3

Ten months later

RICH FOLLOWED THE GREETER to a booth with an underwhelming view of the diner’s parking lot. He had to remind himself where he even was, the travel had taken such a toll.

Albuquerque. Last week of July. Day before the event he’d been living and breathing for the past eight weeks. Fight night.

Just another match. No big deal. He had to keep thinking that, but in truth it was the chance of a lifetime, like tripping over a pot of gold.

Something about Rich—his personality, no doubt—had rubbed Nick Moreau, the current light heavyweight champ, the wrong way. Rich had responded in kind when asked what he thought of Moreau, and a flame war had caught fire, a back-and-forth Rich had hoped might one day land him a well-publicized grudge match. But when Moreau’s opponent for the big event had fractured a rib in May, the champ had a ready suggestion. “Gimme Estrada. I’ll shut that pretty—bleep—’s mouth for him once and for all.”

A stab at the frigging light heavyweight belt, not even a year after signing. That was nuts.

And to think he’d earned the chance just by being unbearably obnoxious!

The waitress came by, but Rich didn’t need the menu.

“Four egg whites, scrambled, no salt, and four pieces of dry wheat toast.”

She scribbled on her pad.

“And a glass of skim milk and a piece of whatever fruit you got.”

“Banana okay? Anything else you can only get in pie form.”

If only. “Banana’s perfect.”

She departed along with the laminated sheet showcasing whatever deliciousness Rich was missing out on. At least tonight he’d get a steak. A lean, unsalted steak and a side of equally undoctored steamed vegetables.

Still, the weigh-in would be done the next morning, the fight that evening. Then it’d take a team of horses to keep him off the nearest plate of ribs.

When his breakfast arrived, Rich tried to overlay the image of his mother’s bandeja paisa, an obscene Colombian orgy of a meal. Beans, dirty rice, pork, more pork, plantain, avocado, yet more pork... He’d think of these rubbery, tasteless egg whites when he landed his first kick, this sickly, bluish so-called milk when he caught the guy with an elbow. He’d dedicate the fight to the god of fatty, rare steaks and strong beer, and he’d earn himself a knockout, no question.

It was nice to have an hour away from Chris. His manager was a schmoozy weenie, but apparently schmoozing worked—look where it had landed Rich. But he wasn’t an ace at being told what to do. Chris was busy with prefight stuff that morning, leaving Rich free to enjoy his solitude. Trouble was, whenever he had a little solitude, his brain filled the space with distraction. A sort of five-foot-six-ish distraction, with dark blond hair and insanely blue eyes, freckles and a wry half smile.

That always happened when Rich had his sights set on a girl but hadn’t gotten with her yet. He fixated. Like the ribs, he hungered for what he couldn’t have. Or rather, what he’d chosen not to have, because she’d made him pretty certain in the back of that cab, he could’ve had her.

Then he’d gotten the text from Mercer’s number.

Yeah, he should have known that. Too bad Lindsey hadn’t been the one to inform him of it.

Jesus, nearly ten months ago that had happened, and he was still hung up. It made no sense, but he could remember her face better than that of the last woman he’d woken next to, only a few days ago. The road must be making him crazy. Or Lindsey made him crazy. She certainly had that night after the fight—not just the messing around, but the way he opened his mouth when her eyes were on him and...stuff just came out. Stuff he never shared with people, except maybe his mom and sister. Emotions and crap.

The waitress came by. “Anything else?”

“Just the check.”

She tore the item in question from a pad and set it on the table.

“Thank the cook for accommodating my ridiculous eggs,” he said with a smile.

“We’ve been getting lots of weird requests. You must be with the...sorry, I’ve forgotten what it’s called. The kickboxing thing.”

“I’m sure we’ll drive you all crazy tonight, ordering chicken breasts with no skin or oil or salt. Worse than a bunch of supermodels before a runway show.”

She smiled at that, and Rich tried to imagine her naked, just to see if the image banished Lindsey’s smirking face from his head. No such luck. The waitress wandered off, but the only backside preoccupying him was two thousand miles away, for better or worse.

Definitely worse.

Rich wasn’t a saint by anyone’s standards, but it had stung, discovering he’d made out with another man’s woman. His younger self wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but he was older and wiser and generally less of a self-centered dick. Even if he didn’t feel an obligation to the poor jerk—probably out of town on a business trip or something—he had the pride to think he deserved the attentions of a woman decent enough not to cheat on someone.

