Raw Deal (Larson Brothers #1)(11)

“I was always in training.”

“So you’re not anymore?”

“Not at the moment.”

He could tell Damien wasn’t fooled. Mike was strict about his training even when he was off season—or at least, he always had been. Before. Whatever gave his younger half-brother such a keen insight into what cards Mike was holding also allowed him free range inside Mike’s head, or so it seemed sometimes. Maybe that was one of the reasons Damien hadn’t seen him in a while. There was something disconcerting about feeling like you were under a microscope all the time.

“It’s really gotten to you, hasn’t it?”

“Wouldn’t it you?”

“Not enough to throw in the towel.”

“You say that now.”

“I would say it then.”

There wasn’t any sense in arguing with him, since he thought he knew it all. And maybe he did. Damien always kept his poker face. It was in place even now, cold, unyielding, giving up nothing.

“What if everything you’ve built here gets raided? If it was all snatched away from you in one night? You’re saying you would be able to start all over, do it all again, knowing it could all come crashing down?”

“What got snatched away from you? You hit a guy too hard. You didn’t lose your f*cking arms.”

It felt that way. Even if killing Tommy had been an accident, it had taken Mike right back to that dingy kitchen fifteen years ago. He’d been seventeen years old with blood on his hands all over again, his mother’s screams echoing in his ears. Something in his brain had reset. He felt like a scared kid again, and he hated it.

Fucking hated it.

“It was always your dream,” Damien went on. “And you’re letting it get stolen from you. We fought our way out of the f*cking dirt, Mike, the three of us. I’m not going back there until I have to. Six feet under.”

“Doing something else wouldn’t necessarily be going back to the dirt.”

“What the f*ck are you gonna do, huh? Be a bodyguard for Zane? Or I could always make you a bouncer out on the floor.”

“Fuck you.”

“You were born to fight. Zane was born to sing. I was born to do . . . whatever the hell it is that I do. This.” He indicated the room as a whole. “You’re upsetting our microcosm.”

Mike had to laugh. “You’re so full of shit.”

“I think you f*cked up when you went over there and let the guy’s family get all in your head.”

“I needed to do that.”

“You needed to leave it alone. It’s dredging up a lot of shit for you.”

Shifting in his chair uncomfortably, Mike took another drink and could only wish he had a fraction of Damien’s stony-eyed impassivity. “It’s not, because I don’t think about any of that,” he bold-faced lied.

“Yes, you do. You’re thinking about it right now. Mike, you did what you had to do. You did it then for all of us, you did it with Tommy Dugas, and you’ll keep doing it. What you have to do is keep fighting. You’re ranked number one but you deserve to have that belt around your waist.”

“There comes a time when you have to ask yourself if it’s worth it. When the shit keeps flying at you and you wonder if this would be happening if you were really on the right path.”

“You’re not going to turn pacifist on me, are you?”

“Naw, nothing like that.”

“Look, it isn’t that I’m not sympathetic. It’s sad. I get it. But it’s eating you up, and if you keep letting it, there’s not going to be anything of you left. Let it go, man.”

It was the same unsolicited advice everywhere he went. Whether it was Zane or Damien or his coach or manager or the commentators on ESPN, everyone was giving their two f*cking cents he hadn’t asked for. They hadn’t seen the devastation he’d seen when he met Savannah and Rowan, but if he said that, Damien would only use it as another opportunity to ride his ass about seeking out the funeral in the first place, and maybe he was right. Maybe he was well and truly f*cked. Whether he could recover enough psychologically to even think about getting back in the cage . . . well, he would just have to wait and see. He knew guys who wouldn’t be bothered by something like killing a man in the ring. He wasn’t one of them.

Brad, his manager, had encouraged him to step away, take some time, just not too far and not too long. He would probably shit himself if he knew Mike had even entertained the notion of retiring.

He was afraid he would see Tommy Dugas’s face on every opponent he ever fought. And if that happened, it would throw his whole game off. He would back down, go easy, mess up. Get his ass handed to him. He’s done, they would say. Couldn’t cut it after the Dugas fight. Oh, what a promising career, derailed by senseless tragedy, blah blah blah.

If he went into a fight even thinking about losing, he had already lost.

His cell phone buzzed in his back pocket and he sighed, plucking it out and frowning at the unfamiliar number. Who the hell would be calling him this late? It was after midnight. It didn’t matter; he wouldn’t be able to carry on a phone conversation in this noise, so he let it go to voicemail. He and Damien had practically been yelling at each other. Something vaguely familiar about that area code, though.

Glancing up to make sure his brother was adequately engaged in conversation with a woman who’d been passing by their table—check—Mike quickly entered the number in Google on his phone.