Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
I’d forgotten how loud quiet could be.
The woods off the Jasper Creek trailhead swallowed town noise in about thirty yards. One minute you had distant traffic and somebody’s dog barking, the next it was just wind in the branches and the grind of gravel under my boots.
Was this helping or was I just inventing a new way to torture myself?
These were the same trails Chloe and I used to hike on Sundays when we were playing at being outdoorsy. Back when weekend plans meant pack a lunch, go see the overlook, talk about maybe someday bringing kids up here in tiny hiking boots.
I hadn’t set foot out here since she’d moved out.
Hell, if I was honest, I hadn’t really been hiking since we lost Kristen. There’d been the one time I’d walked into the trees with a loaded Glock and a head full of ghosts, but that didn’t count as a nature walk.
I jammed my hands into the pockets of my jacket and kept moving.
There was something almost…holy about this place.
I didn’t mean that in a church way. Just—trees towering overhead, ferns crowding the edges of the path, the creek talking to itself somewhere downhill.
It made all the shit that lived in my head feel smaller, like it didn’t matter so much in the face of moss and rock and ten thousand years of erosion.
Grounding, my therapist would’ve called it, if I’d ever actually gone to see one.
I’d left the house early, too restless to sit with my thoughts and too bruised to do much else. Cleaning was already done; hell, I’d scrubbed baseboards at two in the morning like a man trying to erase himself.
So, I’d driven instead. Out of town, up the familiar curve of the road, until the parking lot appeared like it had all my life.
The main trail switchbacked up the side of the hill, packed dirt and scattered roots. I walked it on autopilot, legs remembering the climb even if my head wanted to be anywhere else. After a while, the path forked—one way down to the water, one way toward the lookout.
I took the lookout.
Habit, I guess.
Halfway up, I cut off the main trail and bushwhacked a little, heading higher through the trees.
The air thinned and cooled. My ribs complained at the steeper climb but it was a clean kind of pain, not the tearing, wrong kind from the cage.
I kept going until the trees thinned and the ground leveled out.
There it was.
The overlook wasn’t much to anyone who’d grown up in the Rockies or whatever.
Just a big, flat rock outcropping where the hill dropped away in a steep slope down to the creek.
From here, you could see the water rushing between boulders, flashing white and dark.
In the other direction, if you turned, you could just make out the curve of town through the trees—rooftops, the church steeple, the faint suggestion of the square.
I stood on the rock and looked down at the water.
For a long time, I didn’t think anything.
That wasn’t true, of course. Saying I “wasn’t thinking” was like saying the creek “wasn’t moving.”
I was thinking of Chloe.
Of the way she’d moved around my kitchen like she belonged there, messing up my towel lines, not apologizing for existing. Of how the whole house had felt different with her shoes by the door, like it remembered what it was built for.
Of the way her face had fallen when I’d told her she should go.
She’d gone.
She’d put her hand over my heart, told me she wasn’t giving up on me, and then she’d left anyway. Shoulders straight. Head high. Like she’d finally realized she could walk away and not break in half.
The water rushed over rock, churning around obstacles before smoothing out again downstream.
“You’re an idiot,” I told myself, the trees, the creek. Hell, maybe the birds were listening… judging.
The breeze didn’t answer. A bird called somewhere to my right, sharp and brief. Yep, they were judging. The little bastards.
I thought about the babies we’d lost. About Kristen, the one who’d gotten a name and a face in my head, even if she’d never taken a breath. I thought about the night out here when I’d decided maybe following her sounded easier than going home to an empty house.
I’d stepped close to the edge that night. Closer than I’d ever admit to another living soul.
I looked down now and my stomach dipped, remembering. It wasn’t a pull, exactly, not like before. More a sick twist at the idea that I’d come that damn close to erasing myself from the world that held Chloe.
“You’re still here,” I muttered. “You didn’t take that step. Congratulations on the bare minimum.”
Again the birds chirped.
I didn’t know if coming up here was helping or if I was just rubbing my nose in all the places I’d once felt joy with her by my side.
Maybe it was both.
The sun started to slide lower, turning the treeline at my back into a dark wall. Down in the hollow, shadows stretched long over town. The air cooled another few degrees, enough that I could feel the temperature difference in my lungs.
