This time Danny had imposed it from the first day of training, and I swear to God, he knew when I’d so much as thought about sex. The day after I’d copped a feel with Em, he pushed me harder than ever before, scowling the whole time. I swear to Christ he acted as though Sunshine really was his daughter. I tried really, really hard not to be naked with Em again or to watch her bend over or brush her hair or laugh or do any one of a million fucking things that turned me on when it came to my wife.

When it came to my training, Em was as fierce as Danny. Maybe more so. He’d created a monster. Although she’d been back at school for a while now, there were often days where her classes would finish at three or four and she’d head straight for the gym just in time to see me hit the mental wall of pain that every athlete hits at some point in his training. That point where you feel like everything is about to shut down and you just can’t go on. Around four o’clock every day was that time for me. And my cure? The one thing that got me past the pain barrier? Sunshine.

“Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five…” Earnshaw called out the numbers as I repeated each hanging sit-up. My legs hooked over the back of the crossbar and my hands behind my head meant that I was completely upside down between each sit-up. I’d done fifty this morning at the start of training, no problem. Now I felt like puking.

“Forty-six, forty-seven…” that quiet, gentle voice I’d know anywhere took over the count and I no longer thought about the pain. I thought about impressing my wife. What was she wearing? How had her day been?

“Forty-eight, forty-nine…” With me still upside down, she gently held my head and kissed me deeply. With Em there, everything was instantly better. Unhooking myself from the bar, I dropped down and kissed hard, telling her without words just how much I missed her. Once upon a time, Danny had frowned on having Em in the gym. Once he realized how much of a motivator she was, she became a permanent fixture. Now it was an unspoken rule that I had five minutes alone with my wife when she arrived. It was precious little of the day to be spending together but I’d take whatever I could get when it came to Em.

“Hey, Sunshine. How was your day?”

“Really good. I’ve been doing a couple of hours with Nikki, and she’s totally getting a hang of the module now,” she told me gleefully. My wife was a fucking genius when it came to math. Well, when it came to most things actually. I loved seeing that dreamy, spaced-out look she’d get when she was trying to work out some freaky-hard equations. How one girl could have the same look reading a romance novel as she did doing math baffled me. But I didn’t need to work out what made her tick, or understand any of the shit she was talking about when it came to her degree. I just loved her, and that was all that mattered. I didn’t give a shit that she was smarter than me; most people were. She was the brains and the beauty, and if I was the brawn in our little family, I was happy with that. As long as she was happy too, that’s all I cared about.

“You ready for tomorrow?” I asked.

“As ready as I’ll ever be. They’ll be digging over all that shit in court soon anyway so I guess it’s better to go over it first with someone who’s on my side at least.” Tomorrow was her first rape counseling session, and Danny was ending training at five o’clock so I could take her. It still stuck in my gut that I couldn’t be with her in court and as much as I burned to fight Rico Temple again, I suspected that this was something else I’d have to learn to live with. I tilted her face up to look at me.

“We’re gonna get through this, baby. Whatever happens, whatever shit goes down, it’s me and you forever now.

Chapter 13

As I sat in the cheap plastic chair, I imagined that this was how families of patients in the hospital felt. My girl was next door crying over shit I didn’t think I could stand to hear and tearing open old wounds I had no way of healing. She’d had a nightmare last night, and it was fucking brutal. I felt like I was standing in the corner of the room as Frank raped her. Fucking unable to do anything other than to listen to her endure it. If there was anything more emasculating than experiencing that, I didn’t want to know what it was.

The counselor was one set up by the Crown Prosecution Service. Apparently they weren’t just there to help Em deal with what had happened, but to support her through the trial. Given the brutality of what Frank had done, they’d offered her the option of giving evidence by video. I wished desperately that she’d chosen that option, but I should have known better. As terrified as she was, my girl was too strong for that. She’d read somewhere that juries were more supportive of a victim when evidence was given in person. Something about seeing and hearing their emotional responses humanized them.

Everything that was going down now terrified me and pissed me off in equal measure. Here in this plastic chair I might as well have been back in the changing room at the fight, unable to process any of this shit. The only thing inside stronger than hate and rage was my love for Em and the overwhelming and fundamental need to protect her. So instead of beating the crap out of someone, I sat here in this shitty plastic chair watching the clock tick by painfully slowly. Waiting for my wife. I ran through everything Father Pat had told me about how to control my temper. The things he taught me didn’t change who I was or what I felt but they helped me pretend to be a better man, so by the time the door in front of me opened, I was ready to deal with whatever condition I found Em in on the other side. Her face was a mess, and it looked like she’d spent the whole hour crying. She blew her nose loudly into her tissue as she walked out followed by her counselor. The second I saw her, she was in my arms, her face buried in my chest.

“You must be Cormac. I’m Nora,” she said to me smiling warmly. She was an older lady, maybe me ma’s age, only unlike me ma, she wore very little makeup and had a kindly look about her.

“Nice to meet you,” I told her without offering her my hand. They were wrapped firmly around my girl and weren’t going anywhere.

“Will you be bringing her back on Wednesday?”

“As long as she wants to come, I’ll be here,” I told her.

“Well, I’ll see you both then. Have a safe journey home.”

“Thank you, for everything,” Em told her, twisting in my arms.

“You’re welcome,” she said with a smile.