"Can I fucking help you?" Leon shouted over the noise, immediately cutting between Natalie and the man. He was so close, Natalie had to physically step back to accommodate him.

He was breathing heavily, adrenaline still pumping from his fight. His whole back was pure muscle and glistening with sweat. Her stomach fluttered at the view, her mind wandering to unspeakable places.

"Woah, man, sorry," the man replied, holding his hands up. His words seemed to slur a bit, matching the smell of alcohol that drifted on his breath. "Didn't realise you were the friend."

"Does it matter? She's clearly young, Dan. Why are you hitting on a high schooler, huh?" Leon shouted. He shoved the man's chest, causing his drink to spill.

"High schooler?" he repeated, his eyes bulging. "How was I supposed to know that?" the man—Dan—stepped closer to Leon, and Natalie's heart sank.

Was this leading up to a fight?

"You couldn't use your eyes?" Leon asked.

Dan glanced in Natalie's direction. She froze. All he was doing was looking at her, his beady eyes trained on her face, but she couldn't help the shivers she felt. She was only starting to get used to Leon's attention. A man like this—she felt like she wanted to shrivel up and vanish.

Leon shoved him, his hands planting hard on Dan's chest.

"What are you looking at?"

"Nothing!" Dan said.

"Really?" He shoved him again.

"Really!" Dan shouted. "I didn't realise! She looked—"

"How did she look?"

"I don't know, hot—"

Leon practically growled as he shoved Dan once more, sending him staggering back.

"What the fuck did you just say? She's seventeen!"

"Well, I thought she looked hot, can you blame me—"

His words were smothered as Leon grabbed his collar in a tight grip. "I want you to think about your next words very carefully."

Before Dan could respond, a familiar face appeared. Jeff, the security guard, stepped between the two and grabbed Dan's arm.

"Dan, mate. I think you've been drinking too much," he said. He tugged him, nodding towards the other end of the room. "Let's sit down, huh?"

Dan didn't take his eyes off of Leon, but he nodded, glaring the entire way to his seat with Jeff.

Natalie let out a tight breath, relieved at his swift exit, but then Leon turned and suddenly the anger in his eyes was directed at her.

"Natalie," he began, his voice scarily calm. "What are you doing here?"

She felt like she should answer but when her mouth opened, no words came out. Leon stared at her for a moment, expectantly, before a frown tugged at his lips.

Behind him, people patted his shoulder as they passed, or shook his hand, trying to start a conversation, but Leon ignored them all.

Instead, his eyes dropped to her hands. He sighed heavily, running a hand over his face. Gently, he took her hand in his, giving her a little squeeze.

"You're shaking," he muttered. "Come here."

Her hand still in his, he led her through the crowds.

She was amazed at the sorts of people she passed along the way—the people who stopped to congratulate Leon. From buff, tattooed men, to the sweetest looking, petite women in little sundresses. The Golden Ring seemed to accommodate all kinds of people. Even the guy that Leon had beat came to congratulate him.

It was all a blur of faces until Leon was leading her through a pair of doors and locking it behind them.

She could still hear the quiet chatter of people outside, the low hum of music, as Leon pulled a seat over to her. She blinked, looking around to find herself in what looked like an office.

"Where are we?" she asked.

"My boss's office," he said.

"Are we allowed to be in here?"

"He won't care." Leon waved a hand. In the corner of the room was a duffel bag, which he heaved onto the cluttered desk, not caring about the papers underneath. "I don't like sharing a changing room with those morons. We can hide in here until everyone's cleared out now that my fight's over. He'll be busy closing shop."

Natalie said nothing, only watched as he took a towel and wiped himself before tugging a t-shirt over his neck. She silently mourned the loss of a view, but somehow, Leon in a loose tee was just as appealing.

He turned to face her and crossed his arms.

"Now," he said. "Why are you here?"

She swallowed. "I came looking for you."

"For me? Natalie, do you have any idea what kind of a place this is? You're not even legally allowed in here! And that guy—if I hadn't been there—"

"I was just looking for you!" Natalie interrupted. She didn't like that his voice seemed angry. Mostly, she didn't like that his anger was directed at her. "I haven't seen you in a week."

"So, you come here? Alone?" he exclaimed back.

Natalie frowned. She didn't come here to argue. She didn't expect the conversation to go like this.

She stood then, turning to the door.

"Fine, I'll leave then," she said.

She couldn't even take two steps before his hand was around hers again.

"No," he said. He sighed and she looked back at him. "I'm sorry. Don't go. I was just worried."

