Pride (Bareknuckle Boxing Brotherhood Book 3) (7 page)

“Did you just pull a quarter out of my ear?” she asked, frowning at the money.

“I think we found old Sammy’s stash. How much do you think is there?”

They spread the money on the table and counted it twice. It was near eighteen thousand dollars.

“It’s not enough to pay the second mortgage, so don’t get excited. As much fun as it would be to pretend I didn’t have to go back to real life, to stay here and play restaurant in Potatoville, I can’t afford dreams like that.”

Bronny Dolan hadn’t been this excited in donkey’s years. It was like Christmas morning and his birthday and payday all rolled in to one event. He set his eyes on the prize, the prize money to be exact, and nothing was about to stop him. He had thought of it in that moment, the key to getting her to stay.

If he could still win the last fight of the tournament, he would have enough money to cancel her second mortgage. He didn’t want to tell her—both because he might not win and because she’d hog-tie him and shove him in a closet rather than allow him to fight and reinjure himself. Some things weren’t hers to decide. He was a Dolan, a grown man and more than capable of deciding what he considered worth fighting for. 

If he could step into the ring and punch someone for his dad’s approval, his family’s acceptance, he could sure as hell down enough pain killers to get through one more fight if it meant saving the woman he loved. He did love her. He wasn’t ready to say it, even to himself, but he knew it deep down, knew by the fact that he’d risk anything, permanent damage to his right hand, losing his ability to ever fight again—just to have a chance at keeping her.

When he surfaced at church and brunch the next day, though, his family had plenty to say. This time, his grandmom started. She gave him an affectionate squeeze, even her hair smelling of cabbage, and asked why he was wearing the plastic splint.

“It’s to have my hand heal properly. Don’t worry. I’m taking care of myself. Though I may need an extra helping of pudding to keep my strength up,” he teased.

“If you keep your hand too still, won’t it get weaker?” She asked, seeming innocently curious.

“If I move it too much, I could hurt it again. I start with physiotherapy tomorrow morning over in Kilmuck.”

“Which exercises are you doing now?” His granddad put in.

“None as yet, sir. It’s only day before yesterday I was operated on,” he said brightly. “I’ll be starting soon enough in the morning.”

“So you’re feeble now, are you?” His granddad demanded.

“No, I was up bright and early enough for Mass. What would make you think I was feeble?”

“Playing at being too pitiful to train, prancing around in that bloody great brace like you’ve a war wound. ‘Twas a mere scratch. I’ve had worse from a paper cut than the ‘injury’ you carry on about,” his granddad said.

Bronny gritted his teeth and reminded himself to keep still. He remembered telling Camila that you all smooth out your edges to fit in together as a family. There was no reason to expect them to embrace his injury and his seeming inability to fight in the tournament.

They were just trying to encourage him to try in their way. They weren’t to know he planned to fight anyhow. If he let on that he was going to fight, word would get to Camila and he couldn’t risk her kicking up dust over it and trying to prevent him. So he’d have to endure having his grandfather put his feet to the fire over being a coward.

“I’m on doctor’s orders, you know. The surgeon was keen that I keep use of my hand and get to live a normal life. When you take the long view, missing one fight to protect my health isn’t that desperate,” he assured them.

“So you’re planning to sit this one out and watch someone else walk away with the title and the cash? Och, son, did I raise a little girl or a Dolan man?” His dad injected.

“If you’re keen to change my name to Mary over this, go on ahead,” he chuckled tightly. “Since I was a lad you taught me that the fight was about your head game as well as your fists and I know in my head that it’s smartest to live to fight another day in this case. No sense tearing up my hand by throwing punches too soon. You can be sure I’ll work as hard as the physio will let me and bounce right back.  I expect I’ll be fighting again before too long, soon as the surgeon clears me to go.”

“This desperate wound of yours—did it stop you going straight to your girlfriend’s yesterday?” His father asked.

“What are you meaning?” Bronny hedged.