Weird, though. Lindsey had seemed so like the opposite of that kind of woman. No time for B.S. Hell, the girl was a matchmaker.

Still, none of it kept him from imagining everything he’d opted out of.

He wouldn’t be back in Boston until Christmas, once the last of his three contracted fights wrapped in Cleveland. Three matches in the big leagues in less than a year. Hell of a run. But it was also a hell of an opportunity, and he was in freaky-good shape. If lightning struck, he’d win tomorrow, earn himself a title no one expected him to, and hopefully get to drop that December bout in favor of something a bit further out, maybe even a main event. Even if he lost, he could sleep easy knowing where the cash was coming from to pay his mom’s hospital bills. Knowing there were no financial clouds looming while she recovered from her heart valve replacement... Though it stung that he hadn’t been there to hold her hand. He’d been training, as always, cuffed to his coaches in the run-up to his April match in Vancouver.

It was a stroke of astounding good fortune that he was good enough at what he loved to support his family doing it, and to be a viable age when MMA had all this commercial steam. The chance to make up for everything his father had fallen short on.

Rich’s father had been a small man, in both stature and character. He’d been crippled by a depression Rich had found alternately heartbreaking and infuriating. He knew the depression had come about because the man mourned his homeland, his culture, his identity. But that didn’t make it okay.

Rich’s sympathy had run out at puberty. He’d gotten lucky, though, and stumbled into boxing, a pastime built for seething young men looking for the next best thing to hauling off and punching their fathers in the face.

Now he was twenty-nine—a little old to just be breaking out, but he had a hotter fire under his ass than plenty of these twenty-four-year-olds, and no ego aside from the act he put on for the audience and acquaintances, for everyone but his mother and younger sister. Strip all that bravado away, leave Rich alone with himself—here in this restaurant, in fact—and he felt like little more than a dog. A tough, loyal dog, alternately protective and savage.

It left no room for a life outside the ring and the bonds of his family, but in no time at all, he’d wake up and find he was thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven...past his prime, shunted to the backseat to train or manage younger prospects. A worthy and important role, but one Rich wouldn’t ever take to without bitterness, not the way Mercer had. But he still had five good years or more, hopefully enough to banish the Estradas’ financial worries for good, so his mom could quit giving herself Catholic guilt fits every time she needed a procedure to keep her heart beating.

Every time she cried, another patch of Rich’s heart turned black toward his father, another vertebra calcified, rock-hard, steeling his determination that he’d never be like his dad. Better a strong, dumb dog than a weak, cowering ghost.

He tossed his banana peel onto the plate, fished out some bills and weighted them down with the otherwise neglected saltshaker.

Back to the grind. Back to the routines that kept this body sore and brain quiet, kept his mind off his anger and worry. Kept his muscles taxed and his energy spent, too beat to succumb to any distracting thoughts about Lindsey at night, in whatever anonymous motel room he called his kennel that week.

* * *

“OH, SHUT UP! It’s starting.” Lindsey waved her hands, shushing Brett and Jenna’s conversation about...whatever they’d been talking about. She cranked the volume as the pay-per-view coverage began, heart thumping in her throat.

The announcer ran down the event’s matchups, and she whooped along with Jenna when head shots of Rich and his opponent slid in from either side of the screen, their stats appearing beneath them.

“Wow,” Jenna said. “Second-to-last fight. What a difference a few months make.”

Nine months and three weeks, to be precise, since that fight in Boston. And yeah, a lot had changed.

Jenna was engaged. Mercer had won the money to buy her a ring back in the spring, his first paid boxing match in years. Seemed fast to Lindsey, but the two had been living together since the week they’d met. At this clip, Jenna would be pregnant with twins by Halloween.

Lindsey, on the other hand, was still thoroughly not engaged. So not engaged, in fact, that she and Brett were officially over, even if they’d agreed to share the apartment until Lindsey found a new place she could afford. And in this college town, that wasn’t likely until September rolled around. Five weeks was a long time to cohabit with your ex, civil though things were.

At least work was good. Her own relationship might be over, but she could still drum up enthusiasm for other people’s, and she seemed to be pretty adept at matchmaking. A few of her clients were pains in the butt, but on the whole, she looked forward to going to work. Though some of that could be attributed to her desire to escape her awkward living situation.

Brett stood. “Anything from the kitchen?”

