Chapter 4
CLOSED STANCE (LIZ)
Ican’t breathe.
He’s right in front of me, solid and real, smelling of sweat and whiskey and every mistake I ever made.
“Ex-wife,” I snap, sharp enough to cut. “We’re divorced, Travis.”
His smile is jagged. Mocking. “Funny. I don’t remember signing divorce papers.” His gaze drags over me possessively. “You thought you could just vanish? Start over like I never happened?”
Four years. A new name. A new city. A life rebuilt brick by careful brick.
Still he found me.
The room narrows fast. Sound goes distant and tinny like I’m underwater. I know this feeling. I’ve been here before.
“You’re coming home with me,” he growls, stepping closer. “Back to Louisiana. Back where you belong.”
I force a laugh, brittle and hollow. “No.”
His eyes flash. “I’m your husband, Lillian.”
The name hits like a fist.
Lillian.
I killed her. Buried her. Built someone new from the ground up so I’d never have to hear him say it again.
Beside me, I feel Leo shift. His attention sharpens, cutting between my face and Travis’s, reading the imbalance.
Then Travis’s hand shoots out. Rough fingers clamp around my arm. The pressure. The way he squeezed. The way he twisted. The way he—
He finds the exact spot he always gripped. The same pressure. The same angle. He knows exactly where it hurts most.
Panic flares, hot and blinding.
“Let me go!”
He leans in, eyes bright with possession. “You’re mine.”
Another hand slams down over his wrist.
“You heard her,” Leo says evenly. “Let go.”
Travis’s attention turns to him—amused, dismissive. His mouth curves.
“Hands off, champ.” Drake’s grip tightens. “This is between me and my wife.”
No.
Not him.
Of all people, it has to be Leo. Eden’s brother. The one man in this room whose life could shatter on camera if this goes wrong.
Leo doesn’t raise his voice. He simply steps in, crowding Travis’s space. The shift is subtle, controlled, and suddenly the space around me feels managed.
“She said no.” Leo’s voice is calm. “That’s the end of it.”
Travis snorts. “Go celebrate your win. Before you get hurt.”
Leo’s grip tightens on Travis’s wrist, making his meaning unmistakable.
“Walk away, Drake.”
But Travis is exactly who he was four years ago. Aggressive, unreasonable, petty. I know exactly what his next move will be, a highlight reel I’ve seen play out too many times to count. He jerks forward, shoulder slamming into Leo’s chest.
They collide. The crowd gasps. Bodies scramble back. The music cuts dead.
I should run. Scream. Stop this. But I’m frozen in place while he decides what happens to me.
Travis lunges, an ugly, looping hook aimed at Leo’s jaw. Leo slips it, answering with a right cross so fast it snaps Travis’s head sideways. The sound is sickening. Bone on bone. A sharp, wet crack that turns my stomach.
Crimson is coming. I know it before it happens.
My brain splinters into triage. Orbital fracture risk. Concussion. Possible spinal damage—
“Stop!” I scream.
Travis comes back wild, grabbing, kicking, trying to drag Leo down. He fights dirty, knee driving toward Leo’s ribs, fingers clawing for leverage.
Leo pivots, keeps his feet, answers with force. Pure boxing. Every punch precise. Every movement economical. Deadly.
But this isn’t a ring. It’s a bar. And there are no rules.
Travis surges in again, manages to slam a knee hard into Leo’s side. I feel it low and sick in my gut.
I’ve seen what happens when men lose everything they’ve built. When the ring closes. When the career ends.
The anger doesn’t disappear—it sharpens.
If Leo falls, it would be because of me. But I can’t make the words come out. Part of me knows what this could cost him. Part of me doesn’t care.
I need to see Travis bleed. I cannot go back.
Leo adapts instantly, hooks an arm, twists his hips, shoves Travis off balance. Not pretty or textbook, but effective.
His fist crashes into Travis’s face again. The crack of bone echoes in my chest. I taste copper in the air, or maybe I’m biting my lip. My ears ring from the impact.
Travis staggers, red streaming down his face, one eye already swelling shut. I see it forming even as it happens—inflammation, discoloration.
I cut the thought off.
This is what I do. I catalog damage. I measure injury.
It’s the only way I know how to survive watching it.
I can’t look away.
The bar has exploded. People shouting, filming, stepping back. Drinks shatter on the floor.
And Eden is watching her brother throwing punches in a club because of me.
Travis laughs—actually laughs—blood coating his teeth. The sucker is built for pain, enjoys it even. “That all you got?” he spits.
Leo doesn’t answer. He drives forward, fists a blur, backing Travis into a pillar. A left hook barrels into Travis’s cheek. A right snaps his head back.
I know that sound. Broken nose. Maybe worse.
Part of me wants to run. Part of me wants to check Leo’s knuckles, his ribs, his breathing.
Part of me—the part I hate—feels relief.
At least this time it isn’t me under his fists.
At least this time someone big is hitting back.
The feeling is instant. Shameful.
I should want this stopped. Should care that they’re destroying each other.
I don’t.
“ENOUGH!”
Bouncers surge in, black shirts, muscle, and urgency. Two hold Leo back, two more contain Travis, who’s still thrashing, trying to break free, one-eyed stare locked on me.
The crowd boos. Phones stay raised.
Leo strains against the hold, chest heaving, Travis’s blood smeared across his knuckles.
“You come near her again,” he growls, voice feral, “and you won’t walk away.”
Travis grins through shattered pride and broken bone.
