“Why is he saving his right hand?” Barkley asked quietly.

  I put my hand in front of my mouth. “It’s busted,” I murmured. “Fractured in an accident. It’s a cannon but it hurts him. He needs to save it.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “Car.” My eyes flickered to Barkley and back to Kellen. “He was in a coma. People thought he’d never wake up.”

  He swore under his breath, his phone lowering. He paused it, turning to face me. “What did he mean before? About the abuse.”

  “You have to ask him.”

  “He’ll never tell me.”

  “Then you’ll never know.”

  It was a cold thing to say but it was the truth. It was Kellen’s truth. It was a trust and confidence I’d spent years earning and I wasn’t about to lose it now. Not when everything was finally going so well.

  “Yes!” I screamed, my heart flying in my chest.

  Kellen had the guy against the ropes again, back on defense, and he was landing blow after blow. He worked him with his right hand but he never went full force. It would hurt, I knew, but not like it could. Not like it would if he had to go all in with it.

  He got the guy on the shoulder, the chest. He landed a left-handed blow to his stomach that doubled him over, nearly knocking the life out of him.

  My phone vibrated angrily in my pocket.

  I growled a curse as I pulled it out, glancing at the screen. It was my mom. It looked I’d missed three calls from her already.

  “Yeah, mom!” I shouted over the noise in the gym. “Not a good time. I’m at—“

  “Lane—in the—al.”

  I plugged my free ear and hunched over my phone. “What?!”

  “Laney’s in the hospital!” she screamed.

  “Oh my God. What happened?!”

  “She fainted. She collap—“

  The building exploded in cheers and boos. I shook my head, pushing past the crowd and out into the open air.

  “Mom, what did you say? What happened?”

  She growled angrily. “I said she collapsed! She fainted dead away in the driveway. She hit her head hard on the asphalt and I rushed her to the hospital and I don’t know what’s happening! No one has answered me about what’s going on with her!”

  “Where’s Dad?”

  “He’s on his way. He’s bringing Max from the office.”

  “Okay. Okay. Sit tight. Wait for them.”

  “You have to come home.”

  “I know. I’m in Vegas but I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

  “Hurry.”

  “I will.”

  Mom hung up the phone. I stared at mine, blind as I tried to catch up with what I needed to do.

  “Are you alright?”

  I spun around to find myself face to face with Barkley. “I—I don’t know. My sister, she’s pregnant and she collapsed in my parent’s driveway. She hit her head and no one knows what’s going on and I need to get home but Kellen has this fight and he drove us here and… shit. I don’t know. Do I try to stop the fight and pull him out? I can’t do that. I can’t do that to him.”

  Barkley stepped onto the busy street, expertly hailing a cab as it passed. He put his hand on my back and gently pushed me toward it. “You go to the airport. You book the first flight home and you fly out immediately. I’ll stay with Kellen and explain what happened when the match is over. He’ll drive his truck back tonight.”

  He opened the door and ushered me inside, closing the door behind me.

  “McCarren,” he told the driver briskly.

  The car started pulling away from the curb before I realized what was happening.

  I hurriedly rolled down my window to shout, “Tell him I’m sorry!”

  Barkley nodded once, just the way Kellen always did, and turned to disappear back inside.

  I got lucky at the airport. I was able to get a seat on a flight leaving only twenty minutes after I got there but I paced the entire time. I texted my dad to get an update on Laney but it went unanswered by the time I was in the air.

  When I landed an hour later I had three new messages. It freaked me out that none were from Laney.

  One was from Kellen telling me he was sorry he wasn’t with me, one from my mom panicking in near gibberish and demanding I get there immediately, and finally one from my dad telling me Laney was awake, coherent, but that I needed to meet them at the hospital as soon as I landed. He said he’d be waiting for me.

  I could have called to ask him to clarify, to let me know if the situation was good or bad, but I didn’t. I didn’t because I knew my dad.

