Something is better than nothing, she repeated, hoping it wouldn’t become a mantra for why she was staying with Chuck.
A reason for not admitting her feelings for Luke.
Chapter Three
Luke panted as he got out of the ring, his fingers tight inside his gloves. “I’m done,” he said to his partner, Chris. “You finish it out.” He leaned against the ropes, trying to catch his breath. He wasn’t sure why he was so winded today.
Probably because you already ran five miles this morning, he thought. He had to do something to keep himself busy and out of his parents’ house. Even in February, the sun breathed plenty of heat onto Las Vegas. He ran at dawn, and he dressed in the suit his father wanted him to wear for the appointments they had that day. He’d been working with his dad in the real estate industry for the past two and a half months, and if Luke let himself think too hard about it, he had to admit he didn’t like it very much.
He simply didn’t know what else to do.
He disliked lounging around the huge house his parents had bought last year, so after work, he put his exercise shorts back on, and he headed over to the gym.
His father owned this establishment too, and it seemed like everywhere Luke looked, his own failures stared him in the face.
“Nice,” he called to Chris as he made contact with Alex’s chin. The other man’s head snapped back, and Luke knew exactly what that felt like. His vision swam for a minute as he came back to center, and if Luke had allowed a hit like that to land on his chin, he’d have been in a rage right now.
His blood pumped a little faster, and it wasn’t even him.
Alex swung wildly, which was what Luke used to do in his early days in boxing. Now, he knew enough to lace the fury tight and let it out at the right time. Several more men came over from their workouts to watch Chris and Alex, and Luke glanced over at a couple of them.
Not many people had been super friendly toward him, but Luke nodded at the guy next to him. He missed Nate and Ted, Dallas and Slate, powerfully in that moment. His friends from prison always acted happy to see him, because they genuinely were happy to see him.
They’d do anything for him, and he’d do anything for them.
As he focused back on the fight, he thought for at least the hundredth time that he didn’t belong here in Vegas. He’d hated the months he and Slate had spent in Colorado too. Really, in the past decade, Luke’s happiest days had been spent at Hope Eternal Ranch.
He frowned as Chris danced backward, his gloves coming down. “Stay high,” he called, and the trainee got hit gloves back into a defensive position.
Luke did love boxing with his whole heart and soul, and he’d been flirting with the idea of entering a few amateur fights. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to do it yet, and he knew why: He didn’t want to tell anyone. Not anyone in Texas, especially Nate, and not his parents.
Boxing was the reason he’d gone to jail, and Luke couldn’t imagine anyone thinking him going back to the sport was wise. Luke knew it wasn’t wise.
He groaned with a couple of other guys when Chris took a hard body hit, but Luke realized most of the men here were cheering for Alex. That only made him want Chris to win all the more, because Luke loved a good underdog.
The fight settled into more shuffling, and Luke’s mind wandered again. He used to watch fights just to analyze how the athletes moved their feet, how a match could go from winning to losing with a single breath. One little slip, and the competitor could have him on the ropes. One moment of hesitation, and he could find himself flat on his back, wondering what had happened.
He wasn’t anywhere near as strong as he’d once been, and Luke knew he never would be again. He wasn’t going to take steroids again. Ever. He and Slate had bonded over their similar addiction to drugs, and they’d made a pact in prison. Luke wasn’t going to break it now, not after Slate had faced his demons head-on and won.
He couldn’t help thinking, though, that if he did get back in the ring, would he ever win without the steroids?
Doesn’t matter, he thought. You’re not fighting again.
The real question was: What was he going to do with his life?
He looked around and realized what a pathetic existence he had. Hanging out with near strangers in the gym, cheering for a man who was out-matched, all in an attempt to not be at home.
He turned away from the match before it ended, because he suddenly didn’t care. He’d been looking for something to give him direction in his life, but he realized now he needed to take a step in the direction he wanted to go.
And he didn’t want to be here.
“Holt,” someone called, and Luke turned toward the voice.
Every muscle tensed as Damian Vasquez and his posse approached. Luke knew better than to show fear to these men, and he knew he’d faced far scarier things than any of them. A man saw things in prison, even a low-security facility, that changed him.
Damian scanned him down to his trainers, and Luke started peeling the tape off his gloves. “You wanna fight?”
“No, thanks,” Luke said. “I’m done for the night.” He put a tight smile on his face as Damian closed in. Luke stood over six feet tall, but he worked hard not to puff himself up and make himself look bigger. Damian had plenty of height too, and more weight than Luke.
Luke had steered clear of Damian, because he knew who ran the rings here at the gym, and it wasn’t him. It had been, once. When Luke’s parents had left Texas in favor of Vegas, his dad had moved the gym too. A lot of the guys here had relocated too, including Damian.
He’d stepped into Luke’s shoes when Luke had gone to River Bay, and he’d followed the man’s career for a few months before he’d realized how unhealthy it was to keep looking at life beyond the walls.
“There’s an amateur fight this weekend,” Damian said, glancing to the man on his right.
Luke looked at him too, taking in the squinted eyes and dark demeanor. “I’m not interested in entering a fight.”
“Why you here training every night then?” Damian took an aggressive step forward.
“Just working out,” Luke said coolly. If he told his dad how the guys at the gym treated him, he’d get them to straighten up. Luke would never do such a thing, though. He was thirty-two years old, for crying out loud. He wasn’t going to go running to daddy because some guys at the gym weren’t nice to him.
He started to walk away from Damian, hoping the man wouldn’t find him disrespectful. He said nothing, but Luke felt his eyes on him all the way to the locker room. His heart pounded as he ducked around the wall and pressed his back to it.
He took a deep breath in, and then pushed it all the way out. “You’ve got to get out of here,” he whispered to himself. “You’re not going to find yourself here. You’re only going to find trouble.”
The next morning, Luke found his parents sipping coffee at the breakfast bar. “Morning,” he said.
“Hey, honey.” His mother looked up at him with warm, milk-chocolate-colored eyes. Luke had gotten a tad darker features from his dad, but he could see his mother in him when he smiled. “Sleep good?”
Luke usually lied and said yes. Everything was fine. Another day. Another five miles through the neighborhood. Another day of selling homes. Happy, happy, smile, smile.