Going the Distance by Meg Maguire Page B

abandon and bad-idea excitement. Surely she was blowing the experience out of proportion. And yet...Brett had stirred nothing in her by the end, as much as she’d willed her body to respond, and indeed to keep a certain troublesome man out of her mind during intimate moments.
    She bade Jenna good-night and shut the door, staring blankly at the pattern in the wood.
    Rich is coming home.
    And I am so royally screwed.
    * * *
    H E FUMBLED WITH his crutches and keys and managed to get the heavy glass door open. It was just past five-thirty. The sky was still dark, the city not yet awake.
    This wasn’t how Rich had envisioned returning to his home turf, post title-fight victory—limping in at dawn before the gym even opened, dropped off by his little sister on her way to an early shift at the teaching hospital. But the alternative sucked.
    The alternative was to take the frigging bus. Show up during regular hours and get heralded as the hometown hero, clapped on the back like some prodigal son. Bad enough the board in front of his mother’s church asked parishioners to pray for his swift recovery.
    He was a champion now—and he wasn’t supposed to be. He should have been Nick Moreau’s warm-up bout, a sure-bet title-retention match to keep Moreau’s streak going until the big event in Rio, just after Thanksgiving, where rumor had it a past champ wanted a comeback against him. Now Rich was the light heavyweight champ, such a shock that the promotions outfits were falling all over themselves to get busy making the merchandise no one had expected they’d need. The day after his win they’d taken him to a studio and stripped him to his gloves and belt, propped a crown on his head and photographed him for the cover of his organization’s monthly magazine. There’d be a big thing on the website, too. Prince of Thieves,the headline would read. They’d interviewed him for a couple hours, all about how he’d stolen Moreau’s title from under him.
    Overnight he’d gone from sidebar mentions to the front cover. One desperate headlock and he was a somebody. A champion, no matter how green.
    Yet Rich didn’t feel like anyone worth cheering. Undefeated record aside, he felt like a failure. What good was a pit bull once its teeth got knocked out?
    Back aching, armpits tender, shoulder joints raw, he swung his way down the hall and hopped one laborious step at a time to the basement, unlocking the gym’s double doors.
    Smelled just as it always had, he thought, flipping on one set of lights. Same as when he’d first stomped down these stairs at age twelve. You could keep your grandma’s muffins—nothing said nostalgia to Rich like the smell of sweat and leather.
    Home.
    The thought had guilt squirming in his gut.
    He hadn’t been back since March, and a few more improvements had been made. Fresh mats, a few pieces of new equipment in the weights and cardio corner. Maybe he’d helped buy those, earning Wilinski’s a much-needed boost in dues. It should have cheered him, but nothing could, not in this mood.
    â€œThe members are out of their minds,” Mercer had told him. “You’d think Anderson Silva was coming to train them.”
    â€œYeah, right. Tell them they’re off by about six billion wins and nearly as many dollars.”
    â€œYou’ll see. Everybody’s going frigging bat-shit.”
    Sure. Great.
    Bully for them, getting shouted at by a bona fide MMA rising star. But Rich knew the truth. He’d been neutered, the best momentum of his life wrecked by a misstep, a moment quicker than an eyeblink, quick as Moreau’s elbow colliding with Rich’s first metatarsal. Now he was stuck limping around on crutches for the four to six weeks he’d been ordered to stay off his foot, when the last thing he wanted to feel was idle. The last thing he wanted was time, time to heal and to think while his muscles turned soft