Chapter Seven
SAWYER WIPED THE sweat from his brow and set the hammer down on the deck. He’d been trying to beat away his frustrations by working on the wheelchair ramp that would eventually run from the deck on the back of the house to the patio below, so his father could enjoy the views of the bay. But the more he pounded, the more he thought about Roach’s comment about his mother. He sank back on his heels and shielded his eyes from the blazing sun, battling the unanswerable questions.
Was he doing the right thing?
Would he be lucky enough not to get knocked out?
Normally, Sawyer had unwavering confidence. He felt as invincible as he had his whole life—except now, when he looked at his father, he couldn’t deny the what-ifs. Heck, look at Muhammad Ali. He was the best, and even the best couldn’t escape the very real possibility that Sawyer denied existed every day of his life.
He pulled his knees up and crossed his arms over them. Sweat dripped down his sides as he ran through a few boxing nightmares he kept locked away for his own sanity. He’d memorized them, because even though he’d never allowed himself to lose confidence over them, he had to know what he was up against. In order to win, he had to be aware of the risks. Duk-Koo Kim, died four days after a nineteen-round fight with Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini. Frankie Campbell died at the hands of Max Baer. Benny “Kid” Paret, welterweight champ, went into a coma after a twelve-round fight and died ten days later. Billy Collins Jr. lost his vision because of a cheating opponent who had removed padding from his gloves.
Tragedies happened, but it wasn’t going to happen to him.
He picked up his tools and headed inside to shower.
Half an hour later Sawyer drove to his parents’ house in Hyannis with the radio blaring and the windows down. Anything to block out his thoughts. The workout, the renovation work, the cold shower…Nothing pushed him past what Roach had said, which was why he needed to go see his parents—to remind himself of exactly why he needed to train harder and remain focused.
He gritted his teeth against the stupid word. Focus. Not only was he trying to erase what Roach had said, but he’d had a heck of a time keeping thoughts of Sky from permeating his mind when he was in the ring—and that was dangerous.
He glanced at his cell on the passenger seat. The text from Sky about waking up together tomorrow had him thrumming with the anticipation of seeing her again. He’d never met anyone like her. She was a bright, welcome light to his intense days and as ethereal as she was real, but he couldn’t shake the worry about getting close to her with the fight looming over his head. He couldn’t afford to be sidetracked during training or during the fight. It was all dangerous territory—but no way had he been able to stop thinking about her.
He tried again to push away thoughts of Sky as he pulled up in front of his childhood home. When Sawyer was growing up, the cedar-sided Cape-style home had been the most welcoming place on earth. With scents of his mother’s cooking lingering and his father’s books lining the walls, there was no place he’d rather be. Now, each time he pulled up to the house, his gut tightened, and he wondered how much his father’s health had declined in the days since he’d last seen him. Returning after traveling for fights was the worst. While Sawyer was away, he could pretend his father was the resilient man he remembered from his youth. And it wasn’t until he’d drive down the street, bracing himself for the truth after being away, that reality would puncture the bubble he’d lived in in order to keep his focus. Each time he saw his father, the pain of his declining health hit him anew.
After this many years, he should be used to the fact that his father could no longer smile, that his voice—once so filled with life he could read a passage of the most boring book and make it come alive—was now monotone, cold and emotionless.
He parked in the driveway and waved to Mrs. Petzhold, the same neighbor he’d been caught mouthing off to as a kid. She smiled and waved. Her hair had turned snow-white over the years, and her waist had thickened. After spending time with Roach and learning more about respecting others than he’d ever thought possible, he’d sought out Mrs. Petzhold and apologized—profusely.
Sawyer had been thankful for her forgiveness, and now he was glad that the neighbors his parents knew and trusted had remained on the street. His mother, Lisa Bass, was not the type to complain, but Sawyer knew that watching the man she’d loved since she was eighteen stricken with a disease that would one day render him unable to so much as embrace her was taking a toll on her. His father was a solemn man, who’d preferred his privacy to the camaraderie of friends and neighbors even when he’d been healthy, but he knew that his mother needed their emotional support.
He was happy to find his parents on the back patio, enjoying the beautiful, sunny day. Although his father was still able to handle most of his daily functions on his own, Sawyer had noticed that his gait had not only slowed but had become even more unsteady. He walked with a cane now but refused to use a walker no matter how many times Sawyer and his mother pleaded with him. Tad Bass was a stubborn man. Sawyer knew from talking with his father’s doctor and researching the illness online that the progression of the disease could happen quickly and the risk of falls would increase twofold. As his father’s automatic reflexes continued to slow, his ability to perform simple daily tasks would one day diminish altogether, and he’d need full-time care.
