Legend (Real, #6)(7)

He still looks a little fascinated, but there’s a subtle difference in his expression when I mention the gym. Grows a little darker for some reason. “No sparring partners. Too full.”

I nod. “I can be your partner,” I blurt. “Tomorrow.”

Sable eyebrows go up. “You spar?”

I raise my chin a little tauntingly and nod. “I’ll learn.”

Suddenly I feel really energetic.

I sweep Racer up in my arms. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say, and turn back to the stroller and our stuff, walking quietly. I think I feel his gaze on my back, so I distract myself with Racer and fish the dried fruit from the stroller seat. “Do you want more of these?” I ask Racer, showing him the bag.

He shoves my hand away and tries to run off again. “I want to find the dog.”

I sweep him up with effort. “Okay, but hop in here and I’ll push you real fast.”

He stops squirming to get free and obeys and lets me sit him down, grinning over my shoulders at something.

Or someone.

I turn back to Cage, who’s watching us with a half smile on his face that does more for me than anything halfway should do, and I smile wanly and feel his eyes on my back as I push Racer down the path.

“That’s not fast, Wee! Fastew!” Racer says.

Shit. Really? My ass is going to bounce like crazy.

I lean over to him. “When we round the corner, please, enough embarrassing Reese in front of a boy for a day.” I ruffle his hair and then look ahead in search of the Labrador.





FOUR


KNOCKING


Maverick

The hotel business center has a dozen dormant computers save for the one I’m using. Surfing the net for trainers in the Seattle area. Writing a new list. I started at the top and am at the lower tiers now as I write down the second name, then scan for another half hour. Fuck, I’m quickly running out of options.

I log out, tear the page off the hotel notepad, and stare at the two names I’ve got on the list. I rub my jaw and reread the addresses and locations.

I fold the page, shove it into my jeans pocket, grab my bottle of water, and head out to the bus stop.

I make two stops.

Two more doors closed in my face.

I plant my hand flat on the last one, gritting my teeth and slamming my palm into it.

“Come the f*ck on, man!” I yell.

No response.

Jesus.

Motherf*ckers.

I drop down on the sidewalk and lean my head back against the wall, scowling.

I’ve got three days to find a coach. Three days to make fighting even possible.

I dig into the front pocket of my jeans and pull out the penny I found outside Hennesy’s. I curl my palm around it, willing it for a change of luck or something even better—a goddamn chance.

? ? ?

I GREW UP with my mother in Pensacola. Near the beach. She wanted me to enlist in the army. Turns out, I was never good at being disciplined. “When I named you Maverick, I didn’t know you’d take it so to heart,” my mother playfully chastised when I left the corps.

We’d agreed when I turned twenty-one, I could see him. My father. “He travels due to his work, Mav. I don’t know if you should see him.”

“I’ll travel with him. I want to learn. I’m his son, aren’t I?” I think I imagined a connection between us. I couldn’t wait to get out of Florida.

My dad used to send me a pair of boxing gloves every birthday.

“He was a good man,” my mother would say when I asked about him.

“I want to see him.”

“He was. A good man.” She emphasized the “was.”

I didn’t get it. You weren’t good, and then bad, that couldn’t be. Could it? I was too young and too f*cking stupid.

On my twenty-first birthday, she gave me his contact information, and when he never answered his phone, I went looking for him on my own.

My father—the one I envisioned as big, powerful, and one who had noble reasons to leave my mom and me—was helpless in a hospital bed too small for his body. There was no warning. Nothing to tell my mother and me that his life was going to change ours forever. It was pure daylight, a day like any other. But I was in a city I’d never been in. Alone.

So I sat there with no tears to cry.

Just him and me.

A stranger whose blood I share.

The doctors said they were trying to get his brain to cool down after the accident. They induced a coma. He hasn’t wanted to wake up. His coma is real now. It all depends on his will to live, they say.

“My father fights; that’s what he does,” I told the doctors. It’s all I know about him.

“He may not have any fight left in him.”

I looked at my father; he was scarred, banged-up, beat-up. Not the guy my mother has a picture of.

Don’t stop fighting, I wanted to say.

But I didn’t say it. He’s never heard my voice. I still don’t know if I should call him Dad, Father, or the nickname they gave him as a fighter.

Instead, I said, “I’m going to make you proud.”

I flew back home, showered, and changed, remembering the doctors when they told me it didn’t look good as I took out my boxing gloves. I found my mother in the kitchen.