Lindsey handed him her empty beer bottle. “Thanks. And thank you for coming over,” she added to Jenna. “I would’ve thought you’d had it up to your eyeballs with fighting by now.”

“I have to see if Rich wins, live and in color.”

Lindsey nodded, filled as ever by a stupid rush of bad-girlfriend adrenaline at the mention of his name. Though she wasn’t anybody’s girlfriend now.

“And a night out is nice,” Jenna said. “Beats watching at Hooters with the guys from the gym and all that testosterone. You’ve certainly gotten into all this—enough to shell out to watch.”

“Oh, yeah,” Brett said, returning to the couch with two bottles. “You should see Lindsey’s porn stash.”

She rolled her eyes as Jenna’s widened.

Brett passed Lindsey her beer then leaned over to pull open the side table drawer. He plopped a few glossy MMA magazines in Jenna’s lap.

“I see.” Jenna flipped one open, then immediately winced at a photo of a freeze-framed punch.

Lindsey nearly distracted her by mentioning Rich was in that issue, then stopped herself. Best not reveal to either of her couch mates that she knew which page he was on.

Her embarrassment preempted as the first match began, Lindsey took the magazines back, leaned over Brett and shut them in the drawer.

This event had cost her fifty bucks to order—fifty bucks that should probably have been put toward a security deposit or moving van rental. She ought to be absorbing every second of it, but all she could concentrate on was the clock, and how soon Rich’s fight would be starting.

Her crush was ridiculous. And harmless? Now, perhaps. But she had to admit, it may have contributed to her permanently breaking up with Brett. It wasn’t as though she’d thought about Rich while she’d been kissing Brett or anything heinous...but she did occasionally space out on the subway, lost in the memory of those minutes in the back of that cab.

Stupid girl. For all she knew, she’d kissed some other woman’s lover.

Whatever the case, they’d never gone out for that drink. And Rich hadn’t been back to Wilinski’s more than twice in the past six months, too busy training in California. She’d seen him during those visits, but they’d exchanged only passing pleasantries, nothing that indicated they’d shared anything special. Not that they’d been alone and in any position to flirt, but still—there hadn’t been any of that old fire in his eye contact. Something cagey, she’d thought, something more than she’d find in a friend’s gaze, but no hot promises, none of the heat she’d glimpsed that night in October, the wickedness she’d assumed came standard with Rich Estrada.

The opening matches went on forever. She knew a few of the names, enough to have favorites to root for, but she was too antsy to concentrate.

“Popcorn?” she asked Brett and Jenna, not waiting for an answer.

As she stripped the cellophane from the packet in the kitchen, she commanded her heart to slow. For the entire three and a half minutes the popcorn bag twirled in the microwave, she counted her breaths. How dumb, to get this wound up over seeing some man she kind of knew on TV.

Why should her heart hurt this way? Well, probably because she’d been stalking his career for long enough to gestate a baby.

Yeah, stalking—she could admit it. She wasn’t alone in her admiration, only alone in denying it. Rich had a bona fide fan base, a digital harem of noisy groupies who called themselves the Courtesans and swooned about him in tactless, filthy detail on message boards.

Did they go to the events? Follow his fights in person from city to city, not just on-screen? Did they toss themselves at him after the matches, and if so, did he like that? Was his hotel bed warmed by some new admirer every night?

And most important, why should she even frigging care?

She sighed as the microwave beeped, frustrated to the bone. With herself, for having gotten so hung up. With her living situation, and for what was surely going to prove the longest August in history. And from a phone call she’d gotten earlier—her mother calling to say Lindsey’s youngest sister, Maya, was threatening to not go back to high school in September for her senior year. Lindsey had promised to talk some sense into her this weekend. As always, the peacekeeper mitigating others’ drama.

Yet even with all that on her mind, her thoughts wandered back to Rich. His face and mouth, those fingers on her neck. Whatever she felt, it was no glimmer, no silly stirring. It was infatuation like she’d never suffered before, made all the worse by the way they’d parted. Some nights she was tempted to demand his number from Mercer, drink half a bottle of wine and text him, What the heck was in that message that made you stop kissing me?

But for all she knew, the reply she’d get would be, We kissed? When was that? Lindsey who?

She carried the popcorn and a roll of paper towels back through to the living room and settled between her ex-boyfriend and her boss.

“Nearly time,” Jenna said, sitting on the edge of the cushion with her knuckles pressed to her lips. “Oh, God, I hate this stupid sport.”

