Till made his way over and wrapped me in his arms. “Okay. Okay. Nobody’s getting rid of Eliza. I can make sixty million and keep her.” He continued to laugh even as he kissed the top of my head.
“Gee. Thanks.”
And that was the way we worked. We picked on each other relentlessly and laughed unabashedly. They fought. I refereed. It was perfect, really.
We were a family.
One year later . . .
“THE SILENCER IS IN THE house!” I heard called as I walked into the gym.
Quarry laughed as he took off toward the before-school program he had long since grown to love.
I had quickly become a small-time big deal around the gym.
With over seven fights under my belt, I was making my way up the ladder. The fights were getting larger, and I was loving it. By the end of the first year, I had banked over fifteen grand on top of what Slate paid me weekly. I’d dropped it all in a savings account and refused to touch it. I had never felt more stable and secure in my life. Just knowing it was there calmed the anxiety I hadn’t even known I was harboring.
Eliza was finishing up her last semester in college and had started looking for accounting positions. She said that she was excited about getting a real job, but I knew she was dreading spending her days poring over numbers instead of sketchpads. After a civil case with Derrick Bailey paid off her student loans, I refused to allow her to take out anymore. I was in it forever with Eliza, and the last thing I wanted was to start it out with a load of debt.
God, we fought about money, but not like most couples. It was never because we didn’t have enough or one was spending too much. It was always about who got to pay the bills. I was making decent money and hell-bent on taking care of her the way I had always dreamed about. And well, Eliza didn’t like feeling like a freeloader being taken care of. I loved those fights. Her nipples would get all hard as I yelled about how much I loved providing for her. Then she would stomp her foot and declare that she wanted to split the bills. Which caused my cock to get hard . . . which caused her eyes to heat as they drifted down to my pants . . . which caused me get so hot that I was forced to remove my shirt . . . which caused her to lick her lips . . . which caused me to rush forward and fuck her on the closest horizontal surface I could find. Really, it was a vicious cycle.
“Page, get in here!” Slate yelled from his office.
“What’s up?” I asked, settling into the chair across from his desk.
“You and Quarry go to the doctor yesterday?”
“Yeah. I’m good. He’s not sure why it comes and goes sometimes. I tested at around seventy percent still.”
“And what about Quarry?”
“He’s still sitting at eighty percent. No real change.”
“That’s good fucking news.” He stood up, walked to the door, and pushed it shut before drawing the shades that covered his large, glass windows into the gym.
My curiosity grew, because up until that moment, I hadn’t known that those shades were even functional.
“All right. Now, there’s something else I need to talk to you about.” He sat on the corner of the desk. “Clay Page has been calling the gym looking for you. Pretty much every day, we get a collect call from the prison.”
“Fuck him,” flew from my mouth.
“Right. Well, I’ve been keeping Quarry off phone duty. I don’t want to put him in a position of having to hang up on his own dad if he happened to call.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Well, just so you know, I’ll be contacting the prison to put a halt to that shit. I run a business. I don’t need inmates blowing up my phones.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.” I pushed to my feet, ready to work off some steam.
“Where you going? Sit back down, I’m not done yet.”
“Please tell me there’s not more,” I huffed, flopping back down onto the chair.
“Change of plans on your fight this weekend. Summers got hurt and they can’t find anyone to replace him on such short notice. Your fight got dropped from the card.”
“Son of a bitch!” I boomed, jumping to my feet. “That was a big fight.” I started to pace. “Are we rescheduling?”
“Nope.” He smiled in amusement.
“Why the hell not?”
“You’re too busy.” His smile grew.
“Um, no. No. I’m not. That was twenty-five grand. I’m pretty sure my schedule is wide-ass open.”
“I got you a new fight for Saturday night,” he announced, and I suddenly understood the smile.
“With who?”
“Oh, you know . . . some guy you’ve probably never heard of named Larry Lacy.”
“Shut the fuck up!” I breathed, taking a giant step toward him. “Former heavyweight champ Larry Lacy?”
“Oh, so you have heard of him.” He joked as I started to bounce on my toes. “Well, don’t get too excited. It’s not a pay-per-view or anything. This tiny, unknown network is actually televising it. Shit. I can’t even remember the name.” He rubbed his chin.
I knew he was fucking with me . . . hard. He was almost as excited as I was.
“I think it was called . . . ESPN.”