Page 94 of Ours to Lose
Everything just wrong.
I refused to let this tournament end the same way. Refused to lose boxing the way I’d lost my mom.
I couldn’t control her cancer or her surgery, and I couldn’t get her back, but I could control my own body. I could control this.
Iwouldfight tomorrow.
Iwouldwin.
I would get my gym, and through it, I would hold on to this one thing I had left, and I would rip my arm clean off my body if that was what it took to do it.
“I can’t,” I said again, tone heavy with tears I would not let fall. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when Mom died. You’re right. You shouldn’t have had to handle it on your own. But I need this.”
“More than you need me?” he asked, his voice cracking.
The weight of the ocean settled on my chest. “It doesn’t have to be one or the other.” I willed him to understand. “Evan—if I win, I stay.”
No more goodbyes. No more missed holidays. No more piecing together snapshots of each other from secondhand accounts, trying to grasp enough of them not to feel like strangers. He had to want that too.
“What if you don’t win? What then?”
I will.
It was the only answer I had, the only option I could focus on right now. The only future I could accept.
It wouldn’t be enough for him.
He saw the truth of it on my face. His nostrils flared as his eyes dimmed with resignation. “Looks like I lose either way.”
Chapter Thirty
Aubrey
It waslate by the time I left the Hardts’ house. After Evan had stormed from the boxing arena’s back room and informed his dad and me he’d find his own way home, Mr. Hardt and I had tried to check on Gabe ourselves, but he’d already left through a different door and taken his stuff with him.
Concern ate at me as I shot Gabe a text. All I wanted was to hunt each brother down and find some way to make it okay. One look at Mr. Hardt’s face told me he wanted to do the same. But we both knew his sons. We went to his house instead.
I waited a bit for Evan, hoping to find out what he and Gabe had said to each other, but after two hours with no sign of him, I finally caught a bus back to the city.
Now, after switching to the subway that would take me closest to my apartment, my thoughts rode away with the steady rocking of the car.
Gabe would try to fight tomorrow.
I knew it as certainly as I knew sugar was sweet. Could see it in the rage on Evan’s face as he’d left.
And where the idea of Gabe fighting in the championship match had sent me riding high on a sugar rush before this afternoon, now there was only dread.
Dread if he fought.
Dread if he didn’t.
Dread at the realization that the chances of him getting the money he needed for his gym were essentially the same either way.
I hadn’t realized how much I’d hung my hopes on him getting that prize money until now. How much I’d believed he would win. That he’d get his loan, open his gym, and stay. How fully I’d believed it would all work out despite knowing from experience how easy it was for everything to go wrong.
I hadn’t even been foolish to believe it. He’d been incredible in that ring. An unstoppable force of strength, power, and grace. If it hadn’t been for one unlucky punch, all those hopes would still be alive.
Instead, he’d responded to my text to say he’d rather be alone tonight, and the lump knotting my stomach grew bulkier with the weight of rejection.
