The Aftermath (The Hurricane, #2)(16)

“Earnshaw,” I called out. “You got a sec?” He looked shocked, if not a little bemused, that I was talking to him.

“Do you have any training gear with you?” I asked.

“Sure,” he replied. “Why?”

“Wondered if you fancied sparring?” I asked innocently.

“Sure,” he replied. “Just let me change, and I’ll be there.” I shadowboxed patiently while I tried to calm down.

He wasn’t gone more than five minutes, but as he strolled confidently toward the ring, everything about him, from his tanned skinned to his all-American perfect white teeth got on my nerves. Even his training gear looked new and expensive compared with our raggedy old stuff.

“How long you been boxing?” I asked as we danced around the ring.

“Since I was about ten. My old man taught me.”

“He anyone I would’ve heard of?” I asked curiously.

“Nah. He never did it to compete. He just wanted me to be able to take care of myself. I won a few amateur titles when I was a teenager but I was never good enough to go pro.”

I started out with a few combinations to test his mettle. Kieran was a better sparring partner because he could read me. We’d had a lifetime of training together, and he often knew what punch I’d throw before I did. This guy wasn’t half bad though. He picked up the pace, and we were throwing a few combinations back and forth when a rogue left hook clipped me with more force than he’d intended. It was unexpected and knocked me off my feet.

“Sorry,” he said good-naturedly, offering out his hand to help me up. When I shook my head in refusal, he looked a little worried.

“Don’t sweat it,” I told him with a calm I didn’t feel. I jabbed at him a couple of times, and he responded in turn with a couple of his own combinations. Our friendly banter of a few minutes ago was ancient history, and the tension between us was palpable. It was wrong to blame him for what pissed me off but my rage had no sense of direction. I guess it was in me to hide it from Em, but everyone else lately was fair game. Twenty minutes into our session and I’d made it clear that he was out of his depth. We’d passed what could respectively be called sparring long ago. For the most part, Earnshaw just kept his guard up, jabbing at me when he could, while I used him like a human punch bag. He knew what I was doing, and although the look on his face was murderous, he didn’t call me out on it.

“If the job is a bit out of your league, Earnshaw, there’s no shame in admitting it,” I taunted him. I was basically asking him if he’d had enough. Hell, I was practically daring him to quit. I’d smacked him around a fair bit already but he looked me straight in the eye when he told me to go f*ck myself.

“If you’re too chicken shit to take on major professional fighters, there ain’t no shame in that either.”

Fuck him. I’d show him exactly how out of his depth he was. Dancing around, I deftly dogged a predictable combination and delivered a right hook with the force of a freight train. The hit connected, and I felt a momentary swell of relief. If I could just do that enough times, maybe I could purge the anger and frustration that stayed with me constantly. I didn’t much care about Earnshaw. Not when his eyes snapped shut, not when he flew through the air completely unconscious, and not when he landed with a smack against the canvas. I cared about what happened next.





Chapter 6



“No,” cried Em from across the gym. Kieran stood in the doorway behind her. Both of them ran across the room and climbed into the ring, but it was Earnshaw they went to and it f*cking burned. Kieran checked his vitals while Em looked at me accusingly.

“What have you done?” she whispered.

“What have I done?” I asked, shocked. Watching Em kneeling next to him felt like betrayal. “He shouldn’t be here, Em. If he can’t handle a simple sparring session, how’s he going to handle world-class title fights?”

“He’s not here to fight world-class f*cking fighters, he’s here to promote your career.” The fact that she was shouting at me should have made me pause. Em rarely raised her voice, let alone swore. Unfortunately for me, I was on a roll.

“Nobody made him get in the f*cking ring with me. It’s not my fault if the stupid bastard doesn’t know when to quit.”

“Bullshit! You’ve been spoiling for a fight for ages and you should never have let him get in the ring with you. This is on you, O’Connell, and you don’t have the balls to admit it. You don’t even give a shit whether he’s okay or not.”

“Why are you taking his side? I’m a fighter. This is what we do!” I shouted, feeling more and more pissed off by the second.

“It’s not about taking sides, you arsehole. It’s about right from f*cking wrong. And don’t you ever call this fighting. Stick any label you want on it but you’ve just bullied and beaten a guy who’s done nothing more than try and impress you. That’s not the man I married,” she answered, her eyes welling up with tears.

“Maybe this is exactly the man you married,” I said quietly and turned my back on all of them.

*



“Well, you properly f*cked that up didn’t you,” Kieran said smugly as he sat his arse down on the bench next to me.