“Valdrin.”
I was sitting on the bench in the locker room at Cadet’s with my head in my hands. Lancing pain combined with lack of sleep meant that the sound of someone hitting the bag was pushing me so close to the edge that I was poised to fall off.
Normally, I heard the sound of the speed bag in my sleep. When I hit it at just the right rhythm, it was a staccato tap-tap-tap backed by steady hissing—my lullaby since birthday number seven when I’d first gone to Cadet’s Boxing Club with my father. A few years later he’d taken off, never to be seen again, on the night of my first competitive fight. Without his face in the crowd, I hadn’t cared about winning. The first indicator that I was in it for the wrong reasons.
“Valdrin!”
Wincing, I dug my fingers into my hair and kept my eyes closed. In the gym bag at my feet, my cell phone vibrated. Again.
“Valdrin, what the fuck are you doing?”
My fingers dug grooves in my hair. It was too long, which I hated, but I hadn’t had time to go to the barber. When you didn’t have a lot of time, things like that took a backseat, but—
The phone stopped vibrating.
Relief sang through me for just a second . . . and then the phone started again.
“Val!”
My head snapped up, too fast and sharp for the current state of my back and shoulders, and I squinted. Through the sweat still trickling into my eyes, and the spots dancing before them, I saw Matt Lawrence. He was bigger than me by two weight classes and spent half his gym time training neighborhood kids instead of working on himself, which was partially why I’d gravitated to him in the first place. I’d wanted to know how I could help, before realizing I’d never have the time.
“You taking a nap?”
“I’m fucking dehydrated,” I said. “Can’t even focus and I haven’t done anything yet besides a workout.”
Matt braced his hands at the top of the door-frame, leaning into the locker room, and stared at me like I’d lost my marbles somewhere in the past thirty-six hours of all work and absolutely no sleep.
“When’s the last time you ate? Drank water? Took a vitamin or a nap?”
The questions made my head ache worse than it already did. “Uh. Last Tuesday.”
“You’re an idiot.” Matt exhaled loudly. “I’m ratting you out to Tony.” When I sat up straight, mouth dropping open, ready to unleash a ton of excuses and protests, Matt flipped me off. “If you step in the ring like this, you’re going to get your ass knocked out. I mean, you be doing that shit anyway, but at least it’s when you’re putting in work and not because you’re too stupid to hydrate and sleep before coming in.”
“Don’t tell.” I sounded like a five-year-old. “For real, man. I’ve been slacking, and Tony’s gonna drop me.”
“You spend your days driving a cab and doing handyman shit around your building. That’s not slacking.” Matt frowned as he considered me, genuine worry in his big brown eyes. “Tony would legit never drop you. He’s been your trainer since before you had pubic hair.”
My phone chimed loudly from my gym bag. I ignored it.
“He said my head ain’t in the game lately.”
“It’s not.” Matt jerked his chin at me. “You’re pastier than usual.”
Facts. I’d made the mistake of looking in the mirror as I’d taped up my fists, and I’d nearly cringed at what had looked back at me. My mother’s swarthy complexion was nowhere to be seen and my eyes had stared back like sunken coals. It was then that I’d realized my last two weeks of eating nothing but protein bars and NOS were going to ruin my body, and the three jobs I was juggling were going to shatter my already frayed mind.
Hunching forward, I dropped my head into my hands again. “Fuck.”
“It’s cool, man.” Matt rubbed a hand over his shaved head, shining it with the sweat that had accumulated after sparring with one of the older guys. “Spend tomorrow getting your life together, sleep in, and be ready tomorrow afternoon. I’m telling you—there’s no point in you doing shit in this condition. You’ll just get fucked up and hear a forty-five-minute lecture from Tony.”
My resolve had begun to crumble at the mention of sleeping in. Instead of dark, damp-looking concrete and gray walls, I could see my cramped apartment on 164th and the lumpy bed that was still a comfort despite the springs. How good it would feel to crawl under the sheet after a hot shower and a meal.
“Your eyes are faraway, which means you need to listen to me and get out of here.”
“Nah, let him stay. I wouldn’t mind watching Luis knock him out a couple of times.”
I looked over my shoulder just in time to see Bronson Maurer sauntering toward the door with his hair and skin still damp from the shower. He wasn’t wearing much despite it being cold outside, but maybe his mean mug kept him warm.
