Which he’d then destroyed.
“Hey, guys,” he said as he passed the cage.
“How’s Dane?” Billy asked, leaning over the side.
News of the fight and the incident were all over every sports station that morning, and he hoped the guys wouldn’t pay too much attention to it all. They needed to be there for Dane. He was going to need all the support he could get. “I really don’t know much yet, but I’ll let you guys know what I find out okay? Try not to worry for now.”
Billy nodded.
“Your dad is in the office,” Carlos said.
Of course he was. The day wasn’t shitty enough already.
Walking in, he felt like a twelve-year-old kid again. “Hi, Dad.”
“I guess you know why there’s reporters outside.”
Everyone knew by now. “I was Dane’s phone call last night. Walker and I went down to the station. He’s pretty messed up, but Walker says as long as his bloodwork comes back clean, he should be . . .”
His father slammed the desk in front of him. Silencing him.
He clamped his lips together.
“I don’t care about Dane. I care about this gym, your career, your upcoming title match—the one you seem to have forgotten about.”
“I haven’t forgotten.”
“You also haven’t called the gymnastics trainer I told you to contact over a month ago.”
He hadn’t even remembered it until that very second. “I know. I’ve been distracted.” Understatement.
“Well, get undistracted!”
He swallowed hard. “Yes, sir. I understand.”
“I don’t think you do. What did I say about letting Connor back here? I said it would be a disaster and it was. I told you letting that actress play around in here was a mistake, and I don’t even need to ask where you were last night. So tell me something, Tyson—what the fuck are you doing?”
“Dad, I’m sorry. I’m focused on my fight now.” He had less than a week to get it together. After all of the hard work he’d put into his career, he refused to just let it all slip away in this landslide of destruction. “And this thing with Dane . . .”
“This thing with Dane is ending now. We are going to let that annoying reporter in and we’re going to release a simple statement: Dane Hardy is no longer affiliated with our gym. We offer our deepest condolences to the Consuelos family for their loss. The end. No more. Got it?”
His mouth dropped. His father couldn’t be serious. He expected Tyson to turn his back on his fighter when he needed him most? His friend? “Dad, Dane’s kick was a legal head shot . . .”
“Save it. We are done doing things your way. Dane is out.” He stood and opened the office door.
“No, he’s isn’t,” he said firmly.
His father stopped.
“I’m not turning my back on him.”
“You’re willing to ruin this gym’s reputation for some fighter who should have known better?” he asked angrily.
“It will look even worse if we walk away from him.”
His father stared at the display case on the wall. “Everything I’ve ever done was for this family, for you. And right now, I need you to be the son I raised and do what I’m asking you to do.”
“You raised me not to quit and I don’t. I’m not quitting on Dane either.”
Without a word, his father turned and stormed out of the gym, holding the door open for the reporter, who rushed in, followed by her cameraman.
Great. It had taken a whole team of people to bury him in this mess, and now he was on his own clawing back out.
Chapter 12
He remembered one of his father’s trainers saying years ago that the worst shots are the ones you aren’t expecting. You have no time to prepare for their blow and the impact they deliver. The worst emotions are the same. They come out of nowhere knocking you to your knees . . . and you go down.
Opening the door to his apartment hours later, he finally understood what the guy had meant. A pair of his running shoes sat blocking the entrance and he almost tripped over them. Picking them up, his sighed. The laces were gone.
And so was Connor.
A discarded needle lay on the floor next to the couch and he threw his shoes across the room. He ran a hand over his head, standing there, without a clue what to do next. He’d put off confronting Connor the night before and that morning because he’d considered Parker’s words—that this was Dane’s fault for taking the fight. She was right. Dane would have found this opportunity to screw up his life even without Connor’s help, but his brother still had to learn to stay out of people’s business.
Looked like that wouldn’t be an issue anymore.
Grabbing a plastic bag, he picked up the needle from the floor, wrapped it, and tossed it into the trash. That was it. His brother was gone. He had no intention of getting his life back on track. He should have known better than to think otherwise. Maybe giving people the benefit of a doubt, being hopeful for a better outcome, trusting they would do the right thing was all bullshit.
Certainly seemed that way.
He went into his bedroom and his heart sank ever further as he noticed the closet door ajar. He hadn’t left it that way. He didn’t even need to open it to know the belt was gone. The day reached a record low and the desperation he felt was overwhelming. He had a fight in two days and he’d be walking into the cage without the belt, without his usual confidence and without hope.
Going into the bathroom, he turned the shower to hot and climbed in, rotating his aching shoulder, which wouldn’t ease up with the weight of the world resting on it. As the water poured down his back moments later, he rested his head against his arm. What the hell had he let happen to his life in a few weeks?
* * *
“Parker, your line,” Debbie, the actress sitting next to her, prompted the following day.
Sitting in the cool, air-conditioned hotel conference room, her mind someplace else entirely, Parker blinked. Damn, she needed to get it together. This movie was important; this role was what she’d been working hard for. She couldn’t let her flyaway thoughts take over as they had too many times that week already. “Oh, sorry . . .” She flipped the pages of her script. She’d totally lost track of where they were in the read-through. Again. “What scene are we on?” she whispered.
“The weigh-ins, page seventy-eight,” Debbie said.
“Actually, you know what, let’s break,” Brantley said at the head of the long boardroom-style table. He stood and checked his watch. “Let’s meet back here in an hour. Refreshed and ready to work.” His last statement was directed at her.
Everyone nodded and mumbled agreement as they collected their things and left the hotel conference room, where she’d spent the last four days. Physically at least.
Parker stood and slowly gathered her purse and sweater. Her body ached from lack of training, as though her muscles were begging her to start working them again and she was starting to worry about whether she would retain enough mass between now and when they started filming. But she refused to go back to the gym. She’d even been putting off going to collect the things left in her locker.
“You okay?” Brantley asked her, following as she left the room.
“Yes.”
“Want to try lying to someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do?” he asked with a smile.
A smile that had once set her heart racing. Not anymore. And he was quite possibly the last person on the planet she wanted to have this conversation with. Tyson’s hot-and-cold, back-and-forth was killing her, destroying her focus and taking over her every waking thought. He said one thing, but his kiss and his touch and the way he just couldn’t stay away from her told her something else entirely. He cared about her, she knew it, even if he refused to acknowledge it. “I’m fine, really. I’m just looking forward to getting to LA to start the filming.” Maybe being in a different city would help. Put some distance between them and give her something else to think about. Hopefully the long, grueling days of filming would also help her sleep at night. The tired-looking dark circles forming under her eyes that week were going to take a lot of makeup magic to cover if her restless nights continued.