Chapter 43
THE COUNT (LIZ)
By the time Nate turns off Van Brunt and eases the SUV up to the curb, I’m vibrating so hard I can feel it in my teeth.
The block sits half dark, half sodium-orange, the kind of Red Hook industrial stretch that looks forgotten until you notice how many people are watching without seeming to. Tonight even the building feels braced.
Nate parks and kills the engine.
Nobody moves.
Then I tear off my seat belt so hard it snaps back against the pillar.
“Liz,” Eden says from the front seat.
I lean forward between the seats, fury already climbing my throat. “You do not get to ‘Liz’ me right now.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“You let me walk around all day while my ex-boyfriend and my ex-husband cooked up some entitled macho nonsense behind my back, and you thought that was information I didn’t need?”
“I found out last night. By accident.”
Nate interjects without turning. “That’s not what this is.”
I laugh once, sharp and joyless. “Good to know they’re not deciding which one of the deranged idiots gets to keep me.”
“No,” Nate says.
“Then why am I finding out now?”
“Because this is where we are.”
Which is such a Nate answer, I nearly combust on the spot.
I shove the back door open and get out.
The air hits me hot and damp. My flats crunch over grit and powdered glass. Behind me, I hear Nate’s door open and Eden mutter, “Oh God.”
I don’t wait for either of them. I’m already barreling toward the side entrance.
The security light hums overhead, washing the metal door and cracked pavement in hard white light.
As I get closer, I hear voices inside. Male. Low. One sharp laugh cutting through the rest.
Travis.
Every muscle in my body locks.
A cold, full-body recoil. As if the sound of his voice belongs to a life I once lived by mistake.
I push through the side door and step into Leo’s world.
The front of the gym is exactly the way I remember it. Concrete floor. Scuffed walls. Medicine balls. Battle ropes. That metallic edge fight spaces keep no matter how hard you scrub them.
But farther in, the air changes.
The working rhythm is gone.
What’s left is tighter. Cleaner. Arranged.
A folding table near the ring apron. Bottled water. Clipboards. Papers stacked in neat rows. One camera on a tripod facing the ring. Another mounted high, angled down from the rafters.
All I can think is, what in the nineteenth-century duel is this?
My gaze snaps to the tall brunette beside the tripod, and my temper goes from hot to white.
Jessica.
Near the far post, Ray stands with his arms folded over his chest. Lukas is beside him, looking like he’d rather burn the whole evening down and be done with it. A cutman waits at a stainless tray under a bright lamp, everything arranged with clinical neatness.
And there, outside opposite corners of the ring, are the two men who decided this was reasonable.
Travis is already half changed, T-shirt off, black shorts on, wrist tape wound. One thick-necked guy stands near his corner with a towel over one shoulder and a cut kit on the stool behind him.
My ex-husband looks good. That’s the first irritating fact. Big arms. Defined chest. The kind of body that still reads as powerful to people who mistake surface for substance.
The second fact is colder: he has no idea where he is.
Across from him, Leo is in dark training shorts and nothing else, his back to me while one of the team checks his gloves. Broad shoulders. Narrow waist. The hard discipline of a body built through repetition. Old bruises bloom along his ribs, one yellowing near his right side.
Nothing in him is wasted.
No pacing. No bounce. No theater. He doesn’t need any of it.
I know the exact second he feels me because the man checking his gloves stops touching him.
Leo turns.
For a moment, all I see is his face.
Shock first.
Then anger, immediate and sharp, his gaze cutting to Nate and Eden before coming back to me.
Something worse settles right after—a ruthless calculation that means somebody is about to lose every remaining option.
Too late.
Travis follows his line of sight and grins.
“Well, look at that,” he drawls. “The guest of honor.”
“Do not call me that.” My voice cracks through the gym like a whip.
Jessica’s head lifts. Lukas curses under his breath. Nate and Eden are standing behind me.
Nobody stops me as I stride forward.
I can feel Leo moving now, stepping away from his corner, but I look away from him. I’m not ready to look at him again. If I do, the wrong feeling might show.
So I put all of it where it belongs.
On Travis.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” I demand, stopping a few feet from the ring. “You show up here acting as if you have rights over me? As if I’m a problem men settle with gloves and witnesses?”
His mouth curves. “There she is. My girl always did know how to make an entrance.”
“I’m not your girl.”
He shrugs. “You can say whatever you want in front of people.”
“Oh, I know.” I take another step. “That’s why I’d love to hear you say it clearly. In front of people. Go on. Explain why you think a divorce means nothing if you keep pushing hard enough.”
His gaze stays fixed on me. “You don’t get to erase a marriage because you got upset and ran.”
I smile at him, sharp and joyless. “Got upset and ran. That’s really the story you’re going with?”
Spreading his hands, he gestures as if he was reasonable. “We had a fight. You left. You made a scene. Now it’s over.”
“Travis,” I say very clearly, “we are divorced.”
He laughs. “There’s paperwork, and then there’s reality. You’re my wife.”
He jerks his chin toward Leo. “And him? He’s a rebound. You made your point. Now you’re coming home with me.”
Revulsion rolls through me, cold and complete.
I stare at him. “You hear yourself, right?” I almost stop there. Then I remember I’m done holding this in.
“You hit me.” The words land and stay there.
Every sound in the gym drops out. But he doesn’t even flinch. “You pushed me.”
“I was pregnant,” I say. Quiet now. Deadly. “And when you shoved me into that table, I lost the baby.”
Travis’s mouth tightens. “You don’t know that.”
I take one more step.
“You remember it? I was bleeding. I told you I was scared. You put your hands on me anyway.”
“Liz—” Leo says, rough now, from somewhere to my left.
I don’t turn.
“You hit me. You shoved me. I miscarried. And you’re standing here with a straight face telling me I’m still yours.”
His lip curls. “You are.”
“No.”
His voice rises. “You made vows.”
“And you broke them when you put your hands on me.”
The gym goes quieter. Jessica types faster. Lukas mutters something vicious under his breath. Even Ray looks ready to kill him.
Travis stares at me with that same old certainty, that same rotten conviction that if he says a thing enough times it becomes true.
“You’re my wife. You can run. You can play house with him. Doesn’t change what we are.”
“You’re never touching me again.”
His face changes, ugly and fast. “We’ll see.”
That’s when Leo speaks.
“Drake.”
One word. Low. Flat. Deadly enough that even Travis finally looks at the right man.
The air in the gym goes hard around it.
I turn then.
Leo is at the ropes now, one gloved hand locked around the top strand hard enough to make it groan, his face blank in the dangerous way that means he’s one decision away from violence.
“Step away from her,” he says.
Travis laughs without humor. “What, you want privacy?”
Leo doesn’t blink. “Step away.”
Travis looks at me instead. “You should leave, Lillian. This part isn’t for you.”
The words are so grotesque, so absurdly, historically male, that for one second, I almost laugh.
Instead, my gaze sweeps the room again.
The cameras. The phone in Jessica’s hand. The cutman with his kit. Ray positioned like a referee. Signed papers laid out on the folding table.
Not a back-alley brawl. A controlled, witnessed, recorded event.
And they set it up without telling me.
Decided I didn’t need to know.
My body doesn’t care how different the intentions were when the shape lands the same. Leo still made the decision without me.
Again.
I step back. Eden is beside me instantly.
I don’t look at Leo again. I can’t afford to.
I turn and walk.
Behind me, the ropes shift. Ray barks a command, sharp as a gunshot.
Then the door slams behind me.