Page 9 of Craving the Edge

I risked a glance. Declan stood there, gear bag slung over one broad shoulder. His hair was damp, stuck to his forehead. He just watched me for a second, then a slow, lopsided smile broke across his face before he turned and followed Tomas out the door. The door swung shut behind them, cutting off the daylight.

Is that it all I get? I thought.

I snorted and immediately discarded the stupidity of it. I hadn’t asked for anything more than what I’d just been given.

I pushed back from the desk and picked up my phone out of habit. I scrolled through the contacts until I found Carla.

This was why. This hollow feeling. This was the reason for the desk and the walls built so high no one could see over them. It was the reason I made myself easy to walk away from.

I turned the phone over, placing it face down on the desk.

The screen went dark. Like it always did.

CHAPTER 4

DECLAN

I’d been training at Fighter’s Edge for a week.

I rolled my shoulders, the muscles burning with a clean ache. The canvas under my feet was worn smooth in patches, a map of other fighters’ routines. It was nothing like the pristine, logo-stamped mats at Ironbound, where the air purifiers cleaned out all the shit. Here, the air was real. A grass roots, blood, sweat and tears, kind of real.

The warehouse was feeling less like a punishment and more like a reprieve. No cameras. No sponsors dropping by for a photo op. Just the dull echo of Tomas’s skipping rope whipping the concrete floor and the rhythmic thud of my own gloves against a heavy bag that’d seen better days. In the mirrors, my reflection fractured into a dozen pieces. It felt about right.

Tomas had become part of the furniture.

It was impressive, his ability to just…fit. He was a chameleon, shedding the high-performance skin of Ironbound and blending into the gritty workings of Fighter’s Edge without a second thought. They saw Tomas Fontes, the fighter, the mate. When their attention flicked to me, the recognition was immediate. I wasn’t a person. I was an event.

I turned back to the bag, my knuckles aching inside the glove. The throbbing in my right hand was a constant reminder of the shallowness that often surrounded me. Tomas collected friends. I collected hangers-on. It was an exhausting kind of fame, and watching him made the weight of my own performance feel a hundred kilos heavier. He was the one they’d have a beer with. I was the one they’d pay to watch get his face rearranged.

Leeches who’d jump at the hance to attach their greedy fucking lips to my arse. Money, fame, a way in. Fuck them. I did the work.

I peeled the glove off my right hand, letting it drop to the mat. I flexed my fingers and a sharp pain shot up from the second knuckle, hotter than last week. Every thud against the bag felt like a small betrayal, the bones inside my hand shifting.

For now, I was managing it. I’d started wrapping the joint differently, an extra, tighter loop around the base of my fingers to brace the impact, another strip across the back of my hand to hide the slight puffiness that never went away. It made the glove feel tight, but it was better than the alternative.

My combinations changed. Left jabs, left hooks, body rips with the left. I used my right sparingly, a feint or a quick, snapping cross that carried no real power. Anything to avoid planting my full weight behind it.

Tomas knew. He hadn’t said fuck all, but he knew. I saw it in the way he watched my pad work, tracking the shift in my rhythm. He’d hold the pads a fraction higher for my left, a fraction lower for my right, compensating without a word. He noticed I never led with my power hand anymore. We’d been training together too long for him not to feel the difference.

Five weeks until Sydney.

A countdown timer strapped to a bomb. Each morning the pain was a little worse, and it made the lie a little harder to keep up. I wasn’t sure I’d even make it into the cage.

I was flexing my hand, lost in the rhythm of the pain, when the front door groaned.

Rhys strode in, his polished leather shoes making no sound on the dusty concrete floor. He didn’t turn his head or offer so much as a polite nod to the woman sitting less than a metre away from him.

Dick.

I watched Charlotte, the one bright spot in a shitty world. She didn’t move, her hands still on her keyboard, but I saw her chin lift just enough. I saw her eyes follow his back as he crossed the floor towards me. Her pure, undiluted loathing for Rhys was on full display.

A smile tugged at my mouth. A genuine one.

She fucking hated us. Hated the disruption, the noise, the whole circus…but watching her glare at Rhys, I realised it wasn’t personal…not really. She didn’t hate me. She hated the image on the screen. She hated the arrogant prick in the suit who thought he could walk into her space and treat her like she was invisible. Like she was nothing.

And I couldn’t blame her. I hated that arsehole, too.

My gaze slid past Rhys to her. I hadn’t crossed the invisible line she’d drawn around her desk since that first day. Watching her now, I understood it wasn’t a challenge. It was a boundary, and for the first time in a long time, I was on her side of it.