The Willow Tree Wharf by Leonie Kelsall

Author:Leonie Kelsall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2023-05-17T00:00:00+00:00

19

Pierce

Pierce had slammed it at the gym for the last few weeks, and put in far more hours than the brunch cafe needed. Eventually, he’d had to pull back there, as he was in danger of cutting staff simply so he’d have enough to do to keep himself distracted.

In any case, no amount of activity or self-inflicted pain chased the guilt over his behaviour out of his head. What the hell had he been thinking? It wasn’t like him to shove himself in a woman’s face.

He jabbed the sand-filled punching bag, grunting as the impact travelled from his gloved knuckles and up into his arm.

The thing was, he hadn’t been thinking. He had acted on instinct—base, primal desire. He saw her, he liked her, he wanted her.

His left fist followed the right, muscles flexing and tensing as he swung into the leather in a strong cross, then swiped a hook from his right. He followed the moves with two swift, sharp uppercuts, the smack of knuckles against the leather forcing an explosion from his mouth each time.

The air he sucked back in between his gritted teeth was laden with the bitter odour of leather and sweat. He swiped a forearm across his dripping forehead, concentrating on the punching combinations in the hope the rhythm would shut his brain down for an hour. Get it off the loop that insisted it didn’t matter how often he told himself that Sam had flirted back, that she had maybe even given him the come-on a couple of times, it still didn’t equate to consent.

The confusion on her face when he’d stepped back made it clear she hadn’t been expecting him to kiss her. And that made him barely any better than his bloody brother.

He stalked over to the uppercut bag mounted on the wall, and slammed out a volley of punches.

‘Guess you’ve got the look for it, bro.’

The muscles across his shoulders sheeted into a tense raft, and he clenched his teeth to hold in a snarl. Think of the devil and he appears, Mum liked to say. He didn’t want to turn around. One of his more minor reasons for taking up boxing had been that Dante wasn’t into it: no doubt the sport required too much actual hard work and didn’t provide enough steroid-enhanced photo ops for his brother’s liking.

‘The look, get it?’ Dante indicated his nose, but tilted his head toward Pierce.

‘Yeah, I got it.’ His mashed nose was the result of a fight they’d had when Dante lived at his place, years earlier. Typically, Dante had figured everything that had been Pierce’s was now his. At the time, Pierce had other ideas. He snorted: how many times was he going to be proved wrong on that one?

‘Not still sore about that, bro?’ Dante chortled.

‘You were both adults. Up to you how you behave.’ He used his teeth to unknot the laces on his gloves, then stuck his fists under his armpits to yank the leather off.

‘Not what you said

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