He bent to kiss his mother’s cheek, and she reached up and embraced him.
“Hi, honey,” she said. “What a lovely surprise.” Lisa was in her late fifties, almost ten years younger than his father, although with his father’s deteriorating health, they looked even further apart in age.
“Hi, Mom.” He turned to hug his father, and the familiar pang of longing for the smiles his father had once shared so readily stabbed through him. Facial masking was what his father’s doctor had called his father’s inability to control his facial muscles. An infliction brought on by Parkinson’s. His father’s expression didn’t change when he opened his arms to his son, but when Sawyer embraced the man who had raised him, who had preached about the importance of loyalty and keeping strong morals and ethics, the man who had taught him to throw a baseball, he felt love radiating around him. His father had responded fairly well to the medications. The tremors that had been exacerbated while his father was resting were now favorably controlled and barely noticeable, but when he embraced his father, he often felt the underlying, minimized movements.
“How’s it going, Dad?”
“Fine…son,” his father said. To an onlooker his father’s blank expression would appear as disinterest, his quiet, raspy speech as dissonance. But it was all part of the disease his father endured for having had the courage to fight for their country. His father was dressed in a pair of sweatpants and a baggy T-shirt, which seemed to magnify how much his musculature had diminished.
“You mentioned the other day that you had some errands to run this week, Mom,” Sawyer said with a smile. “You can take off while I’m here, and I’ll hang out with Dad.”
“Oh, how lovely. You’re sure you don’t mind?” His mother touched her shoulder-length dark hair. “I should freshen up before I go out.”
“Take your time, Mom. I have a few hours. I don’t have plans until this evening.”
Curiosity lit up her hazel eyes. “You have plans this evening? A date, perhaps?”
His mother was always trying to fix him up with her friends’ daughters, granddaughters, friends, or relatives. He’d let her set him up twice, and both times were disasters. The girls were less than interesting, and they’d wanted to talk about his career more than anything else. He loved his career, but he didn’t necessarily want to talk about it 24-7 or pretend that he was flattered by their attention. As much as Sky’s reluctance to accept his career worried him, it was also one of the things that he admired about her. She didn’t fawn over him because of what he represented or the titles he’d won. She actually had her own ideas of right and wrong, and she stuck to them, and it was that independence, and so much more, that set her apart from others.
“Actually, yes, a date.”
“A…date,” his father said. Sawyer read past his expressionless eyes to the smirk he knew his father would inflict if he could. “Good…for…you.”
“Someone special?” his mother asked with hopeful eyes.
“It’s only our second date, but I really like her.”
“Well, that’s more than you’ve said about any of your other dates for a long time,” his mother said. “I think I’ll hang on to that shred of hope for a while.”
“Mom, it’s not like we’re getting married and giving you grandchildren.”
She leaned down and kissed his father’s cheek. “A mother can hope.”
“Re…lent…less,” his father said.
Before going inside, his mother stood with her hand on Sawyer’s shoulder for a long moment.
“What is it, Mom?”
“Hm? Just…please stay with him if he has to go inside. Your father’s been a little shakier lately.”
The look on his father’s face might not have changed, but the energy rolling off of him sure had—it was dark and annoyed, making Sawyer’s gut twist.
Sawyer watched his mother walk inside. Then he sank down to the chair beside his father, feeling his father’s eyes on him.
“Why did you send your mother out?” His father’s speaking abilities might have slowed, but his cognition was still very much intact.
“You picked up on that, huh?”
His father nodded.
Sawyer hated that seeing his father today brought bigger concerns—and for the first time, it wasn’t just concerns over how he was going to afford his father’s health care. Today it was like looking in a mirror and seeing his own future reflected back.
With Roach’s comment pinging around his mind like a silver ball in a pinball machine, keeping hold of his invincibility cloak was proving harder than usual. He had thought about sharing the doctor’s concerns with his father, but there was no way he’d lay that on his father’s shoulders.
“Dad, you know I have that title fight coming up, and the purse is a big one. Seven hundred thousand dollars.”
“Yes.”
Over the years he’d grown so accustomed to his father giving his two cents, whether he was asked for it or not, that his silence was unsettling, leaving too many unanswered questions for Sawyer to mull over. He wondered if his father wanted to say more but had grown frustrated with his own slowed speech and had simply stopped trying.
“Son.” The word came out flat, though Sawyer knew it was a question.
