Chapter 26
Max
As I leave the arena, a trickle of blood slides down my face.
I pull my hood lower, hoping to avoid recognition.
In the shadows of the tunnel that leads to the dressing rooms, Daniel stands waiting.
“You did good, Cano.” Daniel’s grin widens, swirling a cocktail in his hand.
“Who knew Leo coming here would benefit me?”
I keep my eyes forward. Engaging with Daniel after a fight was like touching a hot light bulb—you knew exactly what would happen, and you did it anyway.
I’m too tired for that tonight. Xander walks beside me, handing me a towel.
I take it and dab it on the cut. “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I say, walking out the back door of the warehouse.
“Carlos is going to throw a fit,” Xander claims.
Yeah, he is, but I don’t give a shit. I have to do what I have to do. This fight is where I unloaded my anger and frustration. I looked at my opponent’s face and pretended it was the professor. It was rewarding how I left him.
“Tough shit for him. I wasn’t about to let Leo get beaten to death.”
“Fuck Carlos,” Xander spits out.
My thoughts go back to Drake, what he said about Carlos.
I know Xander feels the same way. They dislike him.
It could be because Carlos is hardheaded.
Xander had asked Carlos about going professionally, and Carlos dismissed it, but he told me that Xander was not equipped.
I disagree. Personally, I think he’s good.
Shortly after I arrive at the gym, I hear the familiar crack, crack, crack coming from Carlos’s office.
I peek in to see him hunched over his desk, a small mountain of pistachio shells already forming next to his computer monitor, his thick fingers working methodically, dipping into the bag.
“Hey, mijo, how’s it going?” He glances up, and his eyes enlarge. “What happened to your face?”
I roll my eyes and slouch on the worn-out chair. “I got into a fight.”
“With whom? Don’t tell me…is it over, Rainey?”
“Sol,” I correct. “And no, it wasn’t about her, but I should have fucked him up.”
“Who should you have fucked up? You’re not together anyway. Let her go on with her life, Max. It was young love. You have a career to pursue.”
I’m not sure whether he’s trying to be a protective father or dislikes Sol for no good reason.
“Young love?” I laugh. Not because it was funny.
“Carlos.” I shake my head. “I’ve loved her since I was a child, when I went from home to home.
I loved her when I didn’t know she was alive.
When I slept on cold benches, when I searched the crowds for her as I got older.
” I sit up straight. “I have loved her in different ways, but now…I’m in love with her.
My love for her isn’t just a feeling—it’s a choice.
I chose her right from the beginning. This isn’t young love. ”
Carlos eyes me. “Didn’t you call me and say you were done with her?”
I must have called him drunk.
Scrubbing my face, I shrug. “I did—”
“Then, it’s best to move on, Max… Why do you keep on with her? She’s probably going to get knocked up by her professor, anyway. You know all those girls have kinks like that.”
Something went still in me. “She didn’t sleep with him.” My voice is hard with a bite at the end.
“Here you go again, defending her.” Carlos drops a shell to the side, then reaches into the bag.
I get up slowly. Walk to his desk. Place both palms flat on the surface and lean in until I can see him decide whether to hold my gaze.
He held it. I’ll give him that. “Let me get one thing straight when it comes to my woman. It’s not your damn business.
I might be pissed at her, but it doesn’t give you a free pass to talk shit about her. ”
He lifts his hands up. “Perdón.” Something in his expression changed that I can’t pinpoint.
“I’ll meet you in the ring.” My voice drips with rage.
My watch reads nine fifty a.m., and the heat is already pressing against my skin like an iron.
A droplet races from my collarbone to my navel as I guide the final wooden beam into place, the concrete still wet enough to accept it but already stiffening at the edges, completing the skeleton of what will become a gazebo.
I grab a shirt from the floor and wipe the sweat off my face that stings my eye.
Today is the first time I’ve canceled all my plans in a long time.
Saturday morning, I’d started it at six a.m. I didn’t have a plan exactly.
Just the wood and the concrete and something to do with my hands that wasn’t hitting anything.
Bob and Henry usually have something set up for me.
Today I wanted to get this gazebo started.
As I head to the kitchen for a drink of ice-cold water, the doorbell chimes.
When I open the door, the air is knocked out of me.
I wasn’t expecting her. We both stare at one another, what feels like minutes when it’s only been seconds.
