Chapter 7

After Travis dropped her off, Penny went over to her neighbor’s to pick up Belle.

“Hello there, dear.” The elderly woman opened the door wide. “Go on back and get her. She’s playing with that teddy bear she loves.”

Penny walked back and paused to watch Belle playing with the old bear. It hurt so much that she had to spend so much time working and away from her daughter. Now that she had a better work situation and would have more time, she’d make sure to go more often to the park with Belle.

Just then Belle saw her and held out her arms. With a smile, Penny went to pick her up and give her a cuddle.

“Did you hear that Jamie Lynn had the babies last night?” Penny asked as she grabbed Sarabelle’s belongings.

“Sure did,” Ms. Hannigan answered. “Lidia’s husband knows the janitor at St. Joseph’s, and he called him, and then Lidia called me.”

Penny chuckled. “Small-town life, huh?”

“Sure is. Also heard you got yourself a new job.”

“I did. So many things happened last night I completely forgot to mention it. I’m so excited. Less hours, more money.”

“That’s wonderful, dear. But you know I don’t mind watching your precious little angel.”

“I know. And there’s no way I can ever repay you for that. Still, it’ll be good to spend more time with her.”

“It certainly will,” Ms. Hannigan said as she leaned down and kissed Sarabelle’s forehead.

“You want to go to the park, Belle?” Penny asked.

“Pak. Pak,” Belle squealed.

“I guess we’re going to the park. Again, thank you so much for watching her.” Penny leaned in and kissed the woman on the cheek. “Maybe I can make you dinner for once. How about it? Six at my apartment?”

“If you’re sure…”

“Definitely.”

“Well, then I’ll see you later. Bye, dear.”

Penny had the most relaxing day she’d had since moving to Tarpon Springs. She and Belle took the bus to a hidden little park she’d seen one day, around the corner from the beach, and on the way home Penny picked up some groceries. Afterward, while Belle took her afternoon nap, Penny cleaned her apartment from top to bottom and then made arrangements with Joe to go in the next day for a few hours to train with Olivia, another bartender. Then she’d made a chicken potpie and ate with Ms. Hannigan. The older woman reminded her of her paternal grandmother—she was kindhearted and pleasant to be around. Penny knew that Ms. Hannigan’s husband had died two years ago, and about a month before Penny arrived in Tarpon Springs her dog had died too. She’d been lonely all by herself in her tiny apartment, and spending time with Belle brought her joy.

They talked and laughed as they watched Belle stand, try to take a step, and fall down. They also made plans for her to watch Belle the next evening while Penny trained at Ruby’s.

After dinner Penny was exhausted—and happy that she had only thought of Travis a few dozen times that day.

Growing up, she had been taught that casual sex was a sin. With Lawrence she had thought she was in love, so when they had finally had sex, she hadn’t felt guilt—she’d thought he was the man she was going to eventually marry. She quickly learned her affection was one-sided, and any feelings she may have had for him quickly morphed into sadness and then anger.

With Travis, there wasn’t love, but there had been such deep-seated desire and need in both of them that she also hadn’t felt guilt. How could something that felt so good be bad? Since leaving Oklahoma she’d begun to question a lot of the beliefs that she’d thought had made her who she was.

It was midnight by the time Penny finally took out her contacts, tied her hair back into a ponytail, and washed her face. She was just heading out of the bathroom when a sudden loud knocking at her door startled her. Looking over her shoulder to see that Belle hadn’t awakened, she quickly threw on a long T-shirt, the one she slept in, and ran to the door.

She looked through the peephole and was shocked to see Lawrence standing there. Leaving the chain on, she opened the door just enough to say, “Lawrence? What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in?” He looked haggard and tired.

“No.”

“Let me in, Penelope. We need to talk.” Lawrence was normally an even-keeled kind of person. She blew out a breath before shutting the door, unlocking it, and then letting him in.

“You’ve made such a mess of things,” he sighed, running his hands through his hair, not bothering to even say hello.

“I’ve done no such thing. Plus, it’s none of your business what I do,” she said, her hands on her hips.

He turned and looked at her for the first time in almost two years. “Wow. You look so different.”

“I’m an adult now.”

He tipped his head to the side. “You were an adult then too.”

“Barely,” she replied. “What is it that you want, Lawrence?”

“Your stepfather asked me to come get you and bring you back home. We need to make it look like I’ve been around the entire time. A big happy family living in Florida.”

“What about your wife?” Penny asked incredulously.

“My wife left me and took everything. Turns out she was having an affair.”

“Can’t say I feel bad for you. Either of you, actually,” Penny said. “And the photos? Me kissing another man?”

“You strayed. I have forgiven you,” he replied matter-of-factly.

“And then what? You and I live together like a big happy family? Because that’s not going to happen, Lawrence.”