“Only that I checked up on you to see if you required anything from the chemist’s or a meal and you were not at home. I came back an hour later and yet you remained out on the town.”

“Murrawallen is not much of a town to be out on, Dad,” Bronny joked.

“If you’re so weak you ought to have been abed, not out with your friends.” His grandmother scolded.

“Now, grandmom, I’ve told you not to worry. It’s a grown man I am and well enough to know my own strength.”

“So you’ve strength enough to visit your Italian slut, but not strength enough to train.” His father put in and Bronny set his teeth, keeping his peace.

He took a bit of bread and smeared it with butter left-handed, mildly eating his dinner and listening as the conversation finally drifted to other things, namely his cousin Callie’s recent weight gain and the fact she’d never draw a man if she kept up that way. Callie made excuse that she had overindulged in the pasta at the Cheek, which regrettably steered the discussion back into anti-Camila territory.

“Another grand thing she’s contributing to Murrawallen, then. Shutting down the fighting ring and bringing the obesity of her ancestors to corrupt the healthy Irish.” His granddad proclaimed.

“I’ve seen my share of hefty Irish, Dad. Are you knowing her Italian ancestors, then? That you have concern for their wellness and weight?” Bronny challenged.

“I know you think her a fine little tart but she’s nothing but a scourge to this town. Would that her father had never wandered as far as America and caught the eye of her benighted mother, whore that she was.”

“Do you really think the Sunday dinner table is the place to be defaming the ancestry of a girl you don’t even know?” Bronny asked irritably.

“Don’t you go defending her lot to your own blood kin. You need to be thinking with what’s inside that thick skull of yours and not what’s in your trousers.” His dad said.

“Listen, I’ve had a rough week of it, what with being stabbed in the ring and told my fight career was over by the doctors and having hell about it from my family. Mightn’t you give me a bit of peace with my meal? We shall agree to disagree over the worth of Miss Saunders but abuse her no more at this table, or so help me, injury or not, there will be a row you won’t soon forget.” Bronny warned.

“Do you threaten me at my own table?”

“No, Granddad. I tell you true. I was raised to not back down from a fight and when someone insults those I care for, my loyalty, my manhood’s in question…that’s what you taught me.”

“You were taught to respect the wisdom of your elders, boy.” His grandfather corrected. “Use your manners at this table or leave.”

“I think I’ve been quite the picture of civility while you’ve called me a coward and labeled my girlfriend a slut, Granddad. I’ve endured more insults from you at this table than I ever put up with in the schoolyard as a boy.” He threw down his napkin.

“Where the fucking hell were you after I took you home?”

“I was with Camila,” he said flatly, taking a helping of potatoes.

“You mean you were with that Saunders girl. To think you’d throw away good training time and your family’s respectable name to diddle with some wop, some dago slut—”

“That’s about enough, Dad,” Bronny said levelly.

“You’re wasting time with her, and she’s not one of us.”

“This isn’t the nineteen fifties. You can’t go around slandering anyone you don’t like and throwing around this bullshit hate speech at the breakfast table. You just left church—a church, I might add, that’s based in Italy, not Dublin. You sound like a fucking moron, Dad.” He threw down his napkin.

“You will not use that language at your grandmother’s table.” His grandfather stood up angrily.

“I don’t intend to stay at my grandmother’s table. I’m done listening to your opinions of my choices and trying to be good enough for you to keep me in the family. Enough.”

He walked out to a cacophony of curses.

He thought someone would come after him, that his grandmother, his uncle,
someone
would chase him down and say they wanted him to come back, they were sorry. That he was part of the family, no matter what. He even stood around in the driveway for a minute. But no one came flying out of the house to fetch him. He just had to accept that if he was done, so were they. It hurt even more than he thought it would, but he kept moving.

After all those years of swallowing his opinion, of doing anything it took just to get along and be part of the Dolan clan, he felt sick at the loss of them. No one, not one of the cousins he’d trained to fend off bullies nor the aunts and uncles whose grass he’d cut for free nor even his own dad had trailed after him to apologize, to say he was important to them. That he had always been good enough.

