Page 263 of Juliet

“He’s Cuban. Family is very important to them…and you’re also probably great eye candy for them—you and your high arches that just can’t function in sneakers.” She laughed. “They probably go home with hard dicks every night.”

“Amore!” Roberto yells from the ring.

He can’t say “Lovie.” He says it doesn’t roll off his Cuban tongue, so at the gym I’m “Amore.”

“Come. Let me show you.” He waves his mitt-covered hand and smiles at my heels as I sit my laptop on the chair next to me and push up from my seat outside the ring.

Rich follows his eyes in the same way he follows every man’s eyes that linger on me longer than a few seconds as I gait up the stairs leading into the ring. As soon as I climb inside and stand upright, Roberto grabs Rich’s arm and pulls him to me. We look at each other and smile in the way that annoys Arnez when she’s not being moody and lets us spend time with her.

“Say hello to each other, esposa and esposo,” Roberto says.

“Hi, Rich,” I murmur to him.

“Hi, baby,” he rasps back.

Somehow, I see our uneventful morning replaying in his russet irises. I made his breakfast, then listened to him explain to Aunt Faye which ceiling fan to buy from Home Depot so he can install it in the master bedroom when we fly home to visit.Afterward we rushed out of the condo and got in his truck to head here.

“Listen to me, Amore. La esposa is the backbone of the husband in boxing.” Roberto gestures to Rich’s back and drags his hand up and down. “You understand?”

“I do.”

“Tell me what that means to you.”

I smirk at Roberto and his strange boxing lessons that never feel like they have anything to do with boxing. “It means I take care of him.”

“Uh-huh…and Pup, what does that mean to you?”

“It means she the boss of me.”

Roberto throws his head back, laughing. “Perfecto. Now, hold your hands out, Pup.”

He holds them out, and I drag my eyes across the frayed tape wrapped around them.

Roberto reaches out and unwraps them, slowly exposing myotherfriends I’ve grown to love over the past month. They’re not as pretty as his biceps, triceps, or deltoids, but that’s the thing I love about them the most.

“Street fighter’s hands,” Roberto mutters, looking from me to Rich’s sunken knuckles as if I can fix them.

“Uh-huh.” I nod, reaching out and threading my fingers through Rich’s.

“How long did he street fight?”

“Fourteen years,” I reply just as easily as I do when I’m asked anything about Rich.

“Fourteen years is a long time, so we have to start slow when we train a fighter like Pup. It’s like pulling a wolf out of its natural habitat—it’ll cause him stress. We’ve already taken him from his home…. ”

“I understand,” I murmur.

“So no gloves for fourteen years—just bare knuckle boxing.” He whistles. “You know these hands the best, don’t you, Amore?”

Rich smirks while I nod.

“I…I do.”

“Listen, I wanna put gloves on Pup, but I need to know if he’s ready for that, and you’re the only person here who can tell me if he is.”

I look down at our hands tangled together and stare at his scarred ones. I see all the calluses that scrape against the softest parts of my body. I see each sunken knuckle he says I’ve made better with my kisses. I even see our future in the light colored scars that decorate his knuckles.

I blink up at Roberto. “He’s ready.”