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FOURTEEN WEEKS AGO
“I love you too,sweetheart. Can you give the phone back to Aunt Rylie?” Cade St. James runs his hand through his unruly blonde hair while he stands off to the side of the small crowd. We’re gathered in a room attached to where my brother Hudson is warming up for his big fight.
From the sounds of it, he’s talking to his daughter.
I’m not at all surprised to see he turned out to be a good father.
I always knew he would be.
Even on a night like tonight, when half the world is watching, while he makes sure my younger brother Hudson is ready for his first title fight, he’s making time for his little girl.
Damn him.
“Hey, Scar.” Lenny’s best friend, Jules, slides up next to me and hands me one of the two drinks she has in her hand.
I down the rocks glass, glad it was a Jack and Coke, and refuse to admit even to myself that being this close to that man is having any effect on me.
“Tell me who that fine man is standing next to Becket. Then please, please, please tell me he’s single.” Jules flew in this morning with Lenny, Sebastian, Becks, Max, and me on the Kings’ jet.
Lenny and I run the Philadelphia Kings football organization with two of our brothers, Becks and Max. The four of us have been prepping for the draft that’s happening in a few weeks, so we couldn’t get out here yesterday for weigh-ins when the rest of the family flew in.
I did send my assistant, Connor, to be here in my place for the pre-fight conference and weigh-in. Thank God, they went smoothly. But I was on FaceTime, watching, ready to give instructions if they were needed. Public relations can get tricky.
They weren’t this time.
Hudson was perfect.
Jules flips her hair, stunning as ever. Lenny and she modeled together for a hot minute in high school. Len hated it and never did it again. Jules has turned it into an enviable career and now, ten years later, is one of the top models in the industry. She’s twenty-four and already has the ability to be choosy about the jobs she takes. However, none of that stops me from having to tamp down the desire to knock her skinny ass over when she asks about Cade.
“That man is Cade St. James. He’s Hudson’s trainer. He owns Crucible.” When Jules tilts her head as if she has no idea what I’m talking about, I point out the sea of t-shirts Hudson’s team is wearing with the words “Crucible Mixed Martial Arts” emblazoned across the front of them. “The gym where Hud trains,” I add.
This seems to peak Jules’s interest even more. “Ohhh. He looks like that, and he’s successful? Yes, please.”
Lenny joins Jules and me, wrapping an arm around Jules’s waist. “Who are we stalking, ladies? You look like you’re on the prowl.”
“Not stalking. Scarlet was just filling me in on Hudson’s trainer.”
He’s not mine.
He hasn’t been in years.
He wasn’t even a man then.
We were both kids.
I was fifteen the first time he kissed me and seventeen when I ended it. He’d just graduated from high school with my older brother Becket and Amelia’s husband, Sam. Cade wanted to stop hiding our relationship, and I didn’t. So I ended it. Two weeks later, he was gone. He’d enlisted in the marines.
I knew he was leaving. I knew we’d never have made it anyway.
I ended it before he could and didn’t see him for nearly seven years after that.
Seven years we both spent growing up and into the adults we are now.
And even then, I only ever saw him from afar.
Cade bought Crucible from his father and, in what felt like a blink of an eye, was the MMA heavyweight champion.
All that was before his daughter, Brynlee, was born. I’ve heard rumors of the gossip surrounding Cade and his daughter, but I don’t know the real story. I’m sure Hudson or Becket know, but I’ve never wanted to ask.
