Page 161 of Heal Me, Love Me

When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter. “There is no us.”

The words made it easier to be angry than hurt. He didn’t try to soften them, and maybe he hadn’t meant them the way they sounded, but he’d still said them.

“Right.” I pressed my back harder against the building. “You’re right. There is no us.”

“Rowan—”

“I guess we should both do what’s best for our careers, then.”

“Is that what you’re going to do?”

“Yeah.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

The word sat between us, too final for something neither of us had signed yet.

“I don’t want to hate you,” he stated.

“You won’t have to.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we’re professionals, right?”

“Rowan,” he said again. There was a time hearing my name from him, even clipped and pissed off on the mats at Titan, had gotten under my skin because it meant he couldn’t keep pretending I was nobody, and now I hated it.

“I need to go.”

I ended the call before either of us could say anything else and walked back into Grant’s office and signed the fucking contract.

You want to fight me in the cage, Keaton? Then we’re going to fucking fight.

29

Keaton

I threwmy phone onto the bed hard enough that it bounced twice before landing on my pillow.

An hour ago, I was sitting in Devon’s office, looking at what should’ve been the biggest opportunity of my career. Everything about the offer was exactly what I’d hoped for since signing with Marcos. Until I looked down and saw Rowan’s name.

What pissed me off most wasn’t even that Rowan hated the idea of the fight. I understood why he wouldn’t want to go up against me. Hell, I hated the idea too. No part of me had looked at Rowan’s name and thought,Perfect. This is exactly what I want.But somewhere during the conversation, he’d decided I wasn’t struggling with it the same way he was. As if I’d looked at his name, considered the pros and cons, and immediately started planning the next phase of my career.

“I think you saw my name and started weighing the upsides.”

The accusation felt like shit because it didn’t reflect what had actually happened. I hadn’t spent the last hour thinking aboutmoney. I hadn’t spent it thinking about rankings or exposure or what the fight might do for my career. I’d spent it thinking about him.

I’d thought about our breakup. About everything we’d gone through after high school to find our way back to each other. About all the nights we’d spent convincing ourselves we could somehow make the distance work if we just tried hard enough. Every time I looked at the contract, I saw all of that before anything else.

Yet, somehow, he’d turned me into the guy who chose a fight over a relationship. That part really got to me because he kept acting like he’d been the only one hurt when everything fell apart. As if I’d walked away from Miami and just moved on with my life. As if ending the relationship somehow meant I hadn’t been devastated too.

I knew I was the one who’d initiated the breakup. I’d never pretended otherwise. I’d made the decision, and I’d have to live with it for the rest of my life. But that didn’t mean it’d been easy. It didn’t mean I’d walked away from him feeling relieved or convinced I’d done the right thing.

The distance had been killing us. Every goodbye we said was harder than the last. We spent months pretending that loving each other was enough to overcome everything else, and eventually I reached the point where I couldn’t keep lying to either of us. Choosing to end the long-distance misery didn’t mean I stopped loving him. It didn’t mean I stopped missing him. And it definitely didn’t mean the past six months had been easy.

I pushed away from the window and started pacing. The more I thought about the conversation, the angrier I got. It was as if he’d wanted me to immediately reject the fight because of what we used to be. He wanted me to prove he still mattered by turning down the opportunity before I’d even had time toprocess it. Then, when I didn’t give him the answer he wanted, he acted as if that meant I didn’t care.