Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Josue
Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months.
Guess the time I saw her last had really been the end of it.
That was the thing about quiet goodbyes.
They felt easier, but they weighed more.
No resolutions, just loose ends. Perhaps the kid finally outgrew the cage.
Her only goal had been getting her daughter back.
Maybe she had managed that, and then some.
Nothing made her light up more than the idea of it, and if she wasn't fighting, I had to assume she no longer had a reason to.
What more could I do but support her from afar and wish for her health and happiness.
The only thing I regret was, I wanted so bad to get her a title.
With her talent and crowd-loving persona, had she kept at it, there would have been no doubt that she could have scored one.
Ever since her last victory, any and every phone call I got, they'd asked about her.
When she'd fight next. Who'd she be up against?
Would she be up to sponsoring so and so brand?
There was nothing I could tell anyone, because truthfully, I just didn't know.
The woman had dropped off the face of the earth, with no presence on social media, no address, not even a working phone with the many times I tried getting in contact with her.
The upside to her triumph was, that the same fighters in the past that I tried to recruit, were the other frequent calls I got, their interest in my training piquing after seeing what I was able to do with Sierra.
Medina had brought real eyes to the House of Beast, and where months ago we struggled to collect dues, now we were turning away business with all the memberships enrolling. Filled-up classes, booked training sessions, and it was all due to the Medina and DaCosta fight.
There are a few hopefuls who weren’t too raw to pass up, but the ones who drew me in the most were the ones who weren't just after my help when I was up. The beasts I wanted were the vicious ones.
The ones looking for transformation and not just easy wins.
I wanted leaders, alphas, warriors with some discipline.
Who the fuck was I kidding? What I wanted was another Loba*, someone who believed I could get them there when no one else believed in me.
That kind of setup would be hard to find.
But on the business side of things, I was proud to say that Héctor and I had doubled our staff, and we even started renovations on building a women’s locker room for the huge flood of female fighters coming in.
The space was feeling livelier, but the atmosphere?
It just wasn’t the same without Sierra's smiling face.
That girl…she really knew how to light up a room with her energy, and apparently Héctor had a different reason to why he missed her.
“You know what I miss the most about Medina?” he asked, putting the keys in the door as we closed up shop.
“What is that?”
“That girl stayed with a spray bottle. Had the gym smelling like lavender over broken souls. Hopefully, with some of these new women coming in, they get the place smelling good again, instead of smelling like an elevator full of musty men,” he joked, and he was right.
Running a mostly male facility, her presence was certainly felt, but I had to be fucking for real.
Maybe it was just time for me to move on.
She certainly had. I think I just wished I’d gotten some damn closure, but I suppose that's the lesson I had to learn getting involved with a female fighter.
Walking back to our cars, Héctor rested his arms on the top of his car, hesitating to get in.
“Hey, you trying to grab some late-night Mexican? They got $2 tacos after ten at Orale’s.” It did sound tempting, but after looking at the books all day, I just wanted to turn in for the night.
“Nah, I think I'm gonna call it a night. Take it easy, okay?” I said, getting in my car and watching him pull off. With the press of a button, my car started up, the Bluetooth connected showing a number too late to be someone who didn’t know me.
I almost didn't answer it, but when I did, the silence from the other end made me glad that I did.
I knew her familiar breathing from anywhere.
“Hey,” I said, too impatient for her to announce herself.
“Hey.”
* She wolf