I start the car, pull out of the parking lot, and don’t look back.
This is such a fucking mess.
CHAPTER 7
Dominic
Two days without Brooke Bennett and I’m a new man. There’s no journalist lurking on the sidelines with her phone out, no sharp comments lobbed across the gym floor designed to needle me, and no trace of that perfume she wears hanging in the air of my office after she leaves, clinging to the chair she sat in like a ghost. Just the clean, quiet rhythm of work, the way it should be, the way it was before she walked back into my life and started taking up space in my head.
Roman’s training is going great. We’ve been drilling the counter combination all week, the one I designed specifically to exploit his opponent’s tendency to overcommit on the jab, and his timing is getting sharper with every session. Yesterday he caught me with a shot I didn’t see coming, a quick right hand that slipped past my guard during pad work, and when I looked at him he was grinning like a kid who just got away with something. That’s when I knew we were on track. When he’s loose enough to surprise me, when he’s not overthinking every movement, that’s when he’s ready to fight.
His cardio is where it needs to be. His weight is on track. Everything is dialed in for New York. I’ve been sleeping better than I have in weeks, going to bed at a normal hour instead of lying awake replaying arguments I should have won more decisively.
I’m relieved. I’m focused. I may never have to see Brooke Bennett again, and my life is better for it.
Saturday night is the annual Dark River Community Scholarship Gala, held where it’s always been held: the gymnasium at Dark River High School. Same gym, same cause, same community showing up to raise money so some kid can go to college without drowning in debt.
Dad used to bring all five of us when we were kids, made us put on our best clothes and practice our handshakes, told us that showing up for your community wasn’t optional. I’ve been volunteering at these things ever since, because I believe in helping kids get opportunities they wouldn’t have otherwise, even if formal events make me want to claw my skin off.
I pull into the parking lot and sit in my car for a minute, engine off, looking at the building through the windshield. The irony of where I am is not lost on me. The Foundation runs a lot of programs, but the flagship is still the scholarship fund. The same scholarship that Brooke and I tore each other apart over nearly two decades ago. Now I’m volunteering at the fundraiser for it. Life has a sick sense of humor.
The organizers asked months ago if I’d do a demonstration for the fundraiser portion, and I said yes because it’s for a good cause and because I’m not the kind of person who says no when the community asks. So I’ve set up a balance challenge for later in the evening, with a big taped circle on the gym floor and me in the middle, and anyone who wants to can try to push me out. There are no strikes, no throws, just hands and leverage and the physics of staying planted, and pledges get donated for everychallenger who lasts sixty seconds. It’s physical enough to be entertaining, safe enough that the insurance people signed off, and it raises good money.
I check my reflection in the rearview. Black suit, white shirt, no tie because I refuse to wear a tie unless someone is getting married or buried. I look fine. I get out of the car and make my way inside.
I open the doors, and the gym has been transformed, with string lights strung across the ceiling and silent auction tables lining the walls and round tables draped in white tablecloths arranged across the floor.
They’ve done a good job. It almost looks elegant if you can ignore the championship banners hanging overhead and the faint smell of floor wax that no amount of candles or flower arrangements has ever been able to fully mask. You can dress up a gymnasium all you want, but it’s still a gymnasium underneath.
“Dominic! There you are.” Martha Peterson waves me over to the welcome table, her reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. She’s been running these events since I was in diapers, and she looks exactly the same as she did twenty years ago, which is either good genetics or a deal with the devil. “Table six. And you’re all set for the demonstration later?”
“All set,” I tell her. “Thanks, Martha.”
“We’re expecting a good turnout for it. Dave says he’s going to try his luck this year.” She winks. “I told him you’d go easy on him.”
I smile at her. “I’ll try not to embarrass him too badly.”
She laughs and waves me through, and I head for the bar because I’m going to need a drink to get through three hours of small talk. I’m good at a lot of things, but mingling isn’t one of them. The room is filling up around me, conversations layering on top of each other, and that’s when I see Brooke standing nearthe silent auction tables in a black dress that hugs every curve she has. Her hair is down, falling past her shoulders in dark waves, and she’s laughing at something the woman beside her said.
Every muscle in my body goes tight.
What the hell is she doing here? She’s supposed to be gone. She should be on a plane back to New York writing her story from the safe distance of her fancy Manhattan office, not standing thirty feet away from me at a charity gala in a dress that’s making my slacks feel tighter than they did two minutes ago.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
Her eyes find mine across the room, dark and unreadable, and for a second the rest of the world goes soft and distant like someone turned the volume down on everything that isn’t her. That fucking magnetic pull that’s always existed between us.
She looks away first. Good. Fine. She can look away all she wants. I don’t care. I’m here for the Foundation and the balance circle and maybe a couple of drinks, and Brooke’s presence at this event is completely irrelevant to all of those things.
So is the way that dress clings to her hips. And the way her legs look in those heels, long and tan and ending in stilettos sharp enough to qualify as weapons. And the way my dick apparently didn’t get the memo that I hate this woman.
I adjust my jacket and head for the bar. I get a bourbon and take a long sip, letting it burn, then go find my table.
Table six. I locate the little numbered card in the center of the tablecloth and check the place cards arranged around it. My name is on the far side, facing the stage. I pull out my chair and sit, setting my drink down, feeling good about having a clear plan for the evening that involves sitting in this chair and talking to whoever is next to me and not looking at Brooke even once.
Then I read the place card directly next to mine.
Brooke Bennett.
