Raw Deal (Larson Brothers #1)(79)
“You okay, kid?”
Maybe someday everyone would quit asking him that, but he guessed not any time soon. He wasn’t okay. He missed Savannah. None of this seemed to mean a damn thing without her. Not that he wanted to think about losing to that colossal * in a couple weeks, but how was he supposed to win when he felt like he’d already lost everything? Win the belt, hear the cheers, celebrate his victory . . . go home to an empty, echoing apartment and a cold bed, alone.
What was the point?
“Fine,” he lied, leaning back again and closing his eyes. Jon ambled away to the facility’s small office. Mike might have even lay there and dozed; he wasn’t sure how much time passed before he was startled by Jon calling his name, and his eyes popped open.
“You still out there? You need to see this!”
Sighing, he got to his feet, hating the effort of it—damn altitude—and grabbed a towel before going to heed his coach’s call. He found him in at the desk in the little office, his laptop open. Looking up and seeing him in the door, Jon waved him over. “Come here and watch this. Hang on, let me back it up.”
There was a sportscast in full-screen mode on the computer. Jon let it reload while Mike looped the towel behind his neck and clutched the ends, not expecting much because Jon was always finding little tidbits and sound bites to show him.
Until a certain surname left the anchor’s mouth and every one of Mike’s senses went on full alert.
“ . . . interesting press release from the Dugas family regarding the upcoming Meyers–Larson title bout at Mayhem. Tommy Dugas died shortly after his own bout with Michael Larson over two months ago, something Meyers isn’t willing to let the fans forget. But now Dugas’s wife and sister have released a joint statement through his manager stating the following: ‘Because we cherish Tommy’s memory, we cannot allow Frank Meyers to continue to capitalize on it to benefit his own name and image. We do not know him, he did not contact us after Tommy’s death, and therefore he does not speak for us. Michael Larson, however, went above and beyond to reach out to us and offer his sincere condolences in our time of grief. In him we found a friend, a source of comfort and solace, and we wish him all the best.’ The match is set for five days from now, and there’s certainly no love lost between the two AF fighters. They’ve been at each other’s throats in the weeks leading up—”
Jon clicked the pause button. Solace. Mike blinked as his coach turned to look up at him. “Hey, that’s gotta make you feel good, right?”
“Yeah,” he said, still stunned beyond the most basic words.
“So help me put two and two together here. Is that where you ran off to?”
“It is.”
Understanding dawned across Jon’s face. “Mike . . . you’ve been in a funk. You’re doing good work but you’re not yourself.” He could see the question there. Which one of them is it?
“The sister,” he confessed. “Savannah.”
Rubbing the graying stubble on his jaw, Jon regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. “Sounds like she thinks a lot of you.”
“I thought she did, and then I signed on for this fight. That kind of killed most of her good thoughts.”
“No wonder you were so torn about it at first. I thought it had to do with Tommy, all that shit still on your mind.”
He shrugged. “That’s part of it. Probably always will be.”
“Will she be at the fight?”
“Considering the last one she went to ended with her brother dying, I’m thinking that’s a no.” There was no hiding the bitterness in his voice.
“That’s a shame.”
Indeed it was. But there wasn’t shit he could do about it. She didn’t want to have anything to do with his life. “It’s my fault. I told her the first time I met her I was thinking about retiring. Because I was, Jon. I was thinking about it hard. And then I took this shot.”
“I figured you were having thoughts like that. I also figured they wouldn’t last long. You’ve got the beast in you, kid. If you don’t let it out to play every now and then, it’ll eat you from the inside out.” Jon sighed and shut his laptop. “Go rest up. We have a long day tomorrow.”
As the days ticked by, Savannah found herself winding tighter, restless, uncertain. She worked and helped Rowan with the nursery. A few reporters called for comments, but she told them she had nothing to say that wasn’t already said in their press release, and requested privacy. Rowan told her she’d had the same calls. Her response had probably been far less polite.
Savannah’s TV remained on sports channels more than Netflix lately; she’d heard their statement read numerous times, heard the anchors talk it to death, heard the responses from both the fighters. Mike’s had been succinct, as all of his comments about Tommy had been.
“They’re a wonderful family who didn’t deserve the hand they got dealt,” he’d said to the microphone in his face, looking weary to her eyes. “It’s an honor to know them.”
Frank Meyers’s was far more antagonistic, and of course, far wordier. “It’s guilt, man. It makes a guy do crazy [bleep]. And they’re just trying to make him feel better. It goes to show that he’s beat down mentally, he doesn’t deserve to be here, he doesn’t deserve a chance to take what’s mine, and I’m gonna take him out.”