The hotel gym is a joke, which is surprising for a place that calls itself the official host of UFC fight week. There are a handful of treadmills, some free weights that top out at fifty pounds, and a single cable machine that looks like it hasn’t beenserviced in years, which is fine for a light cardio session but useless for the kind of workout I actually need right now.
Fortunately, there’s a real gym a few blocks away. The UFC has some kind of arrangement with an MMA facility nearby, giving fighters and their teams access around the clock during fight week.
The elevator is empty at this hour, just me and the hum of machinery and my own reflection in the mirrored walls looking back at me like a ghost. I look tired. I look like a man who should be sleeping instead of wandering the streets of Manhattan, but sleep isn’t coming tonight and I know better than to fight it.
The lobby is quiet too, just a bored security guard scrolling his phone behind the desk and a couple stumbling toward the elevators, drunk and giggling, holding each other up. The guard barely glances at me as I push through the revolving door and step out into the night.
The air is warm and thick. Even after midnight Manhattan holds onto the heat of the day. I can smell garbage from somewhere, that unmistakable New York smell, mixed with exhaust and food from a halal cart still doing business on the corner and something else underneath it all, something that’s just the city itself breathing.
I walk fast, hands in my pockets. I’d always wanted to come to New York. It’s where I thought the big leagues would take me back in the day, back when I was young and hungry and convinced I was going to coach champions before I turned thirty.
It’s also where my dad got his start. He came over from Croatia in his twenties with nothing but a duffel bag and a dream of making it as a boxer, and he trained at a gym that closed down years ago. I grew up looking at the photos he kept in his office, black-and-white shots of him sparring with guys whose names I’d later recognize from boxing history, and I always imaginedI’d make it here someday, that I’d follow in his footsteps and prove I belonged on the same stages he’d dreamed about.
It took quite a bit longer than I’d planned, but I suppose that’s the way of it. The path is never as straight as you think it’s going to be when you’re young.
The gym is a few blocks from the hotel, a massive facility that takes up most of a converted warehouse. Three floors of training space, a full boxing ring, a BJJ studio, an MMA cage, more heavy bags than I bothered to count when I walked through during the day. It’s the kind of place that caters to everyone from Wall Street guys who want to feel tough to actual professional fighters preparing for actual professional fights.
The front entrance is locked but my keycard works on the side door, the one that leads directly to the training floor. The lights are already on and for a second I just stand there in the doorway, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.
Brooke Bennett is sitting on one of the weight benches with a laptop balanced on her knees and a thermos on the floor beside her, wearing leggings and an oversized NYU sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up past her elbows, shoes kicked off, and huge wool socks on her feet.
I’ve never actually seen her in anything but polished professional mode, even in high school she was always dressed like she had somewhere important to be, so it takes me a second to recognize her.
She glances up at the door and alarm crosses her face. I step out of the shadows quickly, realizing that a man’s silhouette in a doorway at one in the morning is not a comforting sight for a woman alone. The last thing I want to do is scare her. Relief flickers across her face when she sees it’s me, though it’s quickly replaced by annoyance.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I say, and my voice echoes in the concrete space.
“I could say the same thing.” She pulls her glasses off, which I unfortunately find distractingly attractive on her, and sets them on top of her laptop. “What could you possibly be doing here, of all places?”
“It’s the one gym besides the shitty hotel one that I have access to.” I let the door swing shut behind me. “What the hell areyoudoing here?”
“This ismygym,” she says, gesturing around the space like it’s obvious. “My apartment is two blocks from here, and I couldn’t sleep, so I came to get a workout in. I ended up just answering emails instead.”
“In a city of eight million people,” I say, walking toward the bench area and dropping my bag on the floor, “how the hell do I end up in the same gym as you. Of all places and all nights.”
She laughs. “Well, it’s not my fault my gym got commandeered for fight week. And you’d be surprised how often this kind of thing happens in New York. I swear sometimes it feels like the smallest town in the world.”
I shake my head, not sure whether to be annoyed or amused. “Unbelievable.”
“Yeah, well, I was here first,” she says, closing her laptop and setting it aside. “So unless my presence makes you so uncomfortable that you need to flee back to your hotel, you can get on with your workout instead of standing there glaring at me.”
I drop my bag on the floor and start unwrapping the tape I brought. “You’re really something, you know that? And just when I was starting to think...” I trail off, the image of her tearing into that reporter flashing through my mind. The way she shut him down without hesitation. Roman’s voice in my ear from earlier:I believe her about the article. I kinda think you do too.
“Thinking what?” She tilts her head, watching me with those sharp eyes that never miss anything.
“Nothing,” I mutter, turning toward the heavy bag. “Forget it.”
“Suit yourself.” She uncrosses her legs and stands, stretching her arms over her head in a way that makes her sweatshirt ride up and exposes a strip of stomach I immediately look away from. “By the way, I find it pretty fucking irritating that you told Roman’s management you didn’t want me asking questions at the open workout tomorrow.”
I freeze with the tape half-wrapped around my knuckles.
She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Yeah. I heard. One of the PR guys mentioned it when I was picking up my credentials. He told me that my access had been flagged.”
Shit. Shortly before arriving in New York, I’d talked to Roman’s management team about keeping certain press away from the more intimate training sessions. I’d put Brooke’s name on the restricted list.
It was petty, the kind of move I’d never normally make, driven by anger after the gala and whatever this stupid thing between us is. In the chaos of fight week I’d forgotten to have it removed once I’d cooled down and realized how childish I’d been.
“Listen, I—“ I start, turning to face her.
