The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

“Need to hear you say it, Haley,” said Barney.

That was why the Church of the Cocked Fist—illegal, ill-advised, badly kept secret—thrived. Father Francis Barney ran it in the deserted industrial garage like he’d once run a prep school, before he’d quit the priesthood in disgust over the Church’s cover-up of child abuse. Jack would always have a marker with Barney because the other man would never forget he’d written the story when no one else would.

“I’m in.”

“Why?”

“I’m on a big story. Need to settle my head.” In the pit, one of the fighters was down and not getting up. His name was Khan, a lawyer Jack often used on background. He’d be explaining a broken nose in the office tomorrow.

“You’re always on a big story.”

“This one is—”

“As important to you as all the others. Why did you need this tonight? You’re not going in that pit till I know.”

If he said something vague, Barney would cancel the fight. If he said he was worried about what was going on at the Courier, the newest round of cuts and layoffs, Barney would tell him to grow a pair. Half the men in this place had lost their jobs and worse.

Beneath him they were clearing the space set aside for the fights, a once-deep cement well where mechanics had walked around under hoisted vehicles they were fixing. “I’ve forgotten how to be with people.”

“What people?”

“People who aren’t men.”

“You want to get in the pit and have that Australian bastard who’s at least five pounds heavier than you beat you up over a woman?”

Over a woman with ethereal eyes, rusty curls she failed to tame, teeth she was trying to straighten and a way of handling him that made him laugh. Over a woman who’d tried hard to connect with him as a colleague and a human being despite the fact he was dismissive and he made her nervous. She’d come armed with a patented method of getting that connection to happen and he’d ridiculed her experiment questions. He’d barely

stopped short of calling the work she did frivolous, and that was going to bother him until he had something else more urgent to think about.

Women didn’t usually bother him past a certain point. He liked it that way. On the occasion he bothered them, the fact that it was one and done was in unmissable headline type. But for some reason with Honeywell he was annoyed with himself for being an unreliable source. He couldn’t even get colleague right with her, and that said something about his character he wanted to erase with his fists.

“A woman at work. She deserved better from me.”

“Reason enough.” Barney signaled to the head ref, another ex-priest, and slapped Jack across the back. “Go learn tolerance and kindness, my son.”

Tolerance and kindness. Two of those soft skills Jack mostly lived without. Odd to think he might find them while dodging fists and being on the lookout for feet meant to stay on the ground.

He took the ladder into the pit and touched gloves with Ryan, at least five pounds heavier and two inches taller than Jack’s six two. “Try not to break my jaw.”

“Glass jaw, eh? Got it. If I forget and kick you, I’m sorry, mate.”

“Don’t fucking forget.”

Ryan grinned. “I fucked up at work.” He was a broker, which meant he lost someone’s money; hopefully he could make it back.

“I fucked up at being human.”

“Right, let’s fucking get to it then, mate. What am I teaching you?”

“Tolerance and kindness,” he said repeating Barney’s lesson. Maybe if Ryan could teach him those attributes, he could fuck up less.

Ryan laughed and pointed his worn glove at his chest. “Patience and fortitude. Aim high.”

They separated. Ryan stalked him, let Jack bounce around and take his measure. That was a kindness, probably the last one he’d see for the next little while.

When they connected, Jack aimed high, showing Ryan how patient he could be by laying a set of uppercuts to Ryan’s jaw and forehead. Ryan responded by pounding the need for tolerance into Jack’s ribs until he was breathless from it and disengaged to come at the other fighter with a new approach.

Time shifted, collapsed into sweat and muscle strain, into reflex, skill, judgment and luck. The first three rounds were exploratory, a test of each other’s intentions. Ryan’s punches stung like guilt and Jack was distracted trying to anticipate the moment the man forgot he was boxing and kicked out like Ultimate Fighting’s Nate Diaz. It unbalanced him, made him hyper alert, and he loved it. No time for anything but adrenaline, anticipation, attack and response. It was the one thing that cleared his head, reset his expectations, let him focus. In this, unlike in the rest of his life, it didn’t matter whether he was matched fairly, if he won or lost—it only mattered that he survived.