Fight to the Finish (First to Fight #3)(81)

“He is so in love with you, girl.”

Kara grinned, then dialed it back when it pulled on her bruised face. “I’m going to marry him.”

“Marianne told me,” she said. “What? She wanted to make sure I knew in case it came up while you were unconscious or something. She was just covering her bases. But thank you for telling me.”

“I need to close my eyes now,” Kara said, feeling the beginnings of another headache. Not being the type to suffer silently, she reached for the little clicker the nurse had shown her and pressed for more pain medication. “Talk to me for a few while I keep them closed?”

“No problem. Let’s start with how the site director, Al, hit on me this morning.”

Kara let the darkness act as a balm, and her friend’s voice ground her.


*

GRAHAM hated crutches. They were a menace to society. He hobbled as best he could, keeping an eye out for his friends. As he rounded the corner, he saw not only Greg and Brad, but the entire damn team filling the waiting room. They stood as one when he came into view, and several let out an “Oo-rah!”

“Shh!” hissed the nurse at the nearby desk.

“Sorry,” one of them called out from the back, earning another evil glare from the desk nurse.

Greg pulled out a chair like a waiter in a fancy restaurant. “Your seat, good sir.”

“Buzz off.” But he sat, because his armpits hurt. That was the worst part about crutches. He remembered now.

“How’s Kara?” Brad asked as the team members settled themselves again.

“Concussion, lots of bruises, raw throat. She’ll be sore for a while, but okay. She can’t fly home, for sure. Not yet. I’ll be renting a car and driving her home.”

“With a bum leg?” Simpson asked, looking confused.

“It’s my left leg, numbnuts.” He tapped the side of the thick knee brace that ran from the middle of his thigh down to the bottom of his calf. “I can drive with the right. I’ll be fine. No other choice, really. Tell me what’s going on with the games? I’m sorry I hurt our chances.” His dropping out of the competition left a gaping hole in their roster, and a lot of ground to make up.

“First, let’s just clear this up.” Coach Ace stood. “I trained you all to be warriors and fighters. Boxing is one way to showcase that, but it’s not the only way. I’m damn proud of you, Sweeney. You did what you were trained to do. Fight for the right side. You probably saved that woman’s life. So I don’t want to hear about letting anyone down, or being sorry. That’s damn stupid, and you’re not a stupid guy.”

Graham watched as Coach Ace sat back down with a decisive nod. “Uh . . . thank you, Coach. So . . . results?”

Brad had been knocked out of the running that afternoon. He was serious enough about the sport and the team, Graham expected to see more disappointment. Brad shrugged. “When you’ve seen a life-or-death situation not long before, it suddenly puts things into perspective.”

Greg was in the finals for his weight class, as was Tressler and several others. It looked as though their chances of bringing home a team win were almost nil. But their spirits were high regardless.

Maybe Brad was right. Having watched one of their own—as Kara was certainly their own now—nearly die had given everyone a little perspective about the games themselves.

Team members slowly trickled out after shaking his hand. Many asked him to tell Kara they were thinking about her. They had come to consider her a member of the team, as she’d supported them, taught them, and come to be involved with one of them. She was family. That conclusion was cemented when Coach Willis walked past and dropped a small T-shirt in his lap. “For Kara,” he said in his gruff voice, beard shaking. “I really like that girl.”

Graham nodded, then looked at the shirt. Marine Corps Boxing Team, size medium. For her. He couldn’t talk around the lump in his throat, so he resorted to handshakes and head nods as the last of the team filed out. All but Greg and Brad.

He sat back, wishing he had one of those pain med IV drips like Kara did. “You’ll miss the bus.”

“They’re leaving us here. Reagan’s gonna take us home.” Sitting forward, Brad laced his fingers together beside his knee. “Marianne’s gotten some of the story from the MPs when they interviewed her, but not all of it. Apparently his older brother was in the Corps about four or five years ago. Ready to separate and move on, and he got recalled for one last deployment. Was killed in action in Afghanistan.”

Graham dug his thumbs in his eyes. It jived with what they’d told him thus far when they had come to take Kara’s statement.

“Levi and his brother were close, and he took it hard,” Greg went on. “Blamed the military, the government, and anyone else he could for his brother’s death. His parents thought, when he accepted the internship with Marianne, that he’d gotten over it.”

“Apparently not,” Graham said dryly.

“Apparently not,” Brad echoed. “So he’s been looking for ways to ‘punish’ Marines. Little ways here and there. I think they believe him when he says he never wanted to hurt anyone. Not really. Just embarrass us, inconvenience us, and eventually make it so we couldn’t compete.”

“Hurting us, just in a different way. Because from his f*cked-up viewpoint, if he didn’t physically hurt us, he was better than the Marines, who killed his brother.” Graham had seen enough trials with nut jobs to know how they rationalized anything and everything.