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She’s ready for it. Hips back, all her weight dumped down on my shoulders, and the takedown stops dead. From there it’s a scramble, and by the time I get any sort of grip, she’s already peeling my hands off.

A couple of times my head drops and she clips me on the side of it. Not hard, but what needles me is getting caught at all. Davie has plenty to say about it, of course, loud enough for the whole gym to hear. It may be my fifth round and her first, but the man makes no allowances.

Buzzer.

“Right.” Davie thumps the frame. “Sloan, take fifteen. Gary, Marek, you’re in.”

Niamh and I leave the cage. I pull off my gloves, then my headgear, and that’s when I feel it—a hot, tender spot under my left cheekbone that wasn’t there half an hour ago. A welt coming up. My shoulder’s complaining too where Liam caught me.

Still, five bodies back to back. If that’s all I’ve got to show for it, I’ll take it. I spit the gumshield into my palm.

“Sharp work, Ryan,” someone calls from the bags.

“Aye, solid rounds, big man,” another guy says.

Niamh snorts. “His ego doesnae need the encouragement.”

“Jealous?” I say, bumping my shoulder against hers.

“Dream on, pal.”

I grab my towel and wipe the sweat from my face. Niamh spots the welt and grins like she’s proud of her handiwork.

Liam wanders over with his wraps half unravelled and trailing from his wrists. “Felt that one, aye?” He nods at my shoulder. “And that was me going easy on you.”

I shake my head.

“So.” He grins. “Did Chloe stay over after the flat-warming?”

I unscrew my water bottle. “Aye.”

“Thought she might have.”

Niamh raises a brow. “The model?”

“Aye.”

Razor Athletics put us in the same studio a couple of weeks ago. They sponsor me—I’m the face of their combat range—so it was a day of standing under lights in their new kit while a photographer told me to look meaner, which is about as interesting as it sounds. Still, they pay me an absurd amount of money to train in their gear. Chloe was there for the women’s lifestyle range—leggings and hoodies, that kind of thing. The stuff they shoot with models instead of fighters. We swapped numbers between setups.

“She was hot,” Niamh says. “Lucky bastard.”

“You gonnae see her again?” Liam asks.

I shrug. “Maybe.” But we all know I’m not. I told her at the start it would be a casual thing, and Chloe said that suited her fine. But in my experience, a second hook-up can lead to questions about “what we are”, and that’s a conversation I don’t have. Ever.

I take a drink.

“Here, speaking of that night,” Liam says. “How stuck up was that posh bird wi’ the dug?”

“Ha.” Niamh points her bottle at me. “I still cannae believe that lassie gatecrashed your flat-warming in her pyjamas.”

It was Niamh who opened the door to her. Three days later, she’s still laughing about it.

Liam clears his throat and does an impression of her. “Would it be okay,” he says, high and strangled, his chin lifted and hands clasped, “if you turned the music down? I’m terribly sorry, only, one is awfully tired.”

Niamh nearly chokes on her water.

It’s a ridiculous exaggeration. Pretty sure she never called herself “one”. But, aye, she was stuck up, right enough. Reading people is half of what wins fights—the flinch, the hesitation, the exact second a man’s confidence cracks—and she was about as hard to read as a shop sign. I could practically see the wee cogs going in her head. Trying to work out how a man who looks like me could afford both the flats above hers.