Brett took over the popcorn, which was just as well. As soon as the announcers began discussing Rich’s match, Lindsey felt sick.

“Should be a close one,” the first announcer said. “Estrada’s been on his game, but can that stack up against Moreau’s experience?”

“It’s going to come down to who’s hungrier for it,” a second announcer declared. “Though the odds in Vegas say Moreau’s belt won’t be going anywhere tonight.”

The screen flashed to backstage prep, to Nick Moreau jogging in place. He was good—a mean-looking thirtysomething from Quebec with a shaved head, a bit of a veteran. Then to Rich, and Lindsey’s heart stopped. A close-up of that handsome profile, his expression stern and set. He stretched his neck and licked his lips, then suddenly he was moving, the camera swiveling to follow as he was ushered through double doors into the dark arena.

“Oh, God, oh, God,” Jenna muttered.

Rich’s cocky, regal shtick hadn’t changed. He walked down the aisle to the same music, welcomed with a mix of cheers and boos as his stats were announced. He was extremely popular with Hispanic fans—and with any woman possessed of eyes and a pulse—but hated by his fair share of enthusiasts, too.

Moreau strode out to some hard-core rock song, minimalist in black warm-ups, his scalp gleaming under the lights.

Lindsey felt a pain in her palm and realized she was clenching her fist hard enough to leave nail marks.

The fighters had stripped to their shorts and gloves, both hopping and jogging in place, keeping warm. Rich shook out his arms and tossed punches in the air.

The announcer went through the rigmarole, rattling through the rules for the three-round match, and the men went back to their corners. A ring girl circled, and with a shout, the fight was on.

“Oh, God,” Jenna said again. If the throw pillow in her lap had been an animal, she’d already have crushed the life out of it.

Lindsey held her breath and bit her lip, hands squished between her clenched thighs.

Rich took the offensive early. Moreau was a more cautious, strategic fighter. Rich baited him with a few quick swipes, but Moreau waited for an opening.

“Oh!” Jenna cried when the first punch landed. It was a soft, harmless jab to Rich’s shoulder, but she buried her face in the pillow all the same. Lindsey teetered at the edge of the cushion.

The two fighters clinched for a few seconds, each landing a couple of good shots.

“Stay on your feet,” Lindsey murmured. “Stay on your feet.” Moreau was good on the mat—a far stronger grappler, even after Rich’s past months of world-class training. Or so she’d read in one of her incriminating magazines.

Rich knocked his opponent with a sharp hook then dodged aside, clearly content to keep this fight upright.

“Good. Good.” How had Mercer survived being in Rich’s and Delante’s corners? Lindsey felt a heart attack brewing just watching from the other side of the country. Yet she could practically feel everything, live and in three dimensions. Hear the crowd all around her as she had at the Boston fight, smell the sweat and feel the heat of the lights and bodies.

“Estrada’s come out strong,” the first announcer observed. “But Moreau’s known for his pacing.” True.

“Be cool,” she muttered. “Save something for the other two rounds.”

“I have no idea who’s winning,” Brett said.

“No one yet.”

By the time the horn blared to end the round, the two men had had a good dance, but neither was the clear favorite. Lindsey shoved popcorn in her face, just to have something to do.

Jenna peeked from behind her pillow. “What happened?”

“They’re both holding steady,” Lindsey said.

Jenna went back into hiding the second the ring girl was done prancing.

Lindsey didn’t know what Moreau’s trainer had said to him during the break, but he came out with a fire under his ass, going right for Rich’s legs. Get him on his back. That’s what he’d been told.

Rich dodged Moreau’s efforts to kick his feet out from under him, and with a solid roundhouse to the ribs he sent the other man stumbling into the chain-link.

“Yes,” Lindsey groaned, hugging the bowl. Her heart punched her ribs with every beat, easily a million times a minute.

Rich sneaked in a flurry of jabs, then took a mean hit to the ear. He gave twice as good as he got, banging Moreau in the ribs with his knee. Thirty seconds before the horn, Moreau hooked him behind the legs and got them onto the ground, but they ended the round in a mutual tangle, neither in danger of submitting. Lindsey gulped a breath when the air horn sounded, the first she’d taken since the fighters had hit the mat.

“Anything?” Jenna asked from behind her pillow.

“Nothing deciding.” But Moreau was probably winning now, if this fight came down to points.

“If Moreau can manage that again, early in the third,” noted the announcer, “we might just have a match on our hands.”

