Shadowboxer (Tapped Out 1)

“Coming? Constantly. I’d stay inside you twenty-four-seven if you’d let me.” He shot me a sidelong grin and held out another marshmallow.

“Not that.” Still no flushed cheeks. This might be a record. “I mean fighting. Are you sure you don’t want to go back after you’re healed?”

“Absolutely sure. I’m done.”

“You did it for years and you can walk away, just like that.”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t for me. I am enjoying training though, but I suspect my very hot, very trainable student has a lot to do with that. Eat your marshmallow.”

Dutifully, I pushed it on my stick and held it near the fire until it started to brown. “You’re still enrolling in that sports medicine program?”

“Yeah. I am. I need to separate my finances completely from my parents so I can see what grants I qualify for—” He broke off, looked at me. “What are you going to do? After fighting?”

After fighting wasn’t something I wanted to discuss. The here and now held all my interest. “I’ve been taking interior design classes online. Just one or two a year when I can afford them.” Which wasn’t often.

“So you could redesign this place?”

“Redesign it? Why?”

He shrugged and reached for the bag of marshmallows again. He’d be in a diabetic coma soon if he kept up his current pace. Evidently he’d completely thrown off the shackles of his training diet. Though I wasn’t much better, and I had a fight tomorrow.

“I don’t know. It’s boring. It doesn’t feel like me.”

“So you want, what, naked girly pics on the wall? Maybe a set of monkey bars you can hang upside down on, since you’re so fond of the pull up bars at the gym?”

“Yes. And yes. You are clearly the designer of my dreams.” Without warning, he tossed aside the bag of marshmallows and hauled me onto his lap, leaning back lengthwise on the log so that I sprawled against his chest. “The everything of my dreams,” he added, much more softly, his fingers winding through my hair.

I snuggled in. I couldn’t help it. Yes, we were on borrowed time. This couldn’t last forever. Kizzy was right. I had plans with my sister, and thinking they could include him was a path to madness. Even if I’d been reconsidering leaving the area, my Aunt Patty was right. Carly needed a safer environment. One far away from men like Giovanni Costas.

So where did that leave Tray and me? Nowhere.

Sure, he might think he was up for traveling with us, but he had a pretty great life in the city. He was enrolling at NYU. Why should he have to telecommute when his family was right here? His friends. His world. I was just one tiny, impermanent part of it. Easily forgettable.

God, I wanted to pretend for a little while longer.

“You might not say that if you knew everything about me.” I tried to keep it light, to stay playful. But I hated keeping my past from him, and one day I’d have to stop. Soon.

“And vice versa.”

I lifted my head and laughed. “What could you possibly be hiding? How many women you’ve slept with? You’re not hiding it if everyone knows.”

He brushed my hair off my shoulders, his thumbs skimming my skin and setting off a round of goose bumps. “You’re not the only one who has done things you aren’t proud of. Who keeps doing them every day.”

Something trembled in my chest. I had no right to ask. But I couldn’t not, when he’d given me an opening like that. “Like what?”

“Lots of things.”

His evasion struck me wrong. Way wrong. “Give me an example.”

He clenched his jaw. “Don’t do this tonight. Please.”

I sat up and frowned, the warmth from the fire and being in his arms dissipating in a cold rush of fear. “Tell me. Now.”

“You have to promise me something.”

I shook my head. Kept shaking it when he gripped my shoulders. “No. Tell me.”

“Promise me, Mia, or this stops here. Promise me you won’t run without telling me. That no matter what is said tonight, no matter what happens, you won’t leave without telling me you’re going.”