by JJ Knight
“Not exactly. She wrote down where you were going.”
“Were you at my house?”
He hesitates. “Will you come down?”
“No.”
“You have to come out eventually. I know where Delores parked her car.”
Damn it. “I need you to go away, Parker. For good.”
That gets silence.
“I mean it, Parker. The people around you with that — that sport. They aren’t good for us. It’s not right. You can’t put us at risk.”
I think of the message. Be convincing.
Parker sounds so angry that when he speaks again, fear spikes through me. “You will not keep me from Lily. You can cut me out all you want, but I will not leave her.”
“It’s her I’m thinking about!”
“No, you’re not. She’ll be devastated. You know it.”
I glance at the bathroom door as if Lily will walk in any second. I think of her, and the pink gloves, and not seeing Parker again. But there’s nothing I can do.
“I’ll cancel the child-support payments,” I say.
His voice explodes on the line. “It is NOT about the money!”
I hang up. I don’t know what else to do. I quickly dial zero for the hotel desk.
A chipper female voice says, “Marriott, how may I assist you?”
“Can you hold all calls to my room, please?” I ask.
“Yes, of course!”
“Thank you.” I hang up again, and for good measure, I click the line back open and stick it under a towel so the angry beep of the busy signal can’t be heard.
When I come out of the bathroom, Lily is sitting on Delores’s lap.
“NOW are you going to explain things?” Delores asks.
I shake my head for no. I walk over to them and lift Lily up. She resists for a second, but I pull her legs on either side of my hip. She’s almost too big to carry like this anymore, but she immediately fits against me like she always did.
I remember the first time I shifted her to sitting at my waist, switching her from the normal baby cradle in my arms. She was around six months and strong. She wouldn’t let me hold her sideways anymore unless she was asleep.
Being a mother has definitely been the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Amazing, but hard. And it’s about to get worse. At some point, I’ll have to explain about Parker.
“Is Daddy coming here?” she asks.
“No,” I say simply.
“Why didn’t you let me talk to him?”
“I needed to tell him something very important,” I say.
“In the bathroom?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Did you have a potty accident?” she asks soberly.
“Something like that,” I say.
“That’s bad,” she says.
I squeeze her against me. “You want to watch cartoons?” I ask.
“Really?” she asks.
“Really.”
“All I want?”
“For one hour,” I say.
“Okay.” She scrambles away from me and onto the bed. Within two seconds she has the remote and is flipping through channels. I’m amazed at how easily she adapts to technology. I have to stare at buttons forever to figure out how to work them.
She finds SpongeBob. I glance at the door. The front desk wouldn’t dare tell Parker which room I’m in. I seem to remember some trick in a movie about asking the operator to call and you could figure out which one it is. But I don’t remember how it worked or if it was just some Hollywood fiction.
“Sit by me,” Lily says.
I come around the bed to settle in beside her. I’ve just kicked my legs up when I see something white come through under the door. Delores sees it too.
“Probably the receipt,” I say, although I can tell by the torn ragged edge that it won’t be. I walk over to pick it up.
One side is half a flyer for karaoke hour at the bar downstairs. On the back in Parker’s handwriting are the words “Downstairs in five. Or I’m coming through this door.”
I glance down at my clothes. I’m still wearing my outfit from yesterday. I haven’t had a shower, or a change. I have nothing but my purse.
“Would you like me to get you a chocolate bar?” I ask Lily. “Cartoon candy breakfast?” It’s the treat above all treats.
“YES YES YES!” she says excitedly. “No nuts!”
“Got it. No nuts.”
“There’s a lovely little cafe next door,” Delores says. “Full breakfast.”
“Maybe later,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”
Delores frowns and resumes her knitting. She’s holding her tongue for now, but I know I can’t rely on it much longer.
I pull my wallet from my purse and tuck my phone in my pocket. I don’t bother to even run my fingers through my hair. This isn’t about looking good. It’s about getting Parker to leave.
But even I have my doubts. I’m pretty sure Parker will be impossible to convince.
Chapter 4: Parker
I don’t know if Maddie will even show. The flower sofas in the lobby make me want to gag with happy sunshine overload. If I had a knife on me, I would slice the cushions to ribbons.
The elevator dings, and I turn for the thousandth time to see if it will be Maddie.
This time it is.
She’s still wearing the brown shirt and jeans from yesterday. Her hair is tied up in a loose ponytail, curly bits framing her face. I’ve been so worried and pissed off and anxious since yesterday that I’ve forgotten what it feels like to see her come into a room.
There’s no way I can let her go.
Maddie sees me on the sofa and heads my direction. I’m hoping she’ll sit close, so I can hold her hand, touch her in some way. I want to believe that she is okay, that she’s real. Everything that’s happened since the fight feels like one long horrible dream.
She sits in a chair opposite the sofa and perches on the edge as if she might fly away with the smallest provocation.
“Don’t you have another fight to train for?” she asks. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Maddie. Please.”
She doesn’t budge. “It’s got to be a terrible inconvenience to come all the way to New York.”
