“Aw, get outta here, man….” Walters chided. “Are you saying he’s afraid to fight you?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying,” La Roque said with a nod. His legs were splayed in his chair, and he leaned back like he was in his own living room. “I mean, it could be he’s drunk on new pussy juice, and he’s not allowed to leave the house. I’d almost respect him if that was true. But I think most likely he’s hiding at home because he’s scared of me. Everybody knows he barely beat McCready in his last fight. They gave him that fight because he was the pretty boy that everybody liked. Never met a judge or a ref whose dick he wouldn’t suck. He knows if he steps in the cage with me, there’s no favors that are gonna save his ass. He’d be dead. Knocked out with one punch, bruh. One!”
Stunned, his fists balling, Jack stared at the screen. Rage washed over him like a dark vat of oil, oozing down his back, spreading its black tendrils through his chest and his gut, and finally surging upward to his face.
Walters paused, giving La Roque a hard stare. “You were warned not to bring the spouse into it.”
“You brought the bitch up first,” La Roque retorted with a laugh, his palms up.
“Alright, we’re done.” Speaking to someone off camera, Walters said, “Get his mic off. We’re done. I told y’all he’s inappropriate. Just inappropriate. Get the hell off my set, man.”
La Roque sat there, laughing, his teeth sharp in his wide mouth. The ugliness pouring off him came through the screen. Jack clicked it off before the man’s inexplicable hate could seep onto the carpet and soak it.
Jack got up and strode to the gym door, cracking it slightly. There was a TV in there. Even though he knew Penny wouldn’twatch SportsZone by herself, he had an irrational moment where he thought she might have heard the ugly way La Roque had referred to her.
New pussy.Not a fly model type.
He was going to break that bastard’s neck.
The jittery pulse of his heartbeat calmed down slightly to hear the strings of Penny’s banjo resonating through the crack. But it did nothing to ease the hot impulse rising in him for murderous destruction. He’d be in there hitting the bag to get it out of him, but she was already in that space.
He cracked the door again. “Penny, I need to check on something at the gym. Charlie says there’s a leak.”
Immediately, she paused playing. He couldn’t see her from this side of the door, but her voice came back, uncertain, as though she’d heard the strain in his own voice to sound normal. “It’s late. Do you need to go now?”
“I won’t be long. Be right back.”
“Okay.” She still sounded unsure.
On his way to the training facility, his phone started beeping and ringing with calls and texts, along with notifications from his social media accounts. Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who’d watched that bizarre interview.
“Mans is out of his mind,” James left on his voicemail in that distinctive Mancunian lilt sprinkled with the slang he’d picked up in South London. “Don’t take the bait, Jack.”
Meg left a text. “If that psychopath says one more word about you or Penny…!”
Jack shuddered at that last message. Nobody, absolutely nobody, needed to be on Meghan Rourke’s bad side. Not even him.
He was too wound up to respond to anybody. Instead, he exploded on the heavy bag and the wooden dummy in the gym until he was panting, and his arms and legs were reddened.They’d be bruised in the morning. But although he’d gotten some of the ugly out, it wasn’t enough.
La Roque’s taunts replayed themselves over and over in his head like a spinning wheel. Not just the disgusting way he’d referred to Penny. That alone would have been enough.
It was the sneaking suspicion that Jack had been carrying in the quiet depths of his soul since before the McCready fight. All the things that had been whispered backstage and finally said out loud on camera. They’d winnowed their way into his ear, into his brain, where they’d lodged and festered into an infection that had never been cleansed.
…You’re too old… Too soft… The fire is dead… Not on your game... It’s a miracle you won.
Was it all luck? Did you even earn any of it?
With a vicious grunt, he punched the bag so hard he almost broke his goddamned hand. He grasped the bag to stop it swaying, leaning his head against it, worn out, torn down. Shaking, he let go and stood back, forcing himself to slow his breathing. In, out, release that shit. But he knew it was still in there, that old wound blistering fresh and hot.
Jack pulled out his phone, his finger hovering over his agent’s number. They typically only communicated in emails and texts these days over his endorsement contracts, or the random appearance promoting one thing or another. This call was going to be about a particular contract, the one he’d pored over but hadn’t signed.
Then he pictured Penny’s face. Not gazing at him lovingly, not full of erotic passion in his arms. It was marked with fear and grief after he’d hit that bodyguard.
“They’re just words, Jack. Just words.”
He remembered the catch in his own voice when he’d promised her no more fighting, ever.
When he got home, she was already in bed, dozing with a book in her hand. His heart squeezed at the sight of her. Jack kissed her on the lips and went to shower. When he slid into bed, he took the book and put it on her nightstand, wrapping her in his arms. Even from under the damned scarf keeping him from touching it, the scent of her hair filled his nose. That calmed him enough to pull him into sleep with her.