Fighter's Kiss: An enemies-to-lovers MMA romance (Irish Kiss Book 3), page 32
So it was agony all over again to glance up and see through tear-stained eyes, Oisin calling me from his car just across the street.
Joan sat in the passenger’s seat as the radio blared commentary from the fight inside.
“River, where’s Declan?” Oisin asked before checking the street to walk toward me.
“Can you turn that off?” I asked in a weak voice.
Oisin jogged across the street. “What?” He ran up to me and placed a hand on my back while checking the exit behind me. “Where’s Declan?”
“Please,” I begged. “Can you turn that off?”
I could hear the commentator from the radio say, “Alright, folks, it looks like Declan is up again and ready to continue this fight after all.”
Oisin looked from me to the door, from me to the door that wasn’t moving, from me to the door that wouldn’t move. “Oh, baby girl...”
I sobbed as he wrapped his arms around me. “Turn that shit off!” I screamed.
It only took a second for the radio to cut out, but a second is plenty long enough to stab a knife straight through a heart—the bell for the second round.
Oisin squeezed me tight as my tears stained his suede jacket. His hands smoothed over my hair…over and over again. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his cheek against the top of my head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“He didn’t come after me,” I whimpered, barely able to get the words out. “I thought he’d come after me. I thought…” Fresh tears poured out of my closed eyes as I clung to Oisin’s back. “Fuck, I was so stupid! So stupid.”
“Hey, hey, hey.” Oisin tugged himself away from my grasp, even as I scrambled to pull him in close again. With his hands firmly on my shoulders, he held me far enough away from him that he could look down at me. “Believing in the power of love is never stupid, my little voodoo queen,” he said. “I won’t have you talking nonsense like that ever again, no matter what. Do you hear me?”
I tried to nod but couldn’t as I again broke down into pathetic sobs. “It hurts,” I groaned.
Oisin smiled softly and cupped my cheek. “Come with me,” he said, guiding me with his hand on my back toward Joan and the car.
I moved forward with numb, stumbling feet.
“I can’t help you with tomorrow or the day after or the day after that or even the day after that,” he said gently. “But I can help with tonight.”
River
For the longest time, I couldn’t tell if the ringing was from my phone or from the hangover of the century. Either way, I groaned at the shrill, piercing, head-stabbing noise. Rolling over on the plush couch I didn’t remember passing out on, I tugged over my head the blanket I didn’t remember covering myself with and I didn’t remember ever causing me this much pain.
I “enjoyed” a few moments of nausea-filled silence before the ringing started again. Cursing, I covered my ears as best I could and prayed for it to stop.
Finally, it did.
“Looks like you’re having a fun morning,” an unfamiliar voice said way too cheerfully.
With a groan, I peeled back the blanket and peeked open one eye to squint up at a man who approached me with a glass of water and a bottle of aspirin.
He sat across from me on the coffee table.
I frowned at the sideways image of him. He was clothed. Good-looking. Cute dimples. Reminded me of that actor who played Thor. A little bit too pretty for me. I, apparently, only had eyes for brutal-looking fighters who obliterated hearts as easily as they blended protein smoothies.
“Who are you?” I asked. Glancing around the room, I realised I wasn’t back at the manor. What the hell happened last night?
“I’m Noah,” he laughed. “Noah O’Sullivan? We met last night.”
I tried to dig through my memories and came up blank. I shook my head.
Noah raised an eyebrow. “I own The Jar,” he offered up as explanation, which ended up being no explanation at all.
“The Jar?”
He whistled, probably in amazement at my level of blackout.
I was quite amazed myself, to be honest.
“The Dublin college bar?” Noah tried to jog my memory.
“Nope.”
“The Dublin college bar where you finished my Teeling 29-Year-Old Vintage Reserve Single Malt?”
I shrugged.
Noah leaned in closer. “The Dublin college bar where you finished my Teeling 29-Year-Old Vintage Reserve Single Malt and set off the fire alarms with a bachelorette party’s sparkling champagne bottle so you could ‘dance in the rain’ atop my bar?”
