Page 182 of The Clinch
“Then why am I finding out now?”
“Because this is where we are.”
Which is such a Nate answer, I nearly combust on the spot.
I shove the back door open and get out.
The air hits me hot and damp. My flats crunch over grit and powdered glass. Behind me, I hear Nate’s door open and Eden mutter, “Oh God.”
I don’t wait for either of them. I’m already barreling toward the side entrance.
The security light hums overhead, washing the metal door and cracked pavement in hard white light.
As I get closer, I hear voices inside. Male. Low. One sharp laugh cutting through the rest.
Travis.
Every muscle in my body locks.
A cold, full-body recoil. As if the sound of his voice belongs to a life I once lived by mistake.
I push through the side door and step into Leo’s world.
The front of the gym is exactly the way I remember it. Concrete floor. Scuffed walls. Medicine balls. Battle ropes. That metallic edge fight spaces keep no matter how hard you scrub them.
But farther in, the air changes.
The working rhythm is gone.
What’s left is tighter. Cleaner. Arranged.
A folding table near the ring apron. Bottled water. Clipboards. Papers stacked in neat rows. One camera on a tripod facing the ring. Another mounted high, angled down from the rafters.
All I can think is,what in the nineteenth-century duel is this?
My gaze snaps to the tall brunette beside the tripod, and my temper goes from hot to white.
Jessica.
Near the far post, Ray stands with his arms folded over his chest. Lukas is beside him, looking like he’d rather burn the whole evening down and be done with it. A cutman waits at a stainless tray under a bright lamp, everything arranged with clinical neatness.
And there, outside opposite corners of the ring, are the two men who decided this was reasonable.
Travis is already half changed, T-shirt off, black shorts on, wrist tape wound. One thick-necked guy stands near his corner with a towel over one shoulder and a cut kit on the stool behind him.
My ex-husband looks good. That’s the first irritating fact. Big arms. Defined chest. The kind of body that still reads as powerful to people who mistake surface for substance.
The second fact is colder: he has no idea where he is.
Across from him, Leo is in dark training shorts and nothing else, his back to me while one of the team checks his gloves. Broad shoulders. Narrow waist. The hard discipline of a body built through repetition. Old bruises bloom along his ribs, one yellowing near his right side.
Nothing in him is wasted.
No pacing. No bounce. No theater. He doesn’t need any of it.
I know the exact second he feels me because the man checking his gloves stops touching him.
Leo turns.
