“Sam, stop!” I shout, but he hits him again.
My heart pounds in my chest, but there’s nothing I can do to stop him.
A crowd quickly gathers around us, and they shout with encouragement.
“Stop it!” I scream at them, but I might as well be invisible.
The crowd jumps up and down like heathens, egging them on.
The boy hits Sam in the mouth and a small cut begins to bleed, but Sam doesn’t seem to notice. He hits the boy hard, knocking him to the ground, and grabs his shirt. “Don’t you ever look at her again. You hear me?”
“Hey, hey, hey!” a man shouts, breaking through the crowd, and they all scatter like roaches. He grabs Sam’s arm and pulls him up, but Sam yanks his arm away.
“Get the fuck off me.”
“Hey!” he shouts at Sam, shoving him against the fence. “You don’t know me. Don’t talk to me like that.”
“You don’t know me!”
“Oh, I know you. You’re what, fourteen, fifteen years old? You want to beat everyone up who looks at you or your girl the wrong way. I was you.” Sam tries to move, but the man holds him against the fence. “Listen to me. You like to fight?”
“I don’t like to fight. I have to fight,” Sam grits through his teeth.
“Nah, that’s an excuse. I know you like to fight. I can see it your eyes.”
“So what if I do?”
“Then fight like man, not like some dog on the street.”
“What?” Sam struggles against his hold.
“I own a gym. It’s not far from here. I teach kids how to box. Kids like you, who love to fight.”
Sam stares at him and relaxes a little.
“I can teach you how to fight like a man.”
“Why do you give a fuck about me?”
“Watch your mouth. You want to fight like a man, you have to act like a man.”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I’ve seen what kids like you can be. You want to waste your life away in the Park, getting into street fights, getting into trouble, maybe even going jail…be my guest. Or you can come by my gym and let me teach you how to fight for real, show you how to earn respect for knocking people out.”
Sam stares at him for a few seconds and then nods. “Yeah…okay.”
The man takes a step back. “My name’s Joe. Joe Maloney.” He stretches his hand out in front of Sam and waits for Sam to do the same.
Sam reaches out tentatively and shakes his hand. “I’m Sam.”
“Nice to meet you Sam. You got a mean left hook.”
“Thanks,” he says warily.
“You all right, sweetheart?” Joe asks me.
“Yeah.” I inhale a shaky breath. “I’m okay.”
“What’s your name?”
“Lucy.”
“You like seeing him fight like that, Lucy?”
“No,” I say, keeping my eyes off Sam.
“I didn’t think so.”
I glance up at Sam, who’s looking at the ground.
“Boxing isn’t like that. There are rules, protective gear. You come by the gym with him, so you can see, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You come by tomorrow,” he says to Sam. “I open at six a.m. on Saturdays.”
“Okay.” Sam looks up at him.
Joe looks him up and down and nods. “Don’t let me down, Sam. Don’t let her down either,” he says, looking at me.
Sam gives me apologetic eyes. “I won’t.”
* * *
I sit on the couch in Sam’s dressing room with my feet in Sebastian’s lap, watching a live stream of the interview Sam’s doing in the next room.
“You sure you don’t want to make a surprise appearance?” Sebastian asks, straightening his cufflink.
“One appearance tonight was enough,” I say, folding my hands over my tight stomach. “I’ll be shocked if no one noticed the newest member of Sam’s team tonight.”
“The dress should have thrown them off. No respectable woman in her second trimester would wear something that smoking hot.” He cuts his teasing eyes at me and winks.
“Sebastian!” I smack his arm. “You picked this dress out.”
“Yeah, well, your boobs look fantastic in it.”
I glance down at them. “I think they’ve gotten bigger since last week. How is that possible?”
“You’re four months pregnant, it’s normal. So I hear.”
I narrow my eyes at him and smirk. “You’ve been reading the baby books again, haven’t you?”
“Well, Paul asked me to. And I need to know what’s going on with you.” He closes his eyes and shrugs a shoulder. “It’s my job.”
“So, are you and Paul any closer to crossing into baby territory?”
“Well, I’d like to say your unexpected news didn’t spark the baby bug in me, but it did a little,” he says, pinching his fingers together.
“Really?” I ask excitedly.
“Yeah. Now that I’ve gotten used to the idea, I think we might start seriously looking into adopting.”
“Sebastian!” I smile. “That’s great news.”
“Well, it could still take a really long time.”
“Sam, tonight was your twenty-sixth win, but it was another shaky match,” a reporter says to him, and we both turn toward the TV. “You were on the ropes a lot.”
“And he got off them,” Miles says.
“You’ve taken a lot of hits lately, Sam. Have you given any thought to these retirement rumors?”
“They’re just that…rumors,” Miles interjects again. “And they’re gonna stay that way. Sam’s not going anywhere.”
“I’m not giving my title up anytime soon.” Sam smirks.
“But you do have a wedding coming up, right?” the reporter asks.
Sam leans into his microphone again. “We haven’t set a date yet.”
I look over at Sebastian. “Because I’m not going to be able to fit into a wedding dress in the foreseeable future.”
“Which is exactly why you need to do it sooner rather than later!”
“Bas, I know you want us to have a wedding, but honestly, there’s something about planning two weddings in one year that just feels, I don’t know, wrong.”
He waves his hand at me and rolls his eyes.
“Have you even thought about what that would do to Drew? Or how hard all this must be on him?”
“Um, no, not really…because you’re not with Drew anymore. And for all you know, he’s already got another wife lined up.”
I’d say the thought hasn’t crossed my mind, but when he didn’t reach out to me after my letter, I couldn’t help but wonder if a woman was the reason why. And I couldn’t help but feel a little hurt by his silence. Still, I don’t want to cause Drew any more pain than I already have.
“Seriously, Sebastian. Do you realize the baby is due a week before Drew and I were supposed to get married? That’s going to be a hard enough pill to swallow, don’t you think?”
“I suppose,” he says, swallowing one of his own.