Tyed(76)

Instinctively, I jam my foot in the gap. I’m floored to hear him talk like this. Even though he swears, he’d never stoop as low as fat-shaming or talked to me like this. This is not him speaking.

Ty slams the door on my foot and I wince in pain, falling sideways and stubbing my toes. This is the second time today my foot is injured on a Wilder’s porch. This family is trying to kill me.

“Fuck. You okay? That was an accident. Fuck.” He sighs, his dimples peeking through when he speaks.

“You kiss your mom with this mouth?” I feign a frown, but my lips are curving into a faint smile.

“No, I’m not. That’s the point I was trying to make.” He rests his temple on the doorframe, looking down at me. The high school sweetheart who escorted me to Dawson’s office the first time I saw him is here again. Sweet-Ty. I missed him so.

I take a step forward and put my hands on his chest. It feels so natural to touch his warm, silky skin, and his body immediately tightens and flexes, reacting to my hands instinctively.

“Actually, Jesse suggested this little reunion  . And I think it's a good idea, because frankly, I'm going to become a sports journalist in less than a week, and I'd really appreciate a good headline. Something along the lines of Local MMA Fighter Wins the XWL Welterweight Championship. Think you can manage that?” I whisper the words into his chest, watching it moving up and down slowly to the rhythm of our shallow heartbeats.

He clutches one of my hands, bringing it from his chest to his lips and kissing the back of it while looking deep into my eyes. I’m sure he can see all the shit I’ve been through the past few weeks. We read each other like open books. I feel his pain pouring down on the floor in waves.

"I'm not done being mad at you," he says.

My heart sinks. "I'm not done being mad at you either," I retort.

He shifts his gaze to his mother for the first time, looking at her, but talking to me. “She kicked me out of the house and stole my money three years ago."

“And she’s your mother and wants to start fresh now.” I swallow my anger at Mary.

My body melts into his, and I need to stop this before we kiss. I can’t take him back. Not here, not now. Plus, his mother is standing next to us, so grinding each other like rabbits seems like a fairly bad idea. I drop my forehead to his chest and feel his heart thump beneath my cheek.

"Do you want to talk?" I ask.

"Not right now," he says, and I could crack and break into a million pieces on his threshold. "I have to focus on getting better, and hopefully, on winning this fight."

I lift my head, remembering the conversation with Cameron.

Athletes are wired differently. He needs this win. He needs his space.

It was like that before the Eoghan Doherty fight, and it's like that right now.

"Okay. Good luck." I try to smile at him. "You know where to find me."

He nods wordlessly, which makes my heart split in two.

When I reach my car, I peek over my shoulder to see Ty still holding the door ajar for his mother. She limps into his place, but before she enters the house completely, stops and looks him in the eyes. I can’t read their expressions from this distance, but I hope they can work it out. I hope she can be there for him when he picks up the pieces and rebuilds himself.

And I hope Ty and I can get over ourselves and do the same one day.





Chapter Twenty



November 10th.

It’s almost time for Ty’s fight. This is the date when he’s scheduled to walk into the Vegas cage and face the biggest challenge of his career, the biggest fight of the year.

The past three months have gone by excruciatingly slowly without him. Days melded into each other, sticking together like glued chunks of paper in a new book. I offer myself the dumbest excuses for Ty not contacting me. He doesn’t have my new phone number. He’s busy preparing for his fight with Jesus Vasquez. He’s waiting for our anger to blow over. Or maybe he still hasn’t gotten out of his binge-drinking phase.

No. I know that’s not true. I know for a fact that he’s doing better.

Mary visits Ty every weekend. She takes two buses to get to his house. She cleans, cooks and yells at him that he’s an unbearable slob. (A bit rich coming from her, I know.) She rants when she washes his dishes and cusses at him when she does his laundry. But she’s taking care of him, and I know that because I talk to her whenever I can.

Mary never brings up the subject of my relationship with Ty, and I never volunteer anything about how I’m feeling.

Career-wise, I'm doing better at least. Or at least I’m doing better than Shane, who continuously reports to me about his days serving coffee and being bossed around by people who are only slightly older than us.