Page 39 of Shifting Gears

I closed my eyes for a minute, remembering the images and videos on the cell phone that Jabari had tossed me—of her crying in pain and calling my name to come save her. Rememberinghow I’d beaten the shit out of the man who had orchestrated it all and tried to make me throw the fight. The looks on her family’s faces when I showed up to the hospital, only to find out she was in worse shape than I’d thought.

I hated myself for the choice I’d made that night, even if it was the only option I had to take.

“Hey.”

Raven tapped my chest, and I opened my eyes to look at her.

“Her name is Rosalie,” I said finally.

And it all came crashing back.

Her laugh. The way her eyes had lit up when we were going over paint colors for one of my cars. Watching her, deep in thought, as she drew up designs on her tablet. How she always trusted me. The feel of her body tucked in next to mine in bed. The smell of her perfume. The way she always tasted like strawberries from the lip gloss she always wore. How my heart had felt when she told me she loved me for the first time and when I realized I had fallen in love with her.

“Who is she?” Raven asked.

She was being gentle with her words and her touch. Seeing her being so careful around me reminded me of a similar night with Rosalie. A night where I had started to open up about myself to a woman for the first time in my life. It made it easier to do it this time.

“She was the first woman I ever loved,” I said, the brutal honesty hanging in the air between us.

Raven sat up straighter and turned so she could face me, but her hand never left my body as she listened intently.

“I broke up with her before I came here. She’s moved on. I’m trying to do the same. But that hasn’t been as easy as I thought,” I said as I reached out and stroked Raven’s cheek. “Meeting you had been helping with that last part though.” I attempted to give her a cocky smirk, but my heart wasn’t in it.

Her eyes softened, and she placed her hand over mine, her slender fingers rubbing the top of it.

“Is she why you left? Or did you walk away from her because you had to leave for other reasons?”

Fuck, why does she have to ask the exact questions that are hard to answer? Why couldn’t she just let it go after I said I was trying to get over her?

“Both,” I said.

My mind went back to the night Kayden had met up with me. The heaviness of my choice—taking her dad’s offer of money and a one-way flight to leave his daughter—hung on my heart with the force of a brutal punch to the chest.

I could see Raven wasn’t going to let me move on at that, so I kept going.

“I dated her for a while. Long enough for me to bring her to the fights I was in at the time. My opponent in the rematch for the championship liked to play dirty and tried to use her to get me to throw the fight. His buddies recorded what they did to her—beating her and leaving her on the ground next to her car—and mid-match, he showed them to me on his phone. I couldn’t leave the fight because I had more than money on the line, so I called her brother to get to her in my place.” I paused, feeling my anger increasing.

It’s over with. Jabari isn’t alive to touch her anymore. Her brother said he’d made sure of it.

I took a deep breath, trying to stop the thoughts racing through my mind so I could get on with this conversation.

“She’s fine. She made a full recovery. But I couldn’t get over the fact that she’d only gotten hurt because of me in the first place,” I said, dropping my arm from her body and clenching my fists at my sides.

“If you are the champion of LA’s fight club and she was fine after everything that happened, why come to Tokyo? Seems tome everything worked out in the end?” she asked, pressing for more details.

“Her dad gave me a job opportunity here. I took it. It’s better for her this way,” I said.

“But is it better for you?” Raven asked as she shifted her body to straddle mine again, her hands sliding up my chest until she placed them on my shoulders. “Was coming here what you needed?”

Fuck no, it ain’t.

I’d had to leave my home, my cars, my fights, my money, Pops, and the one person who’d seen me for who I was and not what society decided I should be.

“It is what it is, baby. I’m here now, and this is my life. No sense in focusing on the past. That’s over with,” I said, dropping the hint that I was done with this conversation now.

She chuckled at me.

“What’s so damn funny?” I asked as I glanced back at her.

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