Page 122 of Heal Me, Love Me

“I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not. You’re tired, and you have your meeting with Grant in the morning.”

“I want to keep talking to you though.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” he promised.

“All right. I’ll call you after the meeting to let you know how it went.”

“You better.”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

The call ended, and I sat there for a minute, hating how alone I felt.

The next morning,I took a rideshare to Grant’s office for our meeting. Signing with Grant had made me feel like my career was moving forward, but sitting in his office to go over an actual fight contract made it feel real in a different way. This wasn’t a call, a maybe, or him telling me he was working on something. This was a date, a city, an opponent I didn’t know yet, and another reason Florida felt less temporary than it had when I first got there.

I’d barely sat down when Grant stepped out of his office. “Rowan.”

I stood and shook his hand. “Hey, how are you?”

“Good. Come on back.” He waved for me to follow him.

Grant’s office was clean and professional, but it still had fight posters on the walls, signed gloves on a shelf, and a stack of folders on his desk. The one on top had my name on it. “Coffee?” he asked.

“No, thank you.”

He motioned to the chair across from his desk. “Sit. We’ve got a fight to make official.”

I sat, and Grant opened the folder with my name on it before sliding the contract across the desk. “I finally know who you’ll be fighting.”

I focused my attention on the contract, but the name of the fighter didn’t mean anything to me yet.

Trent Navarro.

“You know him?” Grant asked, pointing at the name.

“No.”

“You will. He’s quick on his feet and has a heavy right hand. He also has more cage time than you, but not so much that I’m throwing you into a fight you don’t belong in. It’s a step up, not a mismatch.”

I read the name again. Trent Navarro wasn’t a face yet, only a name on a contract, but in seven weeks, he’d be the guy standing across from me in a cage in Miami. “Seven weeks?” I asked.

“Yes, the third Saturday in January.” Grant leaned back in his chair. “But before you sign, understand what comes with this. Navarro will talk. His corner will talk. Once they announce the card, The Loop will talk. Some of it will be about the fight, and some of it won’t.”

“I can handle comments.”

“Can you handlenotresponding to them?”

I looked back down at the contract instead of giving him the first answer that came to mind.

“That’s what I thought,” he replied. “There’s a difference between selling a fight and letting strangers bait you into one before you even step into the cage. If the promotion wants you to talk, you and I will decide what you say. If Navarro runs his mouth, we’ll decide whether to respond. But if you start answering comments on your own, you could create a problem I have to fix.”

I’d signed fight paperwork before. The Los Angeles event had come with medicals, drug testing, and enough official shit to remind me that it wouldn’t be just two guys walking into a cage. But Grant wasn’t just handing me another spot on a card. He was putting a plan in front of me, with an opponent, a full camp, a social media build-up, and a path that looked a lot more real with my name printed beside Trent Navarro’s.

“Understood.” I picked up the pen and worked through the packet, initialing and signing everywhere Grant had marked.