Chapter Twelve #2
He’d been my best friend’s older brother. My childhood crush. The boy who girls at school fawned over in a way that made me feel special that he knew my name.
He’d been there but always removed—in high school when I was still in middle school.
Graduated by the time I reached high school.
Away at boxing camp during the summers I spent at the Hardt’s.
He’d been the stories Evan told me about his big brother from their calls on Skype and the weird trinkets he mailed from Thailand, Turkey, and Japan.
Yet, even then, he’d always, always made me feel safe. Where Evan had treated me like one of the boys, Gabe treated me like someone to be protected. Someone worth protecting.
He’d intimidated the kids at the bus stop who made fun of my braces. He’d given me hints at game night so I didn’t feel lost when I was learning a new game. He’d shared the chocolate from his Halloween candy with me when Evan refused to trade.
He’d looked out for me.
Maybe that was how he felt when I’d texted him after his mom’s funeral. Perhaps I’d been the safe space he needed to be broken and have it be okay.
Sitting in this boxing ring felt a little like that. Like the space within its ropes was separate from the rest of the world. Like here, it was okay to break apart, to be knocked down, to fall to your knees. Because this was where you learned to get back up.
“I miss Ardena more than I thought I would,” I admitted after several moments of silence.
The words felt dangerous. A sign of weakness or a burden cast onto others no one would want to share. The kind of burden I’d trained myself out of being after my parents offloaded me to be someone else’s problem.
Gabe didn’t react like it was a burden. He didn’t say anything at all. He just listened.
“I hadn’t really viewed it as me leaving when this whole catering thing started,” I went on, “but that’s what it was.
As much as Arden Catering is a part of Ardena, it’s separate.
The schedule, the kitchen, the team—it’s all its own thing, and I feel like the relationships I built are fading because of it. ”
The more I let the words come, the more cracks formed along my shell until there were too many to hold together at once. I flung a tear from my cheek. “The thing is, I don’t have that many important relationships left.” My voice came out thick.
Gabe extended his arm, and I folded into his embrace as the dam of emotions broke. His hand was a shield on the back of my head as he rocked us gently side to side.
The tears hurt, like the riverbed my grief had settled beneath was being dredged up with each shuddered sob.
Or maybe more like a volcano whose pressure had built too high to contain any longer.
Lava scorched my throat and burned my cheeks, my tears and mascara mixing with the sweat on Gabe’s shirt.
I yanked off my beanie, the scratchiness of the wool suddenly too rough.
I’d learned after my grandma died, and again after Mrs. Hardt, that sometimes crying left me feeling lighter, and other times, it left me raw, like a partially healed cut that had been torn open.
That was how I felt when I could finally breathe again. Like an exposed wound. I let Gabe’s hold be the thing to keep me from bleeding all over the mat.
He pressed his lips to my forehead, not caring that I used the bottom of my shirt to wipe my nose. When I’d calmed more, he said, “It was just me in the ring during a fight.”
My gaze settled on the V of his collarbone as it rose and fell with the soft cadence of his voice. I felt like a bottle of honey set upside down to drain, my last drop of energy depleted. I’d have fallen asleep if it didn’t mean missing out on whatever Gabe said next.
“But it never felt that way to me,” he continued.
“My coach, manager, cutman, training partners—they were always with me in the ring. Not during the rounds, but they were the ones who got me there. When I won, it was because of them. Not getting to be a part of that kind of team anymore was what scared me most when I got hurt.”
He’d torn his rotator cuff in the High Hitter championship fight the weekend his mom had died. The two things he cared about most, both taken from him in an instant.
“Is that why you want to open a gym?” I’d figured it had always been part of his plan, a vision for down the line that moved up when the opportunity for this place arose. But maybe it was more than that.
“It’s why I need it. Why I have to win this tournament. Coaching is the one way I have left I can still be in that ring, even if it’s not my body on the ropes. And this ring, this gym…” He cast his gaze around the room. “It’s home for me. My only one at this point.”
I tightened my arm across his stomach in a slouched sort of hug. “I’m sorry about your shoulder.”
He huffed out a breath. “Don’t be. It’s what I deserved.”
