The only thing.
“I mean no disrespect, Naomi, the last I checked my wife and I owned this place.” I huff out a breath and pinch the bridge of my nose. I’m drowning.
If this is how it’s going to be, I’ll hire someone to find Eden, or I’ll pack my shit up and wait at the cottage. Either those or I need a drink to numb the pain.
I need to drown in a bottle of scotch. It makes me forget for a while that I’m the biggest fucking fool on the planet.
It’s what I need to bring so much pleasure along with the pain growing like a weed in my chest that it makes everything go away.
Standing from her stool, Naomi wipes her hands on a paint-smeared towel and makes her way to me, and gently places her hand on my arm. Her face is crumbling. She’s a good woman, seeing her suffer has me angrier at myself.
“Might be so. You still shouldn’t be here, Mason. This is a place of business — one in which your wife prides in. You cannot come in here and chance customers seeing you torn up. You know better. If Eden wants space, you need to respect that and give it to her.”
Naomi’s right, but I can’t help to think her words are a subtle way of telling me I didn’t respect my wife, to begin with. She wouldn’t be lying.
I don’t want to go. I want to see my wife, wrap her up in my arms, and shut the rest of the world out while I confess more lies. I want to heal her.
I almost choke as I try to gulp down the panic coursing through me. “I can’t stay away; she’s everything to me. We need to talk. I can’t let her go on thinking she can walk out on me and that it’s okay.”
“There’s nothing about what’s happening between you two that is okay, Mason. Eden isn’t here, and if you think I’m telling you where she is, your wrong. I care about you both, but you need to go home and think about not only what you’ve done, but how your wife must feel.”
I swallow. “Please, tell me where my wife is. I need to make sure she’s alright.” The agony inside me is amplifying right along with anger that lights up with a ferocity to not only take it out on someone’s flesh but also to conflict it on mine as well.
“Eden is physically alright. If she weren’t, you’d be the first to know. Mentally she isn’t. You know that as well as I do. You wouldn’t have come here if you didn’t. I’m sorry, I won’t tell you.”
My shoulders sag.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Everything happens for a reason, Mason. It’s up to you to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Christ, this is a mess. A disaster I have no clue how to fix.
The problem with everything happening for a reason? My reason to hang onto the last bit of sanity I have has upped and left me.
Chapter Fourteen
Eden
“I’m proud of you, Cody. Very proud. Listen to Mason. Remember everything you learned, and don’t forget the gym’s motto.”
There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.
If only I could remember it too.
“See you out there, Eden. Thanks for believing in me.” Sincerity wove in his drawl as if we're shooting the word believing into me. I want to cave on the spot. Wishing the ground to snatch me up and swallow.
I avoid placing my hand over my mouth and swallow down my sob. I don’t know why I have this strong sense that Cody knows what is going on.
His jaw clenches, and I swear I hear the wheels turning in his head. I am going to let loose a string of spite if Mason told Cody. He will never hear the end of it.
“They’re the easiest words to say when it comes to you. Those and always believe in yourself. No matter what curveball life throws at you. Where boxing is concerned you keep that belief in here.” I press a palm over his chest. “As long as you let your heart and head work together and block everything else out, you’ll be okay no matter the outcome, Cody. Nothing, and I mean nothing is more important than what you’ve worked for. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I do.”
I hope so.
I lift the corners of my mouth. It’s an endearing smile. As real as I can get in the circumstances of my life. “Good, I’ll see you in a few then.”
Hugging him, I toss my empty water bottle into the trash, close the door, and thank my lucky stars that Mason went to change to give Cody space to gear up his mind.
I can’t face my husband just yet and the destruction he’s caused. Seeing him standing outside the ring while he coaches and encourages Cody, and standing next to him in between rounds is going to be hard enough.
Taking a deep breath, I remind myself for Cody’s sake, I’m grateful Natalie wasn’t in the room trying to dig her poisonous claws into him. Before the mess of my marriage, she’d been after Mason to let her talk to him about signing with her. As far as I know, he hasn’t yet. I’ll do everything I can to make sure it stays that way.
Mason better not have hired Natalie back or asked her to come here tonight either. I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself if she is.
With quick steps, I make my way down the hallway. Eyes on the restroom door at the end of the hall, where Cody said Mason was.
As I take in the pictures on the wall of the many Californian Boxers, MMA fighters, and Olympians from track to Gymnastics, my heart squeezes, remembering a younger Mason.
It’s been ten years since I’ve been in here to watch him box for The USA Title, walking the same hallway that hasn’t changed much from what I recall. Back then, I’d been heading toward Mason with my excitement wrapped around my nerves. Today, it’s enclosing around emotions that squeeze my chest.
I puff out a sigh of sorrow, trying to release the hurt for these next few hours. A lot of good it does when the closer I get to the end of the hall, the more I feel Mason. So close, yet the parts of him I fell in love with are far away.
His mind. His heart. His promises.
Now all I feel are his secrets and lies.
I almost make it to the end of the hall before Mason’s voice stops me in my tracks.
“I’d appreciate it if you’d walk in with us the way you always walked in with me. If not for me, then for Cody.”
There’s a strain in his tone; it sounds like terror and a heap of worry.
They roll off him in waves and lick up my legs.
“Sure. Don’t read anything into it. Besides, this is something you should be in the limelight for, along with Cody, not me. I can wait out here while the two of you finish.” Mason has worked as hard for this as Cody has. He wants him to achieve his goals. Mainly, to believe in himself. To live the dream of becoming more than his shitty mother told him he could be.
“Fuck, this is such bullshit, Eden, it isn’t us. It’s so far from me and you, I can’t see straight. Where have you been? It’s been nearly a week. I’ve been going out of my head worrying about you? The fuck, Eden? You trying to punish me or what?”
My shoulders sag.
Naomi said he stopped by. She didn’t tell me much other than he left when she told him I wasn’t there. But the minute I went upstairs and saw the door shattered, I knew she was covering for him.