On the Ropes, page 1
On the Ropes
Kathryn Nolan
Copyright © 2021 Kathryn Nolan
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Editing by Faith N. Erline
and Jessica Snyder
Cover by Kari March
Photo: ©Regina Wamba
ISBN: 978-1-945631-80-1 (ebook)
ISBN: 978-1-945631-8-25 (paperback)
092621
Contents
A Quick Note from Kathryn
1. Dean
2. Tabitha
3. Dean
4. Tabitha
5. Dean
6. Tabitha
7. Dean
8. Dean
9. Tabitha
10. Dean
11. Tabitha
12. Tabitha
13. Dean
14. Dean
15. Tabitha
16. Tabitha
17. Dean
18. Dean
19. Dean
20. Tabitha
21. Dean
22. Tabitha
23. Dean
24. Tabitha
25. Dean
26. Tabitha
27. Dean
28. Tabitha
29. Dean
30. Tabitha
31. Tabitha
32. Dean
33. Tabitha
34. Dean
35. Dean
36. Tabitha
37. Tabitha
38. Dean
Epilogue
WANT MORE DEAN AND TABITHA?
A Note from the Author
Acknowledgments
Hang Out With Kathryn!
About Kathryn
Books By Kathryn
For those who take up space, demanding attention and justice in the face of larger forces trying to make them silent or invisible. Here’s to loving loudly and proudly.
And for Philly. This jawn’s for you.
A Quick Note from Kathryn
ON THE ROPES is a friends-to-lovers romance. It’s flirty, steamy, and extra adorable. However, I did want to mention that this story touches on a few topics that may be sensitive to some readers, including healing from a concussion, racism toward a family member and homophobia/biphobia. It occurs mostly off the page (and is not graphic).
One
Dean
I leaned back against the wall outside my neighborhood bar and called the same damn number for the tenth time this week. I knew the recorded message by heart now: Thank you for calling the City of Philadelphia’s after-hours hotline. Please listen to the following menu of options.
I tipped my head back and hit 5. It was supposed to send me to a cheerful operator who would help with my “property emergency.” All I’d ever gotten was an endless phone tree maze. I scowled, turned my head as the automated music filled my ear.
It was a hot July night in South Philly. People were either drinking beer on their front stoops or drinking beer in the bar behind me. The sound of the baseball game filtered out onto the block.
Thank you for your patience. We are experiencing longer than usual wait times.
I caught the attention of two guys walking across the street, still in their suits from whatever job they had uptown. What they were doing in this neighborhood, I had no fucking clue. Their watches flashed, their suits looked tailored. Even their teeth looked too white. I probed the back right of my jaw where two of my own were missing. A consequence of going nine rounds with Ricky Hernandez when I was nineteen years old.
I pressed the phone hard against my ear as they whispered to each other. Their wariness was obvious, even from here. People gave me a wide berth in this neighborhood. It didn’t matter if I was just on the phone, standing on a street corner.
I was still Dean the Machine even if I was a quitter.
A rough-sounding voice suddenly came through. “Yeah, this is Fred. What’s the emergency with your city property?”
I shifted on my feet, startled someone had finally picked up. “Uh…sorry. I’ve been calling about a vacant lot on my block. The one at Tenth and Emily. City tore down my neighbor’s house a year ago. It’s just been sittin’ there.”
Fred coughed. “Okay. And?”
“And…I want to know what the city plans on doing with it. ’Cause right now everyone on my street has to live with an abandoned lot that’s turning into a neighborhood dump.”
There was grumbling. Some clicking noises. “I don’t know what to tell ya, pal. Based on what I’m seeing here, there’s no movement. And no interest.”
“No interest in what?”
“Doin’ anything about it.”
I raked a hand through my hair. “So, the city wants…what? A trash heap filled with rats on a block with kids running around?”
Fred made a frustrated sound. “I don’t know what this city wants, okay? I’m just the guy who reads the reports, and this report right in front of me, on my computer, is saying they wanna let it sit there.”
My shoulders twitched. My right hand curled into a fist. Uncurled, slowly. “What do we do in the meantime?”
There was a beeping sound and a few rustling papers. “I don’t really know, and it’s not really my problem. No offense.”
“Okay,” I said through gritted teeth. I’d spent the past week glaring at the empty space on our street. Being in a boxing ring was awful on a good day and absolutely brutal on a bad. But at least I knew how to handle my opponent. How to get what I wanted from him.
Now I couldn’t even get some underpaid city employee to listen to me.
“Hey,” Fred said. “The zip code for this lot. It’s where I grew up too.” His voice dropped. “I’m only saying this because I’m guessing you and me went to the same school. But I ain’t ever seen this city move fast to clean up anything in that zip code. Have you?”
