Chapter 21

February 25th

Tommy thought he was going to throw up. The sound of the door slamming echoed through the suddenly empty apartment. All at once the rage he'd tried so hard to control burst its banks and he hurled a glass from the kitchen counter across the room.

"Fuck!" he said out loud, his heat hammering in his ears. "Fuck!"

He stood in the living room, old feelings of helpless rage paralyzing him. All at once it was as though nothing had changed and he was a little boy again watching as his mother rubbing cream into the bruises on her face. He drew a long, shaky breath, he wasn't a kid anymore, there was something he could do about this, and he was going to do it.

He started for the door, shrugging off his jacket as he went and letting it fall to the floor behind him. At times like this he wished he still had Manny to talk to, he was always the expert with women, wouldn't have made such an ass of himself as Tommy already had, and would know just how to fix it. Manny was always the calm one, whilst Tommy was the hothead, sometimes Tommy missed him more than he could stand, what he wouldn't give to be able to pick up the phone now and ask him what to do.

Never mind that, he thought, already halfway up the stairs, you'll come up with something.

Tommy took the stairs two at a time, his heart thudding against his ribs, palms going clammy with sweat. Several emotions seemed to battle at the forefront of his consciousness; the first- anger. Anger at himself, at his father, at his mother, at his brother, at Katrina for not trusting him with the truth but overwhelmingly at himself.

What the fuck is wrong with me? Tommy asked himself in a rare moment of introspection. No answer was forthcoming, the truth was too mired in a childhood punctuated by arguments and beatings, and an adulthood that wasn't turning out any better. He paused for a moment outside Katrina's door.

Just go in there and apologize, he told himself firmly.

He knocked, for a long moment there was no answer, then there was a shuffling of feet.

"Hello?" as voice asked and Tommy could hear the Katrina had been crying.

"It's me." He replied

"What do you want Tommy?" Katrina asked flatly from the other side of the door.

"Can we… talk?" Tommy asked.

"Go away Tommy I don't want to talk."

"I ain't leavin'." He replied, Tommy wasn't about to take no for an answer.

"Seriously Tommy what the fuck is your problem?" Tommy winced, Katrina almost never swore and the words sounded harsher coning out of her mouth.

"Will you let me in, please?" He heard a sigh, then the lock clicked and the door creaked open.

Katrina stood on the other side, gazing warily up at him. Tommy noticed that she had put on a long-sleeved sweater, one of his, it swamped her completely, making her seem absurdly young and small. Tommy found that he couldn't meet her eyes, he took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry." The words hung in between them, filling the small space.

"Okay."

"Okay?" Tommy asked.

"Let's talk."

Katrina retreated into the apartment, laving Tommy to shut the door. She curled up on the couch, arms around her knees. Tommy sat opposite, not too close even though the only thing he wanted to do was put his arms around her and take her to bed.

"Tell me what happened."

"It's complicated." Sighed Katrina.

"No its not, someone hurt you, who was it?"

Katrina buried her face in her knees, long dark hair flopping forward. When she started to speak the words came out muffled.

"The director of PDC- Daniel Kline" she paused, "I don't know how it happened, one moment I was warming up in the studio and we were talking about the first night, the next moment." She shuddered, "he was kissing me… holding me down. I just panicked because I slapped him. He didn't seem to mind though, just sort of laughed and left. I'm sorry."

Tommy got off the couch, and knelt down in front her. "Don't apologize, please don't." He murmured, pulling her to him until they were locked into an awkward sort of embrace. "I shouldn't have been angry at you, I was bein' a jerk." He felt Katrina nod into his shoulder.

When Tommy raised his head he found himself almost nose to nose with Katrina. His eyes drifted down to her lips and he noticed something he hadn't seen before. Under the bright lights of Katrina's apartment, Tommy could see that she had a split lower lip, red and swollen. Tommy felt all of the anger the he'd worked so hard to tame come rushing up to the surface. As though sensing this Katrina drew back away from him.

"He split your lip." Said Tommy quietly, trying hard to control the rage coursing through him. He could barely remember ever being so angry, suddenly Katrina was far too close, he needed to be away from her.

"Tommy?" through the haze of rage, through the ringing in his ears and the strobe light of bad memories, he heard her voice, small and somewhat afraid. Then her hand touched his chest, he hadn't realized that they were standing.

"What?" he asked.

"Calm down… please?"

He looked at her, at her big brown, worried eyes and pale, freckled cheeks and her full pink lips and felt the anger drain out of him as though someone had pulled a plug at his feet.

He pulled her into him, kissing the top of her head, he needed to breathe, to collect himself, to be out of the searchlight of Katrina's gaze for a moment.

That twinge in his chest that he'd started to feel the first time he'd came to suspect the he loved her, it was back again. Stronger now and more painful, a dull hollow, aching in his chest that only she could fill. She was warm and Tommy breathed her in, calm slowly returning, the red tinge clearing from his vision. They stayed like that for a long time, how long Tommy wasn't exactly sure. They didn't talk as he rubbed long slow circles across Katrina's back. Her warmth seeped into him, even though the thick sweater.

Tommy knew he loved her now, he couldn't explain how or why but he didn't trouble himself much with the particulars, only love could be this painful and still be welcomed. As though seeing his future clearly for the first time, he saw the two decisions he could now make.