“He better not!”

“Linds.” Brett zapped her a look, the kind you’d send your kid when they lost track of their indoor voice. She shot one back, feeling no need to be ladylike, given the occasion. Especially considering how noisy Brett got whenever the Pats played the Giants.

The third round started. Moreau had gotten a taste for dominating and wanted more. He was going for Rich’s legs, looking to get them back to the mat. Before he could, Rich seized an opening, landing a half dozen serious head shots and taking only a single nasty hook to the cheek. There was blood beside Moreau’s mouth, more of the same slicking Rich’s curled fingers.

“Jesus,” Brett muttered, clearly missing the civility of football.

Then, disaster.

Moreau bent low and caught Rich behind his knee. Rich retaliated with an elbow between Moreau’s shoulder blades and wormed his way out of the clinch. They traded jabs, then Rich nearly snagged an opening, missing Moreau’s ribs with a roundhouse kick but still banging his arm, and hard. Something had happened—the crowd’s collective voice flared in a passionate ruckus, but Lindsey didn’t know why. Had that kick been illegal?

“That’s not good,” the announcer said.

She straightened. “What’s not good? For who?”

Then something strange happened. After a moment of staggered circling and punching, Moreau lunged, looking to take Rich down. And Rich seemed to let him.

She shot to her feet, popcorn jumping from the bowl. “No!”

The men tumbled to the ground, scrambling for position before they even hit the mat. Moreau came out on top and landed three brutal punches to Rich’s face, and panic rose in Lindsey like bile. “No, no, no!”

“Linds, chill.”

She shushed Brett.

The advantage was gone as quickly as it had come. Rich clamped his legs to Moreau’s waist and turned them onto their sides, getting his arm locked around Moreau’s neck. Moreau’s limbs were wild, lashing and kicking, fighting for purchase. They rolled and thrashed, arms and legs a gleaming blur.

“A reckless strategy. Can’t see this ending well for Estrada,” commented the first announcer.

“What? What?”

“Don’t be too sure,” the other announcer said. “He’s not letting up.”

The grappling raged on, and Lindsey couldn’t tell who was in control. Rich, she thought. He had a leg clamped over Moreau’s and an arm pinned, but Moreau had the other flailing, knocking Rich with an odd, awkward thump to the jaw.

The screen shifted to a different angle, mat-level, and Lindsey winced at the agony contorting Rich’s face—agony and unmistakable desperation. For ages it felt as though nothing was happening, the two men locked in a slick knot of jerking muscle. Then at long last, Moreau reached his hand out and smacked the mat. The horn blast was swallowed in the crowd’s roar and the announcer shouting, “And there you have it! Rich Estrada is the winner by submission.”

“If that doesn’t get Fight of the Night, I don’t know what will,” claimed his colleague.

Jenna dropped her pillow in time to scream with Lindsey.

“Quite the match,” quipped the first announcer. “Though you can bet Estrada was hoping for a knockout.”

“A bittersweet victory,” said the other announcer.

“What?” Lindsey froze, not seeing any bitter side to this. “Why?”

Unlike his bested opponent, Rich hadn’t stood. His trainer and some other staff member rushed into the ring and crouched over him.

“What’s going on?” Jenna asked.

“I don’t know. Something happened just before they went down, but...” She fell silent and sat. With help, Rich had gotten to his feet. His foot, rather. He held the other one a couple inches above the mat.

“We’re waiting for confirmation,” the announcer revealed, “but it’s looking like...yes—”

“Looks like what?” Lindsey demanded, throwing popcorn at the screen. A medical official knelt by Rich, messing with his foot.

“Yes, looks like Estrada’s right foot is probably broken.”

“Oh, no,” Jenna said, while Lindsey opted for a fouler expression.

They showed a close-up replay of the moment Rich’s kick slammed the top of his foot square into Moreau’s elbow, the impact looking a hundred times worse in slow motion. She swore again, earning a glare from Brett.

“Calm down, Linds. He won.”

“Do you have any idea how long it takes a foot to heal? It could take a guy out of commission for months—”

“This time last year you didn’t even know what MMA was—now you’re a groupie. Give it a rest.”

A guy with a mike made his way to Rich. “Your second consecutive win since you signed, and your first title. How do you feel?”

“I feel like I just broke my frigging foot.”

“Unusual to see you dominate on the mat.”