My gaze is on her oversized sweatshirt. It’s a hundred and ten today, and she’s wearing that.
She’s going to cook herself in there. Her eyes hold everything she wasn’t saying.
I’ve always been able to read her. Even now, even angry, I could see it all—the hurt, the love, the fear, the exhaustion underneath all of it.
“Hi,” I say dryly. I picture her laughing and having a good time with the professor. But I don’t know if she did all that.
Her gaze is on my chest. “Why are you sweaty?” The look on her face tells me exactly where her mind went—in some sexual activity. Then again, I did put those thoughts in her head the last time we spoke.
“I was working.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Did you need something?”
The keys rattle in her shaky hands. A small part of my heart softens only because I hate to see her like this, but I can’t help it; I’m pissed and not ready to talk to her.
“Sorry to bother you… Um, I…asked you last time if you could go to Utah with me. Can you come today? Like now.”
Utah. Johnny said she was spending some time there visiting someone. “Why?”
“I want to show you something.” Or someone, but she doesn’t say.
“I’m not going for a two-hour drive if you don’t say where.” Then I’ll be stuck with her in the car, breathing the same air. Either will fight like roosters, or I’ll end up fucking her in the backseat of my car, reminding her who she belongs to. No, she’s not an object, but she’s fucking mine.
“It’s a surprise…and happy birthday, Max.”
That’s unexpected. I don’t know why. Something moves in my chest that I wasn’t ready for. I turn twenty-six today, but I’ve never really celebrated it besides Carlos and Ness inviting me for dinner. I’ve never spent a birthday with the woman staring at me with hope in her brown eyes.
Before I can stop my loose lips, the words spill out. “What are you going to show me, or who? Is it another man who’s been keeping your bed warm?”
A flash of outrage flares through her eyes. “Don’t be a dick, Max.”
Sweat is rolling down her forehead, and out of habit, I wipe it off her.
It only has her frowning at me. I’m curious to find who she’s been visiting.
Maybe Rowan is in a mental hospital, but would she be visiting him?
I highly doubt it. “Come in.” Into your own house that you have a key to, I want to say instead.
I gesture, stepping back. “I’m going to shower, then we’ll leave. ”
She nods, and I run up the stairs.
Thirty minutes later, we are on the road.
I blast the AC and turn up the radio. “Nothing Compares 2 U” by Sinéad O'Connor plays. Every chance I get, I glance at her. She’s on her phone or moving the box at her feet.
It’s the birthday gift she left at my desk.
I brought it home to open it, but I ended up forgetting it in here.
Turning the radio down, I say, “I didn’t get a chance to open it.
I will when I get back…and gracias corazón. ” I jut my chin. “For the gift.”
“You’re welcome,” she whispers, glancing out the window, staring at nothing but desert sand and cactus.
I raise the volume and set my truck on cruise control. It’s an awkward drive. There is so much I want to talk about, but I don’t even know how or where to start. Should I do it now? Or would it be best to wait until we’re on the way back? Or when we get home. It’s like we lost our way somehow.
Thirty minutes later, I park at a truck stop to pump gas. I stretch my legs and twist to my side. Sol steps out of the truck. “I’m going to the restroom.”
“Give me a second. I’ll walk you,” I tell her in our native tongue.
“It’s okay.”
A knot forms in my chest when she looks down, refusing to meet my gaze. This distance between us is her doing. Even after everything, I take her hand in mine. “You always have to be on the lookout. A lot of weirdos lurk at gas stations.”
She gives my hand a squeeze. “I will.”
When she’s done, I walk her back to the car. Before leaving, I grab a sandwich and a couple of other snacks. I hand her a sub, chips, and a water. She thanks me, and I keep driving.
I dip my hand into a bag of Doritos, and she offers to unwrap my sandwich.
The silence sits between us. Only the music fills it.
Sol sighs when she’s done and rubs her stomach, then proceeds to stare at the emptiness around us.
Everything was going good until those fucking flowers arrived.
She was supposed to come back to me. Now she seems so distant.
She’s sitting beside me, and it feels like miles.
My thoughts grow louder, insistent, until I can’t hold them back anymore. I turn the radio down. “Tell me how many times you went to see him.”
She tucks her phone into the crease of her thigh and brushes back a wayward lock of hair. “Three times, Max.”
The flames of jealousy burn hotter. “Did you let him touch you?” My throat tightens around the words after they are out.