“You’ll fight again,” Arden said. “Well, you will if you ever get out of this, which you won’t. If you did, this still wouldn’t be your last tournament.”
“Fuck you,” I said with a snarl. “I don’t quit in the middle of a fight. This is my last tournament, and it ends in victory just like my first fight and every one of them in between.”
“It never ends,” Arden said. “Franks won’t let you go any more than Rinaldo will let me go. Once they got you, they got you. You never get away from them completely, even when they tell you that you can.”
I might not have been as perceptive as he was, but I still knew he wasn’t talking about me anymore. He was talking about himself.
“Landon isn’t going to fuck me over,” I said. Everything Arden was saying rang true, aligning with my own thoughts, but I refused to agree with him. “I know him. He told me this was it, and he wouldn’t go back on his word. He’s like my fucking father.”
Arden chuckled.
“Yeah, I got one of those, too. He’s the reason I’m here, retirement or not.”
Arden pulled his arm across his chest and placed his hand under his head to get it off the snow. He looked into my eyes again. For a second, he didn’t look quite as emotionless as he had before. His eyes tightened a bit, and his jaw flexed as he spoke.
“We’re too good for them to just let us go,” Arden continued. “Even if they really want to, they’re always going to need us for something one last time.”
I stared at him as the words sank in, and I knew deep inside that he was right. If I did get out of this, Franks and Landon would let me off on my own for a while, but eventually there would be something else—just one more thing they needed for me to do. One more favor. One more fight.
“Fuck you,” I grumbled through clenched teeth. “I’ve got bigger priorities now.”
Arden nodded slightly, sniffed against the cold, and looked back to me.
“I got a girl, too,” he finally said. “Lia. Never thought that would happen.”
“Heh,” I chuckled, “tell me about it.”
The statement was rhetorical, but it seemed to put Arden in a more talkative mood.
“She doesn’t know where I am,” he said. “I sent her off to visit her mom for a couple of weeks. She’s going to come home, and I won’t be there.”
My mind played through the scenario he described, only with Raine and myself as the subjects. I pictured her coming into the condo and finding it empty. I thought about what she would do when it stayed empty through the night. I wondered at what point she would start looking for me and what she would do when she couldn’t find any trace of where I had gone.
She’d freak out. She wouldn’t know what to do, and there wouldn’t be anyone she could call to get any information. How long would it be before she gave up? Weeks? Months? Years?
“Lia came after me once before,” Arden said. “I ditched her in Arizona, but she still managed to find me again. She’s stubborn.”
“That sounds familiar,” I said. “I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone as stubborn as Raine.”
“Raine?”
I tapped the edge of the picture.
“That’s her name.”
Arden huffed a breath through his nose.
“At least she’ll have her kid,” Arden said. “Lia’s stuck with the dog.”
“He’s not her son,” I said quietly.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
I remembered his words from our first meeting with all the families when he’d threatened to come after Alex when this was over.
“You knew that,” I said accusingly. “You knew his mother was dead.”
“Yeah,” Arden said. His eyes were blank again. “Forgot. My mind’s a little preoccupied.”
His eyes flashed over to the side, narrowed, and he shook his head slightly as if to clear it.
“Did you kill her?” I asked bluntly.
“No,” he said. “Franks put the hit on her. Rinaldo told me about it.”
I didn’t see any trace of a lie on his face. I clenched my teeth a bit. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Franks would choose profit over family, obviously.
“Fucker,” I muttered.
“He won’t be on his own,” Arden said as he nodded toward the picture.
“Yeah.” I shrugged though I wasn’t sure he could see the movement from where he lay on the snow. I stared back at the drawing for a minute. “She treats him like he’s hers.”
“Well, you got that at least.”
I didn’t want to go into the detailed story about Jillian and all that shit. He didn’t need to know any more than he already did, and I didn’t want to spend my last few hours thinking about that woman. I wanted to keep the image of Raine in my head, so I kept talking about her.
“She’s a fucking saint,” I said. “I suck at being a boyfriend. I can’t even get along with her friends.”
Arden nodded his head, and his eyes darkened.
“Lia doesn’t really have any friends,” he said. “That’s my fault. To keep her safe and away from all this shit, I had to isolate her. I did it to protect her, but…yeah, well, she doesn’t have anyone but me. Once she figures out I’m not coming back, she’ll probably move back to Arizona with her mom.”
Raine would at least know what had happened to me. Landon would tell her I was dead, and she could move on with her life. Lindsay would be there for her, and she’d have a shoulder to cry on if nothing else. I couldn’t even imagine how she would deal with it all if she didn’t have Lindsay around, and I felt like a shit for being nasty to her and Nick all the time.
At least they could take care of her and help with Alex.
“I don’t know if Lia is a saint or not,” Arden said, “but she puts up with me. Even when I’m…well, when I’m not the friendliest person around, she still hangs in there. It doesn’t seem to matter how fucked up I am in the head, she always stands by me.”
“Raine’s like that, too,” I replied with a nod. “I can be a total asshole, and she still has my back.”
“Lia knows just when to back off and when to be there,” Arden said. “She knows I’m fucked up, but I guess she just…I dunno…ignores it? She doesn’t like it, but she never gives up on me. She also thinks I don’t do hits anymore, but I do.”
“How do you do that without her knowing about it?”
“She’s in school,” Arden said. “It’s mostly online, but sometimes she has to go to conferences or meet with her professors in person. I plan my hits around those.”
“So you hide it from her?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re crazy.”
Arden laughed.
“Yeah, I’ve got the diagnosis to prove it.”
I stared at him a minute. It didn’t seem like an off-hand remark; it seemed like he meant it. He looked back at me and nodded.
“PTSD,” he said. “I’m a certified nut.”
“From being in the Marines?”
“From being a POW, yeah.” He was silent a moment. “Why are you such a dick to your girl?”
“I just…have a nasty temper. I used to drink to make up for it.”
“Not anymore?”
“That’s the one thing she’d leave me for,” I admitted. “If I drink, she’s gone.”
“And that’s enough to keep you off it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Well, mostly. I’ve fucked up but just once.”
“She forgave you?”
“She did.”
Arden pondered a minute.
“I don’t think Lia would be so forgiving if she knew I was still in the business.”
“If she’s anything like Raine, she’d have your balls.”
Arden laughed.
“Sounds like they are a lot alike,” Arden mused.
I had the feeling we were both thinking it, but neither of us said anything about how that probably meant he and I were a lot alike as well. I thought about how he fought—as if none of the blows I’d made to his face mattered. Arden really believed that as long as he was alive, there was still a chance.