“You think I want that to happen? I don’t want this. Any of it. That’s why I paid you off and told you to stay away.”

“And I did. Now it’s your turn to stay away. You’re a grown man. You don’t have to do what Kip Owens says. I’m certainly not going to.”

The man blew out a big breath and sat heavily on the couch. “You are. You’re going to do exactly what Kip says. So am I.”

“Yeah? And why’s that?”

“Kip promised me money, and I need it. Most of it is going to pay for my divorce. But he won’t give it to me unless I bring you home with me and go through this ruse with you.”

“What? No. Absolutely not! Your problem has nothing to do with me.”

“I need the money, Penny,” he repeated. “And you need to leave here and come back with me, because Kip won’t stop. I’m not trying to be the bad guy here. I screwed up. I know I was wrong, but now I’m in a bind, and so are you. We can help each other out. It’s not forever—once the media interest dies down, we can go our separate ways.”

“I said no. I’m not going back to Oklahoma. I’m sorry you’re in a bind, but that is not my problem. Not at all.”

Lawrence leaned forward and took a frame in his hands. It was a photo of Belle and Penny at the park. “Is this her?”

Penny snatched the frame from his hand.

“You need to go, Lawrence.”

“Can I see her?”

“No!” she said harshly, at the same time as there came a pounding on the door.

It was the middle of the night, for goodness’ sake, and now for the second time in just a few minutes someone was banging on her door. Penny went to the door, looked through the peephole, and saw Jack, a local police officer and a good friend of Travis’s, on the other side.

She quickly opened the door. “Jack? Is everything okay?”

“I should ask you the same thing.” He looked over her shoulder toward Lawrence. “Your neighbor called about loud banging coming from next door.” As he said that, Ms. Hannigan opened her door.

“Are you okay, my dear?”

“Oh, Ms. Hannigan, I’m sorry if Lawrence woke you up. I’m fine. It’s fine. I’ll explain tomorrow,” Penny said, then turned to Jack. “I’m sorry you came all the way over here for this, Jack.”

“Ms. Hannigan said you’ve never had a single visitor here in over a year.” Then he looked at his watch. “It’s the middle of the night. You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine. Lawrence was just leaving. Weren’t you, Lawrence?”

Lawrence stood and nodded. “I don’t want to be the bad guy, Penny. You’re making me be the bad guy.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You seem to have forgotten one thing: she’s still my daughter,” he declared as he walked out, followed close behind by Jack. “So yes, my problems are now your problems.”

She’s still my daughter. The words echoed in Penny’s head.

“Travis! Travis!” a small-town newspaper reporter called out to him as he walked toward the Academy the next morning. Travis stopped and turned to her. “Can you tell me a little about your training? Hank Lemmon, your opponent, told me he’s been training feverishly. And the consensus is that he’s the favorite in the match.”

This reporter was one that he already knew. She wore a tight-fitting suit, a silk shirt, and a simple pearl necklace with matching earrings. Admittedly, he’d never paid attention to details such as jewelry, but after seeing how Penny’s fingers fumbled with her pearl necklace when she was nervous, he couldn’t help but notice that type of necklace on other women. Except with Penny, it was all class. She may have been just a bartender, but Penny’s outfits screamed class through and through.

The woman sauntered toward him with her sky-high heels and perfect smile. “You got a statement?”

“Rosie, honey, I ain’t stupid. I know you’re trying to goad me. There’s no way Lemmon said shit to you.” It was true—his opponent was known to be a recluse.

She leaned casually against the wall and pouted as she flirtatiously picked a piece of lint off his shirt. “Okay, maybe he didn’t. But come on, can’t you give me something? Tell me about the rumors regarding Sports Central, then. Did the magazine offer you the cover?”

He hated when women behaved like that—it was manipulative and fake and drove him mad. There had been rumors about the cover, and his agent had apparently been made aware, but nothing concrete had come of it yet. Even so, this was not something he was going to share with Rosie.

Sensing his attitude, she shifted her tactics. “My boss is breathing down my neck,” she pleaded. “This is a small town. Not a lot going on, and now y’all are being followed by a bunch of cameras from a major cable network. Come on, I need to get in on this before you guys blow up and don’t have time for lil’ ol’ me anymore.”

He blew out a heavy breath. “Okay, listen. We’ve all been training hard, and there’s really not much else to say. You guys will have to watch the special, which will be airing next week. And as for the cover of Sports Central, that’s just a rumor as far as I’m concerned.”

“Can you tell me about Penelope Richards?” she blurted out.

That stopped him in his tracks.

“Excuse me?”

