Punching and Kissing (10 page)

“I’m paying.” And then, because she still looked doubtful, I blurted, “I’ll pay for your meals.”

She stared at me as if I’d offered her a ruby necklace. “Thank you,” she said at last. She looked down at her food as she started to eat, but she kept glancing up at me as if I was the second coming.

Jesus, no one’s ever given her a present before?
No one’s ever done anything nice for this girl?
What the
feck
were all those other guys thinking? She should be getting real presents—dresses and jewelry and a feckin’ Mercedes with a bow tied round it on her birthday. And all that romantic stuff—chocolates and flowers and those stupid scented soaps and candles that women like so much. She shouldn’t be getting excited about some free meals.

“I don’t get you,” she said, frowning. When she frowned, she wrinkled her nose like a rabbit and I wanted to pull her out of her seat and snog her so bad. “One minute you’re riding me about how badly I’m doing. The next you’re being nice to me.”

I looked down at my plate. “Just trying to do the right thing,” I mumbled.

I could feel her eyes burning into me. “So, do you have many brothers?” she asked.

“Lots,” I said. I thought of the tattoo on my back, as if it was glowing through my t-shirt.

“Where are they?”

“Around.”

“Around New York?”

“Around America.” I knew I was being cagey so I tried to turn it back to her. “It must be weird, living with your brother.”

She nodded, her mouth full. Given that she’d said she wasn’t hungry, she was wolfing down the steak and eggs. I wondered how long it was since someone had given her a decent meal.

When she eventually swallowed, she said, “He can get a little overprotective, if I bring a guy back. It’s cute.” She smiled for a moment and then it crumbled. She must have remembered where her brother was.
Ah, hell.

“Does that happen a lot, recently?” The words were out before I could snap my mouth shut.
Shit!
Had I just sort-of-kind-of asked if she was single?

She looked up at me. "No. Not recently."

I could almost feel it throb in the air between us, like a heat haze. It wasn't just my imagination. She
did
like me. Which was bad, because I liked her even more.

She poked at her steak. "Paying for my meals is nice. Thank you."

"You're welcome."

But she wasn't finished. "I didn't know stevedores made that much money, though."

We didn't. I shrugged.

"And you don't fight anymore, right? So you're not making it that way. So what is it?" She leaned forward. "Are you smuggling stuff into the country? Like in
The Wire?"

I stiffened. "Not all dock workers are on the take." I knew it was a shitty job, but it was
my
shitty job.

"Okay, sorry. So what is it? You're a secret millionaire?"

"It's only steak and eggs."

"Yeah, but you didn't even think about it. You just paid for it, and said you'd pay for my meals while we trained, which by the way I'm not even sure I'm totally comfortable with. I agonize for an hour over whether I can afford laundry detergent."

I leaned forward, putting my forearms on the table. It creaked. "You’re annoyingly sharp."

"Why, thank you. So what's the secret income? Drugs? Are you a part-time gigolo?"

I sighed. "I don't earn any extra money. I just don't spend it."

She seemed taken aback. "Oh." Then, "Really?"

"Really."

"You mean you don't get out much?"

"
Look—"
And then I didn't know what to say. It had all been going so well, back at the gym. Slow progress, true, but she'd been trying really hard. And now suddenly, as soon as we'd got to the diner, everything had changed. I felt antsy and off-balance.

And then I realized what it was: I wasn't in control anymore. Fighting—that was my world. I understood that. I was
good
at it. In here, talking to her...that was the life I'd left behind when I'd retreated to my apartment.

Since that night I’d quit fighting, the closest I'd gotten to small talk was a few minutes of muttering in some woman's ear, just before I grabbed her hand and dragged her off to a cab so we could go to her place and have sex. Suddenly, I was back out here, talking to a woman, actually having a conversation, and it was jarring and weird and annoying as hell and...wonderful. It was bloody wonderful. I hated to admit it, but I was enjoying myself more than I had in a long time.

I looked at Sylvie across the table. She'd thrown on a loose t-shirt the same bright blue as the sky outside and her usual tight jeans. There wasn't anything inherently sexy about the t-shirt—it didn't even have a low neck. But every time she leaned forward or twisted, there was just a hint of the warm pressure of her breasts, pushing out the front of it. Even when her body was hidden, it was sexy as hell because then I could imagine it.

I am out of control with this woman.

"What about you?" I said gruffly, trying to get things back onto safer ground.

"Hotel maid," she said simply. "Picking up sheets and trash and sometimes dildos."

"Dil—"

"Don't worry, they give us gloves. You wouldn't believe some of the things people leave in their beds. The pay's shitty and the guests are always trying to get into your pants, but it's work." She finished her food and put down her fork. "I was in college, for a while. Dropped out when my dad died. Couldn't afford it."

I nodded sadly. Inside, though, what I felt was anger. Anger at fate for loading the dice when it came to her life. One crappy roll after another. No one did that to my angel. It wasn’t fair. There were people who deserved that sort of luck, people like—

People like me?

I stood up. “I gotta go,” I said. “I got a shift.” I did, but it didn’t start for another couple of hours. But I had to get out of there. For a second, while I was getting all righteously annoyed on her behalf, I’d thought of myself as one of the good guys. Like I could be the one to save her.

