Back To The Start Box Set: Five Full-Length Novels by Aly Martinez
“Yeah. Definitely,” Till answered quickly.
“After that, we can move up to six-rounders and hopefully get you in the ring with some decent opponents with a larger purse.”
“What happened to that possible fight in New York you mentioned the other day?”
“Well, he was willing to take a chance on you as long as I did a fucking meet and greet before the fight. I hung up on him.” Slate paused uncomfortably. “Listen, I’m sorry about that bullshit on the way to the ring. This is part of the reason I always hesitated to come back as a trainer. Eventually, the novelty of me being back in the business will wear off and people won’t even notice I’m there anymore, but for the next few months, I worry that it might just be the way things go.”
“It’s okay. I don’t mind,” Till answered. “Really. It doesn’t bother me. You forget that I’m a Slate Andrews fan too. Well, I was . . . until you almost killed me by forcing me around the track in jeans.” He gave Slate a one-sided smile I recognized as genuine.
“So, when does Till get to the big money? I refuse to believe that Erica has a bodyguard and you made six hundred bucks a fight,” Quarry asked, hopping up onto the table next to Till.
Slate laughed, shaking his head. “I guess that all depends on who he fights. Who he beats. Who he loses to. I’m gonna do my job and get him the fights. The rest is up to Till.”
“So, he gets paid per round? What about if he knocks someone out?” Flint asked from the corner.
“Promoters want a good show so they can sell tickets. Knockouts are nice, but what keeps people happy is feeling like they got their money’s worth. So the opening fights get paid per round. After that, you get paid based on your contract that’s negotiated in advance. Win or lose. Decision or TKO, it doesn’t matter at that point. The established fighter makes majority of the money, and the opponent makes significantly less.”
“Wait . . . what?” Flint stepped closer. “Even if he wins, he still gets paid less money? Shouldn’t the loser make significantly less?”
“It doesn’t work like that. See, the goal is to become the champ. It’s not just the prestige. There are a lot of zeros on the back of that belt that keep people in that ring.”
Till tilted his head in confusion. “Why’d you retire when you had the title, then? You must have been making a ton of money as the six-time defending world champion. Why not stick with it until you lost?”
Slate shrugged. “I guess I was just done.”
Till barked a laugh, and Slate’s eyes turned serious.
“I remember when I won my first pro fight. It was pretty much exactly like things happened for you tonight. I was so pumped up as I walked out of that arena, but then, when I got home, I hit a low. I sat and stared at that envelope full of cash for hours. I was afraid to even touch it. I was convinced that it was all I’d get. For several months, I just let them stack up in a drawer. The promise of money is what drove me in the sport.
“The point is I’ve been where you are, so I know exactly how ridiculous this statement is going to sound. But I hope that, one day, you will understand that money is only as important as what it gives you. I’m not talking about sports cars or big houses. I’m talking about peace of mind. When I walked away from boxing, I turned down a rematch that would have earned me over sixty million.”
“Holy shit!” I heard myself cuss, and it was joined by similar sentiments from everyone in the room.
“For me, money lost its value the day I met Erica. It couldn’t buy me time with her. I had more than enough to live comfortably, and that was all I ever really wanted. So I quit. The incentive was no longer worth the sacrifice.”
We were all silent for several seconds before the room erupted in chaos.
“You turned down sixty million dollars for a girl!”
“You have got to be kidding!”
“No way! What is wrong with you?”
“Sixty million dollars or pesos?”
Slate just laughed.
“You should never tell that story again,” Till informed him, making Slate laugh even louder.
“Worst story ever!” Flint declared. “You know what lesson I learned from that story? Till needs to break up with Eliza—stat.”
“Hey!” I objected.
“Yeah. I agree.” Quarry jumped off the table and faced Till. “If you had sixty million, you could hire her to sleep with you.”
Till slapped a hand over his mouth, but his laugh was no less muffled.
My mouth gaped open before I shouted, “I am not a hooker!”
“Of course not!” Flint rubbed my shoulder soothingly before he added, “We’d still expect you to cook for us. Hookers don’t cook.” He winked.
“How the hell do you know what hookers do?” I bit back.
The whole room was rolling with laughter at this point, and I couldn’t help but join them.
Till made his way over and wrapped me in his arms. “Okay. Okay. Nobody’s getting rid of Eliza. I can make sixty million and keep her.” He continued to laugh even as he kissed the top of my head.
“Gee. Thanks.”
And that was the way we worked. We picked on each other relentlessly and laughed unabashedly. They fought. I refereed. It was perfect, really.
We were a family.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Till
One year later . . .
“THE SILENCER IS IN THE house!” I heard called as I walked into the gym.
Quarry laughed as he took off toward the before-school program he had long since grown to love.
I had quickly become a small-time big deal around the gym.
With over seven fights under my belt, I was making my way up the ladder. The fights were getting larger, and I was loving it. By the end of the first year, I had banked over fifteen grand on top of what Slate paid me weekly. I’d dropped it all in a savings account and refused to touch it. I had never felt more stable and secure in my life. Just knowing it was there calmed the anxiety I hadn’t even known I was harboring.