She laughed. “Come on, you know what sells these shows. Some people care about all your training and skills. But the women mostly tune in to see all the shirtless muscle men. And add to that some sort of romantic scandal with a famous girl who’s been off the grid for a year…well, you’ll be famous. It’s salacious! Did you know who she was this entire time? Did she run away to come be with you?” She reached out to tap the brim of his hat, but he pushed her hand away.

He opened his mouth to comment, but quickly closed it. He wasn’t sure what the correct answer was right now, or how what he said might damage Penny. He was also surprised to hear that people already knew her story.

“See you around, sugar.” He walked into the Academy.

Half of Worth the Fight Academy stood by the front desk chatting when he walked in. “I saw you with Rosie,” Slade said. “She’s been hanging around trying to get us to talk all morning.”

“What did she ask you?” Travis inquired as he sat on a nearby bench and began to wrap his wrists and fingers.

“If we knew about your relationship with Penny. Also if I was single. They’re just looking for the juicy story. Scandalize this up somehow.”

Slade took Travis’s hands in his and finished wrapping them up for him. “When we agreed to do the show, Tony made sure that the producers would be focusing on the Academy and the training. We want to bring big names in to train at WtF, plus get people invested enough in us to buy the pay-per-view fight in a few months, once the show is over.” Slade opened up the boxing gloves so that Travis could slip them on and then tightened them. This was a routine that happened every single morning when he walked into the Academy, but today, Slade tightened them way more than necessary. “I don’t want this place turning into Jersey Shore, got me? This isn’t about money and pussy, Texas. Keep it in check and focus on training. Understand?”

“I didn’t tell her shit. I’m here at seven in the fucking morning to train, just like I’ve been doing for the last year.”

“Fame will fuck you up. Focus on the fight,” Tony, who had been loitering around and prepping the other fighters, said with a smirk. He pointed a finger in Travis’s face, and Travis quickly swiped it away.

“Come on, everyone wants a little fame,” Travis admitted. “But they’re not interested in me because of Penny.”

“Well, they certainly aren’t interested in you because of your fighting talent,” Tony teased. “Maybe it’s because of how big—or in your case small—your dick is.”

“You’ve been lookin’ at my dick, boss?”

“No, just assumed, because of the lack of women.”

“Ha ha.”

With the teasing out of the way, it was time to train, which is what Travis lived for. Some men went to fancy gyms and trained with expensive trainers. Travis didn’t care about any of that. He had a different fire within him, a different drive. He’d been fighting his whole life—he lived and breathed it. His drunk mother had never paid much attention to him, and he’d been on his own for as long as he could remember. He’d learned to fight in the streets. He’d started getting into trouble way too young, but what no one knew at the time was that he wasn’t fighting just to fight. He wasn’t an angry kid; he was a hungry kid. He began fighting for money, which he used to buy food for JL and himself. It hadn’t been much, but at least they hadn’t starved. When he wasn’t fighting in the ring as a kid, he was out hustling in the streets, which inevitably led to more fighting.

He was ashamed of some of the things he’d done. But another thing he’d learned was there was no use in looking back. He’d done what he had to do back then; he’d done other things that he probably hadn’t needed to do, but he’d been too stupid and young to know better. And it had been nearly eight years since he’d been in any real trouble.

He rubbed the dream catcher tattoo on his shoulder. He’d always had dreams but had never thought they’d come true. Mostly he’d dreamed of traveling, eating nice meals, wearing fancy clothes, and owning his own home one day. Perhaps his dreams seemed superficial, but when you grew up scouring the dumpsters for food and the local Goodwill for clothes, the idea of wearing fancy things was as farfetched an idea as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. He’d thought that he’d always be struggling through life, but then this television show had happened, followed by a big deposit in his bank account, and suddenly it seemed as though things he’d never even thought were possible might now be within his reach.

You’ll never amount to anything.

Loser.

Those were the words that stung most. Words that should never come from a mother’s mouth. Later on he’d come to realize she was sick. Addiction was a real illness. But back then he hadn’t known any better, and those words had wrapped around his soul and strangled it. He’d dropped out of school at seventeen and gotten his GED. Why aim big when this was his life?

As he’d told Penny, he didn’t want a wife or kids because he wanted to be able to do what he wanted when he wanted, without anyone tying him down. And he didn’t want to fuck up a kid by being unable to take care of him or her the way kids were supposed to be taken care of. He wasn’t cut out for family life; this was part of the reality he accepted for himself. And instead of being angry about it, he’d plastered a smile on his face and worked hard at whatever he did, which was mostly odd jobs here and there, all fitted in around his training schedule. People saw only the smile, and thought he was a free-spirited, happy guy—a perception he did nothing to dispel.

When the money had come in a few months ago, he’d bought the big house—not that he used it much, since he was always at the Academy. But buying that home had been his big fuck-you to his mother, who’d never believed in him. It had felt liberating…for about three minutes. Then he was back at the Academy thinking of nothing else but Vegas and the bout.