I don’t know what she’s doing. It’s like we never stood in front of that wedding chapel and thought about how to get Lily there to be the flower girl. It’s like she’s done.
“Please tell me why you bolted like that. What were the messages you got?”
Her face is a mask. Calm. Fake. “Just reminders that I needed to be home.”
“And why aren’t you there? Why are you at a hotel?”
“I couldn’t get a flight into the city. I had to come into Newark.”
She isn’t going to give in. I have to break through this. Find out what is really going on. “Maddie, please. Talk to me.”
She stands up. “There’s nothing to talk about. We’re just back to square one. You can video chat with Lily. But no visits for six months. You agreed to that. Six months.”
I know what she’s talking about. When we set up the child support, I would only see Lily once every six months. At the time I didn’t care.
“That’s not what we’ve been talking about these past few days,” I say. I fumble in my pocket for the ring box that I’ve carried since the night of the fight.
She backs up. “But that’s what we’re going to do.”
I leap up from the sofa. “Why are you doing this?” I try to take her arm, but she jerks it away.
The woman at the desk looks over at us.
“Don’t make a scene,” Maddie says, her voice low. “No judge with half a brain would let you see her at all if they find out what just happened.”
My worry and concern explode into rage. “You will NOT threaten me about my own child!” My voice echoes on the walls.
Now the woman has a phone in her hands.
“We’re done here,” Maddie says. “Try not to destr
oy Lily’s privacy with your carelessness.” She heads toward the elevator. “I’m keeping your contact blocked except for Thursday afternoons. That’s when you can call her.”
“This isn’t right!” I shout at her. I don’t give a shit anymore if the desk clerk calls the cops. I’ve got the ring box in my hand and I hold it up.
“I thought you were going to marry me!” I say.
Maddie pauses. “I thought you were going to quit fighting. Look what happened when you didn’t.” Then she hurries away, not to the elevator, but to the stairs. In just a few seconds, she is gone.
I drop back onto the sofa. This can’t be happening. I won’t let it. I stand up again, aiming to follow her. The clerk watches me, phone in hand.
This isn’t the way to go about it. Not right now. Maddie is running scared from something. I have to find out what it is. And I have to fix it.
Until then, I don’t even deserve her.
Chapter 5: Parker
I fly back to LA the same day. I need a plan. And people to give me advice.
Jo meets me at the airport. She’s just in from Vegas.
“Colt’s sending a car for us,” she says. “How’re you holding up?”
I shrug. My chest feels hollow. Either way, with or without Maddie, I would have been back in LA. But I expected to be packing up, heading to New York for good. Now I’m just here.
Jo threads an arm through mine. “It’s going to be okay. You have no idea how much Colt and I went through trying to get together.”
I still don’t see any way for this to work out. Maddie wants me to give up fighting. Fine. But I can’t erase the past. At this point, I don’t know if Striker and Lani will give up even if I do cancel the fight with Viper for the league slot.
Only when the familiar city is whizzing by do I start to really make some headway on thinking this out.
“I have to find out for sure who is threatening Maddie,” I tell Jo. “If it’s Lani, she has really gotten to her.”
“Maddie’s been through a lot the last few days,” Jo says. “Give her some time to sort things out.”
But I don’t want to give her time. I want everything to be the way it was supposed to be. I tug the ring box out of my pocket and pop it open. I never even got to show it to Maddie. I never got to ask her the most important thing.
Jo glances over at it. “Pretty ring,” she says. “You’ll get your chance.”
I’m not so sure.
We pull up in front of Buster’s Gym.
“Everybody’s here,” Jo says. “Well, except Brazen. Your trainer was still gambling when I left him.”
“We were supposed to stay in Vegas through Tuesday,” I say absently. “Let him have his fun.”
The driver gets out and opens Jo’s door. “Your fight with Viper isn’t even scheduled yet,” she says. “So you have plenty of time to train.”
I slide along the seat and get out. I’m not sure I’ll even do the fight, but I go along. “Is Colt’s team going to manage this? Or Brazen?”
“Colt didn’t say. You’ll need more than just Brazen, though. This isn’t small time anymore.” She leads us into the gym. “You’ll need a media coordinator. Possibly your own medic. If you and Colt end up fighting on the same nights, Doc won’t be able to go both places.”
Even more to think about. I pull open the door to Buster’s and let Jo in ahead of me.
I should probably get this out there. “I don’t know if I’m even going to fight,” I say.
“You still thinking of taking the security job in her building?” Jo asks.
The lemon smell of Buster’s Gym is familiar and comforting. No one’s in the front room.
“I don’t know if I still can. Maddie said she was going to block my messages other than Thursdays, when I can talk to Lily.”
Jo stops and turns around. “She can do that? Hold you to Thursdays?”
“It’s part of our agreement. I signed it a long time ago.”
Jo frowns. “I think you should go train in New York. Stay close.”
“Maddie won’t like that.”
“Why am I arguing the side that you should be on?” She tilts her head at me. Jo is shorter than me, but right now I feel intimidated by her gaze. She’s stronger than I am, mentally. I can see it. Nothing gets to her.
