Page 208 of The Clinch
Her mouth curves. “That checks out.”
I cover her hand with my wrapped one. Even through gauze and tape, I can feel her.
She looks at our hands, then back at me, and her expression changes. The softness stays, but the edge under it sharpens into something private.
“Win your fight,” she says, so low the words barely travel. “Then I want you alone.”
Heat punches straight through me.
There it is. The cleanest shot of the night, and it lands before I ever step under the lights. My thumb presses once against the back of her hand. “Yeah?”
Her eyes hold mine without wavering. “You’re going to be impossible afterward. I’m prepared.”
I laugh under my breath. The sound comes rough.
She rises onto her toes and puts her mouth near my ear. “Don’t let them keep you too long.”
By the time she leans back, my pulse is no longer a controlled rise. It is a live wire under the skin.
A production runner calls my name from the corridor. Ray’s voice follows, close behind. “Two minutes.”
Liz looks at me one last time. There’s no fear in her eyes. Tension, yes. Love, yes. Desire enough to make a man dangerous in an entirely different way. But no fear.
That matters more than anything.
She reaches up, touches the cut of my jaw with two fingertips, and says, “Come back to me.”
Then she’s gone.
The door opens and closes, and I stand there breathing through the surge she just dropped into my bloodstream. Then I roll my shoulders once and walk into the corridor.
Ray is at my left. Mickey is behind me. The arena sound is louder now, bass and crowd folded into one physical force that presses against the ribs. The tunnel to the floor glows white at the far end. Security peels people back. Production points us forward.
No room remains for anything except forward motion.
Then the curtain opens, and the noise hits full force.
Las Vegas doesn’t do subtle. The arena explodes in light and sound, every surface built for spectacle. Music slams through the floor. Giant screens throw my face twenty feet high over a bowl of people who paid for blood, glory, and the chance to say they were in the room when a champion defended his title.
I step into all of it and feel the old shift happen. The final locking of parts already built for this.
I walk.
Halfway down the aisle, I turn my head once toward the ringside rows. I find Liz immediately.
She’s seated beside Eden, one hand wrapped around the edge of her chair, the other resting near her lap. The ring catches a stripe of light and flashes once. Her gaze is on me and only me. She’s not flinching. She’s not smiling for cameras. She is simply there, steady as a line pulled taut.
A calm settles under the adrenaline.
I climb the steps, duck through the ropes, and hand the robe off to Ray. The referee brings us together at center ring for final instructions. The challenger stares hard, trying to create a story inside this tiny space before the bell gives him permission.
I look at his chest, not his eyes.
The first bell rings.
He comes fast, exactly the way Ray said he would. He wants to cut the ring and rough the fight early before I find range. I meet him with the jab, sharp and straight, then turn through a hook to the body that lands under the elbow and takes enough air to make him reset. He circles left. I touch him again with the jab. Once. Twice. A third time with more sting. He bites on the head feint and leaves the ribs open. I take them.
By the end of the second, I know his timing. He dips before the right. He squares up when he wants to trade. His feet get heavy when the body work starts to tax him. He’s strong and live and proud enough to stay dangerous. He’s also behind.