  I didn’t because I’d had a bad feeling all day, a feeling that had ominously lifted.

  When I got to the hospital and found my family, three hours had passed since Laney first went down. My dad pulled me aside in the hallway before letting me see Laney,

  I was ready for the worst. Or at least I thought I was.

  “What happened?” I whispered.

  Dad’s face was pained but calm. “Her blood pressure bottomed out. She fainted. Took a bad hit to the head. She has a concussion but it’ll be fine. Her head is fine.”

  “Why’d her blood pressure drop?”

  “They don’t know. But when they checked her belly listening for the baby’s heart they couldn’t find it.”

  “Oh my God,” I breathed, my hand covering my mouth. “Did they do an ultrasound? Did they find it?”

  “They did an ultrasound. It didn’t help. The baby—“ His breath caught in his throat. He coughed roughly. “The baby is gone, Jenna. Your sister’s baby is gone.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Kellen

  Silence is tricky. It’s nothing. It is literally the absence of a thing. The loss of sound and all that it signifies. It could be a blessing and it could be a curse.

  The silence that stalked the Monroe family in the weeks after Laney’s miscarriage was a damnable thing. It echoed through the house, buffeted down the halls by tears and shuddering breaths that sprang to life in every room, every corner. It was a haunted place.

  Laney took the miscarriage hard. I didn’t know any other way a woman could take it. She blamed herself, blamed her body and her blood. I heard her wailing on the other end of the phone the first night Jenna stayed at their parent’s house with her and it sounded like a wounded animal howling in the woods. It punched a hole in my heart that I couldn’t begin to heal. I knew I’d never forget that sound and it made it all the more awful knowing who it came from.

  The girl who I always thought was incapable of caring for anyone but herself was a woman nearly screaming with grief for a life never lived. Eyes never opened. Lungs never filled. Empty hands and unformed feet. It gutted her, took her down to the bedrock of her soul and threatened to break out, break down, break her in two until there was nothing left. For two weeks she wasn’t allowed to be alone. Jenna, Karen, Dan, and Max took turns staying with her, trying to coax her into eating and drinking. Asking her to get up and go outside, but they rarely succeeded.

  They got her into therapy that third week. The doctor had to come to her because she wouldn’t leave the house. Jenna said it was helping. She mumbled updates tiredly to me as she fell asleep, wiped out from the shop and her shifts on watch. I pulled the blanket up high over her thin shoulders, leaving the room silently to go do dishes or laundry, to take her car to get gas; doing everything I could to take care of her. To make it easier for her, but I never felt like I did enough.

  We got the house in Hermosa. Word came through during that second week after Laney collapsed and Jenna was in the thick of it with her family. I brought her papers to sign, promising her I’d read all of the contracts and that I’d handle everything. She was excited but her joy was tempered with the somber feel of her family, consuming her every waking moment and thought. It wasn’t until three days after the incident when my dad sent flowers to the family that she thought to ask me if I’d won my final bout. I told her I had, smiling happily, proud to be able to deliver good news. I thought she’d be excited. Instead she cried. Not the reaction I was expecting but I held her and told her it was okay, whatever it was. I think she was a confused mass of emotions then. Nothing was processing right and it all came out in tears, her body purging the hurt every chance it got.

  They were dark days.

  Now a month after the miscarriage things were starting to head back to normal. Laney was still on medical leave from her job. She said she didn’t want to go back but her therapist backburnered the topic the way Ben often did to me, putting a pin in it for later discussion when Laney was feeling stronger. She wasn’t being watched every second of every day but the majority of the time she was awake someone was there in the house with her.

  Jenna hired new help at the store and for once it was going well. She picked up some young artist with a lot of promise, a lot like herself six years ago when Bryce discovered her – not yet eighteen, still in high school, but determined. Sure of her path. I was glad to see she was mentoring someone eager and loyal. Grateful.