He was still hung up on how much he missed hearing his father’s advice. He’d give anything to go back in time and…What? He didn’t know. He’d always spent a lot of time with his family, but was a lot ever enough? Would any amount of time ever be enough? He’d come here today to strengthen his resolve, to push away shadows of doubt put in place by his doctor, and even more doubt seemed to be mounting with the weight of lead on his shoulders. Sawyer looked away, lifted his chin, and drew back his shoulders, inhaling strength from the world around him and exhaling weakness. Practicing yoga had paid off over the years in many ways—and right now it helped him slip out of doubt and into determination.
He tightened his jaw and forced himself to speak. “If I win the fight, the winnings will cover your medical expenses, Dad. In-home care, as you wanted.”
His father nodded, his expression remaining stoic, and Sawyer felt sadness seeping in. As he’d done so many times before, he forced himself to bury it away, below the worry about whether he’d win the fight or lose his father’s chance for home health care, beneath the worry about the toll it would take on his mother either way and beneath his own wretched devastation over losing his father. He fisted his hands, flexed the muscles in his legs, and readied himself for a fight to the death, if need be.
“I just wanted you to know I’m training hard, Dad.” He forced a smile, and his father slowly shifted his eyes away at the same time as he reached for his son’s hand.
Usually Sawyer spent time reading to his father, but today he didn’t have it in him to think straight. They sat like that for a long time, and sometime later—an hour, maybe longer—his father said, “You’re not going to tell me.”
“Tell you what, Dad?”
“What you came for.”
He heard his mother’s car door shut out front, and as he mulled over his answer, holding his father’s deadpan gaze, his mother came through the living room door and joined them on the deck.
“How are my two favorite men?” She kissed his father’s cheek and touched the top of Sawyer’s head, as she’d done when he was a boy. Her eyes moved between them.
“Everything okay?”
“Of course.” Sawyer rose to his feet, feeling like a kid caught in a lie, and pulled out his wallet. “I wrote this for you last week.”
His mother read the song he’d written and, as she always did, she clutched it to her chest and then pulled him into a warm hug. “Honey, you are every bit as poetic as your father. I know you love boxing, but you should seriously consider putting your songs together and publishing them.”
“Thanks, Mom, but you’re my mom. You’d love anything I wrote.”
“Maybe so, but your father refuses to give me any more poems. We both know his brain still works fine, and I can certainly write them down for him. But I’ve begged him, and still he refuses me.” She squeezed his father’s shoulder in a loving fashion. “I miss that, and maybe if you wrote with publication in mind, the competitive side of your father would come out and I’d get a few more lovely lines.”
His father covered her hand with his and patted it.
Sawyer hugged her again. “I’m going to head out.” He bent down to hug his father.
“You can leave”—his father’s slow, determined voice sent shivers down his spine—“but whatever it is you came to say will still be there when you get home.”
AFTER POPPING IN to talk to Lizzie about her date with Sawyer, Sky went to her apartment above the shop to check in with Blue on the renovations. But her mind wasn’t on the pipes that needed fixing or the walls that needed painting. She was thinking about the text from Sawyer and the text she’d sent to him in response. What was it about him that had her offering herself up like she was? Maybe they’d wake up together the next morning. She hadn’t spent the night with a guy in years, and yet, no matter how many times she tried to convince herself to feel regret over having sent the provocative text, she couldn’t.
Blue scowled up at her from where he was crouched by a hole in the wall that hadn’t been there last night.
“What happened?” she asked, assessing the hole.
“I dropped my hammer,” he growled.
She cocked a brow. “In the wall?”
He rose to his feet and ran his eyes down her sundress. “Don’t worry. I’m taking care of it. You look pretty.”
Pretty? Blue never told her she looked pretty. Hot or cute, yes, but pretty? Never. “Thank you.”
“How was your date? I came by your place around eleven, but you weren’t back yet.”
“You did? Oh, well, we got back late. We went to Brewster, then went dancing. We had a nice time.”
Blue stepped in closer, encroaching on her personal space, which she usually didn’t even notice, but this morning he was giving off a weird vibe, and she took a step back.
“What’s up with you?”
“I don’t know,” he said with a bite of frustration. “You seemed into Sawyer yesterday.”
“Yeah, he’s a nice guy.”
“I saw something more than that in the way you looked at him.” Blue’s eyes narrowed. “Was I misreading the heat between you two?”
