A Fighting Chance (3 page)

Adeline.

Brendan stopped in his tracks, the name ricocheting through his mind like the echo of a primal scream, but it left his lips in a whisper.

Their gazes locked before her eyes dropped to his mouth as if to read her name there. Then her eyes lifted and
her green stare seemed to bore straight into his soul.

“Del.” He said it out loud, ripping the hood back and yanking the earbuds out, but he didn’t need to. He knew she’d recognized him because he could see the shock in her expression, but she didn’t speak.

He watched her gaze sweep over the entourage surrounding him before returning to his face.

Missing this woman had been a constant
ache he’d learned to live with over the last six years—like the dull throbbing of a bum knee—but as he looked at her it flared to life. He took a step toward her, but the anger that flickered over her expression made him stop.

The Del he’d known would have run and thrown herself into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist as he lifted her. He’d loved her laugh. Not the polite laugh
that was all most people ever got to hear, but her real laugh, when she would have to hold her stomach as tears rolled down her cheeks.

But he’d walked away from that Del and even as he tried to think of something to say, she started walking away from him.

“Del, wait.” He pushed past Janie and his trainer, Eric Maxwell, desperate to get to her.

“Brendan, we don’t have time for this,”
Janie called after him.

He ignored her. “Del, please.”

She hesitated, and he knew she was weighing her desire to get away from him against her distaste for public scenes. Then she turned to face him, her mouth fixed in a cool, polite smile that cut him to the core. It was the kind of smile a woman gave an annoying stranger she’d rather not talk to.

“Hello, Brendan.” She spoke quietly,
looking him directly in the eye.

Then she reached up and tucked her hair behind her ear in a familiar nervous gesture. It was her left hand and he looked for a wedding band, his stomach in knots. But there were no rings. No telltale indent or tan line. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“Your entourage looks nervous,” she said, looking at some point past his shoulder.

“We’re
running late. And they saw you flip off my picture.”

Her cheeks flushed a light pink and her smile thawed, becoming a little more genuine. “I didn’t expect to stumble across a giant picture of your face.”

“Where are you headed now?” He was afraid she’d leave and he’d never see her again, even though he’d been the one to do the leaving last time.

He wanted to know how she’d been—whether
his decision had been the right one, no matter how painful.

She tilted her head toward the signs for the restroom. “I was going to the ladies’ room to text my sister and tell her I saw your face on the poster so she could remind me what an asshole you are. Not that I really need reminding.”

That hurt, probably more than she would ever guess, but he had it coming. “I have to do this thing
for like an hour. Will you meet me after?”

Her eyes widened. “Meet you for what?”

“I don’t know. For coffee. To talk.” Talk about what, he didn’t know. He just knew he wanted to see more of her. He needed to know that she was happy.

“Brendan, we have to go.” That was Jonathan Campbell, his manager, and he didn’t sound very happy.

“Del, please. Just a coffee. There’s a little
coffee shop on the hotel level that’s reasonably quiet. Give me one cup’s worth of time.”

He was prepared to beg if he had to, but to his surprise, she gave him a curt nod. “I’ll be there in an hour and a half, in case you run late or whatever. One cup.”

“I’ll be there.”

She nodded again and then walked away, not toward the restrooms, but back the way she’d come from. He watched
everybody watching her walk by and knew they’d be full of questions, but he had no intention of telling them who she was.

“Brendan,” Janie said, her voice tense. “Bryan’s already at the table.”

He replaced the earbuds and hood, mustering an expression suitable for sitting next to a guy he was supposed to pretend he was looking forward to punching in the face. In reality, he didn’t know
Lavaud well, but he seemed like an okay guy. Good fighter.

But he didn’t even care about the fight anymore. He would sign autographs and glower into front-facing smartphone cameras with the fans who insisted on selfies, but part of his mind was already trying to figure out what he was going to say to Del.

He had one cup of coffee’s worth of time to convince her he wasn’t an asshole.
And to convince himself that, even though it had damn near broken him, letting her go had been the right thing to do.

