Crossing the threshold, Kieran hesitated. Going into that conversation, he’d been sure that his shenanigans with Lilywould come to an end. He’d been ready to drop everything for the gym.
He took a deep breath. He’d still drop everything for the gym. Things between him and Lily were casual. There was no danger of upsetting the balance at South Side MMA.
Lily met him in the main lobby and raised her brows. “I don’t know, Sullivan. It’s a tall order to pretend I like you.” She rubbed her neck and shot him a secretive smile.
The last dregs of tension bled from his shoulders. They were back to their familiar heckling. “The feeling’s mutual, but we should talk about the tourney.”
Lily settled behind the desk beside Rachel and grabbed the desk calendar. “What about it? It’s just a fight, right?”
Kieran shook his head as he planted each of his hands on the desktop and leaned forward.
Rachel stretched across the desk, shooing his hands away from her meticulous piles of brochures.
He leaned further into Lily’s space and turned the pages of the calendar instead. “It’s not just a fight. It’s a charity. Half the proceeds go to area schools for their wrestling programs. The other half goes toward women’s shelters.” He pointed first at the highlighted box for August 5: the day of the tourney. “This is the night of the fight. All the gyms are closing early to draw in their crowds.” He slid his finger up the page to a date two weekends before. “And this is the charity dinner where the investors pledge their donations and place bets on their favorite fighters.”
“And who’s the local legend for our gym?” she asked as she entered the information from the calendar into her phone.
Kieran grinned. How could she not know? “You’re looking at him, Princess.”
ChapterNine
“You’re telling me you fucked a professional MMA fighter?”
Lily groaned and drew her blanket up, covering both her head and her laptop screen as if the thin material would keep Natalia at bay. “Semi-pro. And he retired. Or quit.” She squinted at the four-year-old article. Could you really retire at twenty-four? “And in my defense, I didn’t know when I slept with him.”
Natalia ripped the blanket from over Lily’s head and pinned her with an expectant look. “You’re trying to tell me you didn’t run a background check on this man, or at least an online search, before jumping into his bed?”
Nibbling the quick of her thumbnail, Lily let her gaze fall to the search results on her laptop once more. Kieran “Southpaw” Sullivan stared back. He was a little younger and leaner—more toned—and clean-shaven. A fighter from South Side MMA, he’d been picked up by Fight Fest Chicago at nineteen. By twenty-two, he was fighting with Intimidators USA out of Atlanta. From what she could tell, it was one step down from the UFC. Like playing for the minors instead of the majors in baseball. Several of his fights had been on ESPN.
The man in those photos looked like he could break her in two.
“Technically he jumped into my bed.”
Natalia made a fake gagging noise and sat up, plucking at the sheets below her. “You washed these, yeah?”
“Yeah…” Lily barely heard her friend. There was a photo from high school wrestling. A young, hard-eyed Kieran in a Wildcats singlet. She double-clicked it and zoomed in.
Even at sixteen, his eyebrow was split in two. The scar predated MMA.
Her lips pursed together, and she scrolled away, ignoring the twist in her gut telling her this snooping was a violation of their agreement not to discuss their pasts.
“Southpaw Sullivan.” Natalia had her phone out now and was watching videos on StreamScene. “So, he’s a lefty?”
The memory of his lips at her breast and his dexterous hand torturing her clit blazed in her mind. Yes—his left hand. The one he’d finger-fucked her with. Lily swallowed and tugged her laptop a little closer. “Yep. He sure is.”
Natalia hummed and continued scrolling, reading through the captions and comments of the videos she watched. “Seems like he was pretty good…a lot of people were surprised he quit. He was expected to get picked up by the UFC. Did he say anything to you about it?”
Not a word.Lily shook her head. He’d left her mouth agape and staring in the gym lobby. Had she wondered how he afforded a nice place on a gym trainer salary? Sure. But at the end of the day, his nice place was still in the South Side. It wasn’t like Kieran was shacked up on Lakeshore.
“Given what I know about him, I think he came home for his younger siblings. He still has custody of his brother.” Lily shrugged. Kieran had made it clear family was everything, and his focus in his life right now was raising Danny. Still. To giveup a career as a professional athlete. A little knot tightened in her belly, and she held up her phone, staring at the text he’d sent the night before.
Doing anything Saturday?
She’d left him on read.
Because maybe Kieran wasn’t an entire asshole. Maybe he was the sort of guy so humble he never mentioned he’d been on ESPN. He just promoted the hell out of his local gym like it was the best he’d ever fought in.
Maybe he was so selfless, he was the type who’d choose his siblings over money and status and women.
