But, to be fair, at least he was here now. I could give him that. For Mo.

“We can do this together, yeah? Be on… the Mo League, if you want to call it,” he asked. “I can do better, Lenny, if you give me the chance. I can promise you that. I will do better.”

I still said nothing.

The Mo League?

I fucking hated how much I liked it. Hated how reasonable and even sweet he was attempting to be. Hated that I was even in this position in the first place. Not having a kid, but not having her with someone who I could fully trust. Someone I loved, even. That would have been nice.

But this was what I had so….

A hand with short, trimmed nails wrapped itself around my wrist, and I looked up into those honey-colored eyes that popped so much on his tanned skin and held my breath. “There’s so much we have to work out, but I’m more than willing to. I won’t give you a reason to regret it.”

Regret was a weird thing. It was the one topic that Grandpa Gus had drilled into my head over and over and over again when I’d gotten nervous while I’d been growing up. You did something and you could regret it, or you could not do something and regret it. You never knew which way it would go. Everything in life is a gamble.

But I knew what I would regret the most. I knew it deep inside my bones, deep inside my soul, deep inside everywhere.

I looked at the man standing with me on a quiet residential street at ten-thirty in the morning on a Sunday and thought of the words he had already used both in my presence and out of it.

He claimed he wanted to be around for Mo. He’d said it without thinking about it too much, which I wasn’t completely sure was a good thing. But… he couldn’t fuck up if I didn’t give him a chance to.

Jonah couldn’t be a dad if I didn’t give him the opportunity.

I didn’t need to look at the sweet little booger with big honey-colored eyes to know there was nothing I wouldn’t do for her, and spending time with a man who’d hurt my feelings… being obligated to be in contact with that man for the rest of her life—of my life—well, I could do it. I would do it. The way Mo had come to exist was in the past already. But her future was up to us.

I could only hope this might be the easiest thing I ever had to suck up to do.

Being a mom wasn’t for weak asses, that was for sure.

So, I flashed him a grimace that I hoped was at least part of a smile. “Fine. Welcome to the Mo League. You can be the vice president if you’re willing to fight Grandpa Gus for the spot, but he fights dirty, so you’re probably better off being the secretary, I guess.”

Chapter 9

9:08 p.m

Your voicemail is full.

In case you deleted my number,

this is Lenny.

Call or text me. Please.

When I walked into Maio House on Tuesday morning and felt the awkwardness in the air, I knew something was up.

And I had a feeling it was because of a bubblehead from New Zealand.

He had come over multiple times by that point. Of course they’d seen him, he was massive and an unknown. They hadn’t been aware of why he was coming in. It wasn’t unheard of for people to drop by the office to talk about training or marketing stuff or different programs. Managers for the athletes came into the office to talk about one thing or another from time to time. Some of the guys dropped by for advice or to talk… a lot less now than before, but it still happened. Sometimes. Rarely, really. And that kind of made me sad.

Most of my real friends had stopped training MMA over the last few years for one reason or another, mostly from injuries and some because of relationships and families. Priorities changed, and I was the last person to not understand that, especially now. During the last big hurricane, a lot of them had moved away when our old facility had been destroyed by floodwater and mold. And they hadn’t come back.

But whatever.

Where I’d gone from knowing everyone and being friends with them all, now… at most I was someone they kind of knew. I didn’t work with them on the floor much, and if I did, it wasn’t for hours on end like before. Hell, even with Luna, we had to work a lot more at our friendship than we’d had to in the past. We had to schedule lunches every other week to see each other.

Anyway, thinking about that felt like an enormous bummer on my soul, and I focused back on the important stuff.

Men had come into the office when Grandpa Gus had worked there, and they came in now with me. For business purposes. But it wasn’t every day that a six-foot-five-inch man built like a tank came into Maio House and headed straight into the office. It was something worth noticing. Especially when there were so many nosey eyes and ears.

I knew these people, and they wouldn’t avoid looking at me directly unless they were talking about me.

It wouldn’t be the first time it happened.

Fuck it. I had nothing to hide or any explanations I needed to make to anyone.

The old me would have asked them you got something to say? But now… now I just walked into my office and waited until no one could see me to turn around and give the floor in general the middle finger. Both middle fingers. Fuckers.

Half an hour later, I had my computer on and a cup of matcha tea sitting on my desk. I had side-eyed the guys and girls once more on my walk to and from the break room in the other building. I had settled in to go through the voice mails that had the red light on my office phone blinking. There were five new ones.

The first one was nothing special. One of the fighter’s managers wanted to schedule a time for a photographer to come in and take pictures of him while he trained. No big deal.

The second one though had me hitting the delete button like I wanted to break it. “It’s Noah. Call me.” The fact he had called the work phone instead of my cell phone said enough. I had to open my mouth to stretch my jaw after that.

The third call was from a blogger who wanted to talk to Peter, the fourth was some vague message from a woman who just said, “This is Rafaela Smith. I’m looking for Gus DeMaio. I’d appreciate it if—” That name didn’t ring a bell, and she didn’t say what she wanted, so no thanks on that return phone call, and the fifth was from the repairman who came in to fix the gym equipment. He was the first one I called back.

We had just barely hung up when the phone rang.

“Maio House,” I answered, moving the mouse so I could access my email. “This is Lenny.”

All it took was a simple “Hey” to piss me off.

If I could kick half the members out, I would. I really would. I’d kick all of them out if their dues didn’t pay the bills. Fucking bigmouths.

I knew it was petty, but I didn’t give a shit. “Who is this?” I asked, even though I knew exactly who it was.

Noah sighed. “Noah, Lenny.”

“Oh.”

He had to know how lucky he was I had gone with that instead of what do you want, person who I’ve known since I was three, who left me when I needed him.

“How you doing?” he had the nerve to ask like it hadn’t been months since the last time we had talked.

“I’m fine, you?” I asked him like I was petty and held grudges, because I did. But Noah knew that, yet he’d still decided to call me twice within twenty-four hours.