The Aftermath (The Hurricane, #2)(28)

“I’ll train with Kier and Danny alone, everyone else goes to court with you.” She nodded her head at the most obvious of my conditions. “Every time the court adjourns, you call me. I don’t care if it’s seventeen times a f*cking day. You call me. I need to know you’re doing okay or it will f*ck with my head.” She nodded in agreement. “I want you to sign up for rape counseling. I want to take you between my training sessions. If I can’t be with you for the trial, then I can be there for this.”

“I don’t think I need counseling, O’Connell. I’m coping with everything fine.”

“Baby, coping and dealing with it are two different things. The trial is going to bring up some ugly stuff and you need to prepare for that.” She snorted through the thick, ugly tears rolling down her face.

“Finally,” I said, threading my fingers through her hair and pulling her head gently toward me so that I could look into her eyes. “No matter which way that sick f*ck looks at you, no matter what he says, you remember that you’re mine. Body and soul, just like I’m yours. I didn’t know the girl you were before he did what he did, but I know the woman you are now and I’m proud. Not because I’m a fighter but because my wife was one first and she taught me how. Nothing he can say or do in that courtroom will ever change that. I need you to remember how much I love you. You can’t let him inside your head. You survived, and when he goes down, he’s going to get in prison everything he gave to you.”

“I love you, O’Connell. You know that?” she said to me, blowing her nose.

“I love you too, Mrs. O’Connell,” I whispered, kissing the top of her head. The next couple of months would be some of the hardest we’d been through, but once Frank had been put away, I had faith that the worst would definitely be behind us.

*



“So we’re on? For real?” Kieran asked me.

“I don’t like it, but it’s what Em wants. So, yeah, we’re on.” Kieran and Earnshaw fist-bumped each other, and I knew they were excited about making the most of this opportunity. It didn’t occur to me to worry about whether or not I could win or how painful the cost would be to achieve that win. My body was conditioned to feel pain for so long that I didn’t fear it. I worried about how much Em could endure with this trial and without me, and it bothered me that she had to try.

Earnshaw looked at me and could see my unease. “I think you’re making the right decision, but that’s easy for me to say because I have nothing to lose. So what do we need to do to get you through this?” he asked. I looked over at Danny, who still looked concerned. He loved Em like a daughter, and he was by her side when Frank stabbed her. But this was a world title fight, which meant he needed to be with me. I wasn’t the only one who was struggling, and there was no easy fix.

“You, me, Kier, and Danny will train and everyone else stays with Em. We make ourselves as close and accessible as possible until we fight and she stays with me for every minute she’s not in court,” I said. Earnshaw ran his hand back and forth through his hair as he contemplated something, and I guessed he did that a lot.

“Here’s the thing. Temple has one of the best boxing training facilities in the world, and its public knowledge. They don’t want the underdog claiming that Temple’s had unfair advantages, so they’re offering you a state-of-the-art training camp in the US where you can train for the fight and acclimatize.”

“We’re not going,” I told him. “It’s bad enough we’re missing the trial. I won’t miss having her by my side every night,” I explained.

“We’re not set up here to train for this kind of fight, Con,” Kier reasoned with me, but I wasn’t hearing it.

“Years ago, there was none of these state-of-the-art fancy gyms. We ain’t from money, and we don’t need it to get where we’re going. If we’re doing this, then we’re doing it old school,” barked Danny, which was pretty much the first contribution he’d made to this discussion, and the last word on the subject.





Chapter 11



We stood in what once passed as a kitchen. The sink had been taken out, and the plumbing capped. The floor was torn up, and the concrete exposed, and there wasn’t a single door on the filth-laden cabinets at our backs.

“Right, lads,” I said, raising my bottle of beer in the air. “Here’s to one last weekend, for me at least, of beer, marital relations, and unhealthy eating before I hand Danny my balls and get training. I know you could be doing anything you want this weekend, and I thank you for spending it helping me fix up our place.”

“Sláinte,” I toasted, tapping my bottles against theirs.

“Any idea where to start?” asked Tommy? as he kicked at a loose floor tile.

I tipped my bottle toward Liam. “You’re the expert. What do you think?”

“We’ve got two Dumpsters out front. Let’s gut and clean this place to give us our blank canvas. Then next week when you’re training, Tommy and his dad can start the plumbing and Big Joe can take a look at the electric. I’m a fair hand at plastering, so I can get cracking when they finish. By the time the fight’s done, you should be ready for carpentry and decorating so you can take over.” Liam laid it all out, but a part of me worried that this whole thing would stand still while I was training but Liam caught my eye, pulling me out of my own head.