Chapter 2
Cloe didn’t say anything until the waitress set a steaming cup of coffee in front of Sonny. He tried to take a sip and winced when the cup touched his lip. Cloe examined him. “That looks like it hurts.”
“It’s like this every time,” he growled. “Who in their right mind would want to put themselves through this? That’s what I want to know. I try to tell the kids at Carl’s not to do this to themselves, but they won’t listen. They look at my record and they don’t see anything else. You asked about the headaches. I’ve seen five doctors about it. Four of them were top specialists in their field, and they all say the same thing. I’ve had so many concussions in the ring, so many broken noses and facial fractures, I’ll keep having headaches for the rest of my life even if I quit fighting now. It’s not worth it, I tell you. Not all the purses in the world are worth this.” He lowered his flashing eyes from her face to the table.
What could she say to that? Earning the name and fame he got in his career couldn’t be worth ending your life in torment. No wonder he quit. He should have quit a long time ago. “So why have you kept it going? Why didn’t you buy yourself a little farm in the country and become a family man like ‘The Natural’?”
He started to smile, but his lip split open again and blood emerged from it. He grabbed a paper napkin off the table and pressed it against the cut. “I’m terrible with money. I don’t have anything to show for all my years in the ring. I got into gambling and lost most of the purses I ever won. Some of them I lost before I ever signed to do the fight. I drank and drugged myself into oblivion. I only got clean about ten years ago. I’ve been fighting to get out of debt and squirrel away a little nest egg. Now I’ve done that, and I’m out.”
Cloe took another look at him.
Wrinkles scored his face, but from the neck down, no one would guess how old he was. He was just as fit, strong and sturdy as any twenty year old in Carl’s gym.
“So what are you going to do with yourself, now that you’re retired?” she asked.
He didn’t look up. “I’m gonna buy a campervan and take a road trip around the country. I’m gonna fish, relax and sleep a lot. That’s the only thing that makes my head feel better.”
“You won’t start drinking again?” she asked. “You won’t try to drug your pain away?”
He gazed out the window at cars whipping in and out of the parking lot. “No, I won’t do that. Those days are over for me.”
Cloe frowned. Something in his manner shocked her, something unspoken below the surface. “Mr. McCain? Are you all right?”
He took a swallow of his coffee. “You don’t have to call me that. Just call me Sonny.”
A grin burst out on her face. “Thanks, Sonny. I’m Cloe. Cloe Fallon.”
He didn’t seem to hear her. He never took his eyes off the parking lot.
She couldn’t escape the sinking suspicion he wasn’t telling her everything. “Do you have any family left? Maybe you could visit them in your campervan.”
He shook his head. “I don’t have any family. Never had children. That’s just as well. I’ll live the rest of my life in solitude, in quiet contemplation, as it were.”
“Sounds nice.”
He pursed his lips again. “Whatever.”
A dozen questions nagged to get out, but none of them seemed right. Cloe put out her hand and touched her phone to turn off the voice recorder. “Sonny?”
He raised his eyes to her face.
“You don’t seem too happy about spending the rest of your life in quiet contemplation. Maybe you think you won’t have to do it for very long.”
He looked away and didn’t answer. The dreadful truth hit her like a ton of bricks. She stared at him with her mouth open. She couldn’t form the words. “You—you’re...”
He glanced down at the phone. “It’s turned off, isn’t it?”
She nodded.
“Don’t tell anybody, okay? Don’t put it in your newspaper. If you care at all about me, don’t say anything to anyone.”
She leaned across the table. “How long have you known? Did the doctors tell you?”
He lowered his eyes and nodded. “They all say the same thing. I have a tangle of blood vessels in my brain, right over my brain stem. The headaches come from my heart trying to force blood through this tangle into the rest of my brain. One of these days, it won’t be able to get through, and the whole thing will blow. I’ll be dead in a matter of seconds. Until that happens, the headaches will get worse and worse, and there’s not a single thing anybody can do about it. If they tried to operate, I would be toast.”
