“Is that where you met Meredith?”
“Sort of—with help from lightning.”
“Lightning?” Libby repeated.
“I was at the gym, and it was raining something fierce when I glanced out the window and saw two bolts of lightning hit a lamppost. I had never seen anything like it in the city. Meredith was walking down the street when it happened. It freaked her out, and she ran inside to get out of the rain. She’d never stepped foot in the gym before.”
“That’s quite a cosmic meeting.”
“I guess you could say that,” he replied. “From that moment on, we were together.”
“Was she a fan of boxing?”
“No,” he answered, recalling Mere’s expression the first time he brought her to a fight. “She never liked watching me get hit in the head till I fell down. So, I told her I’d become so good that no one could do that to me. And I kept my word. She gave me focus and clarity. We got married when we were eighteen. She worked two jobs to support us before I started winning big money. She believed in me. She put her hopes and dreams on hold to be there for me. After I’d won my first title, she started a charity to give back, the Cress Family Foundation. She loved volunteering, loved going into tough neighborhoods and helping kids. She dragged me along a few times. We even took Sebastian. She wore him in one of those baby carriers while she scooped ice cream and handed it out.” He could see her laughing and chatting with the kids.
“What happened with the charity?” Libby asked.
“Aug and my granny took over.” He stilled. He’d cut himself off from that part of his former life. It hurt too damned much. “I’m not sure if it’s even active anymore.”
“Meredith sounds like an incredible woman.”
His throat grew thick with grief. “Yeah, she was.”
One would think talking about a dead spouse with someone you’d slept with and pretty much wanted to kiss into oblivion twenty-four seven would be awkward. It probably should be awkward, but it wasn’t. Libby had an open quality about her that drew him in like a beacon guiding a wayward boat through tumultuous waters.
“What happened to Meredith?” Libby asked, and the beacon’s light dimmed.
Could he tell her?
He’d never spoken the words.
There hadn’t been a reason to rehash the gut-wrenching tragedy. His sisters knew what had happened. Aug had been on the phone with his granny Fin and had spoken with Briggs. All the players in his life who needed to know did know, and he wasn’t about to go blabbing to the media. Even Briggs didn’t push him on that.
He concentrated on a spot on the Victorian’s hardwood floor. He should stop talking, stop dredging up the past. He tapped the stair with his hand like he was testing the strength of it—checking to see if this perfect purgatory could endure the tale of Mere’s passing.
But as he touched the wood, it became clear.
He wasn’t testing the strength of the steps.
It wasn’t the stairs at all.
The support he truly required wasn’t made of wood. It had amber eyes and jet-black hair.
He allowed his gaze on the wood plank to grow blurry as the words spilled from his lips. “Mere died of sepsis—blood poisoning. Her appendix had burst a few weeks before my championship fight, and she needed emergency surgery. She hated making a fuss and cutting into my training. She kept telling me to get back to the gym, get back to Aug. And after a few days when she seemed to be on the mend, I did. She had my sisters and Granny Fin to help with Sebastian, but her health started going downhill. She’d blamed feeling poorly on a slow recovery and looking after a toddler. We left it at that. She’d always been a healthy person. She rarely got sick. We didn’t have any reason to believe her fatigue was anything more than her body trying to heal.”
He paused, recalling the last time he’d kissed her goodbye. She’d been in bed with Sebastian curled up next to her, sleeping. He exhaled a slow breath, then continued. “The night of my fight, she stayed home. She said she needed to rest, but the pain got so bad that my granny insisted on taking her to hospital. By the time they got there, she was in major organ failure. The nurses told me she was in terrible pain, but she still made them put the fight on the telly. She passed away seconds after the bell rang—just as the ref raised my hand and declared me the winner.”
He sat there, dumbfounded. The story had churned and grated beneath his mask of arrogance. He’d finally spoken the words that had tormented him for years.
“I saw a picture of you after that fight,” Libby said, pulling him back.
“The one right after I won, where I was holding Aug’s mobile to my ear?”
He could feel the crush of people, the blaring music, and the doctor’s voice slicing through it like a scalpel. He knew exactly which photo she’d seen. The bloody image had made it around the globe before he’d set foot inside the hospital.
“Yes, it was that one.”
He ran his hands down his face. “I should have been with her. I should have made her go to the doctor when she started feeling bad. I live with that every day. Now, all I can do for her is make her sacrifice worth it by winning, by being the fighter she helped create. I cannot fail. I can’t be a no-show for this fight. I got a pass, being the grieving widower, last time. It had only been a year since her death. But this is different. This is my last chance. I’m thirty-two years old, plum. I either go out a champion or fade away as some flash-in-the-pan mental case who couldn’t get it together after his wife died. I owe it to Mere to be the champion.”
The weight was back, heavy and gnawing. It hung around his shoulders, dragging him down like stones descending to the bottom of the sea. The spot he’d been staring at had become blurrier. He blinked, needing a new focus. He chanced a look at Libby and got it.
He’d expected to see pity in her eyes after his sad-sap story, but he didn’t.
She cocked her head to the side, her neutral expression not giving anything away. “Can I tell you something, Raz?”
“Sure.”
“I feel awfully bad about calling you a beefcake,” she deadpanned.
For two measured beats, neither said a word. And then, like magic, the gloomy dam in his chest broke, and he laughed, and God help him, it was the release he needed.
How did she know that?
Was he easy to read, or was it something else? Was it that thread that formed between them the moment he’d set eyes on her months ago when Rowen had dragged his arse, along with Mitch and Landon, to nerd-stalk Penny at that dodgy bar?
He shrugged, playing along with her mock aloofness but so damned grateful for choosing this brand of humor. “I can’t blame you. Beefcake is probably the nicest thing you could have called me under the circumstances.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” she answered, gifting him with the ghost of a grin. “I called you other names, too.”
“The obliterator of orgasms, the sinister chi thief, and the climax crusher,” he replied like one of those commercial movie voice-over announcers hyping up a film.
“Climax crusher? That’s a good one,” she chimed as a more playful energy thrummed between them.
Beyond their sexual chemistry, this new sensation of peeling back his layers and revealing himself left him raw but lighter. They sat quietly as a comfortable silence descended on the house when a muffled donkey bray floated in through one of the windows he must have forgotten to close.