He shoves my hand away and tries to run off again. “I want to find the dog.”

I sweep him up with effort. “Okay, but hop in here and I’ll push you real fast.”

He stops squirming to get free and obeys and lets me sit him down, grinning over my shoulders at something.

Or someone.

I turn back to Cage, who’s watching us with a half smile on his face that does more for me than anything halfway should do, and I smile wanly and feel his eyes on my back as I push Racer down the path.

“That’s not fast, Wee! Fastew!” Racer says.

Shit. Really? My ass is going to bounce like crazy.

I lean over to him. “When we round the corner, please, enough embarrassing Reese in front of a boy for a day.” I ruffle his hair and then look ahead in search of the Labrador.

FOUR

KNOCKING

Maverick

The hotel business center has a dozen dormant computers save for the one I’m using. Surfing the net for trainers in the Seattle area. Writing a new list. I started at the top and am at the lower tiers now as I write down the second name, then scan for another half hour. Fuck, I’m quickly running out of options.

I log out, tear the page off the hotel notepad, and stare at the two names I’ve got on the list. I rub my jaw and reread the addresses and locations.

I fold the page, shove it into my jeans pocket, grab my bottle of water, and head out to the bus stop.

I make two stops.

Two more doors closed in my face.

I plant my hand flat on the last one, gritting my teeth and slamming my palm into it.

“Come the fuck on, man!” I yell.

No response.

Jesus.

Motherfuckers.

I drop down on the sidewalk and lean my head back against the wall, scowling.

I’ve got three days to find a coach. Three days to make fighting even possible.

I dig into the front pocket of my jeans and pull out the penny I found outside Hennesy’s. I curl my palm around it, willing it for a change of luck or something even better—a goddamn chance.

♥ ♥ ♥

I GREW UP with my mother in Pensacola. Near the beach. She wanted me to enlist in the army. Turns out, I was never good at being disciplined. “When I named you Maverick, I didn’t know you’d take it so to heart,” my mother playfully chastised when I left the corps.

We’d agreed when I turned twenty-one, I could see him. My father. “He travels due to his work, Mav. I don’t know if you should see him.”

“I’ll travel with him. I want to learn. I’m his son, aren’t I?” I think I imagined a connection between us. I couldn’t wait to get out of Florida.

My dad used to send me a pair of boxing gloves every birthday.

“He was a good man,” my mother would say when I asked about him.

“I want to see him.”

“He was. A good man.” She emphasized the “was.”

I didn’t get it. You weren’t good, and then bad, that couldn’t be. Could it? I was too young and too fucking stupid.

On my twenty-first birthday, she gave me his contact information, and when he never answered his phone, I went looking for him on my own.

My father—the one I envisioned as big, powerful, and one who had noble reasons to leave my mom and me—was helpless in a hospital bed too small for his body. There was no warning. Nothing to tell my mother and me that his life was going to change ours forever. It was pure daylight, a day like any other. But I was in a city I’d never been in. Alone.

So I sat there with no tears to cry.

Just him and me.

A stranger whose blood I share.

The doctors said they were trying to get his brain to cool down after the accident. They induced a coma. He hasn’t wanted to wake up. His coma is real now. It all depends on his will to live, they say.

“My father fights; that’s what he does,” I told the doctors. It’s all I know about him.

“He may not have any fight left in him.”

I looked at my father; he was scarred, banged-up, beat-up. Not the guy my mother has a picture of.

Don’t stop fighting, I wanted to say.

But I didn’t say it. He’s never heard my voice. I still don’t know if I should call him Dad, Father, or the nickname they gave him as a fighter.

Instead, I said, “I’m going to make you proud.”

I flew back home, showered, and changed, remembering the doctors when they told me it didn’t look good as I took out my boxing gloves. I found my mother in the kitchen.

“I’m not coming back home.”

She cried softly. I put my arms around her and I held her. Six years before, I outgrew her in height and she felt small in my arms and fragile.

“I love you, Mav.” She grabbed my jaw and kissed my cheek. “Let me know where you go. Stay in touch.”

“I will.”

“Maverick. You’re not your father. You don’t have to do this.”

“No. But I’m half of him. And half of you.” I looked at her. “I want more than what I have here.” I opened the door with nothing but a duffel bag, my saved money, and my backpack. “I’m going to prove him wrong to believe I was never worth a moment.”

On the bus, I pulled out the last gloves my father sent me a birthday ago. He didn’t send me new ones, he sent me old ones with a message: Since you never use the ones I sent and clearly don’t plan to, sending ones a real fighter’s used.

The gloves are so old, they’re taped at the wrist with silver duct tape. I slipped my hand into one glove, and then the other, and realized they fit me.

They fit me.

FIVE

SPAR WITH ME

Reese

How’s the high life?

Miles finally texted last night. I was already in bed when my phone buzzed. I peered at the screen and jolted upright.

I should’ve probably waited a minute to answer. It’s not good to seem anxious or anything, and to be honest, I haven’t been. But he’s one of my closest friends and one of the few people who knows everything about me and likes me anyway.

Good! I texted back.

Thinking of visiting and meeting your new friends.

Was he using that as an excuse? I frowned and wondered. But we’re friends. He doesn’t need an excuse; he could say he misses me and that’s it. Maybe? Hesitantly, I typed, Sure. When do you want to visit?

Not certain yet, maybe to semifinals? Can you introduce me and the guys to RIP then?