“You did it, Si,” Scott choked out, pulling me into a hug that hurt my ribs. “God, I’m so proud. You’re better than we ever were. You know that? You did it the right way. Just you.”
I stiffened, feeling the crack in my armor.
“Thanks, Scott.”
“I mean it,” Scott said, pulling back, gripping my arms, his voice trembling. “I’m sorry it was so hard getting here. I’m sorry we weren’t—”
“Okay, Scotty, rein it in,” Maverick interrupted, clapping Scott on the back. He laughed, a loud, booming sound that didn’t reach his eyes.
“Let’s not get weepy in front of the boys. It’s a celebration. Silas won. That’s what matters.”
He deflected it. He erased the apology beforeit could even land.
I looked at my dad. “Yeah. A celebration.”
I stepped back, the distance between us feeling like a canyon compared to the huddle of the Donovan family just feet away.
I looked over Maverick’s shoulder.
Cal was watching me. He was surrounded by his sisters, tears on his face, but his eyes were locked on me.
He saw it. He saw the deflection.
He saw the coldness of the legacy I was so desperate to uphold.
9
APRIL - LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
Now playing: False God - Taylor Swift
Thesilenceinthepenthouse was heavier than the roar of seventy thousand people.
It was a physical weight, pressing down on my chest, filling the massive, marble floored living room with a suffocating kind of quiet. I sat on the edge of the white leather couch, still wearing my street clothes, staring at a blank television screen.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table. Messages from Evan. Messages from random numbers congratulating me. Probably a text from my dad, though I didn’t have the stomach to check.
When we walked through the curtain, battered and victorious, clutching that briefcase, Maverick and Scott had offered to take me to dinner. They wanted to go to some steakhouse in West Hollywood, to sit swap war stories and “celebrate.”
I couldn’t do it.
I told them my back was seized up, which wasn’t a lie, and that I needed to ice it. I told them to go without me.
I told Cal to go with his family, to enjoy the love that radiated off the Donovans like heat from a fire.
So, I was here. Alone.
I stood up, my right hip protesting with a sharp throb, and walked to the sliding glass door. I looked out at the LA skyline. It was beautiful and indifferent. I hadjust jumped off a fifteen-foot ladder. I had just won the biggest match of my life. I had just cemented the Reed legacy for another generation.
And I felt completely hollow.
I needed to wash the night off. I needed to scrub the sweat, the table varnish, and the lingering feeling of my father’s critical gaze off my skin.
I grabbed my toiletry bag and limped into the master bathroom.
It was a sanctuary. White stone, gold fixtures, and a shower that was essentially a room of its own, enclosed in seamless glass.
I stripped out of my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor. My body was a map of the match. A massive, purple bruise was already blooming on my hip. My lower back was red and angry. There were scrapes on my forearms from the ladder rungs.