Because to them, to these Dolans, it wasn’t true. You fought or you were weak. You were loyal to the family and abided meekly with the judgment they passed on your choices. You sought first to uphold and honor the family name. Too fucking bad if you weren’t happy or you grew up and didn’t want to fight anymore, or you got involved with anyone who didn’t grow up in Murrawallen.

He had known the expectations and knew the consequences of flouting them, but it still hurt deep and hard, worse than the cut on his hand, the severed tendon that the surgeon had knit back together. He couldn’t help but feel lost, less like a man of conviction than like a street urchin with no one to turn to.

Bronny thought about going straight to Camila but first he went for coffee, sitting alone at a table and drinking the scalding brew and brooding like a good Irishman whose spirit was broken. Family was all and he was no longer part of one. His reflection in the cold window was a stranger’s, a man with a splint and a frown and no place left to go. He didn’t want to go to Camila for comfort.

Their connection was too new and he wanted so much to prove himself to her, to win this fight for her, to help her keep the Cheeky Bowman running. If he had to go forward without the support of his family—he’d just have to do it alone. Galvanized by the knowledge that Camila Saunders needed him, whether she admitted it or not, he pushed away from the table and went to see her. He could worry about getting her to admit it later, he thought with a half-smile. It would be a hell of a lot of fun persuading her to say the words.

When he got to the Cheeky Bowman, he burst into the kitchen. Camila took him in her arms.

“What the hell happened to you at breakfast?”

“I said what I needed to say to my dad.”

“I’m sorry he’s not better than that—that they don’t see what you’re worth. I see it. I see you,” she said, kissing him and kissing him.

Bronny anchored her against his chest and kissed her until he felt better. Then he drove to Kilmuck, paid for a gym membership, and started training away from his dad’s basement. He concentrated on his footwork, his left cross, his left jab. He didn’t want to engage the injured hand until the last moment…holding out hope that a week of physiotherapy would be more of a miracle than it sounded like. He still had a fight to win before he could turn his back on that life. There was a new one waiting for him, one with a beautiful dark-haired girl who was teaching him to stuff meat Italian-style. Who wanted to hear about his cases and talk about her day and take him to bed.

*****

He worked out every spare minute that week, not even seeing Camila on Wednesday or Thursday because he needed to work on the speed bag. There was more at stake this time, and he wasn’t about to let it slip by him. When she called him Friday morning, he expected her to complain about his absence.

“What’s your hourly rate?”

“What for?”

“I need to hire a good property attorney to negotiate a lease for me. The storefront next door to the Cheek would make a hell of a restaurant. It has an industrial kitchen already. I just need someone to get me the best price so I can start knocking down walls.”

“It’s not sure I am that a lease would permit the destruction of walls.” He chuckled.

“Then I may need more than an hour of your time. I need to talk restaurant business with you, and I need to get you between my sheets as well.”

“I have an opening this afternoon at one.”

“Pencil me in, Dolan.” She hung up.

At one sharp he was at the pub with a book on property law, zoning, and lease agreements. She listened to him talk for about fifteen minutes, nodding, asking salient questions. Camila took his hand and kissing his scarred knuckles lingeringly.

“I need you. I need you to help me. I want to make this work—the restaurant and us, too. And maybe it’s the first thing since Mattie died that I haven’t been able to do on my own. So I’ve got to—I’m counting on you.”

His face broke into a grin, although he felt a twinge of disappointment that he wouldn’t get to persuade her into admitting her need of him.  A warmth unfurled in his chest, a feeling he was afraid to put a name to just yet. He only knew he had to pull her into his arms, rest his forehead against hers and speak as solemnly as he ever had before a judge.

“I’m betting on you, too,” he said seriously. “You’re my family now.”

“I won’t let you down.” She kissed him. “Now, come upstairs with me.”