Chapter Two

Del entered the coffee shop, thankful to find it almost deserted despite the number of people still milling around the lobby. She looked around, thinking she’d beat Brendan there until a head turned and she found herself looking into his dark eyes.

He’d changed his clothes. Instead of a dark gray hoodie with some kind of logos on it and worn, ripped jeans with
heavy black boots, he was wearing soft-looking but untorn jeans and a beige sweater. He looked even more like the Brendan she’d loved and lost, and she sucked in a deep breath. Whether it was to steady herself or in preparation for running away, she wasn’t sure yet.

She’d gone back to her room after leaving him in the hallway, intending to call her sister to get some sense talked back into
her. Why had she agreed to meet with him? She should have nothing to say to him after what he did.

But there’d been something in his eyes that had tugged at her, made her want to pull him into her arms and comfort him. In the end, she hadn’t called her sister. She hadn’t even sent text messages to Kate or Brittany. She’d ordered a salad and grilled chicken sent up to her room and hadn’t given
anybody a chance to talk her out of sitting down and having a cup of coffee with the man who’d broken her heart.

She wanted to know why he’d told her he loved her and then changed his mind. At the very least, she wanted to make him look her in the eye when he said goodbye this time.

Brendan stood as she approached the table, his happiness at seeing her evident in his eyes. “Thanks for
coming.”

“You changed your clothes.”

“I wanted to fly under the radar. There are a ton of fight fans here, but none of them look twice at the mild-mannered guy in the beige sweater.”

“Mild-mannered?” She arched an eyebrow at him.

“I have my moments.” He grinned, which coaxed a reluctant smile from her. “I wasn’t sure what you’d want, but I’ll go order for us both now.”

“I’ll take a decaf, black.”

He grimaced. “I don’t remember you taking your coffee black.”

She shrugged. “If you don’t put cream and sugar in your coffee, you can have an extra cookie without worrying too much about the calories.”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that.” He gestured toward the empty chair. “Have a seat and I’ll get the drinks.”

She sat and watched him walk
up to the counter, unable to stop herself from admiring the view. Unlike her, he hadn’t put on any extra pounds since they’d last seen each other. If anything, his body was even more toned than it had been, although it was hard to tell with the sweater covering his torso. But judging by the hard lines of his face and the ass and legs hugged by worn denim, his broad shoulders and rippled abs would
probably still feel like rock under her hands.

Brendan hadn’t been her first and he hadn’t been her last, since she hadn’t been sitting around pining for him for the last six years. But he was the one man whose touch she’d never been able to forget. Even now, as she watched him tug his wallet out of the back pocket of his jeans, she remembered the way those hands felt on her body.

When
he began his return trip to the table, though, she pretended to be interested in reading the banner advertising their specialty coffee flavors so he wouldn’t know she’d been checking him out. He set her coffee down in front of her, along with a huge chocolate chip cookie wrapped in waxed paper. Then he went back to the counter for his coffee and a matching cookie.

“I can’t eat this whole
thing,” she said, pointing at the cookie, which looked just the right amount of soft-baked. She hated crunchy chocolate chip cookies.

“Isn’t that why you drink your coffee black?”

“The bonus calories really only apply to normal-sized cookies.” It looked so delicious her mouth was practically watering. “I did have grilled chicken with a salad for supper, though.”

He broke off a piece
of his and popped it into his mouth, and she watched him chew and swallow it before he smiled at her. “Oh, it’s really good.”

That smile—or rather the memory of how his smile had been the thing that had turned her head at the college party where they first met—hurt, so she took a bite of her cookie. The chocolate chips might be small, but they were still chocolate.

He’d been right about
it being really good, so she had another bite before taking a long sip of the decaf. Then she tucked her hair behind her ear and looked at him across the table. “Why are we here, Brendan?”

His smile faded. “When I saw you standing there, I just... I don’t know. I didn’t want you to disappear without me getting to talk to you.”

“Yeah, that sucks. I know a little about that.” She watched
the words land like blows, and he flinched.

