Page 3 of Craving the Edge

“Gary being Gary, then.” Billie started on her other hand, looping the black wrap around her thumb, then over her wrist. “Who is it this time? Some local council wannabe who thinks he needs private lessons to win a pub fight?”

“Worse.”

Carla’s blue text bubble from my phone flashed in my mind. I hadn’t even typed out a response before deleting it. What would I say? ‘Glad you’re alive?’ ‘How’s London?’ ‘Remember me?’

Billie continued her wrapping. “How much worse?”

People leave. They find something shinier somewhere else. A different city. A better job. They get on a plane and the hole they leave behind is your problem to fill. It was a simple calculation. A tidy piece of math I’d proven a thousand times over. Carla was just the first and final data point.

“Char?” Billie’s voice sliced right through the noise in my head. “Where’d you just go?”

I blinked, the gym snapping back into focus. “It’s nothing. It’s this bloody Monday booking. Gary’s cancelled the entire six-to-eight slot for Declan Walsh.”

Billie paused, the wrap held tight between her fingers. A flicker crossed her face, but her gaze never left mine. She knew a deflection when she heard one. I could see the choice not to push it in her eyes, and was relieved.

“The celebrity circus comes to town,” she drawled. “Yippee.”

“I know.” I made a face. “And I’m going to have to manage it.”

“Don’t let it get to you,” Billie said, securing her wraps. “Gary knows he’d be dead in the water without you here, so do your best and don’t let the cocky arsehole Walsh get to you.” She smirked and wiggled her eyebrows. “He may have a reputation for being a flashy moron, but he is easy on the eye.”

She wasn’t wrong there. Declan Walsh was hot. Annoyingly so.

“I know you’re right, but⁠—”

Billie clucked her tongue. “No buts, Char! Easy come, easy go. He’ll breeze in, not look twice, do his thing, and leave. Guys like that always do. It’ll be the easiest Monday morning you’ve ever had.”

My shoulders sagged. “I hope you’re right.”

“I know I’m right.” She moved away, her wrapped knuckles brushing the canvas of the nearest heavy bag, testing its weight. “Oh, and Char?” She smirked and pointed to the front desk. “Fuck your sister.”

I flipped her the middle finger. “You know me too well.”

Thankfully, the rest of the day moved by without another visitation from Gary “Hendo” Henderson. The last of the regulars drifted out in a sluggish wave of tired muscles and zipped-up bags. The sound dropped the gym into an abrupt quiet. I was alone.

My walkthrough was a ritual. I moved through the back rooms, the small office, and the change rooms. Each flick of a switch plunged another corner into darkness, the sounds of my own footsteps swallowed by the warehouse.

Finally, only the main floor remained lit, the buzzing fluorescents casting a glare over the empty mats. I stopped at the edge of the rubber floor, my arms crossed tight against my chest. I could already picture it: the entourage, the fake smiles, the sense that we were all just backdrop extras in his life. My life.

Billie was wrong. He wouldn’t just breeze in and leave. He’d infect the place.

I walked to the front, gripped the chain beside the metal roller door, and leaned back, my boots sliding a fraction on the concrete as I put my weight into it. The door groaned, rattling down its tracks with a screech of metal on metal before it slammed into the floor with an echoing crash.

I turned the two locks, and clutching the keys in my fist, I stepped out into the damp gloom of a Melbourne winter. The rumble of a distant tram vibrated through the footpath, but the looming presence of yet another man coming to mess shit up followed me out, an ugly reminder of my place on the ladder of life.

CHAPTER 2

DECLAN

All that was left of Ironbound Performance was a burnt out shell of charcoal and ash.

I stood on the footpath, the pre-dawn air sharp with frost. The wind carried the stench of the gym’s ruin. The stench of melted rubber, the chemical reek of detergents boiled into the concrete, and the sour smell of burnt timber.

The building was a shell. Its wide glass facade was gone, and through it I could see the warped machines and the twisted metal frames of the lifting racks. Blue and white police tape sagged between temporary bollards, the flimsy plastic doing nothing to contain the devastation.

This was where I came to work. Not for the cameras or the press junkets my manager lined up. It was the only room in this city where I didn’t have to play the part of Declan Walsh, MMA champion. It was just me and the feeling of my knuckles slamming into something real. A place where the shit in my head went quiet, drowned out by the thud of leather on leather and the simple rhythm of my own breathing.

Now, even that was gone. Just another thing reduced to ash.