"Sure," I said brightly, slipping around Liam, and making my getaway. "I'm on it."

"So, gorgeous," Ciarn purred when I had the flat-screen on his treadmill switched on and set up. "Do you have any plans for tonight?" he asked, hitting full speed on the machine before warming up.

"Not a one," I replied, stepping out of his reach. "I'm going to have a nice quiet night in with my book." I forced a smile and said, "let me know if I can get you anything else," before walking away.

"A b.l.o.w. .j.o.b would be great," he chuckled under his breath and I froze.

Swinging around, I marched back to the treadmill and slammed my hand down on the emergency b.u.t.ton. It came to a complete stop, causing Ciarn to trip over his own feet and land awkwardly on the belt.

"What the f.u.c.k did you do that for?" he snarled, red-faced, as pulled himself up with the help of the side rails.

"Because you're a member, I'm going to let what you said go this one time," I seethed, pointing my finger in his face. "But if you ever s.e.xually hara.s.s me in my own gym again I will cut you."

"Look what you've done, you stupid b.i.t.c.h," he roared, pointing to his ankle. "I have a match on Sunday."

Folding my arms across my chest, I rolled my eyes and smirked. "And that matters to me because?"

"What's going on here?" I heard Liam demand seconds before he arrived at my side. "Teagan?" he asked, looking down at me. "What happened?"

"I'll tell you what happened. That f.u.c.king psychopath just cost me the county final." Ciarn snarled. Hobbling off the treadmill, he tested his weight on his ankle and flinched. "I'm out, Liam. Sorry, man, but I'd rather train in a place that actually wants us."

"Good," I shot back.

"Shut up Teagan," Liam hissed, poking me in the side with his elbow.

Holding his hands up, he turned to Ciarn and tried to defuse the situation. "I'm sure this is just a big misunderstanding," he placated. "Teagan didn't mean any harm."

"Yes I did," I piped up, causing Liam to groan. I knew I needed to shut the h.e.l.l up, but I couldn't back down. It wasn't in my nature. If Ciarn wanted to take me on, I wasn't holding anything back.

Ciarn's face turned purple. "Honest to G.o.d, Liam, I don't know why you waste so much time on her." he roared. Limping towards me, he leaned down in my face and spat, "The guy should go and get himself a real woman. Not a f.u.c.king ice-queen with a cardboard p.u.s.s.y."

"You would say that," I snapped, losing all tact and grace. "When the only moisture you've ever drawn from a woman's body was when you bored her to tears."

"You're finished," he roared. "No one within a twenty mile radius will touch this place when I'm through."

"Thanks a lot, Teagan," Liam muttered before chasing after Ciarn who was making his way out of the gym.

I WAS ON MY HANDS AND KNEES, wiping down the treadmill more like disinfecting it from that pervert's touch when Liam eventually returned. The angry expression he wore on his face told me all I needed to know about how it had gone with Ciarn.

Not well.

"Are you proud of yourself?" he demanded when he reached me.

"Yes," I shot back, climbing to my feet. "But I'm thoroughly disgusted with you."

My retort caught Liam off guard and whatever he was about to say fell out of his head as his brows furrowed in confusion.

"That man has been tormenting me for months," I reminded him. "And you did nothing. So don't get all p.i.s.sy with me for taking matters into my own hands."

"We need his business, Teagan," Liam said, enunciating each word, as if that was supposed to make it all okay. "The gym is going under. What don't you get about that?"

"So I'm supposed to be okay with being touched and degraded because business is slow?"

When Liam didn't respond I shook my head in complete and utter disgust.

"You wanted to know why I won't consider being with you? It's because if you had any real feelings towards me, you wouldn't allow those men to talk to me and talk about me the way they do." Tossing my cleaning rag on the floor, I turned my back on him and headed into the office for my stuff.

"It's banter," Liam called out, following me into the office.

"It's s.e.xual hara.s.sment," I corrected, stuffing my phone and the keys of my apartment into my bag. "And if Noah were here..." I cut myself off quickly. "Forget it."

"No. Please go right ahead," Liam, clearly hurt, told me. "Tell me what the infamous ex boyfriend turned jailbird would do. Is he still in prison?" he taunted. "How many years did he get again?"

