The Perfect Match

“I guess I was wrong about the soft helpless bit, yeah?” His voice was tight.

Her knuckles started to throb. Carlos Mendez was suddenly in the ring with a towel, and blood was dripping onto the mat. Brogan, too, came through the ropes. “You okay?” he asked, putting a warm hand on her shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” she said to Tom, her voice thin and shaky.

“I’m fine, gang,” he said to the kids. “Honor here proved a good point. You’re all quite strong enough if the situation demands it, yeah? Her engagement ring caught me. Nothing to worry about. Shows the importance of blocking, doesn’t it.”

“You’re gonna need stiches, bro,” Carlos said.

Tom glanced at her, his eye already beginning to swell. “Feel like a run to hospital?” he asked. “Kids, class is over for today. Good job all around. Abby, would you mind driving Charlie home?”

* * *

“LOOK, I TOLD you I didn’t want to do it,” Honor snapped.

“And clearly you were sincere,” Tom snapped back, lifting the gauze the nurse had given him when they came in. “Quite the hotshot, aren’t you?”

“Yes! I am! The thing is, you were right,” she said, looking away. “Most women don’t fight for fun. I didn’t want to do it, I was nervous. I told you not to make me do it, but you wouldn’t listen.”

“Blame the victim, that’s it. Does ‘on the count of three’ mean nothing to you, darling, or was there another reason for that punch?”

“I was nervous! I’m sorry, okay? I’m really, really sorry.”

He gave her a one-eyed glare, the flesh around his eye puffy and red. “You’re welcome to make it up to me, darling. I can think of about ten things you can do for starters.”

“Don’t be a jerk,” she said, even as a hot, tight nervousness grabbed her insides.

“Hello, hello!” The door to the exam room opened, and a tiny Asian girl came in, roughly five foot nothing, ninety pounds and perhaps twelve years old. Honor instantly felt like an Amazon. Not in the good way. “I’m Dr. Chu, and what have we here?”

“A bit of a cut,” Tom said. “My girlfriend has a mean streak.”

“There was a slight accident,” Honor ground out.

“Dude, that’s awful!” the doctor said. “Bummer.”

“How old are you?” Honor asked.

“Um, twenty-three?” she answered. “I started college when I was, like, sixteen. A complete trip. But I’m totally a real doctor. Well, sort of. I’m an intern? And I’ve never done stitches before, so I’m totally psyched.”

“Great,” said Tom. “I have absolute faith in you.”

“Cool!” she said, turning on the water. “Washing hands, check. Pleasant demeanor, supercheck. So what happened, Mr., um, Barlow?”

“My fiancée punched me,” he said.

“OMG! That’s horrible!” She turned to Honor. “Are you his mother?”

“No!” Kill us now, said the eggs. “I’m the fiancée.”

Tom grinned. If she’d felt sorry about hitting him, it was fading. Fast.

“Really? Mr. Barlow, do you mind if she stays?”

Tom pondered the question. Honor sighed. “You’ll protect me, won’t you?” he asked, smiling at the tiny doctor.

“Totally! Yeah! Plus, I can always call Security?”

“Then I feel safe.” He cocked his good eyebrow at Honor as Dr. Chu pulled on exam gloves. “So sixteen when you started college, eh? I bet you’re really smart.”

“Not to toot my own horn? But I did graduate first in my class at Stanford.”

“Congratulations,” he said. “That’s incredible.”

“Thanks! So let me get to work here. Um, she punched you? Is that all? Like, how did you get this cut?”

“From her engagement ring.”

“Wow. So ironic,” Dr. Chu said.

“You’re telling me.”

The two shared an adorable smile.

“He was teaching a boxing class and asked me to hit him,” Honor said. Dr. Chu didn’t so much as flicker a glance in her direction, too busy lifting the gauze off Tom’s eye.

“Awesome! That’s some cut! Plus I think you’re gonna have a black eye! Kind of sexy, hopefully?”

