“We did. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I don’t think I’ll ever meet someone that I connect with like I did with him. I really don’t think that would be possible.”
“Then you know what you need to do?” Cole said.
I shook my head. “Tell me.” I was desperate. I’d take advice from anyone.
“Get him back.”
Chapter 26
Shep
Finally.
Fight night.
The plan with this guy had been to take the fight to the ground. He was well known for his striking ability, and had four knockouts. He himself had never been knocked out. He’d been submitted once, by way of arm bar, and had lost once after the fight had gone the distance. The only time his fights went the distance was when he was taken to the ground.
I didn’t really think of any of this, though, leading up to the fight. Even standing there in the cage, waiting for the ref to start the fight, when I should’ve been psyching myself up, I could only think about everything that had happened in the past two weeks. My brother dead. Devin dead. Most of my family in jail, awaiting trial. How was it possible I was even related to these people? But the most infuriating part was how they had interfered with my relationship, with what might have been the best thing to ever happen to me. They had made it so it was impossible to continue with that.
And I hated them for it.
I had tried to keep those thoughts at bay. I had tried not to think anything too bad, because their lives, as they all knew them, were over. Holden was dead. My brother was dead. My brother whom I had grown up with, who shared many of the same memories that I did. Yet he had irrevocably messed things up for me, in a way that I was mourning perhaps even more than I was his death.
I hated them because all I had wanted was a different sort of life for myself. I didn’t want to live a life of crime, of senseless violence. I knew they thought that was hypocritical because I was an MMA fighter, but the sort of fighting I did was different. It was against someone who was an equal match, someone who had also been training equally as hard. There was a ref. There were rules. My family had always operated under no rules, unless they were the rules they themselves imposed.
The fight started.
We met each other in the middle, circling. He threw a few punches, which I easily backed away from. I moved forward and he stepped back; there was a chance to take him down. Kurt was yelling at me to do exactly that. But I didn’t. It was as if I could feel all the energy, all the anger, gathering in my arms. I wouldn’t win this fight if I took it to the ground. I wouldn’t be able to do anything to rid myself of this toxic energy, this anger, this negativity, if I brought the fight to the ground. I might get KO’d in the process, but I needed to keep this standing. I needed this guy to let me hit him, to let me take my best shot.
So we stayed up. We traded punches. He hit hard, but so did I. He caught my left calf with a couple of good leg kicks, but I also blocked a few and countered with my own kick to the back of his right thigh. He faced me straight on and I kicked out hard; an inch higher would’ve been a nice liver shot.
I didn’t know exactly how much time was left on the clock, but I knew we were getting close to the end of the first round. I’d sustained some damage, but nothing too bad. All that energy, all that anger and raw emotion was still swirling through me, strong as ever. And there. Right there. He dropped his hands, left his chin wide open, and I caught him with a right hook, the power behind the hit feeling like the culmination of everything that had happened the past few weeks.
Usually, when you KO someone, you chase them, you rain hammerfists down, you make sure that they’re good and out, that the ref has to pull you off. But I knew the second my fist connected—I saw the way the lights went out as his knees buckled—that it was all over. This man who had never been knocked out before was down, and the place was filled with the thunderous roar of applause and screams. I just stood there. I didn’t raise my fists, didn’t run around the cage, didn’t jump up and down. I looked out into the crowd, the sea of faces.
And I saw her.
Lena was right there, maybe five or six rows back. Had she been there the whole time? How had I missed her?
Our eyes met, and it felt like everything else fell away, even as Kurt was there, the other guys from my gym, picking me up, swinging me around, patting me on the back. I wanted to run over to Lena, but I had to stay in the cage, celebrate with the others, then walk with them back out toward the locker room. I looked for Lena as I slapped fives with some of the crowd, but I didn’t see her. Had she left already? I craned my neck toward the exit, but there was no sign of her.
And then I had to try to get my head back into the moment, into the victory. Kurt and the rest of the crew from the gym were still slapping me on the back, congratulating me, crowing over the KO. While we were talking, two of the main guys from the UFC stuck their heads into the room, then came in, big grins on their faces.
“What a fight!” they both said as I shook their hands. This was big. That they had come back there to personally speak to me was huge. I knew this, but I just wanted to get out of there and try to find Lena.
But I also knew this was the moment that I had been working for—all those fights, all those years training. So I resisted the urge to run out of there, and when they said they’d be in touch about an upcoming fight, I grinned and thanked them and said it would be an honor.
The UFC guys didn’t stay long, and after they left, Kurt and the rest of the crew asked where I wanted to go out to eat—we needed to celebrate.
“Just give me a minute,” I said. “I just… can I just have a minute?”
“Of course you can. We’ll be right out here.”
Kurt patted me on the shoulder once more and they left, taking all of the excited energy with them. I didn’t feel like I’d just come out on top of the biggest fight of my life; all I could think about was Lena. But should I try to find her? I had broken up with her. I had been the one to end things even though I knew that wasn’t what she wanted. It wouldn’t really be fair of me to go after her now. She didn’t deserve someone who was going to be indecisive.