I looked down at my running shoes. The sidewalk was cracked. Uneven. “No.”
“What’s your name, by the way?”
I hesitated. I wasn’t in the mood. “Dean,” I said. “Dean Knox-Morelli.”
He barked out a laugh. “Are you shittin’ me?”
“I am not.”
“Me and the guys used to watch you down at Snyder’s Tavern, off Oregon Ave. You know it, right?”
It was one of the bars in the city with a dedicated following of boxing fans. Place was packed for every match. It used to be I could walk in there any night of the week and drink for free. I wasn’t welcome there anymore.
“Used to know it, yeah,” I said.
“How long has it been since you quit?” he asked.
My shoulder muscles twitched again. “I retired three years ago.”
“Huh,” Fred said. “Time flies. You were really somethin’ else in that ring. But I guess you already know that.”
“Yeah, thanks,” I mumbled.
I got all kinds of responses from fans who had opinions on my early retirement from professional boxing. Sometimes fans like Fred were the hardest. The wistful ones. Like I was already a has-been, and they were sad for me about it.
“Listen.” His voice dropped even lower. “Take this from a, uh, friend from around the way. But with what this city is facing in terms of fixing up vacant lots, they’re not in a rush. I don’t think they’ll care at all what you do with it. Clean it up, put it to good use? If they come knocking five years from now and you’ve basically done their job for them, for free, they won’t be complaining. You get what I’m saying?”
I spotted Rowan on the corner. I raised a hand in greeting. “You think we should fix it ourselves?”
“Exactly. I gotta go take the next call, but it was a real honor chatting with one of the greats. My buddies aren’t gonna believe it.”
I winced as my best friend reached me. “Thank you for your…advice.”
“God bless, and go Birds,” he said and then hung up.
Rowan cocked a lopsided grin my way before clapping me twice on the shoulder. “Are you about to punch something, big guy?”
I slipped my phone back into my pocket. Shoved open the door. “I’ll tell you at the bar.”
It was darker inside. Cooler. Two giant TVs displayed the bottom fifth inning of the Phillies game. Benny’s Bar hadn’t allowed smoking in years, but there was still a whiff of it in the air. An angry slew of curse words went up—directed at the pitcher on the screen—as Rowan and I moved through the tables to the stools.
The bartender gave me a nod of recognition. I held up two fingers, and he sent Yuenglings our way. Rowan perched on the edge of his stool, legs spread, elbow propped up as he took a swig. Rowan O’Callaghan had been my friend since we were four years old. He’d grown up next door to me, living with his grandmother Alice. Like so many others, her family had moved from Ireland to this part of Philadelphia when she was a little girl. Her accent was as strong as ever. Even Rowan picked it up a bit when he was around her.
Rowan and I had grown up together, gone to school together. Were brothers more than anything else. While I got pulled into boxing, he was a baseball player who’d gotten drafted into the minor leagues right out of high school. He’d even been called up to the majors before he blew out his shoulder. If anyone understood the pain and frustration of a career-ending injury, it was him. He was almost as tall as I was, rangy and too confident, with dark red hair and pale skin.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “What’s that smile for?”
“I’m in a good mood ’cause I had a great date.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was past 8:00. “Did you leave her somewhere?”
He smirked. “The date started at eight last night. And that’s why I’m smiling.”
My eyebrows shot up. “You like her?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I liked having fun with her. She was looking for the same kind of thing, so it worked out.”
I sipped my beer and sniffed. Dating was always easy for Rowan.
He tapped my knee. “Who was on the phone?”
“The city,” I said. “Finally got through to someone about Annie’s old place. The guy said the city doesn’t have any plans for it. He told me on the sly that we should fix the damn thing ourselves.”
He scoffed into his beer. “Figures.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a loud table of local guys sharing a pitcher. I thought I heard my name.
“You could do it though.”
I tapped the side of my beer and looked at the TV instead of Rowan. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve got some extra time on your hands,” he said. “If you started cleaning it out yourself, you don’t think everyone on that block wouldn’t come help?”
My hackles wanted to go up at the mention of my extra free time right now. But it was Rowan. He was only saying a nicer version of the words I heard in my head every day: You retired from pro boxing three years ago. You haven’t moved on, and news flash? You’re not doing shit.
Didn’t mean I was ready to carry the weight of people’s expectations again. No matter how minor.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“What if I helped you?”
“You’ve got a lot going on right now. You don’t need one more project.”
Rowan was one of the coordinators at the rec center in our neighborhood. He was trying to get a food delivery program for seniors off the ground. It was hard work. Long hours.
But now he was shrugging again. “So we organize a few cleanup days? Come up with a plan for what would replace the mound of stinking trash? Doesn’t seem so bad to me.”
