Shadowboxer (Tapped Out 1)

She’d left anyway. Even after we’d fought and cried and loved, she’d crawled out of my bed sometime before dawn and just walked out the door.

I went to the window behind the bar and shoved it up, climbing out onto the fire escape without even thinking about the fact that I was half naked and covered in scratches. I needed the bracing slap of cold air against my cheeks, even though it made my injured eye tear up. A salty path carved its way down my cheek, dripping into my mouth. I bent, gasping for breath as if someone were ripping at my lungs. Hacking out the ventricles of my heart.

I’d fought, and I’d lost.

Again.

I gripped the railing and yelled into the quiet pre-dawn, verbalizing my agony the only way I knew how. Shouting her name, over and over again until my throat burned like my gritty eyes.

My neighbor leaned out of his window and cursed at me in Spanish before slamming it shut. Juan was probably calling the cops. I laughed at that, imagining my father’s expression when he found out I’d been hauled in to the station nearly naked and covered in crusted blood that wasn’t entirely my own. I’d scratched her too, when I was holding her down. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, but I had.

I hadn’t meant to love her, but I’d done that too.

Pale purple light filtered from the sky when I finally went back inside. Just past sunrise. The icy air had scraped my skin raw and the warmth from stepping back inside rushed over me like the blast from a furnace. Tearing my breath from me again until I gave in to the urge to fold myself into the nearest chair and bury my head in my arms.

It wouldn’t hurt like this forever. Eventually I’d go back to that numbness I hadn’t realized I’d lived with for years. She thought she was the only one who put on a mask and dealt with shit because facing the whole load of crap would fucking crush you.

Like it was crushing me now.

“Tray.”

I burrowed deeper into the shelter of my arms, fisting my hands in my hair. No. Goddammit, no. I couldn’t hear her voice. She was gone. I’d begged her to stay, to give me a chance to help her—to fucking give me a chance to help myself—and she’d only given in long enough to completely fuck me over.

For all I knew, she’d already left New York. Disappeared like a goddamned thief. And I never would, on the infinitesimal chance she’d come back.

“Tray.”

That voice in my head. Taunting me. Whispering over my abraded skin, delving into the wounds she’d made. Soft hair trailing over my bare flesh, her clean, crisp smell enveloping me even as I struggled against her unyielding arms.

“I’m here. Tray. Look at me.”

I opened my eyes and she swam into focus before I closed them again and shook my head. “No.” I could barely croak out the denial. “Don’t do this to me again. You left. I have to let you go.”

“No. I made you a promise. And you made one to me.”

None of this was happening. When I opened my eyes again, I’d be in bed. Alone.

She laid her hand on my cheek and exhaled a shuddering breath. “Tray, I went to see Costas.”

That name sliced through the fog in my head. I shoved at her hold, breaking it to stalk over to the bar. I didn’t look at her, because I feared she didn’t really exist. Only the anger and misery holding my gut hostage existed. Only that was real.

“I told him I wasn’t going to fight him.”

My heart kicked hard in my chest. Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.

“He wasn’t surprised.” A dry laugh. “He told me he’d been waiting for me to back out. That it didn’t matter, because the fight had already done its job. I don’t know what that means. He never asked me why. Just said ‘yeah, fine’ and went back to his reps.”

“I’m glad.” Relief coursed through my veins, but I couldn’t acknowledge it yet. I still half believed I was trapped in a nightmare that looked like a dream.

“He said something else too.”

I waited. Not really caring what fucking Giovanni Costas had to say.

“He told me you were into some shady shit. Betting on fights. That you’d taken a drop the night of the bout with him.”

Swearing under my breath, I gripped the edge of the bar until my knuckles went white. “He’ll see how much I appreciate that allegation when I pound his skull in for free.”

“I found a paper in your coat. Way back at the beginning. The sheet got mixed up with some mail so I didn’t see it at first. And then when I did, I didn’t understand what it was. Those numbers were amounts of money someone had offered you to lose.”