9. Knox

Chapter Nine

KNOX

“ I have never been more disappointed in you in my entire life,” Ma growls as she storms through the door of my home gym. “Never!”

“Get in line,” I grunt back, drop the weights in my hands and grab the kettle bell.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I plant my feet, raise my arms and ignore the way my shoulder is screaming bloody murder. “Training.” Another grunt as I start doing squats. “Fight’s in three weeks.”

In lieu of a response, Ma marches toward me, stops directly in front of me mid-squat and proceeds to slap the back of my head in a way she had to have learned from none other than Leroy Jethro Gibbs.

“I take that back,” she says in a much more even but no less threatening tone. “ Now I’ve never been more disappointed in you. Are you determined to ruin your life, or is that just a bonus to acting like a total jackass?”

Still squatting, I crab walk away from my pissed off mother and continue with the routine I’ve been doing almost twenty-four hours a day since Monday.

Clean pull.

Kneeling hip flexor stretch.

One arm dumbbell bench press rotation.

Depth jumps.

Deadlifts.

Barbell lunge.

Kettlebell snatch and squats.

Medicine ball throws.

Push-ups.

Pull ups.

Burpees.

Planks.

Boxing.

Running on the treadmill until I want to puke.

That’s how I’ve spent almost every minute since I left Hazel’s apartment and despite knowing I’m doing more damage to my shoulder—and let’s be honest, my heart—I can’t stop because the second I do, I will be at her building banging on her door so hard I’ll put my fucking fist through it.

“Do you have any idea what’s been going on outside of your sad little pity party?”

I look past my mother and continue pushing myself to breaking.

Ma narrows her eyes. “Have you even called her?”

“She told me to leave her alone.” After I said the worst thing I could have said to someone as perfect as Hazel Hollis.

I can’t be that guy for you .

The words have played on a loop since I said them.

We both knew that was a lie, knew that we were already more than either of us expected because we had been for five years.

We both knew I could be that guy for her because I already had been in a lot of ways, it’s not like she was giving me some sort of gift by telling me what she did, and she wasn’t asking me to be something both of us know she doesn’t want, or that I couldn’t be. If anything, Hazel was making me aware of what I needed to know for my anxiety’s sake and nothing more, giving me facts so I knew what to expect moving forward but that voice in my head, the one that reminds me of all the ways I suck at life, started talking.

I’m not good enough for her.

Not strong enough, not stable enough.

My OCD is getting worse. I’m one step up from being considered a hermit.

I can’t talk about my feelings and have an even harder time showing them.

I’m anxious all the time unless I’m training for a fight—or holed up with a tiny sprite of a woman for three days but I’m ignoring that—my fuse is getting shorter, and I can’t even bring myself to see a counselor or therapist to get my mood back on track.

I have nothing to offer someone like Hazel except the promise of infuriating rituals, angry outbursts, weeks at a time of not leaving the house, and non-existent trust with a side of paranoia.

I’m a real fucking catch.

“She closed the clinic.” Ma butts into my quickly derailing train of thought with that little nugget. “Called all of her clients and canceled everything for at least the rest of this week with a tentative schedule for next.”

“It’s not permanent,” I grunt, while my anxiety spikes. That isn’t like Hazel at all. She was ready to start treating people first thing Monday morning, even though she still had a headache and was all out of whack.

Not my problem, though.

“Her phone is off,” Ma adds.

I know. And she deleted her account in our messenger app, too. “Maybe it’s broken.”

She huffs, crosses her arms against her chest and gives me the look. “No one has seen her since last Friday. She hasn’t even gone next door for pastries or anything.”

I drop the kettlebell to cover up my concern.

That’s part of her routine.

It’s something she’s done the entire five years I’ve known her, never missing so much as one day of stopping into that bakery for at least their daily special. She even made me go in there every day for her when I wouldn’t let her leave her apartment.

I’m sure she’s fine, though.

I stocked her place with enough food and Hazel won’t let herself go without.

At the very least, she’ll need cat food and when she picks that up, she’ll get anything else might need, too.

Hazel is a smart girl, she’ll make sure to stay healthy.

“Just a change in routine.” I walk over to the treadmill and get on, then set it to a brisk jog since my mother insists on being here for this.

