Nasty and repulsive.
Just another reminder I’ve broken the promise we made to one another in so many ways that Eden and I made when we were kids.
No secrets, no lies.
It’s our golden rule. We swore on it, did the spit handshake, kissed on it, and so much more.
I’ve gone and pissed all over it.
The need to get out of here starts itching at my flesh. I need to touch Eden in any way I can because Christ Almighty, I have a feeling once I spill my guts out, she’ll have me sleeping on the couch for days.
The continuous battle that’s been waging war inside of me since announcing my retirement two-years-ago starts churning like a bitch in my stomach. Forming knots that twist my guts in half.
I could vomit, and they’d still be there.
Twisting me up to remind me, I’m a piece of trash.
A lowlife, regardless of what the world thinks. A man who doesn’t deserve the woman at his side.
The sensible part of me is pressing to say fuck it and go about our lives. To settle with the success and accomplishments I’ve done. Everything I’ve been blessed to earn far outweighs the dreams I’d once wished for.
Then there’s the other side of me. The part the doctors say years of taking hit after hit has damaged. That part is screaming at me that I have it in me to do what I desperately want to do, that I’m not as fucked up as the doctors claim.
That I’m not half the man, I was.
“You’ve been hit in the head one to many times, Mason. You’ve suffered more concussions than anyone I’ve ever treated. One more and you could live the rest of your life with memory loss and unbearable headaches. Post-Concussion Syndrome causes personality changes as well. You could be happy one second, swing into a violent mood the next. You could become dazed while driving, have difficulty concentrating, reading, eating, and sleeping. To put it bluntly, you could die. A person’s head can only take so much. I advise you to retire.”
I haven’t had a single symptom since we made the decision I would retire.
Hanging up my boxing gloves was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Boxing is in my blood. I breathe it, live it, and at the age of thirty-three, I’m in the best shape of my life. I have more in me; I know I do.
At the moment, the problem isn’t my brain. It’s that I’ve kept wanting to return to boxing from my wife. I’ve been deceiving her. Eden doesn’t deserve that, not when she has stuck by my side since the day we met at six-years-old.
I knew back then I was going to make her mine. This scared little girl with long blonde curly pig-tails, the greenest eyes I’d ever seen so big and bright came strolling through the door of the foster home I’d been living in. Before that, she’d been in too many to count. A baby who was dropped off on a church step and named by the courts.
Once I learned her story of how she’d been brought into the world, right there, I’d convinced my young self she was placed in my home to be mine.
Hell, I didn’t even know what making her being mine meant, but I felt her in my chest the minute those jade-colored eyes landed on me, pulling me toward her from across the room.
I was like a dog to a bone.
We became friends on the first day. The angry punk in me, promising to protect her for life. To give her the world even after she grew into this strong independent woman who could take care of herself.
Blinking away the past, I scrub a palm over my chin, shame, and regret doing their best to consume me.
Both have been licking a blazing trail up my insides from keeping this from her. Hopefully, once we sit and talk it out, she’ll listen and forgive me.
What I should do is get us home and slip inside her warm heat like I have since I retired and pray this time we make a baby. My hectic life of training, and with Eden being by my side throughout the years, plus, she was the one cleaning me up in my corner between every round had kept us from trying.
Besides wanting to open the store, a child is the only thing Eden has ever asked me for, I want one as much as she does, but unlike many other celebrities, neither of us wanted to bring a child into the world and leave them for someone else to raise. Not that it’s wrong, it’s simply not for us.
The thing is, I’m not ready to have one yet. So I’ve been pretending I did. The same as I’ve been faking, I’m content with the direction my professional life is going. Or lack thereof.
That Whitaker’s Gym is enough for me to keep my fingers into a career, I’m not ready to give up yet.
I need one more fight.
“Come on, let's go home,” I kiss her one more time before guiding us toward the door of the restaurant.
“Wow, slow down, are you in a hurry to get us home or what? You walked right by a group of guys asking for your autograph.” Eden says from behind me. Voice low, edged with a little disbelief.
I clench my jaw — anger filtering through my bloodstream. I never turn down, giving an autograph. Not to anyone.
Goddamn it.
I’m going to hurt my wife, and it’s fucking with my head. Maybe, I’m forgetful after all.
“I didn’t hear them. I’m anxious to be alone with you. It’s going to be a busy couple of days with training Cody. Besides, it’s just as hard to sit across from you in that green dress showing off your legs and fabulous rack as it is in workout clothes. So yeah, baby, I’m in a hurry to get home.”
Another lie flows from me effortlessly. I do want to go home; I do want to take my wife to bed, I don’t want to be alone with her because with that, comes truth. And, with the truth comes me hurting her.
A laugh escapes free from her lush mouth. It goes straight to my dick.
A high, sweaty fever breaks out across my skin.
Fire and lust in my veins.
I snap, the desire to taste her races through my blood. In a panic, I pull Eden into a darkened alcove by the exit. Press her back against the wall and devour her mouth.
Starving and possessed. I damn near lose my mind when a tiny moan passes between those lips. It vibrates down my throat and tightens my balls.
I wonder if she feels my desperation with the slide of my tongue, the grip to her hips, the hardening of my cock — the thump of my heart.
She doesn’t. If she did, she’d have picked up on it the minute I walked through the door the day I’d given in to the misery I was holding in to box again.
The day I started to lie.
Eden doesn’t resist. She takes as good as she gives by wrapping that sweet tongue around mine. I bury my hands in her hair, palming them around her head as she sucks my tongue into the warm well of her mouth. She tastes so damn sweet and addictive. I’m hooked on her for life.
Frantic.
That’s what I am. Hanging on the end of the rope that’s connected us all these years. All this pent up deceit is urging me on to beg for a little bit of her heavenly taste when Eden hasn’t a clue that’s what I’m doing.
I wedge my leg between hers, hands going down the smooth bare flesh of her back until I’m gripping her ass, and my tongue is soaking in her flavor.
Goddamn, is she ever delicious.
My wife. My soulmate. The beat to my heart.
Jesus, I need to stop, need to get a grip on what’s important. But I can’t. I’m as desperate as I’ve ever been. I am scared out of my mind that she won’t begin to understand.