She frowned, fully turning to face him, and he continued.

"I didn't expect to see you here, and when I saw you with Dan, I just—I panicked."

He watched her carefully, his gaze so soft on her, she felt her heart skip a beat in the way she thought only happened in movies. She released a breath, unable to resist.

"It's okay," she said. "I shouldn't have come. I didn't expect it to be so busy tonight. I wasn't thinking."

"No. You came for a reason," Leon said.

She hesitated. He was right, of course. Sure, she hadn't seen him in a week, but they'd gone longer without seeing each other before. She'd made a decision to go looking for him tonight.

"You fought really well," Natalie said. She knew she was changing the topic. Leon knew too, but he let her get away with it.

"Of course, I did. My lucky charm was there."

Natalie warmed. "Don't be silly."

"I'm not," he said. He leaned back against the desk and Natalie suddenly felt very small sitting there in front of him. "I was tired. I thought my arms would fall off, but then I saw you and—I don't know. It gave me that burst of—"

"Testosterone?"

Leon barked a laugh. "I was going to say adrenaline, but yeah. That too, probably."

An embarrassed flush spread across her face. "I just meant—when you confronted Dan. I thought you were going to kill him."

"I considered it," Leon said, and when Natalie's face only paled in response, he quickly added, 'I'm kidding. I'm kidding. He's just a big idiot, honestly. It's not the first time he's caused a bit of trouble. Jeff was probably keeping an eye on him the whole time anyway."

Jeff, the security guard. The mention of him sparked a memory in Natalie.

"He knew who I was," she said.

Leon laughed awkwardly, covering his face with a hand for a moment. "God, that's embarrassing."

"Did you..." she didn't know how to phrase it without sounding conceited. Did you tell him about me? What if he said no? Natalie would never recover.

"You just came up in conversation one day," Leon said. "I swear, I talk about other things sometimes."

Natalie fought a growing smile. She liked the idea of her coming up in conversation where Leon was concerned.

"Anyway, don't change the topic," he said. His expression sobered into something more serious. "You were looking for me."

She nodded.

When it was clear that she wasn't going to offer any further information, he did it for her.

"Because," he began, "of your fight with your dad."

She swallowed hard, then nodded again.

"I knew I saw you that night," she said.

He shrugged.

"I knew I wouldn't see you again for another week," he explained. "I wanted to see you one more time until then."

"But you left," Natalie said. When she blinked, she felt like she was transported back to that night. "You heard us arguing."

His face hardened. It seemed like he was no longer looking at her, no longer seeing her, his gaze growing distant and faraway.

"I did," he confirmed.

Her heart dropped. She'd expected it, but now, hearing the words from his mouth, she didn't know what to think. Thinking back, she could remember every word of the argument.

She remembered the things her dad had called him. She remembered denying ever speaking to him.

She felt embarrassed.

"Leon," she began. "The things I said, I didn't mean them."

He was silent for a moment and then said, "You mean how you said that you don't know me? That's fine, Natalie. You said what you had to say."

"So, then..." she trailed off, unsure what she wanted to say. Well, she knew what she wanted to say. She wanted to ask why he was upset, but he wasn't really upset, was he? He was just sitting there, with that faraway look in his eyes.

She watched his throat bob, his jaw tick, and then he pushed off the desk, shaking his head.

"I just hate that you had to say that," he said finally. "Your dad—he doesn't like me. He doesn't think of me as someone who... I don't know. He doesn't want you to associate with me."

"But who cares what my dad thinks?" Natalie added.

"I do," Leon replied immediately. "I want him to think of me as—as someone good. Not as a drug dealer or whatever."

Natalie frowned. She couldn't understand it. Why did it matter to Leon what her dad thought? It barely even mattered to her, and she was his daughter. But seeing that look on his face, that muddle of disappointment and frustration, she knew it mattered a great deal to him.

"Is that why you left?" she asked slowly. Leon shrugged.

"I didn't know what to say after that—how to face you," he said. "I didn't realise you saw me leave. I would've turned around. Explained myself. You were probably worried."

She nodded and he sighed, moving closer.

"I'm glad you came here," he said.

They were silent for a moment. Natalie couldn't even blush at his words. He still had that distant look on his face, like he was thinking about too many things at once. Natalie knew that look well.

She felt the need to explain.

"My dad is always like that," she said. "He's like that about everything. Nothing will ever be good enough for him. Just—don't worry about him. I'm almost eighteen. I can make my own decisions."

The words tasted bitter in her mouth.