“You talk way too much shit for someone who doesn’t even fight,” Matt said with a snicker. “Like, you legit just come here to work out. How are you trying to say something?”
“Just ’cause I don’t fight in the ring doesn’t mean I don’t fight.”
“Aiight Fight Club. Get your ass out of here. Grown folks is talking.”
Bronson flipped Matt off and cast me another evil eye before walking out.
I shook my head and said, “That dude has hated my ass ever since my sister decked him back in high school.”
Matt’s face lit up at the mention of my sister but all he said was, “He’s just an angry white boy trying to overcompensate for his lack of athleticism with his attitude.”
“Sounds factual.”
I stood, grabbed my gym bag, and swung it over my shoulder. My hands were still taped up, but I could mess with that later. Right now, my mission was a shower, a meal, and sleep. The three words repeated in my head in a mantra before blending together like another language. God, I could practically taste the lamb casserole my sister had dropped off earlier in the day. I hadn’t been there to receive it, but her cheerful text message had announced her conning my super into letting her into my apartment so she could force food on me. I pretended to be offended by it, but she knew I cherished her efforts.
“Thanks, man.” I slapped Matt on the back and forced a grin. “Sometimes I need a good voice of reason.”
“Nah, what you need is to start dating. Someone to take care of your ass.” He smirked. “And I don’t mean your sister. Hana can take care of me.”
“Ha. Do me a favor and text her that. She doesn’t believe when I say you have a crush on her.” My phone started ringing again, and my fingers closed tighter around the strap of my bag. “But I don’t have time for dating. I don’t even have time to eat.”
“Then stop fucking up your body and start winning fights. If you go pro, you’ll start making that green paper. You need it, brother.”
That was also a fact, but I would never admit it. Especially since I was the only boxer, probably in the world, who didn’t dream every night of going pro. Of the big day in the future when I had fights on pay-per-view. The idea made me cringe.
“See you tomorrow, Mattie.”
While Matt went to shower, I walked down the short hallway and into the open space of the gym. More gray concrete splattered with sweat and grime, peeling wallpaper decorated with a collage of yellowed newspaper clippings, signed photographs of famous boxers, Polaroids of Tony’s dad—Anthony Cadet—with the guys he’d trained over the years. Memory after memory that meant something to people who weren’t around anymore to reminisce. Back in the day, I’d stared at the pictures and quotes in a state of awe. It’d told a story my overactive imagination had turned into an epic tale. But the truth was, Cadet’s hadn’t been anything special then, and I knew it wasn’t anything special now. Just another tiny boxing gym in the Bronx—down Grand Concourse from a more famous one—that generally spawned guys like me instead of real champions.
The gym’s subpar rep was why Tony had originally questioned my father’s reasoning for bringing me, a supposed prodigy, here. Even as the gym owner, Tony had known better gyms would have loved to get their hands on me. I’d overheard them talking once and had wondered the same. As it turned out, in the short time my dad had spent being my father, he’d realized I didn’t have the killing instinct. And I hadn’t developed that winner’s ambition in the past decade, either.
I walked so fast past Tony’s office that my surroundings were a blur. I vaguely saw Luis Ramos—the guy I should have been gearing up to spar—glaring from across the room.
Not just wasting Tony’s time. Wasting other people’s too.
“You going somewhere, Val?” Luis called from across the gym. “I been waiting for my rematch all damn day.”
Guilt sunk me faster than my exhaustion, and I stopped walking. Nearby, someone started in on the speed bag. The strap to my bag dug into my fingers so hard that I thought it would rub off the skin. And then the goddamn phone started ringing again. Over and over again, never ending, never leaving a message or sending a text. It would go on all fucking night until I caved and picked up. It occurred to me that maybe I was avoiding the wrong call despite it being like clockwork every Friday night, so I glanced in the side pocket of the bag.
One look at my phone showed me a flash of platinum blond hair, long and silky beneath a floppy hat, large dark sunglasses, and a wide mouth wrapped around a cigarette. I’d been right. This was the call I’d been avoiding, but now that I saw his name, it was hard to look away.
I didn’t know why I’d used that picture of Ashton instead of the millions of images he regularly uploaded to his Instagram, but it nearly melted my resolve. The real Ashton—the quirky bastard with the smart-ass smile and thrift-store style—could get me to do anything. The Ashton he played for the rest of the world didn’t have the same power.
