Fighting Silence (On the Ropes #1)(65)

“And what about Quarry?”

“He’s still sitting at eighty percent. No real change.”

“That’s good f*cking news.” He stood up, walked to the door, and pushed it shut before drawing the shades that covered his large, glass windows into the gym.

My curiosity grew, because up until that moment, I hadn’t known that those shades were even functional.

“All right. Now, there’s something else I need to talk to you about.” He sat on the corner of the desk. “Clay Page has been calling the gym looking for you. Pretty much every day, we get a collect call from the prison.”

“Fuck him,” flew from my mouth.

“Right. Well, I’ve been keeping Quarry off phone duty. I don’t want to put him in a position of having to hang up on his own dad if he happened to call.”

“I appreciate that.”

“Well, just so you know, I’ll be contacting the prison to put a halt to that shit. I run a business. I don’t need inmates blowing up my phones.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more.” I pushed to my feet, ready to work off some steam.

“Where you going? Sit back down, I’m not done yet.”

“Please tell me there’s not more,” I huffed, flopping back down onto the chair.

“Change of plans on your fight this weekend. Summers got hurt and they can’t find anyone to replace him on such short notice. Your fight got dropped from the card.”

“Son of a bitch!” I boomed, jumping to my feet. “That was a big fight.” I started to pace. “Are we rescheduling?”

“Nope.” He smiled in amusement.

“Why the hell not?”

“You’re too busy.” His smile grew.

“Um, no. No. I’m not. That was twenty-five grand. I’m pretty sure my schedule is wide-ass open.”

“I got you a new fight for Saturday night,” he announced, and I suddenly understood the smile.

“With who?”

“Oh, you know . . . some guy you’ve probably never heard of named Larry Lacy.”

“Shut the f*ck up!” I breathed, taking a giant step toward him. “Former heavyweight champ Larry Lacy?”

“Oh, so you have heard of him.” He joked as I started to bounce on my toes. “Well, don’t get too excited. It’s not a pay-per-view or anything. This tiny, unknown network is actually televising it. Shit. I can’t even remember the name.” He rubbed his chin.

I knew he was f*cking with me . . . hard. He was almost as excited as I was.

“I think it was called . . . ESPN.”

I froze. “No. Fucking. Way.”

“Eight rounds. Fifty K. Philadelphia. Saturday night.”

“I swear to God you better not be f*cking with me right now.”

He started laughing as he handed me a manila folder. “Lacy’s just out of a yearlong stint in rehab and trying to make a comeback. He was supposed to be going against Pryor, but he pulled out yesterday for reasons that were not disclosed to me. And quite honestly, I didn’t care enough to ask.”

I flipped through the pages of the contract, and sure as shit, everything was there in black ink. My eyes homed in on the four zeros on the second page.

Fifty thousand dollars.

“Holy shit. This is incredible.” My heart was banging around in my chest.

“This is a big break for your career. The sheer amount of promoters who will be watching this fight is going to be ridiculous. Everyone is dying to see what Lacy can do now that he’s sober, but I want them to leave that arena talking about Till Page.”

“Hell yeah,” I whispered.

“Now sign that shit and get in the ring. We need to develop a new strategy for Lacy.”

As I pushed to my feet, I swear my whole body was numb.

“Thanks, Slate,” I called out as I left his office. As I headed down the hallway, I bypassed the main locker room and made my way to one of the dressing rooms in the back. I needed to make a phone call.

“Holy shit. I literally just thought about making twice-baked potatoes for dinner and you called me. That is some kind of serious obsession, Till.” Eliza laughed.

“I’m going to be on ESPN,” I rushed out, and her laughter stopped.

“What?”

My hands were shaking as the shock and exhilaration threatened to overtake me. “Slate got me a fight on ESPN. Fifty thousand dollars.” I broke out in manic laughter. “Oh my God, Doodle. This is so f*cking huge.”

“Wait. When?”

“This weekend!” I yelled as I bounced around the dressing room like a kid on Christmas morning, throwing fist pumps in the most non-badass way possible.

“Shut up!” she screeched into my ear.

I knew Eliza, and I bet she was throwing a few fist pumps of her own.

“Till! That’s amazing! Congrats!”

“There is a really good chance my chest is going to explode before I make it home today.” I continued to pace around the room.

“Ew. No exploding. So, are you good freaking out or bad freaking out?”

“I honestly don’t know. I’m not nervous about the fight, so I guess maybe the good kind? Hell, I don’t know. I don’t get to good freak out enough to know the difference.” I laughed, but it wasn’t a joke.