“Libby, are you there?” Penny asked.
She blinked. “What?”
“You spaced out. Were you getting in a little spontaneous meditation?” Char teased.
“No, I was replaying all the sex I had last night through my head. There was a lot.”
Char lowered her voice. “How did it happen?”
“I told him about my messed-up chi and my missing O, and he volunteered to help. I’ve tried everything, and then I remembered a holistic school of thought that supports the idea of like curing like. I figured, if Raz was the cause of my missing O, he could be the cure.”
“Did it work? I mean, you’ve got hickeys, and you’ve copped to sleeping with the man, but that doesn’t mean you were able to orgasm,” Penny reasoned.
Libby leaned back and remembered the man’s abs, his strong hands, and those eyes owning her every moan. “Oh, I had an O. Actually, I had so many Os I lost track.”
“Are we talking five Os?” Penny pressed.
Libby shook her head.
“Ten Os?” Penny whisper-shouted.
“The man knows how to use his mouth and his hands, and let’s just say, he’s got the right equipment below the belt.”
“So, more than ten Os?” Penny pressed.
“That’s a lot of Os,” Charlotte added with an impressed whistle.
Libby’s skin tingled, and her core clenched. Her body ached for more Os.
“Have you tried masturbating to see if your O is back for good? You do have, as everyone on the internet knows, sixteen vibrators in your possession,” Penny continued.
“That’s the next step we agreed upon.”
“The next step?” Penny and Char questioned in unison.
“I set up an O curriculum. First, we tested my ability to have an O with him. Next, I’ll try to knock one out on my own, and the final test will be to pick out another man, a sort of test subject, to see if I can have an O with another partner. Raz agreed to it, but I’m not so sure we should keep sleeping together.”
“Why not? You like him, right?” Char pressed.
Libby shook her head. “No, I don’t like him.”
Lie. Lie. Lie.
Her brain was furious, but her treacherous body wanted more hickeys. And what about her spirit, her soul? The man had aligned her chakras with one kiss. When he looked at her, the connection between them practically sparked. Energy flowed between them as seamlessly as two rivers coming together to become one. But he certainly wasn’t that man this morning.
“Why don’t you like him? I figured you’d be doing cartwheels across the park after more than ten Os,” Penny remarked.
“Everything changed the minute his grandmother and son arrived. You should have seen him. He barely interacted with Sebastian and bolted the second he could without a backward glance. I also hardly know anything about him. Sebastian told me his mother had passed away. Raz is a widower. Did you guys know that? Do Rowen and Mitch know about Raz’s wife?”
“The guys are oddly protective of each other when it comes to their pasts,” Char answered as Penny nodded.
“It’s sweet. I’d never say this to Rowen, but it’s like they’re their own support group, even though half the time they’re messing with each other. The truth is, they’re there for each other when it matters.”
“Penny and I try to honor that,” Char added, “but now that you’re working for Erasmus, I think we can get a little dirt on the man without feeling like we’re snooping around his personal life.”
“Already on it,” Penny announced, tucking a blond lock of hair behind her ear as she concentrated on her phone. “I’m on his wiki page. Wife, Meredith Holmes Cress, died unexpectedly three years ago. It also says here that Raz learned of her death moments after winning his last heavyweight championship fight. And, oh, this is heartbreaking.”
“What is it?” Libby asked, leaning in.
Penny held out her phone. “There’s a picture.”
Bloody and glistening with sweat, Raz stood in the center of a media circus with Augie next to him. The glittering championship belt hung limp in Raz’s hand while he pressed a cell phone to his ear with the other. Libby enlarged the photo and stared at his face. Tears trailed through the blood on his cheeks. Her breath caught in her throat and a heaviness set in as she took in Raz’s hollowed-out expression—the gut-wrenching look of a man learning he’d lost everything.
Steadying herself, she read the paragraph below the image. “A year later, it says he was a no-show for his next fight, then he disappeared until reemerging now to fight the current champion, Silas Scott.”
“I wonder what brought him back?” Char mused.
Libby stared at the image of a broken Erasmus Cress. “I don’t know.”
Penny scrolled down, revealing a picture of Raz, Meredith, and Sebastian, when the boy was just a baby, then passed her the phone. Libby studied the image. With Sebastian in his arms, holding a paper butterfly in his tiny fist, Raz smiled down at Meredith as she cut a ribbon.
The caption read: Erasmus Cress and his family donate to local community centre. Photo courtesy of the Cress Family Foundation.
Cress Family Foundation.
“Will Raz stay in Denver after the fight?” Penny asked.
Libby handed the phone back to her friend. “I don’t know that either. But I do know that I need to do whatever I can for Sebastian. He deserves to be happy.”
“What about you, Libby?” Char asked.
She shrugged. “My O is back, at least for the time being, but my chi is still whacked out. Except for when Sebastian’s grandmother asked if I’d keep her great-grandson safe.”
“Of course, you’ll keep him safe,” Penny remarked. “You’re great with kids.”
Libby shook her head. “The energy inside me went beyond wanting to keep Sebastian safe. It was weird. The same thing happened just now when I held his hand. It was like he was mine—like a force brought us together for a reason.”
“And what about Raz?” Char pressed.
“Thanks to that stunt outside the gym, we’re stuck together for sixty days,” she answered. “And you know all about the whole spiritual advisor business and Anders and Alec’s tuition. The agency paid half now and will pay the other half after the fight.”
“Covering the boys’ tuition takes a huge burden off your shoulders,” Char offered.
Her friend was right, but it didn’t diminish the weight entirely. It complicated things even more.
She was well and truly stuck with boxing’s Lion.
Penny leaned in. “What happens now?”
Libby sighed. It was as if she’d lived a thousand lives in the space of a day. She needed something to ground her, something to even out her erratic energy. Then she remembered the stone. She removed the smooth aquamarine gemstone from her pocket and rubbed her thumb along the polished surface.
“I haven’t seen that in ages,” Charlotte said, staring down at the stone.
Libby glanced from the object to her friend. “What do you mean? I just got this.”
“Didn’t you have one like it when we were kids?” Char asked, studying the blue-green object.