed and hardened in the last two weeks. He didn’t look like he had an ounce of fat on him. Only once did I make the mistake of telling him that. What followed was a detailed explanation of his exact body fat index, and how it was affected by his training. I could totally appreciate his hotness without understanding the science behind it. He knew that I couldn’t walk past his half-naked body without running my fingertips down his washboard abs, so he made every effort to walk around that way as much as possible.
“I made you breakfast in bed,” he told me proudly.
“Why are you spoiling me?”
“Because I can, and technically we’re still on our honeymoon. Besides,” he said, kissing me soundly on the lips, “I can’t eat any of this stuff for another three weeks so I’m eating it through you.”
I made short work of breakfast, and as I watched him cleaning up after his efforts, I was struck by how monumentally lucky I was. To wake up warm, with a full belly, and a heart bursting with love was the way I wanted to wake up for the rest of my life.
“So, what are we going to do today?” I asked him.
“No idea,” he admitted. “My body clock had me up at five am, and we’ve got hours to kill that don’t involve sex. Tomorrow, though, I’ll need to get my head on straight so we’ll need to be apart for that.”
I didn’t take offense at his wanting some distance. Around me, he felt soft and loving, which was not the best frame of mind to fight.
“Okay, we’ll have an easy day today then tomorrow I’ve picked up an extra shift at Daisy’s so I’ll be there for most of the day anyway.”
“I sort of had a couple ideas about today. I thought we could do kid stuff.” I looked at him quizzically, having absolutely no idea what he meant.
“I brought the rest of my stuff round from Kier’s and while you were out for the count I set up my DVD player. How do you fancy a Star Wars marathon and a couple of board games? I’ve got Jenga and Monopoly,” he suggested hopefully.
“You really are bored, aren’t you?” I commented.
“Out of my fucking mind,” he groaned, running his hands through his messy spikes in frustration.
“I just want to get on with it. I can’t train, and I can’t touch you. I’ve been listening to music for hours, and we’ve got hours left to fill.”
“Okay, Star Wars it is.” I agreed.
He grinned big, slipped the film into the DVD player, and climbed into bed next to me. It was a wonderfully relaxing day, and after so many stolen moments over the last few weeks, it was great to have this time together. O’Connell was a little pissed when I kicked his arse at Monopoly, and I tried to be pissed when he realised he was beaten and used my weakness to kiss me into submission. I sold him Park Lane and Mayfair for a steal and didn’t give a shit that we abandoned the game to kiss some more.
My shift at Daisy’s the next day dragged interminably. Since our last showdown, Katrina had kept out of my way, but I guessed that was the way with bullies. They’re all about confrontation as long as it was on their terms.
“Hey, hun. How are you holding up?” Rhona asked me, as I was cleaning cutlery. We were at a lull between customers, and I really needed to keep busy.
“I’m nervous,” I admitted. “In my head, I know he’s ready for this fight, but I guess I’ll just never get used to seeing him take a punch.”
“Well, there are plenty of ring-side junkies who get off on watching men fight. I’ll bet he appreciates you worrying about him,” she replied.
“Don’t get me wrong; watching him train is hotter than hell. It’s just that when I think about what can happen to him in the ring...” I couldn’t finish, but Rhona knew what I meant.
“He knows the risks, love. He always has,” she told me, as she wrapped her arm around my shoulders and squeezed.
“I just have a bad feeling about tonight,” I admitted.
“You’re a fighter’s wife now, which means that on fight day he needs to believe that you’ve got as much faith in him as he has in himself. So, you’ve got...” she paused to look at the clock, “two hours to stop looking like someone ran over your cat and get your game face on.”
I smiled grimly, knowing she was right. It was time to stop letting my stupid fears control me. After tonight, it would be one down, and one to go. I needed to take one fight at a time and put this stupid, irrational sense of foreboding to the back of my mind. Two hours later, my shift finished, and I was ready. As I left the diner, completely bundled up against the cold, I found Kieran leaning against his bike waiting for me.
“Kieran, what are you doing stood out here? You must be freezing!” I exclaimed.
“As it happens, I am a bit feckin’ cold, so if you could move your pretty little arse Mrs. O’Connell, we can get back to your lovely warm flat,” he said sarcastically.
I rolled my eyes but climbed onto the back of his bike.
“Where’s O’Connell?” I asked.
“He’s been hanging about my place for a bit listening to music and playing video games, but he doesn’t want to see you until the fight.”
“Why?” I asked alarmed, and Kieran turned around to give me a huge grin.
“He’s pretty evil right now, and he’s looking to fuck someone up. He doesn’t like you seeing him like that.” I nodded, knowing that O’Connell didn’t like showing me the person that he needed to become.
If Kieran was that happy, though, he must have thought the fight was in the bag. I was more than ready to watch O’Connell close this down and have him back in my bed. We got back to the flat, and I made quick work of changing and applying my make-up before we were back out on Kieran’s bike.
“Hold on to your knickers, baby, and let’s get this show on the road,” he told me, as I grabbed him around the waist and braced myself. It was hard not to be infected by Kieran’s enthusiasm. He was so wired with excited, nervous energy he looked ready to burst. The closer we got to the venue, the more my anxiety fell away. Unlike the last time, I was now conditioned to watch O’Connell take punch after punch in training, and I had a better understanding of just how prepared he was. Unlike my soft, bruisable flesh, his abs, his core, every part of his body, was rock hard. He told me that he was in the best shape of his life, and it was easy to believe. It wasn’t a matter of whether he took Calvari down, but in what round, and how he would do it. We wound our way through the backstage corridors and then into the main venue.
“Why aren’t we going to see O’Connell?” I asked, unhappily.
“Because he hasn’t seen you all day, so he’ll want to kiss the fuck out of you. If I keep you out here, it will make him mad, and tonight, mad is good.”
I followed him as he led, but I didn’t like it.
“Kier, you’re an evil corner man, you know that?”
He looked back and smiled, waggling his eyebrows and making me laugh. I was slightly mollified when he led me to my front row seat, and I found the gang waiting for me.
“Em,” Nikki screamed, hugging me hard. She was already a little tipsy, but obviously pleased to see me.
“Good Christmas?” I asked, and she nodded, regaling me with tales of her many nights out over the past few weeks. Big hugs followed from Albie, Ryan, Max, and a few of the girls I knew in passing as Nikki’s friends. Before I knew it, the lights dimmed, and the music started pounding. It was time.