Last time I listen to you, bad angel.

Liam

Just like that she was gone.

His fingers tightening around the steering wheel, Liam accelerated his speed along the Breeman Fairway. He was giving a perilous inch to the beast within right then. There wasn't anything else for it. He'd get it out of his system and return to the work of the day. Eventually. Right now, he needed to forget everything. Gravity. Want. Need. Everything.

Following the curve, he laid into the gas all the more. He knew how to handle himself, and there weren't many cars traveling the private road at this time of day. Jackie had left him with a pit in his stomach that couldn't be reasoned with, a sense of loss that hurt him more than it should for it to come from a girl he barely knew.

He had half a thought that his reactions weren't even about her, that maybe he was just lonely and ready to settle down. Maybe she'd been the first woman to cross his path while he was going through some sort of early life crisis. Stranger things have happened. Hell if he knew how to explain the way his heart rate accelerated whenever she was in the room.

How keenly he remembered the scent of her. Saw her in his mind's eye with vivid clarity.

With Dina, things had been different. Desperate, but different. He'd been able to let other women nurture his sorrows when she walked out on him, calling it quits time and time again only to return weeks later.

He couldn't imagine taking someone else to bed after Jackie, and it was perfectly ridiculous because she was obviously over it. Whatever he'd thought they'd shared didn't seem to resonate the same with her, and he was growing angrier with himself by the second for the damnable fixation he had on her.

It shouldn't be this way when two people wanted to be together. Hell, even the barrier of his father's bullshit engagement seemed opposed to it.

Maybe he should take the hint, huh?

Swerving to avoid a squirrel taking an errant notion to cross over the northbound-lanes, Liam grit his teeth and forced himself to reason. He was going too fast.

Fuck.

Why didn't he care?

He had to care. He had a life to maintain. This was silly. School boy shit.

A kind of polarized relief sunk into his veins when he realized he was slowing down, that that unreachable part of him had taken note of his logic. Yeah. That's it. Sometimes, a dude just has to man up. That's all.

Slowing his speed even more, he resolved to take the next right off of the fairway into town. Wouldn't kill him to take in some of the fights before he headed back to the studio. A good spar always settled his nerves, didn't matter if he wasn't the one fighting. Taking a right onto the woodsy strip leading to the back roads by the lake, he leaned back in the driver's seat, feeling more himself now.

A good show would help him change track.

~

“Liam. My man. What's good, buddy?”

Rico clapped his hand into a shake that quickly morphed into an over-muscled hug before settling back against the ropes.

Liam grinned at Rico, marveling that the guy didn't seem to age at all. He'd been Liam's mentor since his preteens, but the dude didn't look like he was a day over 30. Maybe it was all the body work, or the community work keeping his soul right.

“You getting in?” Rico asked him, bouncing a rope for emphasis with a daring glint in his eye.

“Nah, man. Just came to watch.”

Liam folded his arms over his chest. Rico had an uncanny way of looking him in the eye and figuring out whatever was wrong with him. Girl troubles were the last thing he wanted to share with the guy. He felt silly even categorizing it that way. It felt much bigger than something as simple as “girl trouble,” but in the end, it was what it was, wasn't it?

Silly.

“One of those days, huh?”

Rico gave him a knowing glance.

Not the talk, Rico. I can't do the talk today.

“You know... Men and women are different creatures. A good burst of adrenaline helps us forget whatever's bothering us. Women... their shit sits with them.”

He gave Liam a meaningful look that half-made him wonder if he was really that transparent.

“Thank gods for the gym, ah?”

Clapping Liam on the back, Rico laughed heartily.

“Come on, man. Let me get you a bottled water. You've got ringside seats whenever you come through. You know that. Biz and Mike Rowdy are up next if you can wait a few minutes.”

Warming, Liam felt himself relax almost instantly.

“Hell, yeah. I can wait for that.”

Rico gave him a smiling nod and headed off to the kitchenette to get his water, tossing the bottle to him before he disappeared in the back again. He'd been running the shop since his father retired. Well into his forties now, it seemed to have become his life.

Liam had extremely fond memories of the place. It was a home away from home. Hell, he'd slept here. Walked under the bridges and around the lake to get there on the bad nights. Rico's dad never let on that he knew, and Liam didn't abuse the privilege. Around that time, Corey had been safe. He'd been too little to knock around. Mom was still protecting him. But Liam? Liam was “stubborn as a mule.” A “bad seed.” Fucked up thing to say in the ear-range of a 14 year old, but there you had it.

As long as mom's boy toys were bringing the supply when they paid her a visit, she didn't care how they treated Liam. Corey was her golden baby at that point.

Until he hit about 13.

It'd been a rude awakening for him that Liam didn't think he'd ever really recovered from, but he was better off seeing the reality of her before she had a chance to break his heart clean in two. 'Cause she would have. That's just the type of woman she was.

Uncapping the bottled water, Liam took a swig, savoring the cellar-smell of the gym, hints of laundered towels steeped and rinsed in heavily-scented fabric softener pluming the air. It over-powered the sweat most of the time, making the place seem a lot more upscale than the actual budget it ran on. Rico kept it clean and renovated every few years or so, but most of his profits went right back into these walls.

It was a back woods sort of gym, nestled in the trees at the end of a dirt road paved especially for it. Passed down from father to son in succession from sometime in the early 1900s. Something about all of the time it had been standing lent a spirit to it that made you feel like you were being watched over by the old-timer fighters who'd passed in and out of its doors.

This place had seen illegal betting, fights of all sorts, and even prohibition-era poker games. It was steeped in history. And right now, it was just the thing he needed.

By the time the rowdies marched toward the ring, beating their gloves together with playful menace, Jackie was very far from Liam's mind. Right where he needed her to be if he was going to keep his head at all.

Jackie

“Hey, Baby girl,” Roxy's voice crooned through the phone, velvet and cool, just like her demeanor.

“Roxanne! Shit, girl. How've you been?”

Near squeaking, Jackie cradled the phone to her ear. God, she'd missed this chick.

“Just fine, Sugar plum. I'm in town for the night. You free for drinks?”

An effervescent surge of bubbling rose up in Jackie's gut. Hell, yeah she was.

“You know it. Name the spot.”

“Dwight's. I'll get you at 8.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Clicking off the call, Jackie smiled to herself, widely, and probably goofily. She loved the hell out that girl, and a visit with the ol' sage was perfect timing. If anyone could talk sense into her, and set her back on her course it was Roxy.