“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s so complicated.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” she says. “Come on. Get changed. Punching something always makes me feel better.”
“That’s why we do what we do, isn’t it?” I head toward the men’s dressing room.
“It is,” she says softly. “It really is.”
Colt is inside the changing room, stuffing a bag inside a locker.
“Hey,” he says. “Didn’t go well with Maddie, I take it.”
I jerk open a metal door to a locker. “Nope.”
“Brazen’s given me clearance to handle the details with Viper. You in or not?” Colt sits on a bench that runs alongside the row of gray metal lockers.
“Maddie won’t even talk to me. I guess there’s no reason to quit the fight until I know for sure.” I pull a pair of fight shorts from my bag, but instead of changing, I sit on the other end of the bench. “Shit.”
“You think if you stop the fight, Maddie will be all right?”
“She won’t even talk to me. Blocked her phone. Someone has got to be threatening her.”
“I can call Jax.”
“No. I just need to find Lani, or whoever it is. Shut them down. Shut this whole thing down.”
“I can put off Viper’s team on scheduling the fight. There’s no rush on this.” Colt stands up. “Give it a few days. See if Maddie comes around.”
“That’s what Jo said.”
“Jo knows,” Colt says. “Now suit up and come hit something.”
“Jo said that too.”
Colt laughs. “Then what the hell are you doing in here talking to me?”
He heads out.
My suitcase doesn’t fit in a locker, so I shove anything valuable into the space and leave the bag itself in a corner. Brazen still has all the gear, but I can borrow some gloves. Punching something does sound good.
The banging of the weights and blur of a speed bag are calming, like I’m home. I head to the back room, where Jo and Sammy are sparring in the cage. More of Jo’s girls are on a mat, propped in a plank position.
Cam is there. I haven’t talked to her since that day on the bus when she showed me the video that went viral. I never thanked her for making that compilation of all my wins. A big reason I got the fight in Vegas was due to her work.
I head over to them. Killjoy is standing near them, holding a stopwatch. “Ninety more seconds, and no whining,” he says.
One girl’s face is beet red, vivid against her white-blonde hair.
Cam has her chin tucked down, but her arms are shaking. She keeps dipping down and then straightening again.
I drop next to her in a plank.
“Awesome,” Killjoy says. “Nobody gets to quit until Power Play does.”
A chorus of groans comes from the girls.
“Don’t make me add thirty seconds for whining.”
“Shift your elbows out a little,” I say. “It’ll give you a new set of muscles to help out.”
Cam spreads her arms and nods.
“I wanted to thank you for that video. I haven’t seen you.”
She turns her head. Bits of her curly mop have come out around her forehead. Her face is also bright from the effort of holding the plank. “You’re welcome,” she says.
Killjoy’s voice is a boom as he says, “Flirting gets you an extra thirty seconds.”
Cam looks back down at the mat.
“You’re a real prince, you know that, Killjoy?” I say up at him.
“Thirty more,” he fires back.
“Shut up!” the blonde says.
I stifle a laugh.
Another girl on the other end of the mat col
lapses.
“Get back in there!” Killjoy shouts.
She kneels for a second, shaking out her arms, then returns to her plank.
Killjoy walks down to her, away from us.
“You’re the reason I got the Vegas fight,” I say quietly. “I owe you one.”
Cam turns her head just slightly. “No, you earned that fight. I just made sure people noticed.”
I watch her a minute, her arms trembling again. She shifts positions, in pain but determined to keep it. I admire her tenacity.
The blonde girl falls, shakes, and gets back in it before Killjoy can storm over.
“I hear you might turn down the fight with Viper,” she whispers.
“I might.”
“Why?”
I’m not sure how to answer that. “Just might be time to move on. Lots of people think it’s time for me to do something more respectable.”
“Nobody here wants that,” Cam says. “Sounds like you’re listening to the wrong people.”
“They’re people who matter,” I say.
Cam looks directly at me. “Seems to me that anybody who cares about you would want to see you do what you’re good at. What you love.”
I drop to the mat and roll on my back. I know Cam is right, but Maddie is important too.
“What sort of kindergarten planking was that?” Killjoy shouts. “I’ve got a pet gerbil who can plank longer than you.”
The girls all collapse out of the plank.
“Guess I’m washed up,” I say and jump to my feet. “I’ll leave you to train these new recruits to become the fighting machines I’ll never be.” I pat him on the shoulder.
Before he can say anything else, I head to the weight room. I don’t want to be around all the people I’m going to disappoint if I don’t fight.
And I need to decide what I want. If it’s the league spot, the thing I’ve worked for all my life.
Or if it’s Maddie and how I want to spend the rest of it.
Chapter 6: Maddie
The messages have stopped.
It’s been four days since I got back to New York from Vegas. Three days since Parker showed up at the hotel and I made him leave.
Lily’s back at school. I’ve had to return to work. Delores flat refuses to let me install a security system at home. I’ve considered doing it anyway. It’s not like she’ll rip it out of the wall. But since Parker left, I’ve heard nothing. They must know I’ve done what I was told to do.