This caused me to blush as I fingered my still damp curls. I was about to utter a long string of apologies and promises to pay for any damage, but Noah spoke before I could start. “Oisin swore you were American, but after last night I’m still not sure you’re not 100 percent Irish.” He laughed. “You put on quite the holy show.”
“Fuck…” I muttered under my breath before looking back up at Noah and asking, “Where is Oisin, by the way? And Joan? What happened to her?”
“Joan had to drive back to get her son to school, and Oisin is asleep in the guest room,” Noah answered. “We offered it to you first when we got back this morning, but you said, and I quote, ‘I only have half a heart left so the couch is plenty big for me.’”
As embarrassment hit me like a truck, I groaned and I flopped back down onto the couch.
“Here.” Noah handed over the glass of water with a sympathetic chuckle and then poured out a couple of aspirin from the bottle. “These should help with the pain.”
I swallowed them down after a quick “thanks”. Right after, that goddamn ringing started up again, and it somehow seemed louder than before. “Do you hear that too, or is that my brain exploding?” I asked.
Noah laughed as he ducked beneath the coffee table and returned, waving my cell phone in his hand. He glanced at the screen and said, “Umm, ‘Asshole Boss’ is trying to reach you.”
Apparently, I’d had enough sense to change his name in my contacts. Not enough to smash my phone though.
Sighing, I held out my hand for the shrill devil-box.
Noah jumped in surprise when I promptly ripped the phone apart and slung the battery across the room. Leaning my head carefully against the armrest, I covered my eyes with my hands and whimpered.
“Headache?” Noah asked.
“Yes,” I said. “But it’s not that bad compared to the pain of knowing that the person you love didn’t choose you.” I parted my fingers just enough to see Noah through one eye that still narrowed in the harsh morning rays. “I’d take a whiskey knife to the head any day over this,” I said softly.
Noah crossed his arms. “Could you just make it a bit of a cheaper whiskey knife next time?” he asked with a playful twinkle in his eyes.
This caused me to laugh a little and I pointed a finger at him. “Stop that,” I chastised. “I’m trying to be miserable and pitiful over here and you’re ruining it.”
He laughed. “Trust me, River, I know what’s it like to be in your shoes.” He paused. “Oh, by the way, you kicked off your shoes to Whiskey in the Jar and one got caught in the rafters, so I’ll have to find a ladder to get it down.”
“Ugh, please make it stop,” I grumbled with another groan.
How embarrassing!
Noah laughed but then patted my shoulder. “But really,” he continued, his tone suddenly serious, “I know this part is rough, but believe me, love always wins out in the end.”
I shook my head and immediately regretted it as pain stabbed through my brain. “Not for me,” I said, remaining as still as possible. “Never for me.”
When Noah didn’t reply, I glanced over at him. I watched as he played with his fingers in his lap. I sensed he wasn’t there with me any longer; he was somewhere else, in some distant memory.
“Sometimes people are just scared,” he finally said, looking over at me with a smile. “Fear makes us all do silly things, like take the wrong path when the right one was standing, waiting in front of them the whole time.”
I frowned at his words. I wanted to ask him what he meant by them, but just then the front door slammed open and a frantic voice called from outside the living room.
“Noah?”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Aubrey, my wife,” Noah answered with obvious concern in his voice. “She just ducked out to get everyone coffees from the café around the corner. Rey?”
“Noah!”
Footsteps pounded in the hallway and suddenly a pretty woman, red-faced and with hair dishevelled, appeared with a to-go container of half-spilled coffees dripping onto the hardwood floors at her feet. “We have to go,” she said hurriedly. “We have to go now.”
Noah stood immediately, reaching for his wife. “Woah, woah, honey,” he cooed. “What’s wrong? What happened? Where are we going?”
Sucking in a breath as her chest heaved, Aubrey shook her head and nodded toward the couch. “Not you, babe,” she gasped. “Her.”
