Why now?
And while I know he loves taekwondo as much as I do, I’ve never seen him at one of these competitions before.
Is he here for me?
My eyes flick back to the judges before the ref announces the deduction of a point from Sydney’s opponent and the girls go back to finish the round. But my mind is still stuck on the man in the bleachers, begging my eyes not to betray its command.
My attention stays on Sydney, and I watch the way her posture changes. There’s a fire in her eyes, a determination in her stance—theI was just warming up, but I’m about to own you kind—as she lands three solid kicks in succession. She delivers them like claps of lightning, the last one landing just as the buzzer sounds.
And just like that, the match is over with Sydney winning by two points and advancing to the semifinals. While she doesn’t win the next one, she earns herself—and ourdojang—a bronze medal, which is a huge feat on its own.
After a long embrace, where I tell her how proud I am of her, Sydney pulls back, eyes shining and breaths still heavy from the exertion. Her parents have joined us near the exit.
“I can’t believe I did it,” Sydney says, clutching her medal over her chest. “I can’t believe I got this far.”
“I can,” I respond easily, because it’s true. “You’re one of the hardest working athletes I know. It’s not a surprise to me at all.”
“Thank you for always believing in me,SabumnimArora.” Sydney beams, looking from her parents to me. “Would you like to come to dinner with me and my family?”
My gaze flicks to the man standing near a pillar behind her, his two bodyguards hovering close, blending in about as well as Madonna in Amish country.
I give Sydney’s shoulder a final squeeze before nodding my thanks to her parents. “You guys go on and celebrate. I have something I need to catch up on.”
With that, I make my way over to the man watching me approach as if mesmerized. His glasses are gone, but his hood is still up, as if that will stop anyone from recognizing one of the most recognizable faces in the world. But I guess he doesn’t care much about that if he’s risking being here.
His eyes grow darker, richer, with each step I take, and his lips tilt upward. His bodyguards assess me warily, likely wondering if I’m a threat, given I’m charging at their ward like I’m either going to kiss him or kill him.
Honestly, it could go either way.
Coming to a stop in front of him, I try to get straight to the point. Annoyingly, his familiar bergamot and mint scent permeates my thoughts, diminishing some of my tartness.
“What are you doing here?”
We’re hidden enough by the pillar and his security detail that Patton brushes back the hood over his head, his jawline looking anything but casual.
He lifts one shoulder. “I wanted to see you.”
“You wanted to see me,” I repeat. “Why?”
I refuse to acknowledge the way my heart gallops in his presence. In fact, I’ve never had a regular heartbeat around this man. Not when we were dating, not when we were married, and certainly not now. I’m not sure if he made the damn organ stronger or weaker.
“Can I not want to see my best friend?”
I huff out an incredulous laugh. “Yeah, well, we’re not best friends anymore, are we, Patton? In fact, I’d hedge to say we’re pretty far from that after six years of radio silence.”
His gaze drops to my wrist, a smug smile threatening to emerge on his face. “And yet you’re still wearing our bracelet.”
I stand up taller, nostrils flaring.
I knew I should have gotten rid of the damn thing after all these years. And while I took off my wedding ring a year after the divorce was finalized, for whatever reason, I didn’t have it in me to cut the permanent bracelet we’d gotten as teens, his silver to my gold.
“I didn’t want a perfectly good piece of metal to go to waste.”
His smile says he knows I’m lying to both of us. Dropping his eyes to his own wrist, he says, “Yeah, me, too.”
I nod, readying myself to turn around and leave. “Well, this has been swell?—”
“And as for the years of silence, who wanted that, Nisha? Who asked for that?”