Ma rolls her eyes. “I’ve been going to Hazel for almost three years and never once has she changed her routine.” Then she uses them to throw daggers at me. “Not until she had an asshole nursemaid stay at her house for three days.”

Fuck .

Fuck me.

It’s been hard enough to stay away without all this knowledge and now I’m seriously wondering if it’s possible to ride my treadmill across town to the clinic.

But I fucked up. Hazel said she didn’t want to see me anymore—she told me to leave and I did.

That’s that.

“Are you ever gonna tell me what happened?”

My eyes flick to Ma’s briefly and goddamnit, I wish I hadn’t done that.

I don’t need to see her pity, her concern, or her love. I don’t need any of that right now, but I’m not about to admit that I fucked up the best thing to ever happen to me because I feared how I felt, because I let my past hurt make a shitty fucking decision. Just like I’m not going to tell her how I hurt Hazel by rejecting the gift she was willing to give me—her heart, not her virginity despite the way that rocked me while also making me harder than steel—the gift that made every bit of my inner caveman stand up and bang his chest before he took what rightfully belongs to him.

Hazel was willing to take a chance on me , was giving me the opportunity, the gift , of being the one to take her and make her mine, to be the one she was willing to allow into her perfect world all while knowing what kind of basket case I truly am.

Then I shit all over Hazel again , by making her feel like something was wrong with her because she’s a virgin—which couldn’t be further from the truth. But it was something else that just made the possibility of us so goddamn real and I choked. Then basically used it’s not you, it’s me as the reason for not following my gut and making her mine, despite the way I wanted to so fucking bad I felt it in my marrow.

It’s what I should have done. Should have told her right then and there that I’m in love with her, sealed it by giving her the best first I could ever give someone, and made sure no one else has the chance to have her after that because Hazel is mine.

She was anyway.

Now she probably hates me almost as much as I hate me.

“Nothing happened.”

“Bullshit.”

I sigh. “Nothing happened, Ma. I helped her out when she needed it because she doesn’t have anyone else.” Also, I’m in love with her. “She didn’t need me anymore, so I left.”

“Hazel isn’t Isabell, Knox.”

I trip over my feet, barely catch myself on the handles and smother the need to howl in pain over what that does to my shoulder.

That was a fucking low blow.

Ma knows I can’t even stand to hear that bitch’s name without doing serious property damage.

“Not cool, Linda,” I sneer.

But she just gives me the look again, totally unfazed. “She’s not. Isabell was a blood sucking gold digger who could probably conjure the dead with one wave of her claw tipped hand. Hazel is perfect and good, sweet and honest. She’s everything you deserve to have in a partner.”

“Drop. It,” I growl, hop off the treadmill and decide beating the shit out of my speed bag is more appropriate than destroying my gym. “Hazel wasn’t anything more than my therapist, so there’s no comparison.”

“Well, at least we agree on one thing, but you’re delusional if you think for one minute Hazel wasn’t anything more to you than your therapist. I saw the way she looked at you, the way you looked at her. I may be devoted to a ghost, but I’m not blind, and your father would agree with me.”

Jesus.

Here we go.

Not only does she want to drag the skeletons out of my closet, but obviously Ma would like to pick the tattered pieces of my heart from my chest and crush them to a fine powder as well.

Bringing up Isabell is one very bad thing, but you throw in the most recent of my fuckups and my dad, who was my best friend and the love of my mother’s life whom she is still ridiculously faithful to? Might as well convince me my baby brother and sister moved away because I’m a horrible big brother, my new nieces and nephews hate me, then curse me with erectile dysfunction.

That would be the icing on this shit cake, for sure.

“Drop. It.” Now I’m fucking snarling. Wonderful .

Not that it matters to my mother because she just hikes up her gypsy skirt, pushes up her non-existent sleeves and gets ready for a fight. “I will not. I’ve held my tongue long enough already and it hasn’t done a damn bit of good. Now you listen and you listen well, Knox Liam Riley, because your mother is about to lay some serious truth on you.”

If I hit my speed bag any harder, I’m going to shoot it through the fucking ceiling right into the middle of the dining room.

