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“What?” I asked.
“You sure you should still be indulging her?” Beckham asked. His eyes stayed firmly planted on the furniture, though.
My fingers found the bridge of my nose and pinched tight. “No, I don’t know that. But if either of you have any helpful advice in how to help a seven-year-old girl who lost her mom, then I’m open to suggestions.”
“Maybe you should take her to talk to someone if she’s still doing stuff like this.”
“It was getting better back in LA.” I dropped my hand and studied the crisscrossing scars along my knuckles. “Once she gets used to this house and her new school, it’ll get better here too.”
“It’s been two years, Aiden,” Deacon added.
Like I didn’t know when my wife died. I could’ve counted the days with ease. Without looking at a calendar, I knew how many hours it had been. Maybe even down to the minute, if I had Clark’s skill with numbers. A pervasive emptiness came from losing the person you loved, and maybe that emptiness eased with each passing minute and hour and day, turning into something manageable, but it was always there.
But instead of telling him that, of trying to explain to someone who didn’t have a family of his own and had never loved someone whose loss would carve a hole into his being, I simply nodded. “I know.”
One of the strangest things about being back was moments like this, when my younger brothers helped me. With anything, honestly. Not just that they’d been here every day doing things like hanging hot pink tulle canopies and assembling princess vanities, but they were giving me parenting advice.
The stool assembled, Beckham set it on the floor and gave the cushioned seat a pat. “Not bad. Maybe I have a future in furniture assembly.”
Without looking up from the vanity, Deacon pointed at the front leg. “That’s on backward.”
“The hell it is.” Beckham turned it over, then cursed under his breath.
It was easier to smile than it had been leaving Anya’s room. My brother’s worry only underscored my own. My daughter, seven going on seventeen, was smart and sweet and a complete daredevil. But come bedtime, when the dark took over the skies, she let every fear in her head take the wheel.
“Beer in the fridge?” I asked.
Deacon looked up, then nodded. “Might not be cold yet.”
“Fine by me.”
The house was unpacked, even if it was light on the furnishings. Our bungalow in LA was half the size—and twice the cost—as the home I’d found for Anya and me overlooking Lake Sammamish in Bellevue. And the fridge was no different than the rest of the house. Just shy of empty. Inside was a case of beer, leftover pizza, deli meat, and whatever my mom had bought for Anya’s meals. I moved aside a bright pink water bottle and snagged a bottle of beer.
I didn’t drink often, which my brothers knew, but today was a day I could justify it.
The bottle opened with a twist of my hand, and as the metal top clattered onto the tile floor of the kitchen, I took a deep swallow.
Since the day I retired from fighting, I hadn’t second-guessed any decision I’d made. But today, as I scrawled my signature on a hundred papers in front of a stone-faced notary, effectively making the biggest purchase of my entire life—a gym about to be renamed Hennessy’s—gave me my first moment of pause.
My instincts were always, always spot-on. If I didn’t trust my instincts, I’d never have survived a single fight. Sometimes your body reacted before your mind had a moment to wonder if it was the right move. That was what training was for. Because a shift of your leg in the wrong direction meant you were pinned with your arm above your head. If you didn’t block an uppercut to your jaw or your kidneys, it was a hundred times harder to win.
When I visited the gym for the first time, about a year after Beth died, I felt a shift when I walked in the door. It was the only way I could explain it. Something in my gut screamed at me that it was the right gym, the right place, the right time for Anya and me.
“What’s with your face?”
I blinked because Beckham walked into the kitchen without me realizing it. “Thinking.”
“Get your paperwork squared away?”
Nodding, I took another sip of beer.
He pointed at me. “You’re doing it again.”
Sure enough, my forehead was wrinkled, and my mouth turned in a frown. I took a deep breath, trying to smooth out my expression.
“I’m fine.”
Because my little brother knew me, he didn’t push on that comment. Grabbing a beer of his own, he cracked it open and took a long drag while he stared out of the kitchen window overlooking the lake. “Remember your last fight?”