“What would we replace it with?” I asked, curious.
“I don’t know. A fucking tree? It’d be nice to have one of those around.”
I rubbed my jaw. He wasn’t wrong. Our neighborhood wasn’t known for its green space or whatever. I’d only been thinking about getting rid of what was there. Not what would come after.
I shook my head. “I know what you’re doing. I’m still a no.”
He stretched his arms out wide. “And what am I doing?”
I shot him a look. He chuckled, sipped his beer. I wasn’t a kid who looked for trouble growing up. Especially not after finding boxing at thirteen. Except I had a best friend with Trouble as his middle name. This whole song-and-dance routine was as familiar to me as the squeaky sixth step on my old staircase. The one I’d had to avoid when Rowan would convince me to sneak out.
He nudged me with his elbow. “Will you think about it?”
He knew I’d do more than think. I’d overthink. “Maybe. I still want to push the city to do its job though.”
“I’ll take it.”
There was a burst of noise from behind us. The rowdy table with the pitcher. They definitely said my name this time, loud enough for half the bar to hush.
“Ignore ’em,” Rowan said. He waved the bartender over for a second beer. “Besides, this very pretty lady at the end of the bar has been trying to get your attention the entire time.”
My gut twisted. Throw me in the ring with some bare-knuckled brawler and I didn’t bat an eye. Because I could study fight tapes for hours. Train until I could barely stand after. Mental preparedness was how I won, every single time.
Dating was the mystery to me. And Rowan was basically a walking version of a fight tape but for women. He’d done his best since we were teenagers to impart his knowledge, and every time it was like he was speaking a different language.
I waved off what he said. “Are you sure she’s not trying to get your attention?”
“Nope. Believe me, she’s gunning for Dean the Machine over here. Do you want me to head home so you can go say hi?”
I felt my face go hot. “Um…no. It’s okay.”
Only Rowan and my parents could get away with using that old nickname with affection. The papers used to say a glare from Dean the Machine could strip paint from the walls—and that my hits were so precise they weren’t human. Like I was a robot.
“It’s the middle of summer,” he said. “The perfect time to have some casual fun. And just to be clear, I’m talking about fucking. Easy, casual fucking.”
I snorted. “Say it a little louder. I don’t think Father O’Sullivan heard you across the way.”
Rowan’s smile was devious. “Father O’Sullivan would be very disappointed with some of my actions recently.”
It was true. And Rowan was the king of whatever easy, casual fun was. To me, that sounded like a minefield of miscommunication and hurt feelings. I had never been in love before, but it seemed like being serious was kind of the point.
At the height of my pro boxing career, there was a lot of interest in me from women when I went out. I’d had my fair share of one-night stands, where things like talking or being nervous didn’t come up in the dark with a stranger you weren’t gonna see again.
It scratched an itch. I didn’t always feel that good about it afterward though.
“I’m still fine.” I pushed my empty beer away from me. “And not interested.”
The rowdy table at the back finally decided to start shit. We could hear them, drunkenly trying to get my attention. Benny’s was small and crowded. As Rowan cursed beneath his breath, I tossed cash onto the table and knocked my knuckles against the bar top.
“Let’s go,” I said, clapping Rowan on the back. We weaved past crowds and out into the muggy summer night. The group followed, hot on our heels. This wasn’t our first rodeo, so we hung a sharp left to cut across the street.
“Hey, Dean,” a slurred voice called out. “Dean the Machine—that’s you, isn’t it?”
“Don’t they know your fists are literally lethal weapons?” Rowan whispered.
He meant it as a joke. The potential for harm, however, was real. I’d worked hard the last three years to control my body’s instincts to use my hands instead of walking away. Because guys like that—die-hard sports fans who believed I was the scourge of the earth because I’d let them down—only wanted to poke the bear and see what happened.
“Deeeaaaaaaan,” the guy taunted. The block we walked down was free of kids, thankfully. But full of folks on their stoops or lawn chairs on the sidewalk, gossiping with their neighbors like they did every night.
If I hit this asshole, the whole neighborhood would know by dawn.
Rowan and I nodded as we passed houses, greeted a few people we knew. They were very aware of the tiny mob behind us, their eyes wide. I kept my body language loose. Comfortable. The second we turned onto 11th Street, in front of an old, boarded-up deli, a hand grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled.
I stopped. Rowan spun and said, “Come on, man.”
I waited for the guy to release me. He didn’t. His fingers tightened in the fabric. “My friends said I couldn’t take Dean the Machine himself.” I felt him wobbling. “But I said…I said…that piece of shit quit three fucking years ago. Pretty sure I could beat his ass.”
