58. Chapter 55
Mari
T he next month went both slow and fast, somehow.
Chance and I spent every evening together, but every morning apart.
We shared time, finding quiet spots to be alone.
The parks on the opposite side of town, the old abandoned dairy farm, or the Murray Chance had had us hauling ass to all those weeks ago.
One of us always packed a blanket and after we we’d both finished and were both basking in post-orgasm glow, we’d lay under the stars. Some nights it was cloudy, so we couldn’t see much. And others we came up with new, more entertaining names for some of the clusters in the sky above us.
We laughed, talked, kissed, moaned, and laughed some more.
Conversation never stopped flowing. There were never enough kisses, never enough touches.
There was never a ‘last time’. I never tired of hearing his fighting stories, and all of the mayhem-filled memories from his earlier years.
He never cut me off or grew tired of my tales, most containing the same four people: Nan, JJ, Dad, and Al.
I told him about Mum, about her accident many years ago. He told me about his parents’ divorce, about his mother’s second husband and his father’s addiction to work.
He told me more about Milah and Dylan, and I was fully convinced they would set the town on fire the first night they were all back together again.
The nights we spent together were worth the daytime nap times and the pain of waking up early in the morning, only having gone to bed a few hours earlier.
The pretending was a fun little game for us in the gym, stealing glances and meeting eyes here and there.
Though we both always lost, each as eager and aching to touch as the other.
Chance taught morning classes only now that he was in fight preparation, spending hours a day with JJ, Al, and some of the bigger guys from Knock’s.
That was followed by sleep, sauna or more sleep.
And I spent all day watching him. I was miles behind on work for the gym, but I couldn’t help it.
He was magic .
“I can’t believe I’m actually letting you do this,” I laughed nervously as he pressed the buzzing needle into my forearm once again. “For all I know you could be drawing a gigantic dick on my forearm to stay for all of eternity.”
“It’s not a dick,” he replied, though I could hear the amused smirk on his face without even looking.Nan’s old radio was faintly humming in the background as we sat at the kitchen table.
With the oldies out for the night, that being Nan and Al, Chance had managed to convince JJ to be on ‘demon-duty’.
Which, much to JJ’s dismay, meant ensuring Talia didn’t leave his house.
Chance had switched his phone onto silent twenty minutes ago, after the last ‘You better bring a fucking priest home to exorcise this place’ message.
“When can I look?”
“Not yet.”
“When?”
“Not yet.”
“ When ?” I sulked.
“ Not yet ,” he mocked. “Relax, Sunny baby. It’ll be over in a minute.”
“I am relaxed.”
“If you tense up any more, you’re gonna snap the needle,” he mused with a teasing laugh.
“I’m not tense!”“Not anymore,” he replied. “Since we’re all done.”
Instantly snapping my head to my forearm, my heart clenched at the new drawing on my skin. Smudged with excess ink, and with small and delicate lines, was a small Chance space from the game Monopoly just below my inner elbow.
“Chance.” I beamed at the little rectangle on my skin.
“Fitting, since you’re the first official tattoo I’ve ever given. Had to leave a calling card.” He smirked, packing his little kit away into the shiny onyx zip-up bag.
“The first? Really?”
“Yup. JJ showed me how to do it. Then, of course, I spoke to someone else—someone with a lot more experience.” He winked
I couldn’t make out what it meant.
“And here we are.”
“Here we are?”
“Here we are, Sunny baby.”
“So, do I get to give you a tattoo now?” I asked, reaching for the little black bag.
“No need.” He smirked. “I’ve already got some new ink for today. I’d say we’re even.”
“How the hell does that make us even—” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, couldn’t think when he pulled the already tight black sleeve up over his right arm.
There, filling a clearly unintentional gap in the whirlwind of art, was a small, hand-drawn sun. No bigger than a fifty-cent piece, the circle had over a dozen sun rays pointing out from it.
Sun. Sunshine. Sunny .
Fine lines that overlapped where he’d … Jesus, did he do this himself?