Noah turned around to stare at me in confusion.
I, equally confused, pointed a finger at my own chest. “Me?”
“Yes, you, River,” she said, stumbling over her words she was speaking so quickly. “We’ll take his car. Come on.”
Noah calmly stepped to his wife’s side and took the dripping coffees from her. “Aubrey, slow down,” he said softly. “What’s going on?”
“I heard at the coffee shop,” she answered. “We have to go.”
“Heard what?” Noah prodded.
“It’s all over the news,” she said, looking between her husband and me. “You don’t know?”
I shook my head, cursing at the pain that lashed through me.
“Last night, Dominic king hit Declan from behind and he was rushed to the hospital.”
I flung off the blanket. I didn’t care that I only had one shoe as I stood. I didn’t care that he didn’t choose me. I didn’t care about the pain, the heartache, and the sadness I wasn’t sure I would ever heal from.
I didn’t care about anything but Declan.
“Take me to him.”
River
It had all been a blur.
The sprint to Noah’s car, the mad dash through Dublin traffic, the fumbling of my fingers over the keypad of my cell—battery retrieved and restored—as I tried to reach Declan.
The numbers on the screen blurred like this was all a dream, a horrible, horrible dream.
“Is he okay?” I desperately asked Aubrey from the backseat as Noah whipped the steering wheel to switch lanes, only to slam on the brakes half a second later.
Aubrey braced herself on the glove box before tugging at her locked seatbelt so she could turn back to me. “Honey, I don’t know,” she said, reaching a hand back to squeeze my knee that bounced rapidly up and down.
“But what did the news say?” I insisted as I finally managed to get Declan’s number up.
From the backseat, I watched Aubrey’s eyes flick over toward Noah as the phone rang.
“Do they know—anything?” My voice cracked. My heart would be next, then my soul. I’d shatter into a million pieces if Declan standing in that cage was my last image of him.
“River, I know it’s hard, but we’ll know once we—”
“Fuck!” I shouted and slammed my cell phone on the seat cushion next to me. “He’s not answering his phone. Fuck!”
Why didn’t I answer it earlier? Why?
I leaned over to see through the windshield an infinite stretch of goddamn red brake lights below the low-hanging grey clouds that erased the tops of buildings, as if it didn’t already feel like my world was collapsing. “How much longer till we’re to the hospital?” I asked, eyeing Noah’s speedometer creep down, down, down.
“Soon,” Noah lied, avoiding my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Soon.”
Biting back the threat of tears, I grabbed my phone and again dialled Declan’s number. “Please pick up,” I begged as Noah laid on the horn when the car in front of us hesitated for just a moment as the light turned green. “Please, please, please. Please pick up.”
We received the middle finger as the tires screeched and the engine accelerated to get around the slow car.
I squeezed my eyes shut on the fifth ring, dreading the sound of Declan’s voicemail. But the sixth ring stopped halfway through.
“Declan!” I shouted, collapsing against the headrest in relief.
Both Noah and Aubrey twisted their necks around to silently ask with wide, imploring eyes, “He’s okay?”
Covering my eyes, I smiled as I exhaled, “Oh my God, Declan, I—”
“Hello?”
I froze.
That wasn’t the voice that whispered my name into my ear as I pressed up against the wall in my darkroom. Not the voice that grumbled at me to turn down my music even as a grin played at his lips…the voice that told me I was his, and he was mine.
This wasn’t Declan.
“Hello?” the stranger’s voice repeated.
“River?” Aubrey hissed from the passenger seat. “River, is he all right?”
Everything was suddenly loud again. The pitter-patter of rain against the roof of the car, the back and forth, back and forth of the wipers against the windshield, the blare of horns and screech of tires and growl of engines from the traffic surrounding us, all of it beat down on me as my heart rate surged.
“River, what’s going on?” Noah asked, his head moving between me and the road, black with the slick of rain.
“Hello?” the stranger’s voice was louder. “Hello, is this River?”
