Page 16 of Craving the Edge

“Nothing happened.”

“Sure, mate.” Tomas took a long drink, his dark eyes fixed on me over the rim of the glass. He set it down with a soft click. The look he gave me was calm, observant, and it stripped the lie bare before it had even fully formed. He saw everything.

I picked up my knife, turning it over in my fingers. I could still taste her. She’d opened up for a second and then slammed the door shut so hard the hinges rattled. I’d followed her out of the office in a daze, watching her disappear into the women’s change room.

“I’m serious,” I hissed. “Drop it.”

Tomas leaned back against the seat, one arm draped over the top. He eyed me, a knowing look on his face that said he’d wait until I was ready to admit what he already knew.

“She seems like a real person, mate.”

I glared at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means she’s not a ring girl or a sponsor’s daughter or some influencer trying to grab your cock for a like,” Tomas stated. “In our world, that’s rare. Just saying.”

Fuck, he was right. That was the core of it. Char didn’t look at me and see a headline or a rich, ripped guy that was looking for an easy fuck. She looked at me and saw Declan Walsh for the dickhead he was…and for some screwed up reason, I found it intoxicating.

But I wasn’t ready to have it pulled apart and examined over a steak, especially when I had shit all idea what it even was.

“I said drop it.” My voice was hard.

Tomas held my gaze for a second longer then conceded, lifting his beer and drinking. The silence stretched.

Finally, he leaned forward, elbows on the table and asked, “So, what’s wrong with your right hand?”

I went completely still. The low throb in my knuckles flared, pulsing all the way up my arm.

“You’ve been taping it differently for two weeks,” Tomas continued. “Pulling your punches in sparring, just a little. You barely used it on the bag today. Don’t pretend I haven’t noticed.”

I stared at the polished surface of the table, at the faint reflection of my own face. My first instinct, the one drilled into me by a decade in a sport that fed on weakness, was to lie.

I said nothing.

Tomas sighed, a heavy, disappointed sound, and pushed his plate away.

“We’ve been mates since we were kids, Walsh. Since long before you were that.” He gestured vaguely at me. “Before the money, the press conferences, the pussy, and way before Rhys started polishing your are cheeks with his tongue.”

I dug my thumbnail into the wood of the table. “Don’t.”

“No, you don’t,” he shot back. “You shut the fuck up for a minute and listen. I know you better than anyone else in this whole fucked-up business. You think Rhys knows you? He knows your brand. He knows your bank balance. He doesn’t know shit.”

The easygoing bloke from the gym was gone, replaced by the friend who’d seen me at my absolute worst.

“Who drove you to Footscray Hospital at two in the morning after that amateur night in the warehouse? The one where your nose got spread all over your face and you were spitting blood for a week?”

The memory hit me. The reek of rust and stale beer in that crappy warehouse. The shock of pain, the rattling of Tomas’s old Holden as he broke every speed limit to get me to emergency.

I let out a low groan, scrubbing my good hand over my face as the fight drained out of me completely.

“You,” I mumbled into my palm. “It was you.”

“It was,” Tomas confirmed. “And who was there when your old man kicked you out with shit all but a gym bag and the clothes on your back? Who let you sleep on a shitty mattress on their floor for six months until you got your first decent job?”

The memories were sharp. The taste of cheap two-minute noodles. The smell of the damp flat Tomas had rented in Thornbury. The constant worry about money, about making weight, about finding a way out. Before the tailored suits and theVanguard World Fighting Alliance, before Rhys started calling all the shots.

Tomas leaned forward again, his tattooed forearms flat on the table. “I’ve seen you bleed. I’ve seen you broken. I know the difference between ‘fight sore’ and properly fucked, mate. So stop treating me like some reporter you’ve got to spin a line to and tell me what’s going on.”

I stared at him. The lies dried up in my throat. He was right. He’d always been in my corner and wanted nothing from me but my friendship. Lying to Tomas was like lying to a part of myself I’d almost forgotten existed.