"Fine," I snapped, furious. "If Noah were here, he would rip that p.r.i.c.k's head off." Slipping my arms into the straps of my bag, I pulled it onto my back. "He wouldn't let them get away with it, and he sure as h.e.l.l wouldn't make me feel like I was wrong for sticking up for myself."

"Finally," Liam sneered, having the good sense to step aside and let me pa.s.s. "We're getting down to it. Your precious Noah."

"Don't go there, Liam." I warned him in a shaky voice as I marched through the gym, regretting ever confiding in him. "This has nothing to do with him."

Liam knew I had an ex boyfriend called Noah, but what he didn't realize was that he had tickets to go see said ex boyfriend in action later on this evening. If he did, I think Liam would have a very different outlook.

"It has everything to do with him," Liam shot back heatedly. "Go on and deny it, Teagan. Tell me he isn't the reason you're holding back from me."

I left the gym without answering Liam for two reasons.

The first reason being he didn't deserve my answer he had acted like a complete tool.

And the second reason was I didn't want to lie.

"HOW YOU DOING, MAN?" I heard my trainer ask seconds before he landed in the booth beside me. Tugging a sweet little brunette onto his lap, Quincy pressed a kiss to her neck before raising his beer bottle and clicking it against mine. "How are the knuckles?"

"Still functioning, Q," I told him before taking a swig of my beer. I was sore as s.h.i.t, but the adrenalin that was still coursing through me numbed the aching.

Quincy was celebrating tonight. So was the brunette on his lap, and the other forty or so people crammed up in the private room of the Krash bar.

I'd done it. Finally. After eighteen months of blood, sweat and f.u.c.king tears I had proved to all the doubters that I deserved to be here. I had f.u.c.king earned my t.i.tle shot.

I buried Davy Bishop in the second round tonight, knocked his a.s.s out with a superman. Poor f.u.c.ker was out cold the second he hit the mat. I could have put him away in the first round, but I allowed him a little more time with it being on his home turf and all.

The venue was a h.e.l.luva lot smaller than what I was used to, but the victory had the same taste about it as all the others. The taste of more. I was hungry for that t.i.tle. It meant a lot to me. I wanted it to prove a point.

To myself and every motherf.u.c.ker who ever doubted me.

"Smell that, champ?" Quincy chuckled, bleary-eyed and three sheets to the wind. "That, my man, is the smell of success of freedom."

Champ, Quincy called me.

Not yet, but I would be...

I was twenty-five years old and had spent the majority of my adult life behind bars, paying for a liar's mistakes. The irony that I was now at the top of the very same game that had gotten me thrown behind bars didn't go unnoticed.

But I wasn't sure if I would ever get used to the feeling of freedom again. It had been eighteen months since I was released and every day since still felt like I was living on borrowed time.

I didn't verbalize my thoughts though. Instead I stood up, tossed another shot down my throat, and headed towards the bar for something stronger.

A dark haired woman caught my attention at the far end of the bar and when I realized who she was my world came crashing down on me...

"Hope?" I called out as I pushed past a drunk couple in my bid to get to my old friend h.e.l.l, my niece.

My heart was beating erratically in my chest.

"Hope? Is she here is Teagan with you?"

"Stay away from her, Noah," Hope warned me before rushing from the bar.

Like h.e.l.l I was staying away from her. The only reason I had accepted Bishop's f.u.c.king challenge in the first place was the prospect of seeing her.

Every f.u.c.king day since she ran out on me felt like I was hemorrhaging.

She was my Thorn.

And I was getting her back.

I ENDED UP SPENDING THE DAY in town, watching the parade and window-shopping before picking up a takeaway from the Chinese and heading home. When I eventually got back to our apartment just after seven, Hope was already gone out.

Showering and dressing in my pajamas, I settled down on the couch with a large gla.s.s of vino, and forced myself not to turn on the television. I couldn't watch another one of his fights, because when he won and he would win I couldn't bear seeing him mauling another brainless fan girl. So, stocking up on chocolate and wine, I decided to tuck into Hope's ma.n.u.script instead.

