“Really,” said the mother, outraged.

“Yeah! Really,” promised Kieran. The kid shook his head no and I closed my eyes again, smiling. Kieran really was something else.

A few hours later, the sun set and most of the passengers were quiet. The boys, having all gotten bored, had disappeared to the back of the plane. I sat listening to Kier’s iPod as I ran through all Temple’s previous fights in my mind, working out what my strategy was. It was the strong cloud of perfume filling my nose that made me open my eyes as a good-looking girl with long dark hair, perfectly manicured nails, and lots of makeup sat down next to me.

“Hi, I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward. Your friends back there didn’t think you’d want to join us but I didn’t want you to feel left out.”

I pulled off my headphones, not wanting to seem rude. “That’s kind of you. But I’ve got a big week coming up, and I’m happy just sitting in my seat and relaxing until the plane lands,” I told her politely.

“Maybe I could relax with you?” she suggested with a tilt of her head. She bit her shiny lip. Why girls did that I had no idea; it had zero effect on me. Actually that was a lie. Em always bit her lip—when she was working out math problems. She had absolutely no idea she was doing it, and it was sexy as fuck.

“Look, I don’t want to seem rude, and you’re welcome to sit here if you’re after a bit of peace and quiet, but I’m probably going to listen to music and try and get some sleep.” I told her. Maybe I was being rude, not wanting to make idle chitchat with a stranger but being rude was pretty much what I was famous for. At least it used to be.

As soon as I went to put my headphones back on, she started talking again. “The guys told me all about your fight. They said that when you win you’re going to be really famous. You must be totally pumped.” Her perfect manicure was waving around excitedly as she talked about the fight.

“Yeah, I guess,” I replied, trying to replace my headphones again.

“Listen, call it fate,” she said, “but I’m in town for two weeks when your fight is on. Maybe we could hook up sometime?” She tucked her hair behind her ear and bit her lip again.

I looked at her and couldn’t help but mentally compare her with Em. My girl hardly ever wore makeup, not because she didn’t need it, which she didn’t, but because I think it never occurred to her to wear any if she wasn’t going out. She told me that waitressing made her nails all dirty so she kept them short and unpolished. Em was all natural, nothing false about her. There was no comparison. It wasn’t this girl’s fault. It was just that I gave my heart away the day I first clapped eyes on Sunshine, and I never wanted it back.

“Look, it’s really nice of you to offer, but I’m married,” I explained, holding up my ring finger. Leaning toward me, her weight on the armrest next to me, she looked down her shirt at her own cleavage, then raised her eyes to me to see if I’d caught the show and whispered, “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

I leaned in next to her to give her my reply. “First time you come on to me, you’re misinformed. Second time, you’re disrespecting my wife. So how about you fuck off back to your seat before I decide to get offended?”

The look on her face told me this had never happened to her before. She flew out of the seat with a mumbled “arsehole,” and I finally got back to my music. I let out a heavy sigh. No way was I traveling without Em again.

* * *

The warm Las Vegas temperature was a welcome relief from the harsh weather we’d left behind in London. Of course, Danny sucked away all of my appreciation for the climate when he started pointing out that Temple had trained for months in this heat while I’d trained in the cold. Eyeing me up and down as we waited for our luggage like I was twenty stone and not two hundred twenty pounds, he grumbled about the amount of work we had to do. We queued for a taxi after getting through customs and when the driver asked what hotel we were staying at, Danny gave him the name of the gym, and the boys all grumbled.

“This ain’t a feckin’ free holiday!” Danny yelled at them. “You wanna go and lie on a nice beach? Fuck off to Spain. You wanna stay and see how winning is done, you pull your weight. Heath is gonna be busy with promotion, so Kieran, you’re Con’s sparring partner, and Liam and Tommy, you’ll run circuits with him.”

To be fair to Temple’s camp, the gym they’d hooked us up with was small but decent. It wasn’t in the best of neighborhoods, but as I shook hands with a few of the local fighters, I had to admit that Southside Gym had the same vibe to it as Driscoll’s. As far as Danny was concerned, jet lag was just a myth, and, giving us ten minutes to change, we were up and working before we’d even learned everyone’s names.

“Right boys. A lot of shit has gone down in the last week. Tough. This ain’t the time for fucking distractions. For the next six days, you’re all gonna eat, sleep, and dream boxing. When it’s done—you get a day off.”

That was it. The end of his groundbreaking motivational speech. Kier and I both grinned as we looked at each other. At least until Danny shouted, “That’s it. What the feckin’ hell you still standing around for. Get to work!”

I went with the same basic routine I followed at home. Only this time, some of the local fighters had in on the action. When I would run, Samuel, their head coach, made me run with a tennis ball. I’d squeeze it and then relax my hand, repeating the exercise for a mile and then swapping hands. I also didn’t run alone anymore, mostly because it was easy to get lost and time was something I had precious little of left. I did ten miles in the morning but Danny replaced the afternoon run with sprints.

We shared the gym with Samuel’s two bull mastiffs named Leonard and Dempsey. When the guys sprinted, they did too, adding a little extra competition. My days were filled with skipping, circuits, hitting tires with a sledgehammer, and punching sandbags. Unlike punching bags, the harder you hit sandbags the harder they flew back at you. Unless you wanted a smack in the head, you had to hit and learn to duck or dodge, fast. I wasn’t used to training in the heat and my muscles knew it. By the end of every day, I was exhausted but felt like I could actually do this.

The friends we made at Southside should have been in Temple’s corner. They were American, after all. But poverty and a certain respect for the sport and the old ways unified us, until they felt as much a part of our camp as the rest of the guys.