Page 31 of Craving the Edge

I leaned forward, planting my palms flat on the cold desk. “I’ve got a stress fracture in my right hand. The fourth metacarpal. It’s been buggered for weeks.”

I pulled back, waiting for the shock, for the questions, and for her to finally look at me like I was a piece of trash.

Instead, she just watched me, her expression unchanged. A long beat of silence stretched between us.

“I know,” she said.

The two words hit me harder than a clean right hook. My jaw went slack.

She pushed back from the desk. “You barely use it. You wrap it like it’s made of glass and you haven’t thrown a decent right cross since you got here. I’m not an idiot.”

My pride, the carefully constructed armour of an undefeated champion, cracked right down the middle. All my careful guards, the misdirection, the sheer force of will I’d used to hide it—it was all for nothing. She’d seen through it from the start.

“And for the record,” she continued, “I’m not going to tell anyone. It’s none of my business.”

I could only stare at her. Tomas’s words from the other night echoed in my head. She’s a good person, mate. He was right. She saw a wounded animal, not the MMA fighter on the verge of a world title.

And she’d kept my secret without me even having to ask.

“I should’ve known…” A laugh escaped me, a sharp bark with no humour in it. I met her gaze, needing her to understand this one thing. “This isn’t me trying another angle, Char. I’m telling you because I trust you.”

I laid it all out for her. The cracked bone, the stakes of the Sydney fight. How a win there put me on a direct flight to Tokyo for a title shot that could set me up for life. Every detail that came out of my mouth felt like a weight lifting off my chest.

She listened, her expression giving nothing away. Damn, she was good at that.

“Rhys doesn’t know,” I finished. “No one but you and Tomas.”

When I ran out of words, the silence returned, but as I’d expected, Char gave me a dose of reality.

“You have to tell Rhys,” she said.

A wave of frustration hit me. “I know it’s a problem, but⁠—”

“No.” She shook her head, her gaze holding mine, refusing to let me look away. “You need to tell him. Today.”

The word landed with brutal finality. Today. Not soon. Not when I had a plan. Now.

All the months I’d spent bluffing, pushing through the pain, wrapping my hand just so—it all came crashing down. The constant noise in my head went quiet. I realised I’d just been waiting for someone to call bullshit, to say the words I couldn’t myself.

I offered no promise. Not even a nod. My silence was a wall I threw up by instinct, a pathetic defence against the sudden clarity of her demand. My whole world, everything I’d bled for, rested on that one lie and she’d just told me to tear it all down.

Char reached across the desk, her cool fingers closing around my right wrist, and I froze.

She took my hand in both of hers, turning it over. The simple contact sent a jolt through me, a live current that travelled straight down my spine. My gaze dropped, snagging on the soft curve of her lower lip. A twitch in my jeans. Fucking hell.

Her touch was totally professional. She was assessing damage. One thumb pressed gently against the swollen knuckle of my fourth metacarpal, her focus entirely on the injury. Despite knowing this, it did bugger all to quiet the response thrumming through my veins. It was maddening. It was all I could think about. If the desk wasn’t between us…

I looked up from our joined hands to her face. Her expression was all business, her brow furrowed in concentration. The distance between us suddenly felt immense. All I wanted was to close it, to hook a hand behind her neck and pull her mouth to mine.

The fantasy hit me hard. Her pressed up against the wall, my hands tangled in her dark hair. Her legs wrapped tight around my waist as I drove into her, again and again, until the relentless pressure in my head, in my chest, in my cock, finally exploded.

Her fingers slipped from my wrist, leaving me cold. The moment was over, but the charge of it still hung between us. I dragged my eyes from her mouth back to her face.

“Have you had it scanned?” she asked.

“No.”

“Declan…”