Could she make her own decisions? If she thought about the past year of her life, she could pick out all of the decisions she'd made on one hand. All of them involved Leon.

Well, it didn't matter.

Leon didn't need to know that she was her father's puppet on strings. She was just weak. She couldn't bear to make any decisions that she inherently knew her parents wouldn't approve of.

She glanced at his face and noticed that her words had made no impact on him. She wondered if they'd sounded just as empty on her voice as they'd sounded in her head.

Feeling brave, she stepped forward. Her hand brushed the top of his.

"I'm not ashamed of you," she said.

He met her eyes then.

"I'm glad my parents found out," she continued. "I'm glad we met."

He watched her. His eyes were so trained on her face that she felt her bravado fade, replaced with her usual shyness. She refused to look away, though.

His lips twitched.

Finally, that distant look had vanished.

His hand flipped and, in a flash, he wound his fingers around hers.

"Sounds like everyone's cleared out," he said, nodding towards the door. "Should we have a look?"

She didn't even have time to nod before he was leading her back out to the main area. They burst through the doors, finding that he was right—the crowds had cleared out.

All that remained was the empty ring and a cleaner in the corner, sweeping up the last few dirty napkins from the floor. Leon nodded in greeting before smiling at Natalie.

"We have the place to ourselves," he said.

She followed him, her hand still in his, towards the ring. Ducking under the ropes, he finally released her and sat on the floor, legs splayed out in front of him.

She looked down at him, feeling awkward standing above him.

"Well?" he said. "Do you have places to be?"

Natalie laughed. "Nowhere but here."

He patted the floor beside him, and she took it as her cue to sit. She was cautious at first, sitting at an almost-diagonal from him, leaving a decent amount of space between them.

"I can think of one place you should probably be at this time, instead of here," Leon remarked as she took her seat.

"Really? I can't," she teased.

"Don't you have school in the morning?"

"Don't you?"

"Ah," he said, snorting. "You got me there."

He stretched, rolling his shoulders, and tilting his head side to side. Natalie watched him, liking the way his neck looked when he did that. His biceps, still swollen from the fight, looked as though they wanted to burst from his t-shirt sleeves.

"I'm going to be so sore in the morning," he said. He glanced at Natalie, catching her mid-yawn. "Tired?"

She smiled sheepishly. "A little."

It was her turn to stretch now. She stretched her legs out and lifted her arms up, yawning and stretching her body out like a cat.

Rather than returning to her sitting position, she moved to lie down, when Leon stopped her.

"The ring is filthy," he said, placing a hand on her arm to stop her from lying down.

Before she could say that it was alright, that she was too tired to care, he was shifting behind her and hooking his arms under hers. With one swift pull, he tugged her onto his lap. He lounged on the floor, resting on his elbows, with her on top so that half of her body was lying on his.

"Better," he said simply, as if Natalie's heart hadn't stopped functioning.

She could feel every bit of Leon beneath her. Every bit. Under her back, his muscles moved when he moved. She thought that if she laid very still, she could probably feel his heartbeat beneath her ear.

And she wouldn't admit this out loud, but he smelled amazing. How that was possible after a literal boxing match, she wasn't sure. She wasn't sure about anything. She was ninety percent sure she was dreaming right now.

It was moments like these that Natalie would reply in her head a million times, wondering how Leon saw her. Moments like these that blurred that line between them.

"I don't think I'll be tired for hours," he said quietly. "So much adrenaline, you know?"

Oh, she knew.

She craned her neck, looking up to see his face. He stared into the distance of the long-gone crowd, a sort of light in his eyes. She knew he was reliving the fight.

She'd only caught a glimpse of him fighting, and even that had amazed her.

Natalie was never one for sports, but she felt sure that not every athlete looked like that during a match—like it was all he lived for. Even though he wasn't smiling during the match, she could feel it in the way his eyes looked, in the pure concentration in his face.

Even now, she could feel it in the way his voice sounded when he talked about the match—the way his eyes lit up when they stepped up to the ring.

She felt weird inside.

"I think," Natalie began before she could stop herself, "I don't want to do medicine."

She could hear her voice echo in the empty room. The cleaner in the corner was long gone now. When Leon spoke, she could feel it reverberate into her back.

"Why not?"

"It's different from what I expected," she said, the words just flowing out of her now. "I think... I don't like science as much as I thought I would. It's not as interesting as the people-stuff. And I don't like blood. It makes me want to vomit."

"I've noticed," Leon said, laughing. "When you patch me up, you turn pale, you know? Like you're about to faint. Always wondered how you'd be a doctor like that."

