Page 15 of Fighting Fate
“That’s very humble of you.” Adam thought back to his early fight days, to sharing a room with another young fighter-in-training, and how Earl had demanded his own place once he’d won his first fight. Adam hadn’t cared, really. He was so exhausted by the time he fell into bed he wouldn’t have noticed if he’d shared a room with a herd of elephants, but then, there were always those for whom even a taste of fame and power went to their heads.
Earl had won his first two fights, lost his next five, and disappeared off the scene one day. Last Adam heard, he was in Thailand taking part in the weekly money bouts there, where he could get a regular paycheck and live cheaply. There were worse ways to live, he supposed, but he wondered what sort of savings Earl had, what he’d do when getting kicked in by ferocious Thai kids got too much for his aging body.
Hell, I don’t even know what I’m going to do, even though I don’t have any money worries! He’d lived frugally even in LA, neither accustomed to nor desiring luxuries, and he’d been very well compensated for his stellar fighting career. The villa he was borrowing on Sunfish Island was as opulent as any Vegas hotel suite he’d been comped for championship bouts.
“You look deep in thought.” Rosie nudged him lightly, and he turned back to her with an apologetic smile.
“Sorry, just contemplating the rest of my life. Retirement’s… strange.”
“In what way?”
She looked interested, so he tried to explain. “I used to wake up every day knowing when my next fight would be and against whom, training towards a very specific goal. Six to eight hours of training a day, and then another couple watching my opponent’s fights, analysing every one of his moves, working out both counters to them and potential plans of attack.”
“Wow.” Rosie looked impressed. “I never thought about it, but I suppose there’s a lot of strategy involved.”
“My coach always said it’s all in the mind. Win the mental game and you’ll beat even an opponent who’s physically superior to you.”
“I can’t imagine you’d meet too many physically superior fighters.” She surprised him by giving him a blatant once-over, lingering on the thick muscles of his biceps swelling the short sleeves of his shirt.
“You’d be surprised,” Adam managed to get out despite the spike of lust currently kicking him hard in the guts. “Not many bigger, or who hit harder, but definitely some who were quicker or had moves I couldn’t match.”
“I have the feeling you’re being modest and I really need to Google you.” Rosie narrowed her eyes at him. “How many fights did you lose in your professional career?”
Damn, she can read me like an open book. He wasn’t willing to lie to her, and the question she’d asked left little wiggle room for prevarication. I suppose she’s used to asking pointed questions when she interviews prospective employees - and probably picking out the lies better than any lie detector.
“One,” he finally admitted.
“One?” Rosie jaw dropped.
“The last one.” To a brilliant fighter ten years his junior, a man who truly deserved the titles he’d won by defeating Adam. “I was offered an insane amount of money to take a rematch, more than the man who beat me, in fact.”
“Were you tempted?”
“That kind of money would tempt anyone, but reality slapped me in the face pretty hard. My arm needed surgery, and my surgeon was very clear about possible outcomes if I fought again. Those possibilities would have been in my head the whole time, and I wouldn’t have done the fight justice, so it was time to call it quits.”
Rosie considered his words for a long time, and he wondered what she was thinking. The question she finally asked surprised him.
“Did you want to fight again? Even if the money hadn’t been on offer?”
“Yes.” The answer came quickly. “If I’d been fit, I’d have fought for free. It was the only thing I’ve ever been really good at. Those moments of pure adrenaline in the cage, they made all the hard months of training worth it.”
“It was never about the money.” Rosie said it quite confidently, not a question at all.
“As long as I’d earned a living wage, that would have been enough.” Adam shrugged again. “I earned enough to help set my whole family up comfortably, and then more besides.”
Rosie was gnawing on her lower lip, and he finally had to ask.
“What are you thinking?”
“Oh.” Her smile was wry. “Just about my own dumb choices. A few hours and time to think has given me clarity about my own situation, and I’m coming to realise my crush on Luke was way more about me being able to stay in my own comfort zone than about him. Talk about a day late and a dollar short.”
“I don’t follow?”
Rosie took a deep breath, shaking her head and making her soft brown curls bounce around her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter any more. Making a wrong move has just made me realise it’s time to make the right move, not hang around hoping for things to fall into my lap.”
“Sometimes you gotta make the wrong move to figure out what the right move is,” Adam agreed, though he still wasn’t sure what she was getting at. “Sometimes it takes a catastrophe to put you on a new path. There were days when I thought the end of my fight career was just the end.”
“Those days with the prescription painkillers?” Rosie asked, though her expression was understanding rather than judgemental. “I gotta admit, if I hadn’t met you, I’d probably be spending the night drowning my sorrows rather than looking past them.”