“But, Danny,” he whined, “I’m really badly injured!” He turned his downtrodden expression toward Danny, who was the least sympathetic person I had ever met.
“I don’t give a feck if you’re actually bloody dying. Unless you’re planning on donating one of those organs to me, get out of me feckin’ chair.” Looking like Danny had kicked him, he made it out of the chair to stand next to Kier. Em brought the rest of us cups of tea, and I patted my knee when she was done, loving that all the seats were taken so that she’d sit on my lap. I wrapped my arm around her tiny waist, pulling her in close, and inhaled her vanilla scent. The door opened and closed as an excited Earnshaw bounded in. Heath was cautious, reserved, and stoic most of the time so to see him excited was quite funny.
“I’d just like to announce that I’m an absolute genius,” he told us. Danny rolled his eyes and glared at us, like we’d somehow infected Earnshaw with our self-confidence.
“All right, genius, want to tell us why?” I asked.
“I’ve got you a title fight with Rico Temple.”
“The same Rico Temple who kicked Con’s arse and swore he’d never give him a title shot?” Tommy asked.
“You know any other Rico Temples?” Earnshaw responded. I grinned at Kieran because this was my chance for redemption. The exhibition against Temple had been an absolute travesty. This time I would show Danny what I was really made of.
“That’s good news, Heath,” Kier congratulated him. “How d’you get him to agree to it?”
“Pretty much the same way Kieran got us to shoot Tommy,” he answered, and he and Kieran smiled conspiratorially. “It’s only fair to warn you though, Con,” he told me. “You fuck up this fight, and you won’t get another chance at Temple. His star is on the rise, and he’s telling everyone who’ll listen that he’s already knocked you out. You were just too stupid to go down.”
“That right?” I said smiling. There’s nothing like going into a fight as the underdog. Temple thought he knew me, knew my play because he’d seen me on a bad day. I was going to bring his whole world crashing down around him. Danny looked stern and not too happy at all. “What’s wrong, Danny?” I asked him.
“Not sure if your head is in the right place yet. Physically you’ll be fine but one sort of goes hand in hand with the other.”
“We’ll make sure he’s ready,” Kieran reassured him, and it was pretty obvious how much he wanted me to take on this fight.
“When’s all this meant to be going down anyway?” Liam asked.
“December tenth,” Earnshaw answered, and the whole room went quiet.
“We can’t take the fight,” I told him, my voice echoing in the silence.
“Why not?” he said, alarmed.
“The trial for Em’s stepfather Frank starts a month before,” I told him.
“Fuck,” Earnshaw muttered. “What’re the chances of Temple changing the date?” Kieran asked, knowing there was no way I could do that to Em.
“Zero. This is it. Take it or leave it. You’ll get another chance at the title again but you can kiss it good-bye for another three or four years.”
“Shit,” I added, trying to remember all the stuff that Father Pat had told me as I started losing hold of my temper. Finally, after counting to fifty in my head, I made a decision. “Then we wait three or four years. Nothing is more important than Em.”
*
Four weeks to the day that we made an offer, the run-down, ramshackle shit hole that we’d fallen in love with became officially ours. It had been torn down and beat up but I intended to rebuild it, and Em would give it a soul. The irony that the house mirrored our own situation was not lost on me.
After picking up the keys from the agent we walked toward the house through the park. When we got to the bench, Em tugged on my hand as she sat, pulling me down next to her. Without needing to be asked, she cuddled her body into mine and rested her head on my chest. Watching her as she listened to my heartbeat, I felt safe. Is that odd? For a woman to make a man feel safe?
I don’t mean to say that I was afraid of the people around me. I could take care of myself well enough that the prospect of ever getting mugged or jumped didn’t bother me. Most of the time my only fear was of losing Em. She was the beating heart of me that walked around outside my body. She was my greatest strength and my Achilles’ heel. The only way to hurt me was to hurt her.