chapter 42
Sebastian
I PARK THE RAPTOR, THEN hop out and grab my bag from the back seat.
It’s a cooler day, and the thick clouds overhead spit light summer rain as I make my way across the parking lot to Cassidy Combat, the MMA gym where Lucas likes to work out and train.
When I pull open the door, a burst of cool air rushes out, smelling of rubber and AC.
Shirt off, hands wrapped, he’s laying into a punching bag in the far back corner of the gym.
It looks like the other people here are giving him a wide berth based on all the empty bags around him.
I head in that direction, lifting a hand to the guy who owns the place.
He gives me a look before flicking his gaze to Lucas, and I nod once.
I’m not sure Lucas realizes how many people he has in his life who care about him.
And right now, I think we’re all a bit on edge, worried about the precipice he seems to be tiptoeing toward.
And I really don’t want him to fall into that abyss again.
It feels like we barely pulled him out the last time.
I take a steadying breath as I weave through the gym toward him.
When I get there, I sling my bag onto a low bench next to his, then unzip it and reach inside, fishing around for my hand wraps.
I’m not as into punching things as Lucas is, but over the years of coming here with him, I’ve picked up on a thing or two.
He hasn’t said anything yet. His strikes hit the bag with sharp precision, his breath coming in short bursts as he expels his energy. And these days, I’m just glad it’s an inanimate object he takes his frustrations out on and not people who like to hit back.
I finish wrapping my hands, then start to warm up my muscles, stretching out my arms and loosening up my shoulders.
I’ve still got a twinge in one from that night Remi tried to teach me a few pole moves.
And even though the pain nags at me, I almost enjoy it, because it always reminds me of her, of the freedom in her movements as she danced that night, of her laughter as she watched me attempt the simple moves she’d shown me.
“Hey,” Lucas finally says, his green eyes meeting mine. His floppy dirty-blond hair is damp with sweat, and his chest rises and falls with heavy breaths. Seeing him with his shirt off, I notice a few new tattoos painting his skin, the ink vibrant and glossy in comparison to the older tattoos.
Even that makes my stomach sink. When he’s in a dark place, he uses tattoos as one of his outlets, so I’m not happy to see all the fresh ink on his body, including that newer snake tat that curls up and over his jaw, looking like a viper ready to strike.
But I flash him a smile, hoping it’ll get him to smile back. “Hey, man.”
No luck. He just goes to the bench and takes a swig of water, then turns back to the punching bag.
I go around the other side of it, holding it steady for him as he launches into another barrage of strikes.
His punches land true and hard, his eyes narrowing in focus.
I have to tighten my grip on the bag to hold it still under his assault.
With each strike, the metal guitar pick he wears on a chain around his neck thumps against his chest.
After a couple minutes, Lucas steps back from the bag, sweat dripping down his temples.
“My turn,” I say, giving the bag a little push so it sways toward him.
With a nod, he takes hold of it, and I flex my fingers into fists, thumbs on the outside—I learned that one the hard way, nearly breaking my thumb the first time I went to a gym with Lucas. That joint still aches sometimes.
Controlling my breath and engaging my core, I start to warm up, striking the bag with smooth movements, feeling the heat building in my muscles.
Lucas watches me with that same focused attention, his jaw tight, lips pulled into a firm line.
When I’m done, I shake my hands and arms out and bounce on the balls of my feet, rolling out my neck.
It feels good to move, to get some of my energy flowing. Since Remi left, I’ve been about as gray and moody as the weather outside right now.
“So,” I finally say, “what’s up?”
Lucas doesn’t answer right away. His gaze flicks across the gym, to where two guys are sparring in the practice ring. Jaw flexing, he says without meeting my eyes, “Nothing.”
I almost sigh. Lucas’s whole suffer-in-silence thing has always been a pain in the ass. Sometimes I wish I could just shake him until he sees that we’re all here for him, that we want to help him. But I know from experience that that approach never works with him.
Despite that snake tattooed on his neck and jaw, he sometimes reminds me more of a rabbit, and he can take off running at the slightest hint of a threat.
So, I approach him from a more careful place, treading mindfully. “New tats?”
He glances down at the one inked across his ribs. It’s a raven with torn wings, feathers drifting down, some of them catching fire as they fall. I try not to frown at it.
“Yeah,” he says, offering no further explanation—not that I expected him to. But he’s obviously in a mood to make this difficult.
“What’s it mean?” I ask.
He shoots me a look, part annoyed and part humored. His lips quirk up on one side. “Nothing. It’s just a tat.”
All his tattoos have meanings; he told me that one night after he’d swallowed too much liquor and was in a rare sentimental mood. But I don’t remind him of it now. It’d just piss him off.
The two men finish their sparring match in the practice ring. Thinking this might be my only chance to get Lucas to talk, I say, “I’ll let you kick my ass in the ring if you tell me what the hell’s going on with you.”
His gaze meets mine, sharp and assessing, jaw flexing as he seems to consider it. Then he shrugs one shoulder, and his lips quirk slightly in the corner. “Fine.”
As soon as we crawl into the ring, gloves on, I feel like I’ve made a bad decision.
Lucas has kicked my ass enough times for me to definitely have learned my lesson.
