And I had a feeling it was because of a bubblehead from New Zealand.

He had come over multiple times by that point. Of course they’d seen him, he was massive and an unknown. They hadn’t been aware of why he was coming in. It wasn’t unheard of for people to drop by the office to talk about training or marketing stuff or different programs. Managers for the athletes came into the office to talk about one thing or another from time to time. Some of the guys dropped by for advice or to talk… a lot less now than before, but it still happened. Sometimes. Rarely, really. And that kind of made me sad.

Most of my real friends had stopped training MMA over the last few years for one reason or another, mostly from injuries and some because of relationships and families. Priorities changed, and I was the last person to not understand that, especially now. During the last big hurricane, a lot of them had moved away when our old facility had been destroyed by floodwater and mold. And they hadn’t come back.

But whatever.

Where I’d gone from knowing everyone and being friends with them all, now… at most I was someone they kind of knew. I didn’t work with them on the floor much, and if I did, it wasn’t for hours on end like before. Hell, even with Luna, we had to work a lot more at our friendship than we’d had to in the past. We had to schedule lunches every other week to see each other.

Anyway, thinking about that felt like an enormous bummer on my soul, and I focused back on the important stuff.

Men had come into the office when Grandpa Gus had worked there, and they came in now with me. For business purposes. But it wasn’t every day that a six-foot-five-inch man built like a tank came into Maio House and headed straight into the office. It was something worth noticing. Especially when there were so many nosey eyes and ears.

I knew these people, and they wouldn’t avoid looking at me directly unless they were talking about me.

It wouldn’t be the first time it happened.

Fuck it. I had nothing to hide or any explanations I needed to make to anyone.

The old me would have asked them you got something to say? But now… now I just walked into my office and waited until no one could see me to turn around and give the floor in general the middle finger. Both middle fingers. Fuckers.

Half an hour later, I had my computer on and a cup of matcha tea sitting on my desk. I had side-eyed the guys and girls once more on my walk to and from the break room in the other building. I had settled in to go through the voice mails that had the red light on my office phone blinking. There were five new ones.

The first one was nothing special. One of the fighter’s managers wanted to schedule a time for a photographer to come in and take pictures of him while he trained. No big deal.

The second one though had me hitting the delete button like I wanted to break it. “It’s Noah. Call me.” The fact he had called the work phone instead of my cell phone said enough. I had to open my mouth to stretch my jaw after that.

The third call was from a blogger who wanted to talk to Peter, the fourth was some vague message from a woman who just said, “This is Rafaela Smith. I’m looking for Gus DeMaio. I’d appreciate it if—” That name didn’t ring a bell, and she didn’t say what she wanted, so no thanks on that return phone call, and the fifth was from the repairman who came in to fix the gym equipment. He was the first one I called back.

We had just barely hung up when the phone rang.

“Maio House,” I answered, moving the mouse so I could access my email. “This is Lenny.”

All it took was a simple “Hey” to piss me off.

If I could kick half the members out, I would. I really would. I’d kick all of them out if their dues didn’t pay the bills. Fucking bigmouths.

I knew it was petty, but I didn’t give a shit. “Who is this?” I asked, even though I knew exactly who it was.

Noah sighed. “Noah, Lenny.”

“Oh.”

He had to know how lucky he was I had gone with that instead of what do you want, person who I’ve known since I was three, who left me when I needed him.

“How you doing?” he had the nerve to ask like it hadn’t been months since the last time we had talked.

“I’m fine, you?” I asked him like I was petty and held grudges, because I did. But Noah knew that, yet he’d still decided to call me twice within twenty-four hours.

And, apparently, he did know that because he didn’t even bother sighing or getting his feelings hurt by how detached I was speaking to him. “I’ve been better,” Noah responded like I genuinely cared.

I didn’t want to waste my time rolling my eyes, but I did anyway because was he fucking for real? “Do you need something? Peter’s busy right now, but I can get him to call you back when he’s done in an hour.” Not that he actually would.

“I don’t need to talk to Peter,” my childhood best friend said, his tone weird and annoying as hell. “I heard something interesting.”

I closed both my eyes, grabbed my stress ball from the drawer, and squeezed the fucking shit out of it as he kept talking.

“Who’s the guy that’s been showing up to the gym?” he asked casually in the time it took me to do that.

Noah had been my best friend. We’d grown up together. We’d studied judo together at the same club for fifteen years.

And for a couple months, I had thought I’d been more than half in love with someone who couldn’t see me as more than what I had been to him: the girl who he’d grown up with. His kind-of sister. His friend.

Then one random day, I had taken a look at him and decided yeah, no.

It might have been the day after I overheard him bragging about having sex with one of my friends, but it happened. Just, nope. Nah. And as I’d gotten older, I had realized that I hadn’t loved him. Not like that. It had just been… a lapse of judgment. Hormones maybe.

But I had stuck around after I’d come to my senses. Because maybe he could be a douchebag, but he’d been my friend. He’d known me back then better than just about anyone other than Peter and my gramps. He’d been my friend.

Or so I thought.

Then, many years later, after we had both grown up, I got pregnant, and he suddenly lost his shit and left.

And now he was here. Calling me, asking about something that had nothing to do with him. Not anymore.

I “hmmed” into the receiver, forcing my index finger to click the mouse so I could open the most recent email I had gotten. “Pretty sure that’s none of your business. Was there something else you needed or...?” Can you fuck off now? I wanted to ask but barely managed not to.

“Lenny.”

I blinked and moved my tongue across my upper teeth, telling myself again that I wasn’t going to let this bullshit-ass call bother me.

“Who is he?”

I squeezed my stress ball. “I don’t feel like talking to you anymore, Noah, but if there’s something else you need, or if this new gym that you’re at has questions about anything, they can give me a call,” I told him, hearing the sarcasm dripping from my voice.

“Don’t be like that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Have fun in Albuquerque.” Then I hung up.

All righty, I could have done without that.

Shoving my chair back, the fucking hint of a tension headache creeping up on me right between the eyebrows, I got up and headed to the doorway. I stopped there, clapping my hands as obnoxiously loud as I physically could. Under normal circumstances, I would never, ever interrupt anyone training.

But I wasn’t fucking playing around.

The trainers could get mad at me if they wanted, but I didn’t care.

Just as I expected, just about every head in the gym turned toward me as everyone stopped what they were doing.

“I don’t know which one of you snitched, but whoever comes in and out of here is none of your business. It isn’t anyone else’s either,” I said in a voice just slightly louder than my speaking voice. The room projected everything perfectly like I knew it would. “Got it?”

Silence replied to me at first.

And there was only one person who vocally replied. “Wasn’t me. I can’t stand Noah.”

The fact he even knew I was referring to Noah confirmed what I had expected.

No one else had anything to say. I did see one guy turn to look at the man next to him—Carlos, it was Carlos— and I knew what his kind of body language meant. My gut said that fucker was the one who had told Noah. It didn’t surprise me. Before he’d left, he’d spent a lot of time with Carlos.

I sent that guy a long, deadeye stare, the kind I’d perfected over the years.

The kind that said he better watch his tires because having to be a role model now wouldn’t stop me from doing certain things.

I almost slammed the door shut behind me on the way back in, but I just barely managed to close it softly. I didn’t want me slamming it to come across as me being pissed off that Noah knew because I was hung up over him leaving. Everyone knew why he’d bounced.