And no doubt that was the Ashton who was calling me right now.
“Ay, you deaf over there?”
I dropped the bag at my feet. “Nah. I’m here.” I adjusted my tank top, taped in the back to get rid of the extra fabric. “Let’s do it.”
I left the gym after eleven with a bigger ego to compensate for the purpling bruise on my solar plexus and some bumps and scrapes. Even half-asleep, I’d knocked Luis down twice. My footwork had been slow, and my pauses had been too long, but I’d easily drifted into the beat of a fight.
Even so, Tony had still looked at me with flattened lips and hard blue eyes.
Where the other guys saw a challenge, he saw sloppiness. And he was right. Especially since he had his heart set on me going to the Olympic trials in a few months, and every fight leading up to that mattered. I wasn’t as keen. Olympic trials meant traveling for fights nationwide and internationally, and being that far from Hana and Ashton made me nervous. Even if I’d been trying, and mostly failing, to not see Ashton on a regular basis for the past several months. Especially if I’d be seeing him while he was drunk and frisky and handsier than usual.
The expression on Tony’s face nagged at me as I walked to my apartment with hunched shoulders and my hands shoved in my pockets. The street had a ton of traffic even after eleven o’clock, but that was always the case. My neighborhood had the unique position of being surrounded by Yankee Stadium, three courthouses and central booking, and a solid knot of would-be gentrifiers who stuck out like sore thumbs in a neighborhood that had always been a little rough. I greeted six people on my way from Cadet’s to my building, and was grateful for the tomblike silence of my apartment after I shouldered open the door.
I flipped all four locks, did up the chain, and then microwaved a giant bowl of casserole without taking off my jacket. The smell of lamb, gravy, and onions pulled a ferocious growl from my stomach. By the time the microwave beeped, my hands were shaking with the need to devour something. Anything. Especially a meal made of good memories and warmth. Hana always knew what to bring me when I was going through a rough patch.
I chewed while picturing Tony’s disapproving stare, so much like my father’s, and wondered if he mimicked my old man on purpose. Ever since dear old dad walked out on us, and my mother had been forced to take the job as a nanny for the Townsends, my relationship with Tony had very often fluctuated between trainer-fighter, mentor-mentee, and something a little more paternal. In the past, I’d craved that attention. Especially with my own mother practically living half the week in a mansion on the Upper East Side to clean up after rich WASPs, and take care of their sons instead of her own kids. But one of those sons had been Ashton, and now that she was gone, he was still the responsibility of the Leka family. Well, at least one member of it.
The meal vanished within a couple of minutes, I took a fast shower only because I was beginning to sway on my feet, and crashed to the mattress in my towel with my messy, wayward friend on the brain.
Was friend the right word for a rich kid who’d grown up with only his nanny’s son to talk to?
Probably not.
But when he called me again at three thirty in the morning, my hand reflexively shot out to answer before my brain woke up enough to order me not to follow through.
“What?” I rasped.
“Val.” Ashton’s voice was always a little low and hoarse, like he’d been born with a cigarette habit, but the way he extended the consonant made it clear he was drinking. “Are you still avoiding me? I’ve been trying to talk to you all day.”
“Huh?”
“Are you sleeping?”
“Uh. Yeah.” I tried to blink my way awake, shifting minutely on the tangled sheets. My body was weighted to the bed with the strength of several minutes of sleep being stolen with each of his questions. “Ashton, what do you want? It’s late.”
There was a hesitation and the sound of laughter, music, and clinking glasses in the background. His pause gave me pause, because even with the tension of the past few months, he rarely stopped to consider what I might be doing before begging me to put it on hold for him. Entitled? Bratty? Or maybe just . . . desperate for me to give him what no one else would. Friendship.
“Ash?”
There was a deep inhale on the other end. “Hey, never mind, okay? Get some sleep.”
My eyes opened fully. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, babes,” he said, forced cheer faker than a tan in February. I could hear the strain in every syllable. “You sleep. I’ll figure it out.”
“Shut up and tell me what’s wrong.”
“Val . . .”
“Are you drunk?” He made a little sound, like a verbal shrug, and I pressed on. “High?”
“I shouldn’t have called.”
