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39

JACK

FINDING VICTORY

B ambie: I know. Congratulations. x

I stroke a finger across the screen of my phone – the proxy for the girl I wish I was touching – and ignore the chaos raging around me. With my left arm laid out on the exam table and the doctor casting it up, my brothers and sisters stand to the side as my nieces and nephews run around the cramped room like they own the place.

I love them, I love them to fucking bits, but some peace and quiet right now would be good.

“Turn your arm over.”

I nod softly, but the gentle movement sends my brain rattling around inside my skull. I don’t look up at my doctor, I just stare at my screen. ‘I know. Congratulations.’

She knows, so she was watching.

“Fractured again, though not as bad as the original break. It’s weak, son, and it always will be.”

Aiden’s nose almost touches my arm during his inspection. “Will he be able to keep fighting?”

Nodding, he works in his little med bag and pulls out torture devices. “Yeah. He’ll be off for a couple months, cast, physio oughtta get it back most of the way. But you need to be careful. It’s only a matter of time before you can’t use it anymore. Next time you break it, we’ll be pinning it and you’ll be off for the better part of a year.”

“A year?” Aiden balks. “That’s a long ass time, doc. ”

“It sure is, so you better be careful.”

Somehow, somewhere along the way, our group of badass fighters turned into a bunch of pussies.

I’m positive Bobby started our downward spiral into sissyhood years ago after he won his third or fourth title, after he met and married my sister. His way of celebrating was not with girls and partying and booze, but as a family with ice-cream and milkshakes and all the sugary snacks we could possibly consume.

I was sixteen – and I had a belly full of dessert. You wouldn’t hear me complaining.

But tonight, three hours after being announced winner, I find myself freshly showered, topped up on Advil to ease the pain throbbing all over my body, and my fresh cast laid out on the bed in my penthouse suite while my nieces and nephews draw all over it.

Their color choices lean toward pink and purple, and though I could claim that it’s because they’re our gym colors, I know that’s a lie, seeing as most of the drawings are of flowers and hearts.

Roles have been reversed; I sat drawing on my sweet Evie’s cast when she was only three years old, and now almost a decade later, she lies in the crook of my arm with her head on my shoulder and her hair in my nose, quietly doodling with a pink marker.

She’s been on me like white on rice for weeks, more so the last week. She knows I’m sad about Bambie – though I have never, and would never, talk to her about that.

That’s grown-up shit, not for twelve-year-old girls to worry about.

“Here you go.” Quietly – and with a shyness I haven’t seen in my sister in forever – Kit steps forward with a filled-to-the-brim chocolate shake.

My fight’s over, which means I can eat shit again. Sitting on the edge of the bed close to my right arm, she quietly sips her own shake and pretends like she isn’t freaking out.

The awkward silence sucks the oxygen from the room and crushes my chest.

She fidgets – with her fingers, with her wedding band, with the straw in her shake – then with a heavy sigh, she spins and drops to the floor on her knees until her watery eyes meet mine. “I’m so sorry for not believing in you, Jack. ”

I just nod. I’m not mad at her. “We’re okay.”

“Are you okay?”

Not really. “She didn’t come.”

Sighing, because she’s the closest thing to a mom I’ve ever had, she runs her fingers over my forearm. “No, she didn’t.”

“I was going to marry her.”

“I know. I’m so sorry.” Breath hitching with empathy, she swipes a single tear away with her shoulder. “You seem…” She hesitates. “Well, sad, but different to last time.”

Nodding, I squeeze Evie, because I know she’s listening. She wants to be a grown-up. She wants to be treated as one. She wants to be involved in grown-up discussions.

“I gotta stand on my own two feet, Kit. You’ve been saving me all my life, then like a kid of a divorced couple sharing custody, I was passed on to Steph. Then Bambie… I’ve been reliant and lazy my whole life. That’s a really crappy trait to have; not the kinda guy a woman would want to marry.”

“I think you’re a good catch. Any girl would be lucky to have you.”

“You have to say that,” I chuckle softly. “It’s definitely not what you were saying when I was fifteen and an assh– a delinquent.”

With that motherly smile she does, she admits, “You’re an acquired taste, I guess.” Sighing, she squeezes my arm. “But your heart, Jack, it’s so pure. So pure and so kind.”

I shrug and play with Evie’s hair.

“You did an amazing job tonight.”

I smirk. “Busted my arm on the first jab.”

“You’re such an idiot,” she snaps. “You should’ve stopped, not kept going.”

I shrug and pat Evie’s curls away from my face. “I think my career’s coming to an end, anyway. We already know my arm won’t hold out for much longer, so I had to keep going tonight. Had to set myself up so I’m not mooching off my sister anymore.”

She rolls her eyes. “You’d still have a job, dummy. You can still train others. Work in the gym.”

“We’d still pay you to wash the jock straps and mop the floors.” Wandering into the room, Bobby annoyingly grins and sips at his sissy shake.

Grabbing the TV remote off the bed, I toss it at his laughing face. “You can shut the hell up about fighting me, by the way. I proved my point. ”

“You didn’t prove shit!” he argues. “Anyone could beat that sissy from tonight. Evie could beat him–”

“Yeah, I could.”

“See?” He points at her. “You didn’t beat me ! So really, you’ve proved nothing.”

“I’m not listening to this shit tonight, asshole.”

“Potty mouth!” Kit snaps. Her kids sit barely three feet from my head and watch me and their dad verbally spar.

“And now you’ve busted your arm, no doubt on purpose ‘cause you’re too scared to go toe to toe with me.”

“Are you done?”

“Guess I’m gonna have to be,” he bitches. “Guess we’ll never know.”

“We know!” I glare. “We definitely know. You’re lucky I can’t hit you right now, you’d feel it for weeks.”

“Mmhmm. Pussy.”

“Bobby!”

“Do you like my picture, Uncle Jack?” Sitting up fast, Evie unintentionally tweaks my arm and almost has me weeping.

Breathing through the pain and concentrating on my trashed cast, I stop on Evie’s drawing and bark out a laugh. “Evelyn! Where the hell did you learn that?”

“I found my old cast the other day,” she answers easily. “It was packed away in a box under my bed, but I found it. My arm used to be so tiny.”

Walking up to read over my shoulder, Tina huffs and slaps my shoulder. “I told you not to draw that on her cast, you idiot!”

“I didn’t write it till after it was off her!” I laugh. “I didn’t feel right making a three-year-old walk around with a ding-dong on her arm.”

“Well now you can walk around with one on yours, dummy.”

“You have that TV interview tomorrow,” Kit says cheerfully. “I hope they see it and make fun of you.”

I shrug. I honestly don’t care.

“Then we gotta go downtown for the radio interview,” Bobby adds.

“Then home. Finally.”

Thank God.

“There’s no place like home.”