But fighting is one of the only things that seems to bring him out of his shell, and if that’s what it takes to get him to talk, I’ll do it.
We bump gloves, then take our fighting stances. My bare toes grip the cool mat underfoot.
I might be bigger than Lucas, but he’s a hell of a lot faster than me, and he actually knows what he’s doing.
He feints, then lands a jab to my ribs that makes me draw a sudden breath and stumble back.
I know how Lucas fights when he means to hurt, and he’s not fighting like that now.
His punches are controlled, reined in, and each one he lands hits just hard enough to hurt without seriously injuring me.
I’ll definitely be bruised tonight though.
I’m lucky enough to land a jab to his shoulder, making him stumble, and it draws a thin smile to his lips.
“Nice,” he says.
Only Lucas would be pleased by someone beating him up. I immediately think of his father, of what he went through when he was young, and it makes my stomach turn.
“Now talk,” I say, bouncing on my toes, gloves held up to shield my face—not that he’s trying to hit me there, but he’ll give me an earful if I drop my hands.
Lucas rolls out his neck, and for a moment, I think he’s going to ignore me. Then, with the casual tone of someone talking about the weather, he says, “Alisha dumped me.”
The words zing through me like a bolt of lightning, and I try not to wince.
Shit.
I had a feeling that was what had happened. It feels like they’ve been imploding for a while. But to hear him confirm it makes me worried—and sad. I really like Alisha. She’s part of our band family. And I’ve missed having her around.
“What happened?” I ask, then have to quickly dodge out of the way when he tries to kick me in the upper thigh. The kick is slow, and I’m grateful he gave me the chance to move out of the way. His kicks are brutal.
He bounces on his toes, hair flopping and guitar pick thumping against his chest. “She wants to get married.”
I knew that, kind of. When Dex proposed to Nora, things seemed to change with Alisha, like she was getting tired of waiting for Lucas to ask her.
“And you don’t?” I ask.
“Not right now. I told her later.” He gives me another lazy shoulder shrug, but there’s more that he’s not saying; I can see it in the firm set of his jaw, the tightening around his eyes. “Guess my time ran out.”
This time when he strikes, it’s swift and unflinching, and he lands two hard jabs—one to my shoulder, one to my ribs—before I get out of the way.
“Fuck, dude,” I say, holding up a hand, then wincing at the pole injury in my shoulder. Guess he woke that one right back up.
He doesn’t apologize; Lucas rarely does. But he doesn’t come after me again, instead retreating to his side of the small ring.
With his back to me, he says just loudly enough for me to hear, “If you know what you want, don’t be a dumbass about it.”
I stop rubbing at my shoulder, my hand falling slowly to my side.
Immediately, his words bring her face to my mind: blue eyes, windswept black hair, soft brown skin shining golden in the sun.
And the thought of losing her in the way Lucas has now lost Alisha makes deep pain blossom under my ribs—though this ache has nothing to do with the bruises that’re definitely already forming from Lucas’s punches.
I let out a sigh. Lucas glances back at me, and for the first time since I walked into this gym, I see a flicker of pain on his face. He masks it well, but I’ve seen it enough times to know how it looks, to recognize the way it pulls at his mouth and his eyes. And I hate this for him.
Alisha was good for Lucas. She brought him stability when he had none, gave him a soft place to land after the reckless flight that was his life. Now that she’s gone, what’s going to happen to him?
It makes dread curl inside me.
“I’m sorry,” I finally say, taking a step toward him across the ring.
But that was obviously the wrong thing to say, because he draws himself up, that flicker of pain gone from his face, replaced by something hard and sharp, about as friendly as shattered glass.
“Shut the fuck up, man,” he says. Then he turns toward me and holds up his hands. “You gonna fight or what?”
BACK IN MY RAPTOR, I wince as I pull the driver’s door closed. Lucas’s E30 roars to life one row of cars down from mine, and I watch as he rips out of the parking lot, window down and smoke already billowing out into the gray sky.
I shake my head and clench my jaw.
When I look down at my hands, I find the knuckles red and chafed despite the hand wraps I was wearing. I don’t come to the gym often enough to have built up a tolerance to it, and the raw skin stings as I flex my fingers.
Then I reach for my phone, which I accidentally left in the cup holder when I went into the gym. I have a text message from Ashton, reminding me of our upcoming gigs, but I ignore it and go straight for my conversation with Remi.
With a heaviness in my chest, I type out a message to her and send it without overthinking it.
I miss you. A lot.
Rain starts to patter against my windshield as I sit there in the parking lot, phone in one hand, my eyes trained on the dark gray sky hanging over LA. Is it cloudy in Vegas right now? Or is it sunny where Remi is, out there in the desert?
The phone pings in my hand, and I look down.
I miss you too. More than a lot.
Her words make me feel better, but just for a moment. Because no matter how many hundreds of text messages I exchange with her, she’s still not here, where I can hold her and smell her and fall asleep next to her.
Lucas’s words echo in my mind: If you know what you want, don’t be a dumbass about it.
And I know what I want. I want her. Fully and completely. In all the ways someone can want someone else.
But I don’t know yet if I’m being a dumbass. And I don’t know what I’m going to do about any of it.