“I’m sorry, Del. I really am. I thought it was for the best.”

“You thought disappearing on me and then breaking up with me over the phone was for the best?”

His jaw tightened for a second. “I didn’t have the balls to face you.”

“Wasn’t meant to be,” she said quietly, almost under her breath. “I’ve always wondered if you met somebody
else and didn’t want to tell me.”

“No.” He denied it quickly, without thought. “There was nobody but you.”

She believed the sincerity in his voice, and he really had no reason to lie to her at this point. “I’ve never understood how you could tell me you loved me one day and then just take off. And then just tell me it wasn’t meant to be.”

After taking a sip of his coffee, he wrapped
his hand around the mug. “Does it really matter now?”

“Yes, it does. I don’t know why. It shouldn’t.” She snorted. “I’m a little disgusted that not only am I sitting here eating cookies with you, but I’m asking you to tell me why you didn’t love me. It’s sad.”

“It’s not sad. I hurt you, but I did love you.”

“Not enough,” she said with fake cheer, lifting her mug to drink so she
wouldn’t say anything else. She had no idea why she was poking at old wounds, but once she’d agreed to have coffee with him, she’d decided she wasn’t leaving without an explanation. Maybe she’d finally be able to put his memory to rest if she had some closure.

“Things changed when you took me home to meet your parents and then we started spending more time with your family.”

“Too much
commitment for you?”

He shook his head, and then took another bite of his cookie. She wasn’t sure if he was buying himself time to think or not, but he sure took his time chewing it. Then he washed it down with coffee before speaking again. “It wasn’t about commitment. I loved you, Del, but it wasn’t going to last so I let you go. I was hoping to talk about your life now, though. That’s in
the past and I can’t change it.”

“You were definitely in my past. But now I’m sitting here with you and a cookie and... I want an answer. You owe me that.” She could feel the anger rising and welcomed it. His smile. His voice. The way he looked at her. While her body only seemed to remember the good times, she needed to keep in mind this man had already had his chance and he’d blown it. “If
you loved me so much, why did you think it wouldn’t last?”

“Your family didn’t think I was the right guy for you,” he said. “Your father made it pretty clear you were destined for greater things than being married to the son of a roofer who was between jobs and who had met his daughter at a party on a college campus he didn’t belong on.”

“Greater things? I work for a tech company in
Providence, testing software.”

“I had nothing.”

“So? We would have built a life
together
and you certainly wouldn’t have been the first man to have to win his father-in-law over.”

Brendan tilted his head, his gaze locked with hers. “It was more than that. I was rough and you were so...”

When his words trailed off, her fingers tightened around the handle of her coffee mug. “I
was so what?”

“You were slumming, Del.”

Shock and anger rose up inside of her in equal measure and she let go of the mug so she wouldn’t be tempted to throw it. Not that she’d make that kind of a spectacle of herself, but her emotions were like a storm in her head. “Are those your words or my father’s?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

She watched him struggle with what he was
going to say. Even years later, his expressions were so familiar to her, she didn’t have any trouble reading him. But what she didn’t know was why he was having a hard time with the words. Did he not want to tell her, or did he not want to tell her the
truth
?

“He didn’t use the word ‘slumming,’” he said finally. “But what he
did
say made it pretty clear that’s what he thought. And maybe I
didn’t think he was wrong about me not being the kind of guy you’d be happy with long-term. The more time I spent with your family, the less I felt like I belonged there.”

He didn’t look at her as he spoke, staring instead at the remains of his cookie. She should probably be thankful, because if the pain in his eyes matched the pain in his voice, she’d be tempted to walk around the table
and hug him. As it was, she knew she’d take almost any excuse to touch him. Six years’ worth of hurt and anger obviously hadn’t been enough to kill off her feelings for him.

“You didn’t have to belong with them. You belonged with
me
.”

“Tell me you didn’t feel it, too, Del. You were already being pulled between me and your family. I thought—hoped—it would get better, but the more serious
they could see our relationship was, the less they liked me. It was only a matter of time before you’d have to choose.”