Eliza was finishing up her last semester in college and had started looking for accounting positions. She said that she was excited about getting a real job, but I knew she was dreading spending her days poring over numbers instead of sketchpads. After a civil case with Derrick Bailey paid off her student loans, I refused to allow her to take out anymore. I was in it forever with Eliza, and the last thing I wanted was to start it out with a load of debt.
God, we fought about money, but not like most couples. It was never because we didn’t have enough or one was spending too much. It was always about who got to pay the bills. I was making decent money and hell-bent on taking care of her the way I had always dreamed about. And well, Eliza didn’t like feeling like a freeloader being taken care of. I loved those fights. Her nipples would get all hard as I yelled about how much I loved providing for her. Then she would stomp her foot and declare that she wanted to split the bills. Which caused my cock to get hard . . . which caused her eyes to heat as they drifted down to my pants . . . which caused me get so hot that I was forced to remove my shirt . . . which caused her to lick her lips . . . which caused me to rush forward and fuck her on the closest horizontal surface I could find. Really, it was a vicious cycle.
“Page, get in here!” Slate yelled from his office.
“What’s up?” I asked, settling into the chair across from his desk.
“You and Quarry go to the doctor yesterday?”
“Yeah. I’m good. He’s not sure why it comes and goes sometimes. I tested at around seventy percent still.”
“And what about Quarry?”
“He’s still sitting at eighty percent. No real change.”
“That’s good fucking news.” He stood up, walked to the door, and pushed it shut before drawing the shades that covered his large, glass windows into the gym.
My curiosity grew, because up until that moment, I hadn’t known that those shades were even functional.
“All r
“Fuck him,” flew from my mouth.
“Right. Well, I’ve been keeping Quarry off phone duty. I don’t want to put him in a position of having to hang up on his own dad if he happened to call.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Well, just so you know, I’ll be contacting the prison to put a halt to that shit. I run a business. I don’t need inmates blowing up my phones.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.” I pushed to my feet, ready to work off some steam.
“Where you going? Sit back down, I’m not done yet.”
“Please tell me there’s not more,” I huffed, flopping back down onto the chair.
“Change of plans on your fight this weekend. Summers got hurt and they can’t find anyone to replace him on such short notice. Your fight got dropped from the card.”
“Son of a bitch!” I boomed, jumping to my feet. “That was a big fight.” I started to pace. “Are we rescheduling?”
“Nope.” He smiled in amusement.
“Why the hell not?”
“You’re too busy.” His smile grew.
“Um, no. No. I’m not. That was twenty-five grand. I’m pretty sure my schedule is wide-ass open.”
“I got you a new fight for Saturday night,” he announced, and I suddenly understood the smile.
“With who?”
“Oh, you know . . . some guy you’ve probably never heard of named Larry Lacy.”
“Shut the fuck up!” I breathed, taking a giant step toward him. “Former heavyweight champ Larry Lacy?”
“Oh, so you have heard of him.” He joked as I started to bounce on my toes. “Well, don’t get too excited. It’s not a pay-per-view or anything. This tiny, unknown network is actually televising it. Shit. I can’t even remember the name.” He rubbed his chin.
I knew he was fucking with me . . . hard. He was almost as excited as I was.
“I think it was called . . . ESPN.”
I froze. “No. Fucking. Way.”
“Eight rounds. Fifty K. Philadelphia. Saturday night.”
“I swear to God you better not be fucking with me right now.”
He started laughing as he handed me a manila folder. “Lacy’s just out of a yearlong stint in rehab and trying to make a comeback. He was supposed to be going against Pryor, but he pulled out yesterday for reasons that were not disclosed to me. And quite honestly, I didn’t care enough to ask.”
I flipped through the pages of the contract, and sure as shit, everything was there in black ink. My eyes homed in on the four zeros on the second page.
Fifty thousand dollars.
“Holy shit. This is incredible.” My heart was banging around in my chest.
“This is a big break for your career. The sheer amount of promoters who will be watching this fight is going to be ridiculous. Everyone is dying to see what Lacy can do now that he’s sober, but I want them to leave that arena talking about Till Page.”
“Hell yeah,” I whispered.
“Now sign that shit and get in the ring. We need to develop a new strategy for Lacy.”
As I pushed to my feet, I swear my whole body was numb.
“Thanks, Slate,” I called out as I left his office. As I headed down the hallway, I bypassed the main locker room and made my way to one of the dressing rooms in the back. I needed to make a phone call.
“Holy shit. I literally just thought about making twice-baked potatoes for dinner and you called me. That is some kind of serious obsession, Till.” Eliza laughed.
“I’m going to be on ESPN,” I rushed out, and her laughter stopped.
“What?”
My hands were shaking as the shock and exhilaration threatened to overtake me. “Slate got me a fight on ESPN. Fifty thousand dollars.” I broke out in manic laughter. “Oh my God, Doodle. This is so fucking huge.”
“Wait. When?”
“This weekend!” I yelled as I bounced around the dressing room like a kid on Christmas morning, throwing fist pumps in the most non-badass way possible.