I had made my choice. It hadn’t been a choice that I wanted to make, but at the time I had felt that it was the right one. Because Lena deserved to be with someone who wasn’t going to be a constant reminder about the worst day of her life.
So I would not go out and chase after her, despite the fact that was really the only thing I wanted to do. I would change, go out and find Kurt, maybe watch a couple more fights, and then go celebrate proper. I would continue to focus on training; I would anticipate getting ready to actually fight in the UFC, whenever that might be.
I was almost done pulling the tape off my wrists when I heard someone at the door.
Lena.
“They said you were back here.” She smiled. “That was an amazing fight. Congratulations.” She came over and stood right in front of me. “I’ve missed you. A lot. I just… I wasn’t even planning on talking to you; I just wanted to come see your fight. But… now that I am seeing you, I realize how not okay I am with us ending things. I’m just not.” Her eyes were filling with tears, which she tried to blink away. My throat ached. The pain from the punches and kicks I’d endured faded until it was barely noticeable. I had missed her, too. There were no words to describe it.
“I can’t even begin to tell you how much I’ve missed you,” I said. “My life feels completely meaningless without you in it. I don’t care how pathetic that sounds; it’s the truth.”
She touched the side of my face, where I could feel the skin tightening into what would tomorrow probably be a spectacular bruise.
“Then it sounds like we feel the same way. So what are we doing?”
“I just can’t help but think that you see him every time you look at me,” I said. “Holden probably did the worst thing to you that anyone ever has, and I look exactly like him. How am I not supposed to think about that? How am I s
upposed to be with someone when I know my face looks exactly like the person who kidnapped her?”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter to me. He did an awful thing. But I know you are not him. He might’ve done one of the worst things to me, but you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, Shep. You really are. I never thought that I’d be with someone, not really. And I certainly never thought that I would meet someone who I got along with so well. I just really feel like I can be myself around you, that you get me. I don’t want to lose you. I love you.” She smiled. “You know how I said I wanted to talk to you, too, that day you came over? I was going to ask you to move in with me. Because nothing would make me happier than knowing I was going to get to come home to you. Because my house really feels like a home when you’re there. That offer still stands.”
I let the tape fall to the floor. All of the thoughts that I’d had about letting her go, moving on, completely vanished, like they had never existed in the first place. If she was standing here, telling me that she didn’t want to lose me, that she loved me, there was no way I was going to ignore that. I’d been out with enough women that I knew having a connection like this was not something to just throw away.
“You do not know how happy I am to hear you say that,” I said. I held my arms out and she came over. I pulled her close, kissed the top of her head. “I never wanted to break up with you in the first place—you know that, right?”
“I do. But I also want you to know that I do not think about your brother when I look at you. Not at all. And I don’t want you to feel any guilt about what happened. Because if anything, it just made me realize how much I love you, and how lucky I am to have found you.”
I let my eyes close as I leaned my forehead against hers. “I love you so much. And if you really mean that about moving in, of course I would be more than happy to do that. Because nothing sounds better to me than the idea of waking up next to you every morning.”
I opened my eyes and we smiled at each other, and then I brought my hand up to the side of her face and tilted her head back slightly so I could kiss her. I had just won the biggest fight of my career, but the only thing that mattered to me was this woman, and what we had together. As we kissed and I felt her body entwine around mine, I knew that I would do whatever was necessary to protect her, to keep her safe, because that is what you were supposed to do for someone you loved.
And love her I did.
BOOK FOUR
Chapter 1
Ben
I was always glad to get away from the city, for any amount of time. A few hours, a whole weekend. It didn’t matter the length of time; I appreciated when I was able to get away from all the buildings, the people, the concrete. Someday, I hoped that I’d be able to relocate up here permanently, and live a life in the redwood forests. Maybe I’d even stop paying for Internet service, just get a landline. Go back to the old way of doing things.
It was Saturday morning, early, and I’d gotten back from a hike where I’d foraged a good amount of morels in an abandoned apple orchard, about five miles away. I was thinking about what I’d sauté the morels up with when I heard a car coming down the driveway.
The driveway was long, steep, so there was no way that this was just someone who was lost and wanting to bang a quick U-turn. If you were driving down here, it was because you meant to come to the house—which would be fine, except it was my weekend up here.
I left the basket of morels as I saw Camille’s Jeep Wrangler come into view. I took a deep breath and told myself to stay calm; I’d had such a nice morning that there was no need to disrupt it with what was surely just a little misunderstanding.
Camille was clearly just as displeased to see me, a fact which made all the more sense when I noticed that there was someone—a guy—in the passenger-side seat.
The jeep came to a lurching halt and a second later, Camille jumped out. “Ben,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s my weekend.”
She frowned. “I texted you about this. I was going to come up here this weekend. Brian has Monday off this week and we were going to have a little three-day weekend together.” She gestured over her shoulder toward the jeep, where the guy—I assumed Brian—gave a sheepish wave.