“Whatever you say, Doctor.” His crooked tooth flashed, making him look like an incredibly appealing, adult version of the Artful Dodger from Oliver Twist.

“Awesome! So, like, let me get stitching, okay?”

It was clearly the best day of Dr. Chu’s brief life. “Suture kit, check. Sterilizing the field, check! This is fun.”

“I love a woman who loves her job,” Tom said.

“I totally love it! And what do you do, Mr. Barlow?”

“I’m a professor of mechanical engineering.”

“That rocks! Okay, this is gonna sting. So sorry about that. Sympathetic attitude, check.”

“Very sympathetic indeed.”

“Supercheck, then!” Dr. Chu giggled, then raised a needle of painkiller to inject under the cut.

Guilt wasn’t an emotion Honor was used to.

Honor looked at her hand. It was slightly swollen, which she supposed she deserved. It was also the first time she’d ever hit someone in her entire life.

Well, no. She’d smacked Dana, hadn’t she? She was building quite the reputation.

“Do you have a regular doctor?” Dr. Chu asked. “He or she can take out your stitches in about a week. Or I can totally do it! You just have to come back here. I can give you my number if you want to see when I’m on duty.”

Tom glanced at Honor. “You can go to Jeremy,” she said. “He’s a family friend.”

“I’ll do that, then,” Tom said.

“Sure! Just look at these gorgeous sutures, right? Listen, it was so nice meeting you!” Dr. Chu said. “I’m just gonna ask my attending one thing, okay? I doubt we need X-rays, but I want to be supersure.”

“Thank you,” Tom said.

“You’re totally welcome! Back in a flash!” She practically skipped out.

Honor forced herself to look at her fiancé. “Not bad,” she said. Dr. Chu’s stitches were small and neat, for all that she talked like a love-struck tween.

“Good. Such a pretty face, I’d hate for it to be ruined.”

“I’m really sorry. As I believe I’ve said fifteen or twenty times.”

“Don’t worry about it. Sorry I put you in that situation.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the floor.

Out in the hall, they could hear the noise of the hospital, the clatter of gurneys and the hiss of the automatic doors. A baby was crying.

“Why were you so scared?” Tom asked unexpectedly.

She shrugged, her heart rate surging once more. “I don’t know.” She started to speak, then stopped. “I was mugged once. He, um, shoved me in a doorway. Just like your little scenario.”

His eyebrows jolted upward. “Are you bloody joking?” he said. “That would’ve been really good to know.”

“You didn’t ask. And I didn’t think to mention it.”

“Why the hell not? I wouldn’t have pretended to be assaulting you if I’d known that, Honor! Why didn’t you say something?”

“I don’t know! Don’t yell at me. It was a long time ago, in Philly when I was in grad school. He grabbed me, asked for my purse, I gave it to him, he left. He had a gun, so I just did what he said. It wasn’t a big deal.”

“You were held up at gunpoint, but it wasn’t a big deal?”

“You can stop yelling anytime, you know. I thought you Brits were all about keep calm and carry on. And don’t tell anyone I was mugged,” she added in a softer voice. “No one else knows.”

He was staring at her, mouth slightly open. “Yes, God forbid you should let anyone know you’re human.”

“And what does that mean?” she snapped. “Are you an expert on me all of a sudden?”

There was a knock on the exam room door, and in came Levi, dressed in his police uniform. He jerked to a stop at the sight of them. “Oh. Hey, you two.”

“Hi, Levi,” Honor said, glad for a friendly face. “What are you doing here?”

He drew in a breath. “Uh, I have to ask Tom some questions.”

“What for?” Tom asked.

“The doctor suspects domestic abuse,” Levi answered. “And I did just hear yelling.”

First a catfight, now this. “Do your thing,” she said wearily.

“Mate, it was nothing,” Tom said. “She was helping out at the self-defense class and caught me off guard.”

“So really, this is kind of your fault,” Honor said. “Since the class was your brainchild.”