..."What do I mean to you?" I blurted out, never one to mince words. My cheeks reddened, I could feel them burn, but I kept my eyes on his face.

"Everything," Jordan mumbled, never taking his eyes off the pad he was sketching on. His fingers moved so fast across the paper, so skillfully, as I stared at him, drinking him in.

He looked good, too good for my twin bed he was sitting on too good not to touch and I was itching to touch him.

His hair was a mess, a s.e.xy mess of curls and his whole body looked entirely too tempting.

G.o.d, hormones had officially found me. This was only day three of summer vacation. Jordan and I had at least another month together. How the heck was I going to cope?

"Everything." I tested the word around and decided that was a great answer. "You really mean that?"

"Of course," Jordan added with a chuckle. "You're my little keychain..."

"This is really good," I muttered to myself after a couple of hours of engrossed reading time had pa.s.sed. Fetching another bottle of wine from the kitchen, I poured myself another large gla.s.s before snuggling down on the plush cushions on our super-comfy couch, and devouring my best friend's latest masterpiece.

..."Are you going to tell me what's wrong?" I asked, holding my breath, fearing his answer, hoping he would lie and tell me he was fine because that look in his eyes was petrifying me. He was hurting. I could feel it in the way his hands trembled, I could see it in his eyes. Something was wrong.

"Jordan," I whispered when he didn't answer.

He didn't look at me.

Instead, he stared downwards. G.o.d, I knew this conversation was going to end badly and if I was Ash, I'd know a number of different tricks to take his mind off his problems, but he wouldn't let me touch him.

G.o.d knows I'd tried...

"Hope, I don't..." he broke off and rubbed his face with his hand. "Just sit with me," he choked out.

Edging closer to me, he bowed his head, rested his knee against mine and shuddered violently. "This is all I can manage," Jordan admitted. "Please don't ask me why."

"I won't," I told him, forcing myself not to throw my arms around him.

I never asked and I never touched. He would freak out if I did and I needed him close to me. I needed the smell of him in my senses, the weight of his knee against mine. I needed answers.

Dammit...

"I love you, Jordan," I whispered, hoping to G.o.d and every angel, star, and whatever the h.e.l.l was up in the sky that he would open up to me. That today would be the day he would tell me his troubles.

"I'm never gonna be the right guy for you, Hope," he husked, twisting his head to look at me. His green eyes penetrated me, burned me. "You'll figure that out soon enough, but it would be a h.e.l.l of a lot easier if you'd let me go now. Your dad's right about me...."

...As you can tell I've been in love before, but it was the first kind. The sweet innocent will-never-end kind of love that gently flickers over time but never completely burns out or fades from your heart.

It's a special sort of love really, and sometimes it's the one that lasts the longest the one you remember when you're old and gray and drawing your final breath into your weary lungs. If I had one wish it would be that I was his...his one love...the one that burned brighter and harder than all the others...the love that lasted the lifetime of the heart it was embedded inside...

It was gone one in the morning when the banging on our apartment door started.

The loud clattering startled me and I leapt off the couch. The ma.n.u.script I had been holding in my hand scattered to the floor and I groaned.

I hadn't numbered the pages...

The loud rapping noise continued.

"Hang on," I shouted as I made my way over to the door. Hope had been doing this a lot lately going out for the night and forgetting her keys.

Usually I didn't mind because I was either out with her or with the guys, but tonight I hadn't felt up to going out clubbing.

"Hope, I swear to G.o.d I am going to tie your key around your b.l.o.o.d.y..." My voice trailed off the moment I opened the door inwards and caught a glance of my roommate's wide-eyed, horrified expression.

"What's wrong?" I whispered, seconds before she barreled into my arms.

"He's here, Teagan," she choked out, squeezing me so tight I could barely breathe. "In Cork...I saw him at the club," she slurred. "He's here."

"Who?" I demanded, hugging her tightly. "Who's here, Hope?"

"Noah," she hissed, and the ground fell out from underneath my feet.

All the sensations I had felt when I was seventeen came back full force, smothering my heart and sabotaging my ability to breathe easily.

"Oh my G.o.d," I managed to choke out.

"You're my thorn, if you leave me I'll bleed out..."