I walked out of the station and called Kieran from my new phone, a perk Em had insisted on after my title win.
“Can you do me a favor and give Em a ride home from work tonight? I need some time in the ring,” I asked him.
“No problem. I’ll see you later,” he agreed and hung up. There was no way Em was finding out about Frank’s latest stunt but fuck knew I needed to hit something if I had any chance of hiding this from her.
*
The thump of the bag echoed across the nearly empty gym. I’d been smacking the shit out of this thing for over an hour but it wasn’t working. I was still as pissed off and as pumped up as when I started. To calm my rage, I needed the satisfaction that only the crack of knuckles across flesh would give me. Ignoring the gloves by my side, I stuck with the dirty wraps I’d found at the bottom of my locker. They didn’t smell too good but they protected my knuckles at least. I needed Kieran or Liam to spar with me to take the edge off but the place was empty. Heath Earnshaw chose just that moment to walk out of Danny’s office. He’d do nicely.
“Earnshaw,” I called out. “You got a sec?” He looked shocked, if not a little bemused, that I was talking to him.
“Do you have any training gear with you?” I asked.
“Sure,” he replied. “Why?”
“Wondered if you fancied sparring?” I asked innocently.
“Sure,” he replied. “Just let me change, and I’ll be there.” I shadowboxed patiently while I tried to calm down.
He wasn’t gone more than five minutes, but as he strolled confidently toward the ring, everything about him, from his tanned skinned to his all-American perfect white teeth got on my nerves. Even his training gear looked new and expensive compared with our raggedy old stuff.
“How long you been boxing?” I asked as we danced around the ring.
“Since I was about ten. My old man taught me.”
“He anyone I would’ve heard of?” I asked curiously.
“Nah. He never did it to compete. He just wanted me to be able to take care of myself. I won a few amateur titles when I was a teenager but I was never good enough to go pro.”
I started out with a few combinations to test his mettle. Kieran was a better sparring partner because he could read me. We’d had a lifetime of training together, and he often knew what punch I’d throw before I did. This guy wasn’t half bad though. He picked up the pace, and we were throwing a few combinations back and forth when a rogue left hook clipped me with more force than he’d intended. It was unexpected and knocked me off my feet.
“Sorry,” he said good-naturedly, offering out his hand to help me up. When I shook my head in refusal, he looked a little worried.
“Don’t sweat it,” I told him with a calm I didn’t feel. I jabbed at him a couple of times, and he responded in turn with a couple of his own combinations. Our friendly banter of a few minutes ago was ancient history, and the tension between us was palpable. It was wrong to blame him for what pissed me off but my rage had no sense of direction. I guess it was in me to hide it from Em, but everyone else lately was fair game. Twenty minutes into our session and I’d made it clear that he was out of his depth. We’d passed what could respectively be called sparring long ago. For the most part, Earnshaw just kept his guard up, jabbing at me when he could, while I used him like a human punch bag. He knew what I was doing, and although the look on his face was murderous, he didn’t call me out on it.
“If the job is a bit out of your league, Earnshaw, there’s no shame in admitting it,” I taunted him. I was basically asking him if he’d had enough. Hell, I was practically daring him to quit. I’d smacked him around a fair bit already but he looked me straight in the eye when he told me to go fuck myself.
“If you’re too chicken shit to take on major professional fighters, there ain’t no shame in that either.”
Fuck him. I’d show him exactly how out of his depth he was. Dancing around, I deftly dogged a predictable combination and delivered a right hook with the force of a freight train. The hit connected, and I felt a momentary swell of relief. If I could just do that enough times, maybe I could purge the anger and frustration that stayed with me constantly. I didn’t much care about Earnshaw. Not when his eyes snapped shut, not when he flew through the air completely unconscious, and not when he landed with a smack against the canvas. I cared about what happened next.
Chapter 6
“No,” cried Em from across the gym. Kieran stood in the doorway behind her. Both of them ran across the room and climbed into the ring, but it was Earnshaw they went to and it fucking burned. Kieran checked his vitals while Em looked at me accusingly.
“What have you done?” she whispered.