By nine o’clock that night, Travis was dead on his feet. He’d been at the Academy since early that morning. He’d stopped for about an hour for lunch, but that was the only real break he’d gotten. He needed to bulk up, otherwise he wouldn’t make weight.

Once he was home, he opened up one of the big containers of protein powder. When he’d moved into the house, he hired a personal shopper to outfit his kitchen, but he could count the number of times in the last four months he’d actually used it. The only thing on the counter was the blender, which he quickly used to prepare an enormous protein shake. Afterward he sat in front of his monster-sized television, which he had watched only once before, and drank his dinner.

He washed his glass and the blender and put them away, then decided to do some laundry and tidy up his house. When he had nothing else left to do, he took a shower and lay down on his bed, but he tossed and turned for a while, unable to sleep. He got up and sent Enzo a text asking if he wanted to meet him at the Pier. Going to the bar to check up on Penny had been his evening ritual, but now that she wasn’t there, he didn’t feel the need to go. He paced around his four-thousand-square-foot house waiting for a reply.

It’s midnight! We have newborns! What is wrong with you? Go to sleep, Enzo texted back.

Travis exhaled and muttered, “Fuck it.” He threw on some gym shorts, put on his sneakers, and went out for a run until his legs shook. When he walked into his house, he was so tired that as soon as he collapsed onto the couch, drenched in sweat from the impromptu run, his mind was finally quiet enough that he could sleep.

He was just about to pass out when his phone rang, startling him. He looked at the screen and saw that it was Jack. It was never a good thing when your cop friend called you at that hour.

“What’s going on, man?” Travis said.

“Just left Penny’s house,” Jack said, and Travis leaped up. “Before you have a fuckin’ attack, it’s all good. Just thought you should know that some guy was there. Her neighbor was worried because apparently the guy was knocking loudly and it was late and Penny doesn’t normally have any visitors.”

“Who was it?”

“Some man named Lawrence. She didn’t tell me who he was, but if it makes you feel better, she kicked him out.”

Travis sat back down. “That’s her kid’s father.”

“Oh. Well, none of my business, but you’re a friend, and I thought you’d want to know.”

“Was…” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Was she okay?”

“She was fine. Get some sleep, Texas,” Jack said, then hung up.

He threw his phone aside and lay back down. What if Lawrence was trying to win her back? What if this had something to do with her stepfather? His mind began to reel, and it wasn’t until the sun shone through his window that he was able to get an hour of sleep.

Early the next morning, as Penny was making breakfast, her phone beeped. She was surprised, since she had the phone mostly for emergencies and only a handful of people had the number.

She looked at the flip phone’s tiny screen. It was a text from Travis: Can I see you?

Typing on that phone was like pulling teeth. Laboriously she wrote back, When?

I have to go see JL and babies now. Noon okay?

Okay. I’m home.

See you later.

Unsure what he could possibly want to say to her, she tidied up, then dressed and decided she had enough time before he arrived to go to the park with Belle.

Half an hour later, Penny was sitting on a bench watching Belle play with her teddy bear on the grass instead of in the sandbox with the other kids.

“There’s something you should know.”

Startled by the voice, she looked around to see Lawrence walking up to her from behind.

“What are you doing here, Lawrence? I told you to leave us alone.”

“I didn’t want to do this, Penny.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s my daughter too. I have a right to see her. You can’t keep her from me. Not legally.”

“What?” She stood up abruptly. “You didn’t want anything to do with her. You gave me money. You told me to leave you alone. I did that. You can’t come back now and tell me you want to see my daughter.”

“Our daughter,” he corrected. “I can and I will. And as far as I’m concerned, I never said any of that. You just disappeared with my kid and five thousand dollars of mine.”

“What?” she shrieked again. “No! No way. You can’t do that, Lawrence!”

“Then just come home with me.”

She stomped over to Belle and scooped her up. “Just go!” she yelled at Lawrence as she hastily strode away.

“That’s her? That’s my daughter?” he asked, following her.

Penny tried to shield her daughter with her body as best she could, but Lawrence just stood there looking at his daughter with misty eyes. “She’s beautiful.”

“She’s mine,” Penny practically snarled.

“Penny, be reasonable. You’ll lose in the long run. Don’t you want our daughter—”

“My daughter!”

He shook his head. “Don’t you want her to have a good life? Come back home with me. You were in love with me once. We can try again.”

“You don’t want me, Lawrence. You want Kip’s money.” She headed out of the park.

“Your stepfather will be here in a few days. Make it easier for everyone involved and just come home with me today.”

“No.” She pulled out her phone. “If you don’t turn around and walk away from me, I’m calling the police.”

“Dumb move, Penelope.”