“Desperate times,” Rich said, annoyance seeming to give way to exhaustion. One thing was certain—he was not happy. Someone presented him with a flashy gold belt, but he did little more than clutch it to his ribs.

“Anything else before we let you get that foot taken care of?”

Rich said what he did at the end of every match. “Thank you, Mamá. Thank you, Diana.” Then he added something he never had before. “See you soon.”

Lindsey shivered.

The guy with the mike moved on to Moreau as Rich hopped down from the cage with the help of his corner, belt slung over his shoulder.

Jenna shook off her alarm. “Rich is healthy. He’ll be back in no time, I bet.” She stood and replaced the throw pillow.

“You heading out? The main event’s next.” Don’t leave me with Brett.

“I think I’ve hit my threshold for stress. Plus I’ve got a client first thing, and who knows how late Mercer will keep me up rehashing this.”

There was more to Jenna’s hurried exit, though, and Lindsey couldn’t blame her. She and Brett weren’t exactly bringing out the best in each other lately. She went to fetch Jenna’s purse.

“Well,” Jenna said when they met at the door. “At least there’s one rather selfish upside to this.”

“What?”

“We’ll probably get to see a lot more of Rich around the office again.”

“You think?” Lindsey glanced back at the screen, a queasy sensation tumbling around in her stomach. The camera followed Rich as he was led hopping from the arena, supported by his trainer and a medic. His face was pained, glistening with sweat. He didn’t look like a man who’d just won his first title fight. He looked...uncertain.

“I’m sure he’ll come home during his rehab,” Jenna said. “Mercer said he’s really close to his family.”

“Right. Yes.” The coverage had shifted to the next match, leaving Lindsey dangling, feeling too many conflicting things: dread and relief, fear and triumph. Pride. Worry. More emotions than she’d felt in the past month combined. The result of Rich’s injury? Partly. And the thought of him coming home.

“Well,” she managed to say, “that’s something.”

Something that had guilt rising in her middle for all the times before the breakup when Brett had been making the effort to be sweet, rubbing her feet, maybe, and boom! Rich’s hands. No, Brett’s hands—Brett, not Rich. But he’d flashed across her mind, unbidden.

Worst of all, Brett’s kisses had paled for her. She’d kissed Rich for all of three minutes—and a champagne-clouded three minutes at that—full of abandon and bad-idea excitement. Surely she was blowing the experience out of proportion. And yet...Brett had stirred nothing in her by the end, as much as she’d willed her body to respond, and indeed to keep a certain troublesome man out of her mind during intimate moments.

She bade Jenna good-night and shut the door, staring blankly at the pattern in the wood.

Rich is coming home.

And I am so royally screwed.

* * *

HE FUMBLED WITH his crutches and keys and managed to get the heavy glass door open. It was just past five-thirty. The sky was still dark, the city not yet awake.

This wasn’t how Rich had envisioned returning to his home turf, post title-fight victory—limping in at dawn before the gym even opened, dropped off by his little sister on her way to an early shift at the teaching hospital. But the alternative sucked.

The alternative was to take the frigging bus. Show up during regular hours and get heralded as the hometown hero, clapped on the back like some prodigal son. Bad enough the board in front of his mother’s church asked parishioners to pray for his swift recovery.

He was a champion now—and he wasn’t supposed to be. He should have been Nick Moreau’s warm-up bout, a sure-bet title-retention match to keep Moreau’s streak going until the big event in Rio, just after Thanksgiving, where rumor had it a past champ wanted a comeback against him. Now Rich was the light heavyweight champ, such a shock that the promotions outfits were falling all over themselves to get busy making the merchandise no one had expected they’d need. The day after his win they’d taken him to a studio and stripped him to his gloves and belt, propped a crown on his head and photographed him for the cover of his organization’s monthly magazine. There’d be a big thing on the website, too. Prince of Thieves, the headline would read. They’d interviewed him for a couple hours, all about how he’d stolen Moreau’s title from under him.

Overnight he’d gone from sidebar mentions to the front cover. One desperate headlock and he was a somebody. A champion, no matter how green.

Yet Rich didn’t feel like anyone worth cheering. Undefeated record aside, he felt like a failure. What good was a pit bull once its teeth got knocked out?

Back aching, armpits tender, shoulder joints raw, he swung his way down the hall and hopped one laborious step at a time to the basement, unlocking the gym’s double doors.