“Did it all myself,” he said, reading my thoughts with a proud grin warming his face. “JJ helped tidy up the lines a little for me, but I wanted to be the one to draw it.”
Leave it to Chance to be instantly good at something as complex as tattooing. I reached out, running my fingers gently over the plastic that was stuck over the top of the slightly raised skin. It was beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Beautiful .
My heart pounded, thudded deeply in my chest like a sledgehammer against a wall. For sure, it was going to pop out of my chest and onto the floor any moment now. I couldn’t stop it; I didn’t want to stop it. Warmth, that familiar loving flood of warmth, rushed my system.
“What do you think?” he asked softly.
When I looked up to find those oceanic blue eyes, I found a stormy, heated, electrified gaze awaiting me.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered, my throat welded shut with emotion.
“Yeah?”
“It’s …” I ran my fingers over the delicate lines again. “It’s perfect.”
“I know.” He grinned.
~
We’d found a new spot tonight, an old barn house at the back of an empty lot a few doors over from Al’s house.
His lights had long been turned off when we snuck past—every single curtain drawn closed in his house, a force of habit.
Cars drew too much attention to our presence or lack-thereof, so we walked everywhere.
“Didn’t we name that one after Hogs the other night?” I asked Chance, referring to the cluster of stars that looked like the gigantic, hunched-over heavyweight who trained at Knock’s.
“Well, I’m renaming it to Old Man Larry.” He laughed, referencing the man who came down to Knock’s once a fortnight to complain about all of the cars parked along the street.
“Fair enough,” I said, chuckling. “Hey, Chance?”
“Yeah, Sunny?”
“How long are we gonna do this for?” I asked.
He paused.
“What do you mean?” He sat up, leaning on an arm to stare down at me.
“This, Chance.” I pushed up onto my elbows. “All of this sneaking around. When will it end?”
Silence.
His eyes left mine, disassociating into the long grass in the distance.
Second by second, new nails would secure his walls back up into place.
And with fight week beginning in two days, he was already in a different form of hell that I couldn’t relate to.
Any of the cash fights I took on were at my walkaround weight, just a cash grab.
“I only ask because I may need to pre-order six-dozen energy drinks—”
“I don’t know,” he interrupted. His blank, emotionless tone told me Chance had vacated the moment.
“Hey,” I mumbled softly, placing a hand on his now turned shoulder. “Where’d you go? Come back to me.”
“I’m here, Mari,” he replied, running a hand down his face. “Just … don’t push me on this. Not on something I don’t have any control over.”
“What do you mean you don’t have control?”
“She can ruin me. With one Instagram post, she can ruin me. As soon as she tells the world that it was me who put hands on her, no one will ever believe me.” He gently shrugged my hand off, before picking it up and brushing his lips over my knuckles.
The muscles in his biceps were popping since he had already started to drop his calories.
His big weight and water cut wouldn’t start until fight week.
But from my understanding, this was the point when the brain fog and depletion really kicked in.
“What if you told the world first?”
He went as still and rigid as stone.
“The fans, the world, everyone. What if you told them first?”
A second of silence, of taking a moment to think, before a sad, deflated laugh left his lips.
“You think anyone will believe me? You think anyone will believe the number one heavyweight contender in the Ultimate Fighting League got beaten by his wife?” Another laugh. “You’d be insane to think that.”
“Well, I believe you,” I said, feeling my heart rip clean in my chest.
“You and no one else,” he said bitterly, too late again. It was something I’d noticed since his weight cut had started.
“Does that not count for anything?” I asked, swallowing the shake in my voice.
“Not for my career, no.”
“Right.” I stood, brushing the few leaves I’d managed to lay on. “I’d better get home.”
“Why?”
“I’m sorry for what happened to you, Chance.”
Those blue eyes flared.
“I’m sorry that you fell in love with the wrong person, and that she used and abused you and your heart and your money. But I can’t do this forever.”
“Sunny—” he started.
“I deserve better than this,” I said.
And when a reply failed to come, I left.