Page 5 of Craving the Edge

Discreet. That just meant it was a dump. A place a fighter on the way down would train, not someone defending a title in seven weeks. The thought of it was a lead weight, but then, my whole fucking life felt like a lead weight.

He expected me to kick up a fuss. I always did. The ritual was familiar. He’d present a solution that prioritised optics over my actual needs, and I’d tear it apart.

Not this time.

The sharp ache in my right hand pulsed, a quiet, insistent reminder of what was really at stake. A media circus sniffing around for a new training facility was a risk. A team doctor getting a proper look at my hand was a catastrophe.

Rhys had, without knowing it, handed me the one thing I needed most. A back-alley gym where no one would look too closely. A place to disappear.

I snorted. “Whatever.”

I had no other choice.

I turned my back on the wreckage. There was nothing left to see here but a grave for a life I was already leaving behind.

Down the block, beyond the last police car, a flicker of movement by a white delivery van snagged my attention. A figure, hunched low. The unmistakable shape of a long lens. A photographer hoping to catch a moment of private grief.

My spine straightened in an automatic reflex. My expression hardened, the soft lines of exhaustion around my eyes tightening into the intense, unreadable stare they plastered across posters and pay-per-view ads. The ‘Declan Walsh’ persona clicked into place, a suit of armour I wore more often than my own skin.

I knew the shot he was getting. The champion, silhouetted against the smouldering ruins of his kingdom. Stoic. Unbroken. It’d be online within the hour, captioned with some bullshit about resilience. What a fucking joke.

Rhys saw him, too. His head snapped in the photographer’s direction, a low curse hissing through his teeth.

“For fuck’s sake. Let’s go.” His hand clamped around my bicep, pulling me towards the black car at the curb. “Get in the car. Now.”

He steered me away from the ruin, half-shielding me with his own thin frame as if he could block the camera’s view.

I slid into the back of the car. As Rhys slammed the door shut, the truth of the situation landed even harder. This filthy nothing gym, Fighter’s Edge, was now my only chance of surviving the next seven weeks.

Rhys got into the driver’s seat, slamming the door closed as his smartwatch buzzed again, a fresh wave of notifications lighting up its screen. The vultures were circling.

My right hand pulsed on my lap, the throb matching my own heartbeat. I clenched my fingers, slowly curling them into a tight fist. Pain shot up my forearm, but I held the pressure, testing the boundary between a bearable ache and the searing agony that’d give me away.

He didn’t need to know. Not yet. Not until after Sydney.

The thought was a familiar one, but as the car’s engine came to life, a new question surfaced. Was it just about the fight? Or was some morbid part of me holding onto this bloody secret because it was a way out? A final, career-ending injury that wasn’t my choice to make. One last brutal bout and then it’d all just…stop. I wouldn’t be Declan Walsh, Vanguard World Fighting Alliance champion, anymore. I’d just be Declan.

The car pulled away from the gym, joining the early morning commuter traffic. I stared out the passenger window at the blackened hole, the row of emergency vehicles, the gawking photographer, as it all slid past. Rhys took a sharp left, and the ruin of my old life vanished from view.

Rhys wrestled the car through the thickening mess of busy Brunswick Street. Trams rumbled past, their bells clanging. Melbourne was waking up, oblivious. Sunlight glinted off the high-rise towers of the city skyline ahead, a wall of glass and steel that felt like another world.

Just another Friday.

My thoughts had already left the wreckage and fixed on a place called Fighter’s Edge.

Rhys called it discreet, but I wondered how long it’d stay that way. Nothing that good ever lasted.

CHAPTER 3

CHAR

By the time Monday rolled around, I was numb to it.

I ran a hand along the top rope of the boxing ring, checking the tension. It was fine. Everything was fine.

I’d spent the last hour running around the place like a woman possessed. I’d scrubbed the grime from the mirrors and mopped the floor in the entrance. A stack of clean towels sat folded on a bench and the fridge was stocked with Declan ‘Dickhead’ Walsh’s favourite sports drink, all paid for by Gary. A luxury our members had never been afforded, even though they were the ones whose memberships had paid for this place over the years.

At least Gary was nowhere to be seen. I’d called him last night, leaving him no room for his usual brand of hot air. I’d commanded him not to come in today. At all. The thought of him trying to impress a world champion athlete while reeking of beer and cigarette smoke was a nightmare I had no intention of managing.