"I didn't think about that stuff when I was a kid and I dreamt it all up," she said, her voice turning quiet. She'd never admitted this before out loud. "I didn't think about the blood and the reality of it all. I was so focused on the helping people side of it, I didn't think about the medicine side. I just—I don't think I want to do it anymore."

"You don't have to do it if you don't want to," Leon said. His hand reached up, brushing hair out of her face. She frowned.

"Don't I?" she mumbled.

He was right, in a way. But ever since the day that she'd proudly announced to her parents that she wanted to be a doctor, it felt like she had to.

At first it was fine. Her parents would buy her books about anatomy, and they'd watch medical dramas on TV with her. They paid for her to get a tutor and let her use their credit card for a subscription to some science website. She still had a stuffed toy in the shape of an anatomical heart.

But then she got older, and those medical dramas went from G-rated to R-rated, and when those surgical scenes came on—it hit her. Literally. The nausea, the dizziness—she was officially squeamish.

For a while, she thought maybe she could get into a field where she never had to see blood, but that wasn't how medical school worked. And then she thought she'd grow out of it. She didn't.

It was fine. She could work on it. Exposure therapy, and whatnot. But then she hit senior school and with that came senior science and—God she hated biology and chemistry.

It wasn't a matter of grades. She was top of her class, but that didn't stop her from hating it.

And now her parents had spent all this money and had all these expectations—how could she let them down?

"Natalie," Leon said. One of his hands drifted down her arm, stopping just over her own hand. She shifted, blinking up at him.

"Just checking if you fell asleep," he teased, meeting her eye. "I wouldn't know how to get you home."

She laughed. Or she tried to laugh. She was so tired; it came out more like a breath.

"I'm awake," she said. "For now."

"Maybe we should get you home," he suggested, though he made no effort to move.

Natalie shook her head immediately. "No. I don't want to go home. Not yet."

"Well, I can't have you falling asleep on me. Keep talking," he said.

"Talking about what?"

"Anything. Why did you want to be a doctor in the first place?"

Natalie snorted. She remembered it like it was yesterday. It was the memory that got her through Year 11 Biology and Extension Maths.

"When I was a kid, I got sick," she said, her voice thick with sleepiness. "Fever, rash, spots. It was just chickenpox, but a week later, half my face stopped working. It's like, it just froze."

"Bell's Palsy?" Leon asked.

"You know it?"

He laughed. "Don't act so surprised. I can know things too. A couple of boxers I know had it. Scared me the first time I saw it. Thought he was having a stroke or something. Almost switched sports in that split second."

Natalie nodded, remembering her parents' reactions to her drooping face that day. "I was terrified. We went to the hospital, and it all ended up being fine, but we were so scared. It took a month for my face to go back to normal, but we thought for a while there that it would never go away. The doctors were so nice to me that day, so reassuring. I never forgot it."

"So, they inspired you? That's nice."

"Yeah. Well—to be fair, it wasn't only the doctors. Everyone was so nice to me. The nurses would bring me toys and colouring-in sheets all the time, and then I had to go to physiotherapy and speech therapy, and we just played a bunch of games."

"What, the physiotherapist wasn't cool enough to inspire you?" Leon teased.

Natalie laughed, shaking her head. If she weren't lying on his lap right now, she'd probably elbow him in the ribs, but she was too scared to move, lest she feel more of his body against her than her heart could handle.

"I don't know," she said. "I guess it just sounded cooler to be a doctor."

She'd never thought about it before. Sure, nurses were probably around blood and guts as much as doctors were, but the others? She hummed.

"Well, it doesn't matter," she continued. "I can't turn back now. I'll just have to figure out how to do surgery with my eyes closed."

"Just don't test it out on me," he replied, chuckling. There was a moment's pause before he sat up a bit straighter and patted Natalie's shoulders. "Alright. We'd better get going before you really fall asleep here."

Natalie pouted but knew he was right. It was getting late and as the silences between them stretched, she could feel her eyes drift further and further shut. With a long sigh, she heaved herself up, taking Leon's hand to stand.

"How did you get here?" he asked, dusting himself off.

"I walked," she said. "Why? Are you going to walk me back?"

Leon fished out his keys and swung them around one finger, grinning. "I've got one better."

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

I really wasn't expecting this chapter to be so long lmao I hope you liked it! Thank you for all the love on the last one!!! Sorry for leaving you on a cliff hanger hehe

I'm trying to post a chapter every day to try and force me to keep up with my writing so stay tuned! xx