  Things were going well at the firehouse. I was making friends, enjoying my days, and when I wasn’t there I was at the Hermosa house with Callum doing demolition work, getting it ready for the remodel. I texted with my dad now and then. He asked after Jenna and her family. I sent him pictures of the house. I saw him on ESPN when I was flipping through the channels and stumbled on an old broadcast of the World Series of Poker. He was consistently one of the November Nine competing each year. On the footage I saw he took home nearly eight million dollars, and it wasn’t his only victory that year.

  “How flush do you think he is?” Callum grunted.

  He tossed the bathroom sink into the wheel barrel in the hall. It crashed loudly, sending up a plume of dust into the air. His voice was muffled by his breathing mask, my own making my mouth wet with rebounding hot air. I itched all over from where the dust found home on my skin and mixed with sweat. My body was exhausted and busted, bruises running up and down my arms and thighs. It was brutal, tiring work but I loved it. I relished the feeling every night of utter fatigue from a day spent tearing the place down and plotting how I’d build it back up.

  “I don’t know, man,” I answered Callum. “He’s been doing this shit for a long time and he’s into the stock market too. He’s good at it. He’s smart.”

  “Is he a genius like you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Does he want to invest in an MMA gym in L.A.?”

  I laughed as I landed a blow to the ugly green tile shower, sending ceramic chips flying. “You’re welcome to ask him.”

  “I can’t believe you’re not gonna get in on this.”

  “I can’t believe you talked Tim into going into business with you.”

  “He knows a good thing when he sees it,” Callum replied proudly.

  “I think he sees a chance to hand off a lot of the work to someone else and retire. He’s getting old. His health isn’t great.”

  “Either way, dude. Who cares? I’ll do the work. It’s worth it. It’d be a lot more fun if you did it with me.”

  I paused, lowering the long hammer I’d been swinging to look at him. He was covered in white dust and sweat, same as I was, but his eyes above his mask were eager and excited. He was putting a dream into action, just like Jenna had. I was proud of him. Psyched for him. I just didn’t want to get too involved in it.

  He didn’t understand how I could quit competing. He yelled at me when I told him I was done. Tim had only nodded gravely, no words spoken. He understood it. He had ended his career around the same time, just before hitting thirty. He’d known me since I was an angry eight-year-old kid and I’d needed something to hit. He’d helped me find my outlet and now he knew I didn’t need it anymore. Now I needed Jenna and a functioning right hand that could hold my kid someday. I was leaving my past behind and looking forward to a future, for once believing I had one. For once in my life I was looking to the next day. The next dawn. The next chapter in my story.

  “I think it’s great you’re going in with Tim on the gym. I’m proud of you. You’re not the complete fuck up I tell everyone you are.”

  “Fuck you,” he growled, his voice smiling.

  I grinned. “I just don’t want in. I told you I’ll still work out there. I’ll train there and I’ll be around if you need any help but I don’t want to get too invested in it. I’m done with that being my entire life. I’ve got this house to rebuild and a job to work, Jenna to take care of, and someday I want a family here. Doesn’t leave a lot of room for constant training and competing.”

  “Yeah, alright. I get it. You’re pussy whipped.”

  “I’m holding a sledge hammer. You see that, right?”

  He put up his hands up in submission, his eyes squinting against the swell of his smiling cheeks under his mask.

  Two hours later and Callum was gone. He had a date with Sam and the dude definitely needed a shower. I was dreaming of one myself, but I went to check the back patio before heading home. I liked to stand out there with the ocean at my back and the house glowing golden in the setting sunlight in front of me, because if you crossed your eyes and used your imagination to its fullest extent, you could see it. You could imagine how this shell of a building could be a home. One filled with Jenna and her laugh. With love and little feet on the floor. With gray eyes and dark hair and the entirety of my existence.

  It gave me peace in my soul that I could barely comprehend and a sting in the back of my eyes that I didn’t try to brush aside. I let it burn and I let my eyes brim because I was a man. I was an Irishman, and I wasn’t ashamed of my joy.

