Page 164 of Heal Me, Love Me

“No.” Devon’s gaze never left mine. “I’m telling you what I saw. You two may have thought you were both hiding it, but you weren’t. You guys are stuck.”

“I’m not stuck,” I countered, but my words didn’t carry much weight.

“No?”

“No.”

He studied me for a second. Then he said the thing that finally pushed me over the edge. “I thought maybe this matchup would force it.”

The room fell completely still. “What?”

“I thought that working through your shit in a cage would finally get both of you to move on.”

I glared at him. “You thought us fighting would make me get over him?”

“I thought it might make you stop living in the middle.”

There it was. The thing that had nothing to do with rankings or opportunities with promotion companies. Devon wasn’t talking about my career anymore. He was talking about Rowan and me as a couple, not as former training partners. He was talking about decisions that weren’t his to make.

I shook my head slowly. “You had no right.”

“I was trying to help.”

“No.” My voice came out quieter this time, which somehow felt worse. “You were trying to force something that wasn’t yours to fix.”

Devon’s expression softened. “I care about you.”

“Sure.” I shrugged. “You brought me into Titan. You helped me become a better fighter. You got me my first fight. But somewhere along the way, you started thinking that gave you a say in everything else.”

“That’s not?—”

I held up my hand because I was done listening to his excuses. “Marcos already made arrangements.”

The surprise on his face was instant. “What arrangements?”

“Phil’s going to run my camp at another location.”

He narrowed his gaze. “You’re leaving Titan?”

I looked around the office. In the room where I’d always trusted him to have my best interests in mind. “No. I’m leaving you.”

30

Keaton

Three MonthsLater

Rowan satat the other end of the table, and I tried not to look at him.

That lasted about thirty seconds.

The conference room in Austin was packed with cameras, reporters, and enough promotional banners to remind everyone why the fight business existed in the first place. I sat behind a long table, my name printed on a place card in front of me, while photographers moved around the room, seeking the best angles. To my right, a heavyweight contender fielded questions about his training camp. Somewhere down the line, another fighter laughed loudly enough to draw attention away from whatever interview was happening nearby.

I’d done some media before my previous fights, but nothing like this. Answering questions about myself wasn’t something I enjoyed, especially when the interviews followed the samepattern. How’s camp? How do you feel? What do you think about your opponent? Then someone would ask a slightly different version of the same question and pretend it was groundbreaking journalism.

But this wasn’t only about the fight.

The promotion had spent the last six weeks turning our match into a story. Every poster featured the two of us. Every social media post somehow circled back to the fact that we used to train together. That seemed to be enough to make people interested.