She walked toward the kitchen to grab a glass of water. “Heat? I don’t know.” She didn’t know what to make of the way he was acting, so she tried to change the subject. “What did you end up doing last night?”
“I hung out with Hunter and Grayson at the bonfire down at Cahoon Hollow. I figured if your date sucked you’d want to end your night on a better note and join us.”
“Thanks, but my date didn’t suck.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “You know he’s a fighter, right?”
“Yes. How do you know that?”
Blue smiled, but it wasn’t his typical easy smile. His jaw was tight and his brows were knitted together. “I’m a guy. I know sports. I didn’t recognize his name at the bar the other night, but yesterday after I left I realized there probably weren’t many Sawyer Basses around and put two and two together. You’re dating Sawyer ‘Songbird’ Bass. He’s a big-time boxer, Sky.”
Sky leaned against the counter and sipped her water. “He told me.”
Blue leaned beside her, and some of the tension seeped from his shoulders. “You’re okay with that?”
She shrugged. Why couldn’t everyone stop talking about Sawyer’s career so she could forget about it for a little while longer?
“Sky?” His voice softened. “Do you think we missed a connection? Between us, I mean?”
“We have a great connection.”
He cocked a brow.
“Oh, you mean…” Crap. What? “Blue, I never…We never…We’re such good friends.”
“I know. I’m not asking if we should try to be more.” He shifted his eyes away. “I just…” He met her gaze again, and she finally saw her old friend again instead of whatever weird, stressful person had inhabited him for the last few minutes.
“When I saw how you lit up when he was talking to you, some part of me wanted to be the person you looked at like that.” Before she could process what he’d said, he added, “I don’t mean that either. Darn it. I don’t know what I mean. I was friend jealous, I think. At least a little bit, which is really messed up.”
“Friend jealous? What is that?”
“You’re my best friend, Sky, and I want you to be happy. I’ve never thought we were anything more than that. I mean, I love you, and you’re gorgeous, and funny, and I love spending time with you, but—”
“But?” But? Was he saying he didn’t want more or that he wasn’t really sure? She might totally regret what she was about to offer, but it seemed like it might show him what she already knew. “Do you want to kiss me and see if there’s a spark?”
“What? No. That’s not what I meant.” Blue pushed from the counter and paced.
“Good.” She sighed with relief.
He shot her another narrow-eyed stare, only this one held a hint of amusement.
“No, not good, like I don’t want to kiss you. Wait, I don’t want to kiss you. That’s not what I meant. Wait…” She covered her mouth with her hand as his lips quirked up in a playful smile. “Geez, Blue. You know what I mean. I don’t need to kiss you to know that I don’t feel like we’ve missed anything. But if you feel like the only way to know for sure is to see if there’s a spark, then I’ll do it.”
“Sky, I didn’t ask to kiss you. You asked if I wanted to.”
“Right. This is confusing.” She paused to gather her thoughts. “With Sawyer, the second my lips touched his, I knew I wanted to be in his arms.” She slid from the counter and reached for his hand. “I love when I’m with you, but it’s a different type of love.”
“I know.” He gave her a quick hug. “I love our friendship, too.” A moment later he ran a hand through his hair and looked at the floor, then up at her with a shy expression. “Have you ever been jealous of the girls I’ve dated?”
“You almost never date.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sky, I’m not a saint, and you know that.”
“Okay, yes. When you’re out with a girl I always wonder what you’re doing and if she’s going to be the one, but not because I want to be the one, just because I still want to be whatever we are. BFFs.”
He smiled. “Then you get it.”
“Yes, I get it. I get you, Blue, just like you get me.” She stepped in close again and squeezed his hand. “I don’t know if Sawyer’s the one, or if I’ll date ten more guys before I find the right person. But I know that whoever I end up with will have to be able to deal with our friendship, because you’re important to me. You’ve been a better friend to me than anyone I’ve ever known, except maybe the girls.”
He laughed a little. “I rank right up there with the girls. That’s awesome.”
She swatted his arm. “It is.”
“I know! I meant it. It really is awesome. I’m sorry I was a jerk when you came in. I saw how he watched you the other night at the bar, and yesterday there was an energy between you two that was so thick I felt like I’d stepped onto an island where I didn’t belong, and it was weird.”
She turned away so he wouldn’t see her cheeks flame up. “You always belong, but I’m not going to deny that whatever’s between me and Sawyer is pretty intense.”
“Intense is good, Sky. As long as he treats you well. But I do worry about him being a fighter and you being a butterfly.” He touched her shoulders, and she reached up and covered his hands with hers. “In all fairness I should tell you that I had Duke check him out.” Duke was Blue’s eldest brother. He owned a number of hotels and had connections in every industry known to man.