Smelled just as it always had, he thought, flipping on one set of lights. Same as when he’d first stomped down these stairs at age twelve. You could keep your grandma’s muffins—nothing said nostalgia to Rich like the smell of sweat and leather.

Home.

The thought had guilt squirming in his gut.

He hadn’t been back since March, and a few more improvements had been made. Fresh mats, a few pieces of new equipment in the weights and cardio corner. Maybe he’d helped buy those, earning Wilinski’s a much-needed boost in dues. It should have cheered him, but nothing could, not in this mood.

“The members are out of their minds,” Mercer had told him. “You’d think Anderson Silva was coming to train them.”

“Yeah, right. Tell them they’re off by about six billion wins and nearly as many dollars.”

“You’ll see. Everybody’s going frigging bat-shit.”

Sure. Great.

Bully for them, getting shouted at by a bona fide MMA rising star. But Rich knew the truth. He’d been neutered, the best momentum of his life wrecked by a misstep, a moment quicker than an eyeblink, quick as Moreau’s elbow colliding with Rich’s first metatarsal. Now he was stuck limping around on crutches for the four to six weeks he’d been ordered to stay off his foot, when the last thing he wanted to feel was idle. The last thing he wanted was time, time to heal and to think while his muscles turned soft from disuse.

Time to worry that this funk he couldn’t seem to shake might be depression. His father’s bleak, hateful legacy finally come calling.

He was a trainer again. His job for the past decade, but never his passion. He’d done it for the paycheck and the free membership, for a set of keys that let him seek refuge in this underground sweat-hole in the middle of the night, those times when anger or sadness kept sleep at bay. Now he’d be one of those lazy-ass trainers, shouting orders from the sidelines. And once his bone was healed? Another couple months struggling to get back into the best shape of his life.

Stay off your feet, he’d been told and told and told.

“Shit.”

Maybe this was comeuppance, karma biting him in the ass for turning his back on Wilinski’s, no matter that he’d never meant the exit to be permanent. The gym hadn’t changed aside from those few modest improvements, but it felt worlds different. There were the rings where he used to stalk and pounce, the treadmill he wouldn’t be running on anytime soon.

He could pound on the bags at least. Those might be the key to his sanity, these next few months. His arms worked, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much angst to vent.

Still, he thought, you paid for the surgery. You did more than your old man ever—

“Hey.”

Rich turned to find Mercer crossing the threshold. “Well, well. You’re in early.”

Mercer flipped on the rest of the lights. “Same to you. Didn’t expect to see your ugly face this soon.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Unwilling to let Mercer come to him, Rich met him halfway, arms aching. Mercer’s hug felt as it should have—nothing about it softened by sympathy. It was a relief Rich hadn’t expected to register, not this deeply. He’d never been great at feeling close to guys, but this man was surely the nearest thing Rich had to a brother.

“Look at you,” Mercer said, grinning with obvious pride. “Frigging undefeated pro. How about that?”

“Anybody wants to steal this crown off my head, they gotta do worse than break my foot.” He cast his gaze around the space. “Looking good down here.”

“It’s getting there. Give it a few months and the Rich Estrada Memorial Women’s Locker Room’ll be up and running.”

He had to smile at that. “Memorial? I’m crippled, not dead.”

“You’re not crippled, either. By the time we start welcoming women, you’ll be back to your old self.”

“Yeah. We’ll see.” Four months to get back into fighting shape...sounded like a life sentence with this depression dogging him, making it so hard to see the bright side of anything.

“I got plans for you,” Mercer announced. He was doing his best to act as though Rich’s homecoming was no walk of shame, but there was strain behind the blasé attitude.

“What plans are those?”

“Keep you off your feet.”

He shook his head. “If I hear that one more frigging time—”

“Keep you off your feet and work on that broken-down game of Twister you call grappling,” Mercer interjected.

Rich mustered a grudging smile. “Not the worst idea.” If he was careful with his foot, maybe that wasn’t such a bad use of his time off.

“Got a new jujitsu trainer lined up,” Mercer said. “Nearly a done deal.”

“’Bout time. He’s guaranteed to be better than either of us.”

“She,” Mercer corrected.

Rich raised a brow. “Oh-ho. You tell her she’s stuck changing in the lounge until the spring?”

“I’m sure she’s dealt with worse on the road.”

“Who?”

“Penny Healy.”