I checked the sky out of habit—old firefighter reflex. Cloud cover was thickening; the moon wouldn’t be much help tonight.
I huffed out a laugh at myself.
Yeah, I might have some self-destructive ideations still bouncing around in the back of my skull, but I wasn’t so far gone that I was going to hike down a steep slope in the dark on a moonless night with shit ribs and a meeting on my calendar.
So, I turned away from the water and headed back the way I’d come, taking it slow, placing each foot carefully. I made it back to the main trail before the light really started to fade, and back to the truck with just enough time to get home, shower, and drive to Knoxville.
After all, I had a meeting with a man to keep.
And maybe, just maybe, a mess to step into with my eyes open for once.
Kellerman’s was the kind of place truckers stopped when they didn’t want to deal with chain restaurant bullshit.
Neon sign buzzing out front, gravel parking lot, big plate-glass windows sweating from the heat inside. The kind of diner that smelled like coffee, bleach, and a thousand fried breakfasts cooked on the same grill.
I got there ten minutes early.
Maurice Benson was already there.
He’d chosen the booth in the back corner, the one farthest from the door and closest to the bathrooms. The overhead light above it flickered slightly, giving everything a faint strobe effect.
He didn’t wave when I walked in. Didn’t nod, didn’t smile.
He just watched me approach, eyes tracking my progress like a predator watching something wander into his kill zone. He was alone in the booth, one hand curled around a mug of coffee, the other resting flat on the table next to a laminated menu he clearly wasn’t reading.
I stopped at the edge of the booth, took in the setup, and realized he’d left the only open seat facing the wall. If I sat, my back would be to the door, to the counter, to the whole damn diner.
That position never sat right with me on a good day. It really didn’t sit right when the guy across from me was someone I was already sure I couldn’t trust.
I slid in anyway, ribs twinging as I moved. I could feel the entrance at my back like an itch I couldn’t scratch.
Maurice’s mouth curled into a slow smile. “A lot of guys lose their nerve before my second cup of coffee,” he said. “They talk big at the gym, then find a reason not to show. I told myself, Post isn’t like that. He’ll come. He’s a serious man.”
It took everything I had not to roll my eyes.
Instead, I reached for the menu just to have something in my hands. “So,” I said. “Tell me about your setup.”
A waitress appeared then, like she’d been waiting for that cue. “Evening,” she said. “You need a minute, or you know what you want?”
“Coffee,” I said. “Black.”
“You want anything to eat?” she asked.
I shook my head. My stomach was in a knot tight enough to strangle a python.
She refilled Maurice’s mug and left us to it.
Maurice waited until she was out of earshot. Then he leaned back against the cracked vinyl, draping one arm along the back of the booth like we were just two guys catching up after a movie.
“You ever hear of regional circuits?” he asked.
“Depends what we’re talking about,” I said.
“Not the nice ones,” he clarified, amused. “Not the league stuff with announcers and EMTs ringside with forms to sign in triplicate. I mean the fights that happen when you drive past the official gyms. Places where people go to watch with real hunger in their eyes.”
I kept my face neutral. “I’ve heard rumors.”
His smile deepened. “Of course you have.”
He laid it out then in smooth, conversational strokes, like he was explaining his fantasy football league.
There were locations—warehouses, barns, back rooms of closed-down businesses—rotating so authorities would never catch whiff of a spot.
There were “sponsors,” which sounded a hell of a lot like guys with too much money and not enough hobbies.
There were regular fight nights, invite-only, names passed by word of mouth and encrypted group chats.
Money on the table. Cash, mostly. Some under-the-table transfers if you knew who to ask.
“Payouts are good,” Maurice said, watching me over the rim of his mug. “You show, you fight, you walk out with more than your monthly salary. You put on a show, you walk out with enough to make a dent in whatever problems are keeping you up at night.”
“No sanctioning?” I asked.
He shrugged. “We have our own code. You tap, it’s over. Ref stops a fight if someone’s out on their feet. We don’t like casualties. They attract attention.”
“Seems to me, that’s not much different than what’s done at Cappy’s. Why all the big bets?”
“Like I said, they come for the show,” Maurice said. It was the first sound of agitation in his voice.
“Like WWE?”
“Catch a clue, Post. Not like WWE. Otherwise you wouldn’t get such good payouts.”