I swallowed. “Yes.” I wasn’t sure if I managed to say it aloud or if it remained a quivering gasp in my head.
“Thank Jaysus,” the stranger replied. “I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”
He was a doctor at the hospital. He was calling to tell me the bad news. He was a lawyer from the MMA. He was calling to ask me not to sue. He was a reporter. He was calling to get a quote about the tragic death of Declan “The Homewrecker” Gallagher.
“You still there?” he asked. “River, you still there?”
I ignored the questioning looks from Noah and Aubrey. “I’m here,” I whispered.
I wished I wasn’t. I wished I was anywhere else. That I could open the car door, sprint out into traffic, and escape into the dark, churning clouds.
“My name is Danny,” the stranger said. “I’m a good friend of Declan’s. He’s, um...”
When Danny’s voice grew thin from emotion it was like a sucker punch to the gut. I sank my teeth into my lower lip as my eyes watered.
“Can you get to the hospital?” Danny asked. “I can send a car to you. I’ll be here in the ER waiting room.”
I wanted to ask the question so terribly—I needed to ask it. It was on the tip of my tongue… I was about to ask it. But I didn’t… I couldn’t.
“I’m already on my way,” I said, numb to everything.
I hung up and stared without seeing at the back of Aubrey’s headrest, ignoring the wave of anxious questions tossed back at me till there was nothing but silence and doubt in the car. For the rest of the ride to the hospital, I repeated the question I was too afraid to ask again and again and again: Is Declan alive?
Twenty minutes later, the screech of tires like a dagger through my brain was a welcome relief because it interrupted the question that repeated again and again… Is Declan alive? Is Declan alive? Is Dec—
I opened the door of Noah’s still moving car in front of the ER.
“River! Wait! You can’t just—”
I stumbled onto the pavement, scraping my palms and knees, but quickly pushed myself to my feet and without even bothering to close the car door as I ran toward the glass sliding entrance amongst the shouts of hospital personnel and the wail of ambulance sirens.
Inside the waiting room was chaos. Phones rang behind the busy front desk, gurneys rattled across the stained linoleum floor as attendants called for people to move, babies cried in the arms of parents with fast-tapping feet. Nurses bellowed orders as a wheelchair emerged from the ER where machines beeped, alarms blared, and moans of pain cut through all the noise like a knife.
It was all so loud. Standing there just inside the double doors, I was brought back to the stadium the night before—the thousands of feet pounding the bleachers, the crushing wave of cheers pouring over me, the vile shouting from Dominic as I begged for Declan to come with me, just come with me. I ran then.
I wanted to run now.
I wanted to escape to a place of quiet with green leaves above me and green blades of grass between my toes. I wanted peace, but there was none to be found here, in this ER waiting room.
Whirling around on my heels, I stepped toward the glass sliding doors, only to hear my name called out over the din.
I hesitated.
I could still leave. I could still slip through the doors, get lost in the traffic of gurneys, ambulances, doctors, nurses, and hospital staff. I could still run.
But a hand on my shoulder erased any dreams of softly swaying trees and replaced them with white, sterile walls.
“River?”
I turned around to find a tall, darkly handsome man wearing a motorcycle jacket with messy midnight hair and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, staring down at me with wide, bloodshot eyes.
“I’m Danny,” he said as I considered just lying and telling him my name wasn’t River. “We talked on the phone.”
He laid his hand on my shoulder, but all I managed to do was blink mutely up at his dark eyes.
“I know this is a lot,” he said softly. “Come with me.”
Danny moved to my side and slid his arm around my still quivering shoulders. Him next to me was the only thing keeping my heavy, clumsy feet moving one after the other as we passed through the chaotic traffic of the waiting room.
Ask him, I told myself. Say the words, Is he alive? Is Declan alive?
But I didn’t.
Danny spoke quietly with the nurse at the front desk as I stared at my slightly too big sneakers borrowed from Aubrey. I should redo these laces. I’d made a mess of them, barely doing them up.