“Shut up!” she screeched into my ear.
I knew Eliza, and I bet she was throwing a few fist pumps of her own.
“Till! That’s amazing! Congrats!”
“There is a really good chance my chest is going to explode before I make it home today.” I continued to pace around the room.
“Ew. No exploding. So, are you good freaking out or bad freaking out?”
“I honestly don’t know. I’m not nervous about the fight, so I guess maybe the good kind? Hell, I don’t know. I don’t get to good freak out enough to know the difference.” I laughed, but it wasn’t a joke.
“This sounds like a really good thing, Till. Don’t muddle it all up.”
I could hear the warmth in her voice, and it calmed me immediately.
“I love you,” I said quietly, even though it deserved more emphasis than I could ever give with words alone.
“I love you too. I’m really proud of you. ”
I breathed a content sigh. “I have no idea what I would do without you.”
She giggled. “You’d probably be emaciated from your all-ramen diet and stuck hanging out of the third-story window.”
“Why the third story?”
“’Cause if we ever break up, the boys decided they want to live with me. They told me they liked me better than you.” She giggled. “And I lived downstairs for enough of their one a.m. Royal Rumbles to know I’d want my bedroom on the third floor this time.”
I grinned as I sank down on the bench. “Wow. This sounds like a big house, moneybags.”
“Yeah. My boyfriend was a big-time heavyweight boxer. He bought it for me.”
“Jesus. I want to do that,” I whispered.
Suddenly, her laughter disappeared. “I don’t need that, Till. I was only joking around.”
“I know you don’t, but I’m going to give it to you anyway.”
“I just need you. It doesn’t matter where we are.”
It was a sweet sentiment that anyone could recognize, but to me, it was everything.
She was everything.
I cleared my throat to cover the intense emotion and then changed the subject. “You’re right. This is a good freak out.”
“I’m always right.” She laughed, and it eased my entire world.
“So I’ve been told.”
“What time are you coming home?”
“Probably late. New fight needs a new plan.”
“Okay. I’ll see you then.” She paused. “I might even be naked when you get here.”
I let out a groan. “Mmm . . . I love the way you think. Now, talk dirty to me and tell me you’ll be holding a plate of twice-baked potatoes.”
She burst out laughing, and my lips split into a smile. I listened for a while, savoring the sound.
Finally, she got quiet again. “I love you, Till.”
“I love you too. I’ll see you tonight.” After a quick goodbye, she hung up, but I was left staring at my phone for several minutes.
I’d just gotten a fifty-thousand-dollar fight that would be televised for the entire world to see. Yet, somehow . . . it wasn’t even the best part of my day.
I sucked in a deep breath.
Yeah. I was definitely going to be late that night. It was time to tap into my savings account . . . and hit the hardware store.
Eliza
Me: The boys are spending the night out.
I sent the message the moment I saw the headlights of Till’s truck pull into our parking lot. Then I sprinted to the bedroom and counted to ten.
Me: Twice-baked potatoes. Check.
I sent him a picture of a plate filled with them and then counted to twenty as I settled onto the bed.
Me: Naked. Check.
I snapped a quick
Then I screamed at the top of my lungs as I saw his face lit by the glow of his phone outside our window.
“Fuuuck,” he groaned, still staring at the phone even as I freaked out on the other side of the glass.
“Shit! What are you doing?” I asked as I pried the window open.
“I’m saving that picture for my home screen.” He finally looked up at me.
“Why exactly are you doing it on a ladder?”
“Oh, this? It’s nothing. Life was just feeling too real today. I wanted a little fantasy.” His gaze raked down my nude body. “And clearly, I’ve come to the right window.”
His eyes were playful, but it still concerned me that he was climbing through a second-story window.
“Till . . .” I started.
“So I have a theory.” He leaned on his elbows, popping his head through the opening. “That night when you pushed me out of your door, I had originally come in the window. So what if the life we have been living ever since then is like a fantasy within a fantasy?”
My stomach twisted.
“You have to admit. It’s been pretty amazing.” He smiled.
Something wasn’t right with him. I could feel it, and it scared me to death. I reached out to touch him, but he caught my hand in midair and pressed his lips to my palm.
“See, windows have never let me down before. And this might just be the biggest fantasy of them all. I needed every bit of help I could get tonight.” He placed a small, black box on the windowsill. “Marry me, Eliza.”
I sucked in a deep breath as tears flooded my eyes. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure whose fantasy we were in at all, because Till Page offering me forever had always been mine.
“Till . . .” I stared into his eyes. “Are you serious?”
“Completely. I love you, Doodle. Forever, remember?”
Fully naked, I launched myself at the window. Till was barely able to stay on the ladder as I assaulted his mouth. The ring, which I still hadn’t seen, fell to the floor—thankfully on the inside. My tongue rolled in his mouth as my hands threaded into his hair. With one arm secured around my waist, he deepened the kiss as he crawled all the way inside. My feet were lifted off the ground as he walked us to the bed. I dangled in his arms, but I had never in my life felt more grounded.