“No, it’s not.”
His shoulders tensed. “Evan’s right. I chose my career over my family and let them down.”
“No, you—” My tongue tripped over the dozen ways I wanted to disagree. “It was never meant to be a choice between the two. The surgery was supposed to be straightforward. Everyone believed the worst was a long way off.”
“I shouldn’t have risked it. Evan—”
“Evan’s upset. He’s angry your mom is gone, and he’s worried about your dad, about you.” I poked his chest. “He wants to keep everyone from ever hurting again, and he knows he can’t, so he’s lashing out.”
A muscle flexed in Gabe’s jaw, his defiant gaze fastened on his lap.
“Your mom wanted you to stay for that fight,” I told him.
“It was all she talked about. She had Evan bring her an old pair of your boxing gloves that she planned to wear for the match and told every doctor and nurse who walked in that her son was about to be a High Hitter World Boxing champion. She didn’t feel abandoned by you. She was inspired by you.”
He rolled to his back and covered his face with his hands. His chest rose and fell with sharp breaths, fragments of the love and joy and comfort his mom used to bring that were left shattered in her absence.
It would pain her to see her sons like this. Hurting, not speaking, spinning in circles while waiting for the world to make sense again. She would hate it.
I hated I couldn’t fix it.
“She was inspired by you too, you know.” He dropped his arms to his sides and met my gaze. His eyes were red. “That Thanksgiving before she died? The last one I was home for?”
I nodded. It was the first time I’d seen him since graduating from culinary school and navigating the world as something resembling an adult. He’d texted me later that night to say how nice it was to see me.
My heart had just about exploded. Not even because his handsome features had grown more stunning as they’d matured into those of a man, like they’d been waiting since birth to reach their full potential.
But because it felt like confirmation of my place within the Hardt family.
A place offered by each of them in kind and not just by Evan.
We hadn’t continued texting then. He’d gone into training mode for the High Hitter tournament, and I’d committed to the grind of a fine-dining kitchen. One year later was his mom’s funeral.
“After you left,” Gabe said, “she talked for almost an hour straight about how you were already a sous chef after just three years, and you’d graduated from culinary school at the top of your class.
How she’d been there to see it and rubbed it in all her friends’ faces that soon she’d have an in with a Michelin-star chef. ”
I snorted. “No, she didn’t.”
He grinned as if remembering. “She did. She had zero doubts it would happen.”
“It hasn’t.”
“Doesn’t mean it won’t.”
I didn’t care if it did. Stars were exciting, but there were other measures of a great chef. Like the respect of your peers.
Gabe must have thought so too. “Your team still cares about you. Just because you’re in a solo sport now doesn’t mean they won’t still be behind you in the ring. I bet if you asked, they’d all want to be.”
Ah, but that was the problem: asking.
I was the person others asked. The person who handled things so others wouldn’t have to. The one who was supposed to be solid and reliable and useful. And if I did ever ask, it was a question of how I could help.
When I’d first moved in with Nana, I’d been the one to ask her for chores. She started tying my allowance to whether I played outside to make sure I still experienced being a kid. And as Jase’s sous chef, I’d regularly volunteered for the extra shifts.
The one time I’d accepted help without question was immediately after Nana had died and the Hardts stepped in to help me with the million things that needed to get done. Arranging the funeral, handling the will, talking to accountants, transferring bills, notifying social security, calling banks.
A whirlwind of demands in a storm of grief, and they hadn’t waited for me to ask before stepping into the eye of it with me.
They’d just been there, standing in the receiving line with me at the wake and leaving food in my fridge.
Sitting beside me while I met with lawyers to counter my parents’ challenge on the house and helping me pack Nana’s things when it was finally time to sell.
Evan had slept in a sleeping bag on my floor for a week after the funeral so I wasn’t alone. I’d done the same for him after his mom.
But a little loneliness and a heavy workload weren’t life and death.
Neither was a creative funk. I hated the idea of bothering the guys with this, especially when they were already at full capacity with Ardena.
It wasn’t fair for me to ask them to take on my stuff too.
Not when it wasn’t anything beyond my ability to handle on my own.