I could train her. Nothing more. The deeper I got into her life, the worse it would be for her. I wasn’t any sort of good luck charm.

“What should we do about training?” she asked. “I’m kind of busy—I was thinking of taking on some extra shifts—”

I shook my head. “Don’t. Cancel anything in the mornings.”

“The
whole morning?
Every day?”

“You’re in training, now.”

“I need the money!”

“Money’s no good to you if you’re dead. Win the fight and you can pay the bills with your winnings.”

She considered. “Okay,” she said at last.

“Get some rest. Meet me at the docks, tomorrow. Wear running shoes. We gotta work on your stamina.” I tossed some bills on the table to pay for lunch. “6:30.”

I walked away before I got in any deeper. But I heard her call after me, “6:30
am?”

Sylvie

Getting to the docks for 6:30am meant getting up not long after five. I couldn’t remember when I’d last been awake at five, but I was pretty sure that it had involved staying up late, not getting up early.

When I reached the docks, I saw Aedan waiting for me outside the main gate. His face was upturned to the rising sun, as if he was bathing in pure morning. He hadn’t seen me, yet, and he had an expression of beatific joy on his face, as if he was doing something he loved, something he hadn’t done for a long time.

Which seemed weird. I mean, he was free and single. If he wanted to get up at this ungodly hour, he could, every morning. So why was he only doing it now?

Unless...he hadn’t had a reason to, before.

“Hey,” I said, to get his attention.

He looked around and, for just a second, I saw those big blue eyes shine as he looked at me. The way they lit up made my heart dance. A hot little thrill went through me, the sort I hadn’t felt in a hell of a long time.

And then he seemed to catch himself and look away. I could almost see his defenses slamming back up. His shoulders tightened, his brow furrowed. “You’re late,” he muttered.

It was 6:35. “There’s no way you can possibly call this late. It’s the middle of the night. We could go for a coffee and come back and it would
still
be too early.” I yawned and considered that. “Actually, could we just do that?”

He ignored me and nodded at the road. “C’mon.”

And he started to jog at an easy pace. Well, it was easy for the first hundred yards. Then I started to feel it.

“Okay,” he said, not out of breath at all, “Now start punching. Jab, jab, jab, cross, like I showed you.”

“While I’m running?”

“You think that girl you’re fighting is going to stand still while you hit her?”

I tried to punch and run at the same time. It wasn’t just doubly tiring, it was about ten times worse. Every punch threw off my stride. Every stagger threw off my punches.

“Come on,” he told me. “Women are meant to be able to multi-task.”

I huffed for air. “Traditionally,” I managed, “aren’t you meant to be riding a bike alongside me?”

“When you’re running fast enough that I need a bike, I’ll let you know.”

We ran, with me
jab-jab-jab-cross
ing and him snapping orders at me. The sun slowly rose behind the cranes and moored ships, turning the water to glittering gold. I had to admit that I’d been missing out, never seeing sunrises.

We ran right down to the water, where there was an old, disused wooden pier. Some of it had collapsed and its stout wooden legs were all that were left on one side, stretching out into the water like stepping stones.

He veered off from me and jumped onto the first of the wooden legs, then jumped onto the next and the next, using them like stepping stones. When he reached the end, he turned on the spot and jumped back along them. He was as steady-footed as a mountain goat.

“I want you to try that, eventually,” he said. “To work on your balance...and get you out of your head.”

“Out of my
head?”

“You’re too much in your head. Not enough in your body.” Was it just me, or had he hesitated before he’d said
body?
As if thinking of my body tripped him up. “You think too much. You need to feel it more.”

I was still
jab-jab-jab-cross
ing, panting, now. “You’ve—lost—me,” I managed.

He thought about how to explain it. He still wasn’t out of breath. “Your body’s just a vehicle, to you. Something to carry your brain. You’ve got to start feeling it.
Feel
the road under your feet.
Feel
each punch. Be in your body, not in your head.”

It sounded like mystical boxer bullshit to me, but I nodded. And, as we ran on, I tried to do what he said. I tried to feel the air whistling past my fists as I punched. I tried to focus on the feel of my legs flexing with each step. I tried to stay out of my head and its thoughts of Aedan, jogging easily alongside me, his pecs stretching out his t-shirt, those wide shoulders rocking from side to side, his big blue eyes regarding me so solemnly….

“You’re in your head again,” he told me.

I gritted my teeth and kept trying. And slowly, despite the distraction of Aedan and his damn eyes, I started to feel it. It still sounded like mystical bullshit, but my body
did
start to feel more like
me
and less just a thing I gave orders to. I felt less floaty and distant, more grounded.

By the time we reached the halfway point and turned back the way we’d come, it felt natural. By the time we reached the pier again, I was buzzing with the feeling. My muscles ached and my lungs burned, but I felt alive.

I veered off the street and ran for the pier. It was still too early for traffic and it was so quiet that I could hear every scrape of my shoes on the asphalt, every rasp of the fabric of my sports top as I twisted and punched. As I approached the stepping-stone pier legs, I quit punching and held my arms out for balance.