She turned to face him. “You spied on him? Behind my back?”
“No. I checked him out to make sure he wasn’t a freak with skeletons and abused girlfriends in his closet.”
“Okay, first of all, don’t ever do that again. That’s kind of creepy.” Although, she had to admit that she liked knowing he cared enough to do it, despite the fact that it bothered her. She still needed to draw this line.
“We don’t know him from Adam, and you looked at him like you wanted to jump his bones—”
“So what? That’s my prerogative, Blue. You don’t get to decide who I go out with or whose bones I jump. I don’t check out your girlfriends.” Anger simmered inside her. “Have you done this before? Checked out guys I dated?”
“No, of course not. He’s big, Sky. He’s strong. He’s a fighter.” His jaw clenched. “I wasn’t deciding who you go out with. I was just making sure you were safe.”
He reached for her, and she held her palms up to stop him. “Fine. No, it’s not fine, but since you did it out of some warped protective intent, I guess I should say thank you. But next time ask me, okay? That should be my choice. And without telling me anything personal about him, because I really think he should be the only one who decides what he shares with me…Did Duke find any skeletons?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. The guy’s never done a single thing wrong.”
She sank down to a chair. “I wouldn’t expect you to find anything bad about him. But I have to admit, even though he makes my head spin in the best possible way, I can’t wrap my head around his fighting.”
“Because that’s not your world.” He crouched beside her, and his eyes warmed. “He seems like a nice guy, despite the fact that I had him checked out, and from what you’ve just said, you really like him.”
“So now you’re pro Sawyer after you were the one who checked him out because he was a fighter?”
“I checked him out because…I don’t know. Tons of fighters have issues and bad reps, run-ins with the law, and I’ve never seen you look at a guy like that before. I wanted to be sure you were safe. We’ve already established that it was a bad move.”
She sighed. “It wasn’t a bad move. I appreciate that you care, but I don’t appreciate that you ran to Duke without telling me first. Shouldn’t you have clued me in that you were worried?”
“You would have rolled your eyes at me.”
“True,” she said with a smile, because he was right. Short of finding out something horrific about Sawyer, nothing would have stopped her from going out with him. “If he was a freak, I could have been killed last night and the information wouldn’t have mattered.”
Blue smiled. “Yeah, I sort of thought of that this morning, too. Not my brightest idea, but I am glad I did it. Even if it pissed you off. Now I don’t have to worry when you’re out with him.”
“Guys are so weird.” She looked around the apartment, thinking about saying good night to Sawyer last night and how much she’d wanted him to stay.
“Are we still cool, or do you want to give me a hard time for overstepping my bounds?”
“How can I give you a hard time? If you didn’t do it, then one of my neurotic brothers would have the second they found out.”
“Yeah, well…Hunter and Grayson weren’t thrilled about this.”
“See?” She threw her hands up in the air. “Why’d you even tell them?”
Blue shrugged. “I don’t know. We were talking, and they were surprised I showed up without you. Anyway, even if you didn’t want the info, now at least you know Sawyer’s an okay guy.”
She shrugged, noncommittally. “Well, he’s still a fighter, and I need to figure out if I can deal with that.”
“Fighting is what he does, Sky. It’s not who he is.”
“That’s weird, because he said, I’m a fighter. It’s who I am.”
“He was probably just trying to be tough and impress you.”
“I’m pretty sure he wasn’t, although he did revise the statement afterward and tell me exactly what you did. That fighting is what he does, not who he is, so maybe he’s confused by it, too. Or maybe he was trying to impress me by changing it, because he knows I’m not on board with fighting.” She didn’t get the feeling that he was trying to impress her either way, and the more she thought about their conversation by the brook, the more she wondered if he really wasn’t sure. She was still having trouble putting the hard and soft pieces of Sawyer together.
“Maybe you should go watch him fight so you can get a feel for it.”
“I can’t watch him get hit.” The thought made her stomach queasy.
“No, I didn’t think you’d agree to. But you could watch him train. I’ll go with you. I’d love to watch him do his thing.”
Not for the first time, she silently thanked the universe for sending her Blue. She had visions of watching Sawyer in the ring, totally losing it, and running from the fight club in tears. “Thanks, Blue, but what if it’s better that I just pretend he doesn’t fight and keep dating him? What if I can’t handle it?”
“Sky?”
She lifted her eyes to his.
“What if you can?”