“No fucking shit you shouldn’t have called at three in the morning.” There went the temper only he could rip out of me. “You’ve been calling me since seven o’clock in the evening, way before you got to wherever you are now, so don’t pull this coy bullshit with me. Tell me why you’re acting weird.”
“I just . . . I wanted to talk. I don’t have anyone to ask for advice, and I thought . . .” Another pause, this one punctuated by a clicking sound. “I thought you could help me make a choice, and you didn’t pick up, so I made it on my own.” A sardonic laugh filled his end of the line, and that sound was all Ashton. My Ashton. Not the one he’d created for the socialite crowd. “But then again thinking isn’t my strong suit, right?”
“I don’t want to hear this bullshit.” I slid out of bed, my head spinning from the abrupt motion, and reached blindly for a pair of jeans. “Where are you?”
“Val, just forget it. You’re right. I’m a teeny bit tipsy and I need to just stop calling you every time—”
“Tell me where you are or I’ll just use the Find My iPhone app.”
“Val—”
“Ashton, I swear to God, I’m not in the mood. Tell me now if you’re just jerking my chain because you’re drunk and emo, or if you’re stranded again at some crazy party and need a ride.”
His answer, when it came, was barely above a whisper. “I need a ride.”
The knowledge that I’d likely be driving for over an hour to get to wherever he was that didn’t have a taxi or a subway didn’t anger me. All I felt was the cool relief that this godforsaken conversation could end, I could complete the task of retrieving him, and eventually go back to bed.
Ashton murmured an address in Long Island and ended the call with a very faint, “I’m sorry for being like this.”
Those six words echoed in my ears the entire way as I stumbled out of my apartment, jogged down the stairs, and sat heavily in the driver’s seat of my battered black Camry. It wasn’t the first time I’d be going to rescue Ashton from a glitzy party so far out of my zip code that they’d practically ask to check my documents at the door, but it was the first time his voice had sounded so regretful and pained.
The last time he’d spoken to me in that tone had been nearly a year ago on the night of my mother’s funeral. He’d begged me not to go, but I’d walked out of his apartment without looking back and had proceeded to avoid his calls for nearly three months.
Actually, no, it’d been more recently. After Valentine’s Day, when I’d seen pictures on Instagram of him and some dude named Caleb Stone. I’d had no idea who the guy was, but he’d looked . . . normal. Normal enough to be potentially permanent. It had freaked me out to not know that Ashton might have had an actual boyfriend.
That gap in knowledge after a lifetime of knowing everything about him had pushed me into ending my radio silence. I’d down shifted from my post-funeral ice to the wishy-washy avoidance dance I performed with him now. He’d been so grateful to hear my voice that he’d nearly cried. And that had broken me. It was why I told myself to keep my distance but could never manage to stay away.
He needed me. I wanted him in my life. It should have been simple.
But us spending time together meant never forgetting what had happened on the night of the funeral.
And, fuck, I had to be tired to be traveling so far up that road.
I shook my head, smacked my own cheeks, and then pulled up the GPS in my phone to guide me toward my destination. The trip duration read nearly an hour, and I vowed to myself, as I managed to squeeze out of the tight parking spot I’d snagged earlier, that I’d pick him up, take him home, and then return to my own apartment. That was it.
I repeated it to myself multiple times as I took off toward the Cross Bronx Expressway.
I’d get him out, get him home to Manhattan, and come back to my world in the Bronx. No lingering. No cuddly heart-to-hearts while he caressed me and stared into my eyes. No more joining the ranks of people who were infatuated with Ashton Townsend. Or, more accurately, not allowing him to find out I was already in those ranks.
It was a promise I’d made to myself once I’d emerged from the fog of grief that had allowed me to fuck him wildly on the floor after the sparsely attended burial. What he didn’t know was that I’d avoided him because I couldn’t bear the realization that I’d treated him like everyone else. I was supposed to be different but, at the end of the day, I desired him just as badly as whoever he was with tonight.
The mansion was somehow more ridiculous than I’d expected it to be. Growing up as the pseudo best friend of a filthy rich kid had guaranteed I’d gotten dragged along to many a glitzy event in my teenage years, but this place took the cake. It didn’t even look like a house. The structure was so contemporary that it resembled an office building that also doubled as a spaceship. If there was ever a real War of the Worlds, I knew exactly where the first pods were going to show up. At this goddamn place right here.
After a minute of glaring through the gates at the four-level building, I guided my Camry to the guard tower.
