Page 104 of On the Ropes
Dean
At the height of my training with Sly, the warning he repeated the most was to never let myself get cocky when I ducked under those ropes. A quiet confidence was one thing. Feeling like you deserved every victory just by being there wasn’t.
His warnings were true. The few times as an amateur when I stepped into the ring cocky, I took a surprise hit below the belt every time. Couple of those and you straighten up, real quick.
How do I feel, Tabitha?
I’d been boasting, hadn’t I? Woken up on that couch flush with the kind of head rush I always got when I was no longer in pain. As if our secret sharing, that sex, this entire morning could exist without consequences.
As if I ever thought falling in love with Tabitha Tyler would have a happy ending. But now I had Harry calling me nonstop, developers on the block, and Tabitha shyly admitting it was better for her to leave.
“New plan,” she said, pulling her hair up into a ponytail. “You take your call or…get ready for your meeting, I guess, and I’ll go talk to Mr. Bad Fucking News. See if I can’t shake out what’s going on.”
She changed quickly, mouth tight, and I caught her peeking at my prescription bottle open on the coffee table. She’d looked shocked that I hadn’t turned down the commentator gig. A good part of me was shocked too. But now that feeling was competing with an uneasy guilt. I’d bared my soul, had told her all of my complicated issues about the industry and my own injuries. She’d seen the effects last night, feeding me pills because I was in too much agony to take them myself.
With a polite smile, Tabitha slid on her shoes and walked outside. I couldn’t worry about Oswald Properties and the terrible fucking things they’d been known to do across this city. Yet. Instead, I answered my ringing phone with a weary sigh.
“Yeah, Harry? Sorry, I’m here.”
I walked up the stairs and yanked a clean shirt from the dresser. Set Harry to speaker phone so I could splash cold water on my face.
“I should hope so,” he said, tone clipped. “Rex is meeting me at the coffee shop down the block from you in ten minutes. Can I ask where the hell you are?”
I paused in the middle of drying my face off with a towel. “The meeting’s here, in South Philly? I thought we were meeting uptown?”
“Dean.” Harry’s frustration was obvious. “The biggest sports network in the entire world wants you, so yeah, he’s willing to come wherever you are to sign this deal.”
I tenderly rolled my neck from side to side and considered telling my agent how I’d spent my night—in searing pain that knocked me out better than any uppercut ever did. But he’d never been the kind of agent who cared about that.
“I know this is shitty fucking timing, but I still don’t even know…don’t think I want this job. I don’t want to waste his time.” I leaned my shoulder against my bathroom wall and glanced in the mirror. The post-migraine dark circles under my eyes and five o’clock shadow weren’t a real professional look.
Harry coughed into the phone. I heard him giving directions to what was probably a cab driver. “You don’t know if you want to pass on one of the best opportunities in the entire industry? To meet with the guy who runs the programming that paid you all those purses you won?”
I flexed my fist open and shut. “Like I said, I’m grateful.”
“Can you give him twenty minutes?” Harry’s tone had softened an iota. “I know you’re nervous. I know you think you’re out. But I’m not talking a regular old comeback. I’m talking about you being the newest wave of young analysts. Maybe even changing the way things are done.”
I walked to the bathroom window and peeked out. Tabitha was speaking with the two guys wandering around the park. The very real concern etched into her face had my stomach twisting.
Goddammit.
“Dean? You there?”
“Fine,” I bit out. “I’ll see you in a few.”
Shoving my phone into my pocket, I went back downstairs as Tabitha was coming inside. “So what is it?” I asked.
She crossed her arms and peeked out the window. “It’s the scenario you and I talked about in the very beginning of all of this. Not just that a developer would come buy it from the city. But that they were the bad-fucking-news kind. The guy out there told me if the purchase goes through, they’ll be building the three-story condos they’ve put up all over the city. I got the impression these were very expensive condos.”
I grimaced, rubbing a hand over my mouth. “In this neighborhood, when they go up, they’ve been selling for three times what our houses are worth. And we’ve got a lot of renters getting priced out and having to leave. Landlords kicking out their tenants.”
Tabitha took her phone out and started tapping away. “I’m going to put the word out on social media and see what other people have done to prevent this kind of thing from happening. Then, before I pack, I’ll go round up the neighbors, fill them in on the situation. We’ll send out a bat signal, and I’m sure we’ll find a way to save this place for Annie.” She stopped typing and glanced up at me with a dazzling smile that took me back two weeks ago, when she was pointing me toward this park transformation I was too in my head to see.
I walked past her to push open the door, chest tight with nerves. “I have to go meet with this producer.”
Her smile dimmed.
“If you’re talking to the neighbors, I’ll come find you. But…” I hesitated, thoughts a mess. “I don’t know if there’s a way to save that park. We can’t buy it. We can’t stop them from buying it. I always…always knew this could happen.” I blew out a breath full of irritation. “We’ll need to figure out how to return everyone’s donations from that website, right?”