Rich laughed. “No. Way.” He’d met Penny—or Steph, as she preferred to be called outside the ring. She was a kick-ass fighter, and a Massachusetts native. They’d hit it off when they’d both had matches in Vancouver. She’d told him she was looking to retire and get into training full-time. He’d given her Mercer’s number, never imagining anything would come of it.

“That girl can do better. How’d you talk her into joining the Basement of Misfit Toys?”

“She wanted to move back to Mass. And I think she likes the challenge of coming on board during the whole coed transition.”

“Lucky us. I’ll be delighted to roll around with her.”

Mercer gave him a look.

“Training-wise. Though I’ll remind you some of us still have a pulse, even if Jenna’s made a decent man of you. You gonna take her last name, by the way?” he teased. “Monty’d be dancing in his grave to know you wound up a Wilinski in the end.”

Mercer checked his phone’s clock. “Lemme show you the new computer system before the early birds show up.”

Rich trailed him to the office. It looked less dreary than it had when he’d last been here, and their ancient software for tracking dues and schedules had been upgraded to something vastly better.

“You’ve been busy.”

“Thanks to a boost in membership. Thanks to you.”

“And Delante. Watched his fight in Reno. That kid’s a frigging force.”

“I think we’ve lost him forever to L.A.”

“He was too big for this place.”

“So were you.”

A fresh stab of shame caught Rich in the gut. “Then what am I doing back here?”

“Gracing us with your majesty’s presence,” Mercer offered, then smiled. “Hope you can cope without a nutritionist and masseuse and whatever space-age equipment they got out west.”

Rich cast the gym a long look through the office door. “Nah. This’ll do.”

“Bread and water,” Mercer said, echoing their late mentor. “Anything more and you’ll start mistaking the prison for a spa.”

“And then what incentive is there to escape?” Rich finished. He sighed, some darkness lifting, making room for grim resignation. “Fine. Let’s get my goddamn sentence started.”

* * *

THE DAY DIDN’T start off too badly. Routines hadn’t changed much, and Rich had never been a morning person. In the old days when he had to open, he’d shouted a lot and sipped his coffee until his muscles woke up around ten or eleven. This felt much the same, only on crutches, plus with every goddamn member who came through the door clapping his arm and wanting to rehash the title match.

He slapped a grin on his face and took it like a man.

By lunchtime, he was restless. He hid in the office under the pretense of finding his feet with the new system, but really he was fed up with everybody. At one-thirty he sneaked out in search of food, hopping up the steps to the ground floor. Twenty-two steps. Funny how he’d never counted before. And funny how he’d never appreciated how many that was.

In the foyer, his angst shifted. From frustration to uncertainty in a ragged heartbeat as he swung himself toward the exit. He slowed as he reached the glass windows that fronted the Spark offices—Jenna’s territory. Lindsey’s, too. He’d known he’d be seeing her, but... He was feeling too much already, without piling that old tangle of emotions on top of it.

The blinds were open and he glanced in.

Oh, shit. There she was. In profile, facing away, talking to Jenna.

She was just as he’d remembered. And what a kick in the nuts it was, the way simply seeing her affected him. A glimpse of her smooth blond hair, her pink cheeks. That smirk, even directed at Jenna as it was now, did crap to his brain. What he’d give to see her gazing up at him in bed, wearing that smile.

Rich was used to women looking at him. Tall and built as he was, he had a polarizing effect on the fairer sex, and their stares nearly always said one of two things. It was either, Sweet Jesus, take me now or You are ridiculous. The funny thing was, Lindsey’s eyes said both those things at once. Skepticism and lust all jumbled together, as if she wanted him, but wished she didn’t.

And he understood why she wouldn’t want to. That reason’s name was Brett, he’d heard in passing.

Maybe a few drinks had had her ready to ignore such a technicality that night in the cab, but Rich wasn’t nineteen anymore. He’d found some semblance of honor, somehow, from someplace. All was fair in love and war, but only between single parties. It burned him to think he’d come close to being nothing more than a slip of her better judgment.

Part of him wanted to march in there and sit right down on the edge of her desk.

You owe me a drink.

That’s what he wanted to say, but that couldn’t come before So, you still with somebody? And indelicate though Rich was, he couldn’t bring himself to ask. Couldn’t even bring himself to wait for the eye contact, not from those blue ones that drilled inside his skull and sucked all his vulnerabilities out through his mouth. And he had way too many vulnerabilities just now.

He locked his gaze at the exit and headed for the street, as fast as his crutches could carry him.