“I’m here to pick up Ashton Townsend.”
I’d expected a guard who looked bored and sleepy, but this guy looked like a member of Delta Force. So fucking odd. Everything about this night was odd.
He gave my car a not-so-discreet once-over. “You’re his driver?”
My jaw clenched. “No. Just check your list, man. You had to have seen him today. Tall, blond, slender. Looks like a movie star, but he’s really just a former model with a huge Instagram following and a sex tape.”
The guard’s mouth twitched. I grinned, trying to appeal to his inner working-class motherfucker in the most basic way even though every word tasted like poison. I was saying the things other people said about Ashton, and I hated that. I hated bringing up the sex tape even more. It’d been secretly recorded by one of his former lovers, and a hacker had snagged it from the dude’s online cloud. Now it was all over the internet with no way to get it back. It’d been loosed into the world six years ago, but that tape had started so much shit, it would never be buried.
Even so, saying things like this usually helped me bypass the red tape, which would help me get to Ashton faster.
“Just let me pick the kid up. He’s probably puking on someone’s family heirloom by now. Your boss probably had him summon me to fetch him and clean up the mess.”
“Heh. I hope someone is paying you well to be working so hard to take care of some rich punk.”
I cringed inwardly. “You gonna do me a solid?” I pressed. “I just drove from the Bronx, man.”
“You really are devoted to the cause.” The guard jerked his head at the gate. “Go get your guy.”
The phrase put my back up, but I managed a tight smile. “Good lookin’ out.”
As I guided my car away, I noticed the driveway was lit on either side by tiny dome ornaments, which made it seem like a silver ribbon leading to the enormous home. Up close it was larger. Like a mismatch of different Lego pieces stuck together any which way by a kid who liked monotone colors. The inside was probably banging, but I couldn’t see what would have initially attracted a buyer. Or maybe that was just my bitterness because I paid a cool fourteen hundred for two rooms and a kitchen that barely worked.
My fingers curled around the wheel again, and I swallowed my resentment. My struggle was my problem. It wasn’t the bastards who owned this joint’s, and it definitely wasn’t Ashton’s.
Parking in front of the massive entrance, I swept my eyes over the place. Every window seemed to be lit, and I could hear music emanating from the door. Tinkles of laughter came from everywhere on the property, as if couples were wandering through the shadows to secret places to be alone. But if I knew anything about the crowd Ashton tended to run with, it was that they weren’t shy about getting busy in front of an audience.
I shot him a text—Where you at?—and got no reply. After several minutes of drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, I sent him another—Come the fuck on, Ash. I haven’t slept in days.
When that one didn’t get a reply, I gnashed my teeth together and jammed my finger down on the call button. Voice mail. I realistically knew this meant his phone had died, but a tinge of worry edged its way down my spine anyway. There had been times in the past when Ashton had gone missing. He’d wander off on his own without telling anyone, and would pop up a few days later with an explanation as simple as, I just needed to get away. My concern had always gone unheeded, and he’d kiss my face and call me overprotective, but there had been times when I’d expected him to not come back at all. Or not in one piece. Ashton didn’t always attract the best people.
Footsteps nearby drew me out of my tense reverie, and my eyes strayed to the passenger’s-side window. Ashton’s long blond hair caught on the lights, making it seem like a sheet of streaming gold, as he hurried down the steps in his clattering motorcycle boots. He looked slimmer and taller than usual in a black dress with a deep V-neck and black leggings or stockings. My relief was short-lived because two things became immediately clear: he was hurrying away from someone, and that person was following him.
The man had mostly silver hair, and looked normal enough, but the way he grabbed Ashton’s arm made me want to knock his teeth out. I sat up straight, adrenaline coursing through me. Ashton’s eyes met mine immediately, and I stopped. He shook his head before turning to face his pursuer.
The man drew Ashton close enough for a deep, crushing kiss.
“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered and willed myself to look away. But I couldn’t.
My pulse was still racing out of control, temper not chilled in the least even when Ashton’s jaw moved enough to indicate he was responding. I scanned him for a sign of what the hell was going on, but only saw the conflicting sight of his tense back and slack fingers as his lips moved enthusiastically against the man’s.
At the sound of a hoarse groan, I stopped watching. The guy might not be hurting Ashton, but I still had a growing desire to crush his face.