“Lillian is mine,” he barks as they drag him backward. “She always will be.”
Lillian.
Lillian.
My former name cuts through the bar like broken glass.
“Liz.”
Leo’s voice reaches me, rough and urgent, but Eden gets there first. Her arm wraps around my shoulders, firm and grounding. Nate appears at my other side without a word, solid as a wall.
“We’ll take you home,” Eden says, scanning the room. “Nate and I will stay with you tonight.”
“No.” Leo’s voice cuts in.
Eden turns on him. “Excuse me?”
“Drake didn’t just stumble in here by accident,” Leo says. “He probably knows where Liz lives, which is where you live too. None of you are going back to the Cherokee tonight.”
“Nate will stay with us,” Eden fires back.
Nate opens his mouth to agree, but Leo lifts a hand. “With respect, brother, you’re a big guy and you can handle yourself. But Drake’s a professional fighter.” He flexes his split knuckles, checking the damage. “And he’s good.”
Something in me snaps. That tone. That certainty. A man deciding the shape of my night as if my opinion doesn’t matter.
I didn’t cross state lines just to end up in another corner.
“Hello?” I bite out, jabbing a finger toward my chest. “I’m right here. You’re discussing me like I’m not in the room.” My voice rises, sharp with heat. “I’m not a child. I’m not property. And I can take care of myself—”
“That’s not what this is,” Leo cuts in.
I whip my head toward him, fury flaring hotter. But before I can unload, Jessica steps in, phone in hand, expression all hard edges and calculation.
“Okay,” she says briskly. “Everyone pause. Leo, you jumped the ropes earlier tonight. That clip is everywhere. Now this happens? To anyone watching, it looks like escalation.”
Her gaze moves between Leo and me. “This is going to be a media storm in minutes. Videos are already circulating.” She hesitates, then looks directly at me. “I can see this is difficult to talk about. But we’ll need to discuss who that man is.”
The words jam behind my teeth.
“And,” Jessica continues, businesslike again, “if he tracked you down once, he can do it again. Plus, I bet the press is already lurking on your block, waiting. If Nate’s with you and something happens, I’ve got another disaster on my hands. Lying low with Leo is the safest option. For everybody.”
My mouth falls open. “You’re siding with him?”
A thousand people just watched my life implode.
A thousand witnesses to the name I buried.
To the version of me that once existed in public, under lights, with expectations attached.
The life I ran from.
The past I thought I’d escaped.
It’s all over the internet now.
Permanent.
Inescapable.
The club entrance is chaos—phones raised, voices shouting over one another.
“Lionheart! Who’s the girl?”
“Was that Travis Drake?”
“Are you two together?”
Jessica cuts through the noise like a blade. “No comment. Mr. Carver has nothing to say at this time.”
We pile into Nate’s SUV, all six of us wedged together in tense silence as it pulls away from the curb.
I angle myself toward the glass and stay there. My arm still aches where Travis grabbed me. Leo sits beside me. Too close. I can feel the heat radiating off him. Smell the copper tang on his knuckles.
Travis’s blood.
Leo just destroyed his career for me. A woman he barely knows. A woman whose birth name he didn’t know until five minutes ago.
Eden will pay for it too, whether she ever says it out loud or not.
The weight of that sits heavy in my chest.
Jessica’s phone buzzes nonstop. She scrolls, eyes flicking between screens.
“How bad?” Leo asks.
“Bad,” Jessica says flatly. “Every major outlet picked it up within minutes. TMZ’s already running Boxing Champ in Bar Brawl. Someone identified Drake as a former MMA fighter. They’re digging.”
“Let them,” Leo mutters.
“Oh, they will,” Jessica snaps. “And when they pull the footage where he’s calling her his wife—” She stops, eyes lifting to me. “And calling you Lillian.”
Her words cut to the bone.
“I need your previous legal name,” she says, calm but unyielding.
“Lillian Richardson,” I barely manage. “We’re divorced. Legally. He just... doesn’t accept it.”
Eden swears under her breath and takes my hand, squeezing hard.
Jessica is already typing. “Okay. Controlling ex. You left. You filed. You rebuilt. He shows up uninvited and gets aggressive.” She glances at Leo. “You step in to stop it. That plays.”
“I wasn’t playing anything,” Leo says sharply. “He put his hands on her.”
“I know.” Jessica doesn’t look up. Her tone softens, just a notch. “But the public doesn’t. Right now all they see is you punching a man on camera. We need to get ahead of this before it turns into ‘violent athlete loses control.’”
The car pulls up to a luxury high-rise in Williamsburg. We move through the lobby in silence. Up the elevator. Into Leo’s apartment.
His place is exactly what you’d expect from a heavyweight champion. Expansive. Sparse. Floor-to-ceiling windows framing the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan beyond. Everything big. Solid. Unapologetically masculine.
I drift to the window and fold in on myself, arms wrapped tight, trying to keep the pieces together.
Eden hovers nearby. Nate drops onto the couch. Finn leans against the wall. Jessica paces, phone glued to her hand.
“We have a narrow window,” she says. “Right now, you’re a man defending a woman from her abusive ex. That’s the story we want. But if we don’t move fast, someone else will rewrite it. Question your judgment. Your fitness to hold the title.”
Leo’s fists clench. “I’m not apologizing for protecting her.”
“I’m not asking you to.” Jessica stops pacing and looks between us. “But we need to give people a story that will keep them on your side. Both of you.”
“What kind of story?” I ask quietly.
Jessica’s mouth curves, sharp and knowing.
“A love story.”