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Well, she was a lot nicer than the last one. But hey, I didn’t look like something a tornado had coughed up tonight.
I must’ve looked lonely or sad or something, though, because after she’d seated me at a nice table in the middle of the lounge, she leaned into me and said gently, “I’ll check on you in a bit, hon.”
I watched her walk away.
Then I looked around. The lounge looked exactly the same as I remembered it, and I was suddenly hit with such a wave of conflicting emotions, I had to bite down on my tongue to keep from crying.
There was no gorgeous, mysterious stranger sitting in the corner, though. And somehow that just felt terribly wrong. Like this beautiful, magical moment in time had passed me by. I’d let it slip through my fingers.
Four years ago.
He left me his number and I didn’t call him.
At the time, I just couldn’t see past the fact that who he was meant that he was wrong for me.
Because it was easier for me to believe that he wanted to hurt me than that he actually just wanted me.
A cocktail waitress came and took my order. Just a simple, local beer. I would’ve ordered one of those fancy pink cocktails that he bought for me that night, if they still had them on the menu, but I was afraid it would just make me too sad.
Then I pulled out the little pad of hotel stationery I’d brought with me, and I wrote a note to him.
ChapterThirty-Six
Shane
Iwas at Johnny’s place again, and this time Johnny actually tore himself away from his music studio. He said he was working on a bunch of new songs, which was great, considering the shit he’d been through recently with losing his band and his record deal, and basically having to start over. But he joined me in his gym.
He didn’t work out, though. Him and Lex just sat at the bar while I did my leg workout. My hands were so fucked from the fight, they needed to heal before I could put them to work in the gym again.
I didn’t even have a reason to be working out, really. I didn’t have a new fight scheduled, and I wasn’t sure when I would. I just knew that if I sat around and didn’t work myself out of this slump I was in, I’d go crazy. It was early evening and I’d already spent most of the day in and out of the gym, restless and struggling to focus.
All I could seem to think about was Jolie.
I knew she was in Whistler now, with the rest of the family, and it was murdering me slowly, this monumental effort to stay away from her. To just leave her the fuck alone.
Let her go.
“How are your hands doing?” Johnny asked me, as he watched me do seated calf raises. He’d been pretty quiet.
So had Lex, which was usually not a good thing.
“Nothing broken,” I muttered. “They’ll heal.”
I saw them exchange a look.
Usually, they’d join me in a workout. You know, like if I gave them a heads up. But apparently Johnny had already worked out first thing in the morning, while I was still moping in bed. And Lex said he was “saving his energy for the bedroom,” whatever that meant. He must’ve had a date planned with his wife tonight.
He didn’t bring her to the fight, and Maddox didn’t bring his girl, either. None of my friends who came out to my fights ever brought their wives or girlfriends. Except Dane; he’d brought Devi to a fight, just once, shortly after they were married, and only because I basically goaded them both into it.
Fuck, I really was an asshole sometimes.
Johnny didn’t even come to this fight. I’d noticed that he only came out to my fights when he was in a bad mood, drinking a lot and looking for trouble. He hadn’t been in that kind of mood for a long while. Now that he’d found peace with Angeline…
Peace.
That’s what it was I saw in him now, right?
I knew what that felt like, maybe. There were moments, with Jolie, when it felt so damn right, peace was definitely the word for it. In those fleeting moments, there was nothing to fight. Everything just fit.