He could still leave Katrina, tell her he wasn't cut out for relationships, lie to her, push her out of his life, dull this ache in a bottle of whiskey. He would spend all his time at the gym or with the guys. He would train longer hours, take on more shifts in the reception. He wouldn't take so many trips out to see Brendan and Tess at first, they'd want to know what had happened to Katrina, maybe they'd stop asking if he was rude enough. Eventually the pain would subside, as all pain did, like a wound finally scabbing over, blood clotting and skin knitting back together. He could heal if he walked away now, stopped twisting the knife, never kissed her touched her or spoke to her again.

He couldn't do it.

"Tommy?" Katrina's voice brought him back to himself.

"Yeah?"

"Thank you." She rested her head on his chest.

The words that had been going around in Tommy's head for what seemed the longest time, stuck in his throat on the way out. He didn't say anything, couldn't- so he settled for giving her another squeeze.

After a long moment they drew apart and Tommy saw Katrina wiping her eyes with her sleeve when she thought he wasn't looking.

"Want a drink?" she asked, a smile breaking out at last.

He nodded and allowed Katrina to lead him into the tiny kitchen area, settling on a barstool to watch her fill the kettle as he had so many times before.

In a minute they were settled back on the couch, mugs of tea in their hands; Tommy was finally getting used to the herbal stuff. Katrina flicked on the TV and started going through the channels, Tommy wrapped his free arm around her waist and she snuggled into him with a sigh.

"You okay?" he asked after a moment.

"Yeah. Not exactly looking forward to work tomorrow."

"You don't have to go y'know."

"Yeah I do, but" Katrina shrugged, "I'll be okay"

Tommy resisted the urge to disagree, nodding blankly at the TV screen.

"You don't think so?"

Tommy shrugged, "I just don't like to see you go back there… seeing that guy day after day…"

"Its okay babe, I'll be fine."

"I think might come in and see this guy."

"Oh, Tommy no, I don't think so."

"What?"

"Somehow I don't think you'd like jail very much." Tommy saw Katrina's smile out of the corner of his eye.

He shrugged in acknowledgement.

"Probably not." And with that they would both have to be content.

February 26th

Tommy was half asleep when he felt Katrina slip out of bed in the morning, the fist fingers of light just starting the inexorable creep around the blinds and into the semi-darkness of her bedroom. He felt the side of his body that she'd been curled against start to cool and heard the muffled sounds of dressing. He allowed himself a moments more sleep before getting up and heading downstairs, pulling on boxers as he went.

Katrina was almost out the door, jacket and scarf on, kit-bag slung over one shoulder.

"Hey." Tommy murmured, kissing her cheek. She wrapped her arms around him, leaning into him for a moment.

"Hey yourself. I'm about to go, are you working late tonight?"

Tommy had to think for a second. "Yeah, I think Frank wants to take all the fighters out on for hill training…"

"Better you then me" Katrina laughed.

Tommy waved one last time as she vanished out of the door a slight twinge of unease in his stomach. He didn't like to think of her going back to work with that man Daniel, not at all. He comforted himself however with the thought that if seeming were to happen, he knew where the man worked. Tommy privately thought he'd hold up fairly well in jail.

Tommy killed time, he went for a run. Pushed him body around the park and over near to where Pop's house was, taking longer than usual. His breath was coming in short sharp gasps by the end of the eight-mile track, burning in his lungs. He left for the gym shortly after eleven, nothing going around in his head except for the thought that he needed to tell Katrina that he loved her and that he had no idea how to do that.

Once at Frank's gym he had bigger concerns, the place was packed with casuals, the type of men who like to relive the glory days of high-school wrestling or semi-pro boxing, the type of men who worked nine to five on offices and spent their lonely or overwrought weekends listing to antiestablishment music from the nineties and trying to regain some semblance of manhood and street-cred. The kind of men, in short that Tommy despised. He tried to play nice, keep the annoyance at their unabashed hero-worship from the surface but on the whole he preferred to avoid them. He gave a cursory wave to Jay and the others over by the free weights before heading in to the changing rooms. Once there he collapsed on a bench, checking first that he a alone; the place was mercifully empty.

He dialed Brendan and thankfully his brother picked up after the second ring.

"Tom?" he heard Brendan's voice, slightly muffled by static.

"Yeah Bren it's me."

"What's up?"

Tommy hesitated for a moment before asking the question that'd been spinning around in his brain for a while now. "Bren, when you were sixteen, how did you know that Tess was the one?"

There was a long pause, the crackle of phone line interference the only sound between the two brothers. "I dunno… I guess" Brendan sounded uncertain, "I couldn't imagine it being anyone else, waking up next to any other girl, making big decisions, buying a house… I picked out the names for our kids y'know?"

"Really?" Tommy snorted, "you were always such a girl…"

"Fuck off." He could here the smile in Brendan's voice.

"Nah, man thanks…"

"Is this about Katrina?"

Tommy nodded for a moment, before realizing that his brother wouldn't be able to hear that in Monroeville. "Yeah… it is."

"Good choice brother."

A/N

Okay so this has been a long time coming and I know that Tommy is moving pretty fast but I feel like he's a bit of an all or nothing kind of guy?

Thoughts?

xxx