Page 58 of Fighting for Irish
“Or by the judges’ decision if neither fighter finishes it, but yeah. It was close, but I ended up submitting him with an arm bar.”
“Congratulations.” He muttered a thanks, then turned her around so he could rinse her hair one last time. “I’d like to come to your next fight.”
He paused and glanced down at her before refocusing on his task. “I’m not really on my A game yet, you know? Maybe someday.”
Kat got it. He wanted to wait until he had his confidence back before she watched him. If she had anything she was good at, she’d probably want the same thing. As it was, though, she’d never had time to explore any interests she did have. That was something she should add to her to-do list. Discover hobbies or possible talents.
“God, I love your hair,” he said, running his fingers through the now-silky mass.
“This is nothing. You should see my sist—” Kat cut herself off. She’d let her guard down so much around Irish she forgot to keep up the ruse of having no family. Maybe he didn’t catch it.
“You never told me you had a sister.”
She sighed. Of course he caught it. Irish actually listened when a woman talked. Men like him were extremely rare. Actually, in her experience, they were more like unicorns: talked about as though they might exist, but really just a creature of girlish fairy tales.
It didn’t matter anymore, she supposed. Irish wasn’t a threat to Nessie. She’d always kept her sister a secret so no one could ever use that knowledge against her. On the seedy side of the tracks in life, people didn’t hesitate to threaten your loved ones to get you to do what they wanted.
She’d even convinced Lenny years ago that she’d received word Vanessa died in a car accident. If there was one thing Kat had been adamant about since she was fourteen, it was that Vanessa’s life would never be tainted by hers. She’d protected Kat when they were growing up. The least she could do was try and protect her older sister now that they were adults.
“I have an older sister, Vanessa. But we don’t keep in contact.”
Reaching past her, he grabbed his all-in-one shower gel and filled one of his hands with the electric-blue soap. As he made quick work of scrubbing some of it through his midnight hair and the rest over his body in quick, efficient movements, he asked, “Why not? Don’t you get along?”
“No, that’s not it. Nessie and I are very close.” Kat crossed her arms over her chest and moved so he could rinse himself from head to toe. “Especially when we were growing up. She always protected me, always took care of me.”
The clean scent of some scientist’s idea of what the ocean breeze smelled like curled around her. She closed her eyes for a few seconds and drew it deep into her lungs. His sheets and pillowcase smelled like that and she was sure it calmed her better than any expensive aromatherapy ever could. She came back to herself when Irish maneuvered her to stand in front of him, her back to his chest.
“So what happened to make you drift apart?”
Irish moved the heavy mass of her hair over the front of her left shoulder. Gathering it in her hands, she braided it to keep it out of the way as he began soaping her back. “She graduated and went to college in Nevada. She tried calling me, but I didn’t take her calls very often.”
His hands slid up and down her back, kneading her sore muscles and lulling her into an almost dreamlike state. She let her head drop forward and closed her eyes.
“Why was that?” he asked, his voice a low rasp by her right ear.
“Before she left, our asshole of a stepfather went to jail, so Vanessa thought I’d be okay for the next three years. But then Mom got a new boyfriend who made the stepdad look like Santa Claus.” Kat felt his grip tense briefly as he stroked down the length of her arms, but she forgot his reaction when his hands moved to lather her stomach in lazy circles. Leaning her head back on his chest, she continued. “So I rarely spoke to her because I wanted her to focus on the new chance she’d gotten at having a decent life. She didn’t need to be stressed out about any of my shit back home.”
“You were pretty selfless for being so young. Strong, too.”
A stunted, humorless laugh echoed in the small room. “I wasn’t either of those things. But I owed it to Nessie to let her go. She’d had to act like my mother almost my whole life because ours constantly chose her addictions over us.”
Flashes of memories from deep in her past crept out from the darkness to close in on her. Her throat was thick with old fear and forgotten ghosts. She took some deep breaths through her nose and forced herself to concentrate on Irish’s strong hands now spreading the shower gel over her breasts and up her neck.
Placing a soft kiss at her temple, he traced the scar in the center of her chest and asked, “Will you tell me how you got this?”
Kat opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling. She shook her head back and forth a few times on his pec. “I know you have some idea of my shitty life, Irish, but trust me, you don’t want to know the fucked-up details.”
His strong arms wrapped around her waist and he turned them to the side so the shower spray hit them both. With him leaning back against the wall, she let her weight sink into him. Between the water running down her front and his body behind her, she felt wrapped in a cocoon of warmth, and yet her insides were starting to convulse as though she stood naked in a snowstorm.
“I want to know everything about you, Katherine Terese MacGregor. Even the bad stuff.” When she started to shake her head again, he stopped her by tucking his face down by hers. “Hey,” he said gruffly. “I will fight anything—past, present, or future—that tries to hurt you. But I can’t fight your demons unless you show them to me.”
“There’s no point. You can’t fight things from the past.”
“Sure we can. Look at how we fought your problem of slipping away when we make love. We found a way around it and beat it. So maybe there’re other things we can do to help heal the parts you feel are kind of broken, you know?”
His point was valid. Sort of. He’d been right about keeping her eyes open during sex. As long as she could see that it was him, her brain didn’t slip into survival mode without her consent. She’d even gotten to the point where she could close her eyes for a few seconds at a time and still be okay. That probably was due to the fact that Irish could win awards for Best Sweet Talker Ever. It wasn’t constant during sex, but she suspected he did it as a way to keep her in the moment with him. Whatever the reason, she loved it and hoped he never stopped.
So, yes, he had fixed one problem she’d had as a result of her past. But even still, she didn’t see how telling him the sordid details of what happened to her for the two years between Nessie moving out and leaving with Lenny would help her. Her life was what it was. She’d learned to bury it and do her best to never let it see the light of day.
