3. Theo Fairview
Sienna was long gone by the time Coach let me leave the arena. He’d made me sit there and go over the footage he’d recorded of the third round over and over, drilling into me all the mistakes I’d made to end up with another bruise on my face.
It was irritating.
It was pretty ridiculous to expect a fighter to make it through an entire match without getting hit, but that was why Jerry was my coach. His expectations were impossible to reach, and he was a big reason why I was as good as I was.
And he technically was right. I’d let Andrea hit me, but he couldn’t know that. Even I knew that was kind of fucked up, but honestly, it was better than some of my other coping mechanisms.
Coping mechanisms that I was actively fighting off as I pulled my ancient Honda hatchback into Fairview, tucking it behind the guesthouse where Ryan’s clients wouldn’t see it.
The first time Cal had seen my car, he’d given me so much shit over it.
He didn’t know exactly how much money I made, but he knew I made enough to afford something better than my current ride.
Despite his indignation over the fact that I would willingly drive this little shit-bucket, I’d brushed him off.
I didn’t give a fuck about cars.
I didn’t really give a fuck about much, to be honest.
All I cared about was keeping those itchy feelings buried deep enough inside me that they didn’t consume me, and they were closer to the surface now than they had been in months.
Slamming the car door, I spun my keys in my hand as I made my way through my mother’s garden and up the steps to my guesthouse.
Samwell’s face flashed across my mind, and I gritted my teeth, letting out a long, slow breath as I opened the door to my sanctuary.
The guesthouse was clean–I was far from a slob–but it was pretty bare bones, despite the fact I’d lived in here since I’d come back home after college.
I had a thrifted leather couch in the living room with a rickety coffee table that Iris had finally retired from the main house after years of use.
The TV was the most expensive piece of furniture in my space because one of the few things I truly loved was watching professional boxing and UFC matches. I also played on my Switch a lot when I wasn’t actively fighting off my demons, and it was more fun on the big screen than the handheld.
My kitchenette was clean and modest as well, with a Keurig, a microwave, and a toaster I’d gotten for two dollars at Value Village.
Despite how empty my kitchen was, I actually didn’t mind cooking, and I’d been recently experimenting with learning how to make vegan meals as a byproduct of the short period of time Cass had lived in here with me.
The thought of Cass briefly chased away the toxic buzz of old trauma that was currently threatening to explode out of the box I kept it in, and I smiled.
Instead of searching for the bottle of vodka I knew I wouldn’t find–I’d dumped it after my last little mental breakdown and sworn off drinking for the four hundredth time–I made my way over to the empty guest room where Cass had stayed.
Creaking the door open, I leaned against the frame, not bothering to turn on the lights as I took in her empty room.
If I closed my eyes, I could still smell the faint remnants of her perfume.
Cass smelled nothing like Sienna.
She smelled like no one I’d ever met.
She was like no one I’d ever met.
The first time I’d ever met her, I’d been so shocked at the fact that she’d just shamelessly assaulted me in my mother’s kitchen that it had taken me a moment to work through my feelings toward her.
Most of my feelings manifested as anger first. I was sure a therapist would have something to say about this, but who am I kidding? Who has time for therapy? And my feelings for Cass were no different.
The fury I’d felt when she’d stuck her nail in the cut on my face had been all-consuming.
It had taken me days to realize that while she was probably the most infuriating person I’d ever met… The days after that incident, I hadn’t thought about Samwell and my stupid trauma once.
The peace that had brought me was… foreign.
It made me crave more. Soon, I was obsessed and desperate to get that woman to do something else unhinged to me to distract me from the constant, looming threat of a complete mental breakdown that I’d been viciously fighting off for the better part of my entire life.
So, the anger had slowly morphed into straight-up worship.
The six weeks she’d lived in this guesthouse with me had been the best in my life. I hadn’t been able to drink myself into a coma when the memories came knocking, because I obviously couldn’t expose Cass to that when she had no other choice than to be here.
Besides, I didn’t want her to see me like that.
And I hadn’t really needed to do that when she’d been here, because I’d been too busy making sure she didn’t flit off into the night to try and save her brother to really worry about my own shit.
But now she was gone, and she hadn’t answered any of my texts since I’d recovered from my stab wound.
She was gone, and Samwell was lurking in the back of my mind, and I didn’t have any fucking vodka.
Should I just run out and grab some?
There was a twenty-four-hour liquor store back near the arena. I’d purposely driven past it on my way home in a valiant effort to avoid the inevitable.
I did this a lot.
Convinced myself I didn’t need it, even though I knew deep down I would end up doing it anyway.
It came in waves.
I’d go a few months without spiraling, then something would trigger me–or maybe my demons just got sick of being locked away–and I would be forced to go on a bender again to get them to leave me alone…
They were definitely active tonight.
That urgent, anxious feeling was churning in my gut, and my skin felt too tight.
My mind didn’t feel like my own, and the racing thoughts were starting to get to that familiar level of unbearable.
I knew how to slow them down… but I also knew if I let myself succumb to this again, it would last weeks, and I had my fight with the Russian coming up…
Besides, it was almost two am. If I drowned myself in a bottle of vodka, I would miss my morning coffee meeting with Jerry, and then he would definitely know something was up.
Another big perk of resisting the urge to drink was that we always had these meetings at the cafe near Cass’s office, and sometimes she would come in to order her Venti triple long oat milk iced latte.
She hadn’t caught me staring yet… I don’t think she even knew I was at that cafe nearly as often as she was, and for that I was grateful.
I was scared that if she knew, she would stop going. And that would be a tragedy.
I loved just watching her exist.
Fuck, she was so perfect.
With her long dark hair, lean, athletic body, and the face of Aphrodite, she was a femme goddess…
It was cosmically unfair that she wasn’t interested in women.
Someone so perfect shouldn’t be wasted on some idiot straight man that probably didn’t wash his own ass because he was worried it would make him gay or something.
So unfair.
Sighing, I shoved up off the frame of the door and resolved to try to wrangle up my demons with a fat joint instead of vodka.
Weed was always a gamble. Sometimes it just made the anxiety worse, but it usually also prevented me from giving in to the desire to drink myself unconscious, if only because it made me overthink everything, including my own fucked up coping mechanisms.
Slipping into my bedroom, I dug through my end table for my bag of indica, hoping like hell it would help me pass out before my demons finally caught up with me.