Cloe’s eyes refused to blink. Sonny’s face wobbled in front of her. In the middle of this explanation, the puffy tissue surrounding his cheekbones and eyebrows flashed out of view. She found herself looking at the Sonny McCain she saw in press release photos. His high angular features stood out crisp, clear and sharp, with no pockets of bloody bruising to disfigure him.
Just for an instant, she considered scooping the sports world with this priceless tidbit. She’d be on top of her paper staff after blowing the lid off this one. Her editor would go into spasms, and her colleagues would turn green with envy.
The next minute, she knew she couldn’t do that. Beyond the simple integrity of giving him her word she wouldn’t tell, she didn’t want to. How could she destroy the last few months or years of a man’s life by revealing his secret to an adoring fan base? They would never leave him alone. They would flock around him to receive his last dying pearls of wisdom. They would hound him around the country in his campervan. He would never get a moment’s quiet contemplation— ever.
He flexed his fingers open and shut. “So now you know. Do you want to turn your recorder on again?”
Cloe cast a glance down at her phone. She didn’t want to turn it on. She didn’t want to spoil this fragile moment. He’d confided in her. How many people on the planet knew what she knew? She might be the only one. How could any man go through life utterly alone, without revealing his most devastating secret to anyone? No wonder he drank and did drugs and gambled his money away. What did he have to live for? He had no family, no future. He was a walking dead man.
She didn’t move. She just sat there and gaped at him.
He looked all around then at her. He glanced out the window and down at the phone. He did everything but speak.
Cloe broke out of her trance and shifted in her seat. The interview was over. Should she get up and walk away? Should she leave him in peace the way she said she would?
He jerked his chin at her. “Well, if you’re not going to ask any more questions, maybe you’ll answer some of mine.”
“Me! What do you want to ask me?”
“How did you get into sports reporting?”
“I dunno. I guess it just sort of happened when I left college. I mean, what else was I going to use my English degree for? I couldn’t be a teacher, even though my mother wanted me to. I had to get a job, and this was the only one that used my degree.”
He didn’t just pretend to listen the way most people did. He really listened. He took it all in. “So you’re not really into boxing. You’re just doing a job.”
Cloe cocked her head to one side. “How did you get into boxing? I’m not asking for my interview. I really want to know.”
He shrugged. “I started in high school. I wanted to work out and get stronger so I could beat up the other guys and they couldn’t beat me up. After school, it turned out that was the thing I was best at in life, so I just sort of kept doing it.”
“So you’re like me. You aren’t really into boxing. You’re just doing a job.”
His mouth twisted in knots. “I guess so. I never really thought about it that way, but now that you mention it, I never even really liked boxing. I just never had anything else I was so good at.”
“And now? How do you feel about it now?”
“I hate it!” The words exploded out of him with such force Cloe sprang back in her seat. “I hate boxing. It ruined my life, and now it’s going to kill me. It took everything I ever had. It cost me my family. It made it impossible for me ever to get married or even keep a girlfriend for long. I’ve lived my whole life alone because of boxing and now, it’s going to drive me into my grave. I hate boxing! I hate it!”
He slammed his fist down on the table so hard people in neighboring booths turned to stare.
He saw them glaring at him, and he collapsed in on himself. He scowled and clenched his teeth. “Sorry. I got a little carried away.”
Cloe glanced around the coffee shop. He shouldn’t be here. She wanted to get him out of here, to protect him from the world. He’d suffered enough. He didn’t need strangers staring at him and whispering, “That’s the famous boxer, Sonny McCain. What’s wrong with him?”
Before she could ask, he bent forward and murmured under his breath, “Do you want to get out of here? We could take a walk in the park. We could talk better there.”
Chloe jumped at the chance. She put her phone back in her clutch bag, and they headed out the door.