“I’d have to agree,” Tom said. “It’s certainly not Honor’s.”

Levi did not look amused. “Let me talk to Tom for a second. I have to follow procedure, even if you’re Faith’s sister. Especially because you’re Faith’s sister.”

“You bet.” She slipped out and stood in the hallway. So now her brother-in-law/supercop was investigating her. She sighed, then force-smiled at an old man with an oxygen mask over his face. He didn’t smile back. Poor guy. Honor looked away.

Hospitals had always creeped her out, ever since Mom had died. That had been the worst day, of course. The worst day in her life. She’d been the one to answer the phone; Dad was in the fields, and she was waiting for Mom and Faith to return from Corning. They’d been late, and Honor was jealous, imagining them out to lunch somewhere, or bopping into the cute little shops on Market Street.

“Is your father there, sweetheart?” Chief Griggs had asked, and Honor knew in that second that something horrible had happened. “I need to talk to him.”

“Why?” Honor asked.

“I just do, honey.”

A white, icy fear flashed over her. Her knees buckled, then straightened. “Are they dead?” she whispered.

“Sit tight, okay? Is your dad home?”

“Yes.”

“I’m on my way,” the chief had said, and the terrible kindness in his voice had confirmed it. Death stood in the kitchen with her as she put the phone down on the counter next to her chemistry textbook. It followed her to the back door, out into the yard, and yet she was calm as she called to her father.

Faith and Mom, gone. Dead. So this is what people meant when they said they felt numb.

Dad was going to need her. As Chief Griggs pulled into the driveway, she wrapped her arms around her father’s waist. Heard the words—Faith was okay, but Constance didn’t make it.

Honor felt her dad sag, heard the horrible small sound that he made as the chief said the words. Held his brittle, dry hand all the way to the hospital where one ambulance had taken Faith, and one had taken Mom.

That ambulance would’ve gone more slowly, Honor thought, standing outside Faith’s room as Daddy went in. No lights, no sirens. Somewhere below her, her mother’s body was being slipped into a dark, cold cupboard.

Mommy.

The horrible magnitude of the loss threatened to swallow her whole and suck her down. The only one who really got her, who had made her feel so special, was gone. It was over. Life would never be the same, never as good, as whole, as happy.

The black grief had to be held off, though. Honor was her mother’s daughter: calm, logical, pragmatic. No one else in the family was like them. She would keep her shit together, she would duct-tape her heart so it wouldn’t shatter and she’d do what had to be done.

But those happy, perfect days of wholeness...they were done.

Only with Brogan—and only once in a great while, admittedly—did she ever get a little glimpse of that again. Not that she’d been miserable. Just that life hadn’t been firing on all cylinders. She’d been waiting since she was sixteen years old to have that piece of her returned, and every once in a while, when she and Brogan were out to dinner together or when he forgot what time zone he was in and called her in the middle of the night had she ever glimpsed a sliver of what she’d been missing.

Which did make her wonder what she was doing with Tom. He was still mostly a stranger...a stranger who flirted with anything that sported br**sts and a pulse. Who was occasionally so wonderful that she’d start to hope for that missing piece, only to have him withdraw seconds later.

The door opened, and the man in question appeared, Levi close behind him. “I’ve decided not to press charges,” Tom said. “So long as you’re on your best behavior from now on.”

“Very funny,” she said.

“You guys need anything?” Levi asked.

“We’re all set,” she said. “Thanks, Levi. Sorry you had to come out here.”

“All in a day’s work,” he said. “See you soon.” He started to walk away, then turned and looked at them, a frown creasing his forehead. “Are you guys sure you’re okay?”

“We’re fine, mate,” Tom said, sliding an arm around her shoulders. “Right, darling?”

“Yes! Yeah, absolutely. It’s just been a long day.”

Levi looked at them another minute, and Honor’s stomach cramped. She tipped her head against Tom’s shoulder and smiled. “Thanks again. Tell Faith I’ll call her later.”

He nodded, then lifted a hand and walked away.