“Brian?” I said. “Who the hell is Brian?”
I could hear the edge in my voice, which I immediately regretted. It wasn’t like I was still pining for Camille for anything. Well, not really. We’d broken up almost a year ago, and surely almost a year was ample time to get over someone, even if you’d been with that someone for well over a decade and had planned to eventually get married. You know, talked about it on many occasions, always because she brought it up. Even if this someone had betrayed you in ways that you didn’t think were possible. I still couldn’t let myself really think about what had happened, still wanted to believe that it was all a bad dream that I just needed to wake up from. I took a deep breath. “Who is Brian?” This second attempt came out sounding far less hostile and more like a general inquiry, which was good. Progress.
“Brian,” Camille said, speaking slowly, “is the man I’m seeing. Which is totally allowed, because you and I are not together. It’s been a year, Ben.”
“Not quite a year.”
I bit my lip and wished I hadn’t said anything. I had only made that comment because I was feeling prickly and wanted to give her a hard time, but the way it sounded made it seem like I was keeping track.
She rolled her eyes. “Irregardless of whether it’s been a year or a day, it doesn’t matter, because you and I are not together.”
I smiled thinly. “Yes, I know. And irregardless isn’t even a word, by the way.”
“Are you here just to argue with me?”
“Uh, no, Camille, I’m here because this is my weekend.”
“Right. Which I texted you about.”
“And since you didn’t get a response, you shouldn’t just assume that it’s okay for you to come up here.”
“I wouldn’t expect a response from you because you’re totally ignoring me!” She threw her arms up in the air as she said this, and we continued to bicker. I was dimly aware of this guy Brian, who was still sitting in the jeep, and though I couldn’t quite make out the expression on his face, it amused me a little bit to think that he was wishing he was anywhere but here.
Camille’s eyes narrowed. She still looked good—better, even, than when we were together. Being an adulteress can be tiring and stressful when you’ve got to pile lie upon lie, and toward the end of our relationship, it was definitely taking its toll on her. She’d had bags under her eyes; she’d been pale. I had thought she was getting sick; I’d doubled down on my efforts to get her better, making her bone-broth soups, meals with lots of organic whole grains and lean proteins. We’d always eaten pretty well, but Camille liked takeout, and she preferred Chinese food and bacon cheeseburgers from this dive bar that was around the corner from our place. Looking back on it now, I think that, deep down, I’d known something was up, but I just hadn’t wanted to believe it. Thinking that I could fix our relationship by foraging and cooking with whole foods was just a more palatable reality for me at the time.
“I’m ignoring you because we’re not together anymore. As you so often seem to need to point out. I know this, though. Very well aware of the fact, actually.”
“I know you know. I just feel like I still need to remind you of this fact.” She returned my wan smile, and I imagined, from his vantage point, Brian might have thought that Camille and I were standing here sharing fond memories or some inside joke. Ha.
Fortunately, Camille and I did not have any children together, which always complicates matters of separation. What we did have, though, was this cabin, nestled up in the Russian River, a place that we both adored and perhaps loved as much as a child. So much so that neither of us was ready to give it up, and so we had decided on something of a joint custody, at least for the time being. We’d alternate weekends
, and we’d be fair-minded when it came to holidays, birthdays, and other special occasions. What could ever go wrong with a plan like that?
I had a vague recollection of a text message from Camille, which I had promptly ignored and likely hadn’t gotten back to her about. I was trying not to communicate with her any more than was necessary. I hadn’t always approached things like that, though; this had been a newer development, in the past couple of months or so, because I had realized how Camille would always seem to find a way to get me to do something for her. I knew I played just as much of a role in it—I could just as easily have said no—but for some reason I had a really hard time doing that. But this whole weekend switch—had I agreed to it? I probably hadn’t responded, was the most likely answer, and Camille had probably taken my non-response to mean yes.
She took a step closer to me, the dappled sun making the blond highlights in her hair look like they were sparkling. “Please, Ben,” she said in that soft purr of a voice that always got me. “We’ve got the whole weekend planned out. This is really going to ruin things. And you had last night up here, anyway. So it’s like a bonus.”
I was annoyed because I knew I was going to agree to it. Did I want to? No. But I didn’t want the ensuing fight if I refused, and Camille could be vindictive if she wanted to be. The silent treatment, harboring resentments, bringing up old shit that I’d thought was done and settled. All that was in her bag of tricks, and I knew she had no qualms in whipping out any of it, at any time.
“You can camp in the backyard,” she said, a desperate note in her voice.
Right. Like that’s what I wanted to do—be out there in a tent while my ex-girlfriend was inside our house, screwing her new boyfriend. Knowing Camille, she’d probably come out and ask me if I’d like to cook the two of them a nice meal.
“I want the next two weekends,” I said. Hell, maybe I’d even take a week off from work and come here for a whole seven days. Really treat myself. I wouldn’t mind the solitude.
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