“Isabell was nothing but a two-faced, money-hungry, backstabbing, cheating, lying little c-u-n-t who only looked out for herself. What she did to you was unforgivable. It was condemnable and I hope she gets what she deserves.”

Well, so far, she’s not wrong.

Isabell and I were together for two years and I thought she was the one. I proposed just before I lost my belt the first time, but shit went to hell in a handbasket as soon as I did. When I lost, she changed. She didn’t support me, lift me up, or try to help me rebuild my confidence, and didn't even offer so much as a better luck next time .

Instead, Isabell cleaned out my bank account, moved in with the guy she had been cheating on me with—Dirk Chapman, in case you’re into spoilers—then went to the paps with a story about how I was an unhinged psycho who beat her regularly, used PEDs, and forced her to have an abortion when I found out she was pregnant.

For the record, none of that’s true. I’ve never laid a finger on a woman, never used performance enhancing or any other drugs, and Isabell was never pregnant. Bitch had a hysterectomy when she was in high school because of tumors and shit, so it wasn’t even a possibility.

Oh, and I forgot to mention, I lost my belt the first time right after my dad died. Literally hours, although I didn’t know it until after my fight. He’d been diagnosed with stage four colon cancer a few months before and that was the only one of my fights he ever missed, and quite frankly, I’m glad he missed it as well as all the shit that followed.

But it’s why I wanted to retire on top and I fucking intend to do that.

If only my mother would stop her morbid stroll down Knox Riley fuck up lane.

“Isabell is a horrible person and what she did to you broke my heart right along with yours, but you cannot keep doing this.” Ma sighs. “Protect your heart? Sure, but don’t lock it away. It’s beautiful, Knoxy, and it deserves to be loved and cherished just like the rest of you. I know you’re hurting, know that losing your dad then that she-devil right afterward hurt you so badly, but it doesn’t define you. Da would want you to be happy, to find someone who makes you happy because you are worthy of it. ”

My eyes dart to hers, then narrow.

Apparently, my mother is psychic now. “Ma?— “

“I know that’s how you feel, son. Feel like you’re not worthy, don’t deserve a true love who makes your spine tingle, makes your belly flip, makes your heart swell and fill to bursting. Just like I know you can’t forgive yourself for not being there when your dad passed on.”

Ma’s eyes water, but she smiles so big. “None of you were there because you were out doing the things you loved, doing what your Da always wanted you to do. And just because you weren’t physically with him doesn’t mean you weren’t there in spirit. He passed with a smile on his face and the love of his kids in his heart while holding my hand. He’s at peace, but he’d want you to be at peace too.”

She walks up to me and squeezes my forearm. “This isn’t you, Knox. You’re not an angry, terrified man who feels like he doesn’t deserve all the good things this world has to offer. You’re our warrior, our brave little guy and when you finally accept that, that’s when you’ll be at peace too.”

Ma leans up on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to my cheek. “I wouldn’t wait too long to figure things out, though. The love of a good woman is a rare and beautiful thing, but it can disappear in the blink of an eye if you let it slip through your fingers.”

Then, almost as quickly as she came, Ma whirls away from me and slams the door.

Fuck man.

Talk about laying truth.

My mother fired it at me with a fucking cannon at close range.

But she’s right.

I won’t give her the satisfaction of knowing I think so, but my mother is absolutely right.

The only reason I went to the fight the night Da died was because he insisted on it. He told me to go, told me to fight and told me I was a champion, a warrior, regardless of the outcome, and that he loved me no matter what. That’s what he said when I talked to him before I went to the octagon and that’s what the last text message he ever sent me said, just an hour before he passed.

As for Isabell?

That conniving bitch was my past—she has no control over my future.

My future that is currently hanging in the balance by a razor thin thread, the power to snip it or mend it in the hands of a beautiful little raven haired sprite who I need to see immediately.

Not as her client.

Not even as her friend who ghosted her.

I need to see Hazel as the man who loves her, the man who wants to give her the world and make her the center of it.

I need to go to my sweet girl right fucking now and hope that it’s not too late for us because if it is, honestly, nothing Ma said will matter. I’ll become the lost soul everyone already believes I am and there won’t be a damn thing anyone can do about it.