My phone buzzes in my pocket and I answer as I’m still a couple blocks from my apartment building.
“Stinky butt,” I say. “Always lovely hearing from you.”
Maeve growls on the other end. “I swear, if you call me that one more time?—”
“You’ll what? Tattle tale on me like when we were kids?”
“I was going to say stick my foot up your ass all the way from California. That, or hop on a red eye to be there and do it in person.”
I chuckle at my baby sister’s threat. “Wouldn’t mindhaving you visit. Ithasbeen years. But to what do I owe the threatening phone call?”
“Can’t I call and check up on my big, jerk-face brother? You still behaving yourself?”
“As much as ever. Training hard. Got another fight coming up.”
“That Big Ed guy, right? You know Allen bet on your fight against the Russian? What happened with that? The media’s been so confusing about it.”
“Never you mind, stinky butt,” I say, amused by the thought of her glowering on the other end. “It’s a long, complicated story.”
“Oh god. It’s mob related, isn’t it?”
“I’ll leave that up to your imagination.”
“Is that what you’ll say when I ask you about your girlfriend?”
The sudden pivot catches me off guard, making me stop halfway down the block. “Girlfriend?”
“You heard me. Our mother texted me about it. She said you brought her by our parents’ dump a while back?”
“You actuallyreadone of Ma’s texts?”
“Moment of weakness,” she admits. “Don’t change the subject. Who is she? This the same girl you mentioned kissing earlier in the summer?”
I release an irritated breath, tempted to scowl. “That’s the one. Her name’s Jhene. We were together for a while. Then we broke up.”
“What happened?”
“It’s complicated.” I scrub a hand over my face. “She’d been through a lot. She needed space to figure herself out. So I gave it to her.”
“You sound upset about it.”
“Well… I wasn’t exactly over the fucking moon to let her go.”
“But you’ve let plenty of other women go,” Maeve points out smartly. “I’ve never heard you actually… upset about a woman before.”
“I can’t stop thinking about her,” I confess. “We’ve been broken up almost three damn months, and she’s still on my mind every other second.”
“Three months is space.”
“Maeve.”
“What? It is! Are you going to just let her walk away?”
“She asked for space. I’m trying to respect that.”
“Killian,” she says with an exasperated sigh. “There’s a difference between respecting someone’s boundaries and letting them slip through your fingers because you’re too scared to fight for them. You were born a fighter. It’s what you do.
“You fight for everything else in your life, Kill. You fight in the ring. You fight for the Callahan clan as their boneman. You fought for me and Mom all those years ago, when Dad was...” She trails off, and we both let the silence fill in the blank. “Now it’s time to fight for the woman you want to be with. Don’t let her get away or you’ll regret it.”