  Of the absolute overwhelming fullness of my heart.

  A board rattled, knocked, and clattered loudly to the ground at my right, startling me.

  Callum and I had been assembling a pile of boards we were salvaging from the house out here on the patio, planning planter boxes or the construction of a small shed with what we saved. We had stacked it precariously and I assumed the wind had gotten under one, lifting it just enough to send it off balance and knock it to the ground. But then I saw a shadow, dark and sleek. It darted farther behind the pile of boards, pinning itself down between the fence and the stack.

  It was an animal, too big to be a cat or raccoon. Had to be a dog.

  I wasn’t great with dogs.

  I approached the stack cautiously, expecting the animal to run out at any second and dart down the beach toward home, but it stayed hidden and silent, waiting for me to leave. I saw its dark head first; shining black fur and wide, panicked eyes. Its body was hunched down low and lost in the shadows, but the face told me it was a pit bull. No doubt about it.

  I hesitated, now sure what to do. We hadn’t been pulling nails from the boards. They stuck out at all angles from practically every surface and this guy had shoved himself down in the fray. He was going to get cut if he didn’t get out of there. If he wasn’t cut already. I couldn’t just leave him in there.

  I knelt down, shrinking my body and getting low at the entrance to the stack. I reached out my hand, keeping it low and distant, making sure I could snap it back before he snapped at me. I also pulled a short board in close on my left, just in case.

  “Hey, buddy,” I said softly. “What are you doing in there, huh?”

  His eyes darted from side to side, looking for an escape. His front feet scuttled over the broken patio cement as he tried uselessly to get farther from me. To push himself farther into the corner.

  I could see his body moving with each breath, fast and labored. His heart was probably beating out of his chest and still he stayed there, hunched down to the smallest size he could be with fear in his face. He released a low moan, almost a growl but more of a whimper that ended in a groan and I caught the tang of copper on the air. The undeniable scent of blood.

  He was hurt and cornered, the cagey look in his eyes so fucking familiar it was uncanny.

  “Yeah,” I murmured, lowering my hand slowly. “I get that feeling.”

  I backed up out of the way, giving him an out if he was brave enough to take it. He could dart past me and be down the beach if he wanted to run, but I sat down off to the side, put my hands in plain view in my lap, and I waited. I didn’t speak to him again. I didn’t move. I didn’t make eye contact. I sat and I waited and as the sun set farther and farther into the water the dog disappeared in the shadows. All I could see of him were his dark eyes, all I could hear was the rushed sound of his breath.

  Just when I wondered if I should let him sort it out himself, the eyes moved. I watched them out of my peripheral as he came slowly toward me, hesitant and afraid. He inched toward me. Once. Twice. A little farther, until finally his head poked out of the shadows and his shining, wet nose sniffed around my hands. I opened one, keeping it low and under his face so he could always see it, and he sniffed my fingertips. My palm. He came out of the shadows far enough that I could see his naked neck.

  No collar. No information. The bones of his shoulders stuck up high under taut skin. He was thin, too thin. Definitely a stray. Homeless and abandoned.

  He came a little closer, his eyes darting to the side toward the opening I’d left him, but still he sniffed me. He stuck around and I took a chance. I reached up with my other hand and gently touched the side of his face. He flinched, going perfectly still, but I didn’t stop. I petted him gently and slowly, the rest of my body motionless and my eyes on his paws. He let me pet him and slowly I lifted my other hand, scratching the other side of his face and he allowed that too, never moving. His eyes started to calm, to close until I couldn’t see the whites anymore and his breathing wasn’t out of control. He was tense and afraid, ready to run at any second, but he wasn’t aggressive. Nothing about him said he was going to bite me, and when I began to pull my hand back he followed it. He stepped forward, cautiously laid down in front of me, and laid his chin on my leg.