Crazy Baby Page 21

As soon as he does, Shane throws his power punch, a right hook to the jaw. The other guy’s head swings around violently, and he instantly drops to the mat. He doesn’t move, except to breathe, and the referee counts to ten. His team rushes to his side with smelling salts to rouse him from his knockout. Seventeen seconds into the fight, Shane has won by a KO.

  A gasp reverberates through the crowd, followed by an eerie silence for a couple of seconds, before screams and cheers for Shane ring out. The crowd is going wild and chanting his name. He’s still wearing his serious face when he allows the referee to lift his arm in victory. As Mack approaches him in the ring, I see a small lift of one side of his mouth, and that’s the only sign of a smile he gives.

  I’m on my feet, cheering like a crazed fan, when Shane’s eyes find me. He must have singled out my voice in this sea of people who are screaming his name. He motions for me to come to him, and I readily comply. My brother has just become a huge name in boxing, and rightfully so. I can’t wait to see what his career holds for him now.

  Climbing in the ropes, I rush to him and he lifts me in a huge bear hug. As I squeeze him tightly, my smile beams and makes my face hurt from overuse. I can’t stop smiling because he has worked so hard and so long to earn this chance.

  “I’m so glad you’re here, Andi,” he says into my hair.

  “I wouldn’t miss your fight for the world, Shane. You’re my brother and I love you. Congratulations! I’m so proud of you.”

  “I love you, too. Thank you,” he says, still hugging me.

  I think the emotions are flowing through him much more than his stoic appearance would have others believe. He’s hiding them behind me, but I’m fine with him using me as a barrier. He’s protected me enough, and I’ll gladly be his shield now.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d be here after everything that’s happened,” he says.

  “No one will ever keep me from being here for you when you need me, Shane. You should know that.”

  “I do. Without a doubt, I know.”

  Mack finally makes Shane release me, and I step back to snap a picture of him with my phone. When I do, I see Luke watching me from ringside. Averting my eyes from him and Syndi, I snap a few more pictures of Shane and Mack before going back to my seat with Travis.

  We stay to watch the main event, which is lackluster compared to the other fights. Once it’s over, Travis and I head back to the hotel and hit the casino for a little fun before returning to our room. In the elevator, Travis seems quieter than usual despite my attempts to get him to talk. Once we enter our suite, I decide to push for an explanation.

  “What’s wrong, Travis?”

  “Andi, there’s something I need to tell you. It’s about Luke. I just found out, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to say it,” he blurts out.

  “Just tell me,” I reply.

  He runs his hand through his hair. Hesitation and frustration are evident in his jerky movements. “Katelyn and Syndi originally planned to make you jealous so you’d leave the tour and run to Luke. Syndi ended up falling for him and pushing you to me instead of to Luke. Katelyn told me last night that—” His voice trails off.

  “That what? Don’t leave me hanging there,” I urge.

  “She said that Syndi is late. She may be pregnant.”

  That is not at all what I expected to hear, and it hits me like a ton of bricks. Is this just further proof that we were never meant to be? Shaking my head, I walk to the window and stare at nothing.

  There’s no way that Luke and I aren’t supposed to end up together.

  If we weren’t meant to be, if I’d really accepted that we were through, would it still hurt this much? If there were nothing left to fight for, would we both still try to reach the other—even if it’s only in subtle ways?

  “My ring?” I ask, only trusting myself to voice those two little words.

  “Syndi stole your jewelry. Luke doesn’t know she has them,” Travis admits solemnly.

  This is hurting him to tell me the truth. He’s concerned about my well-being, but he also admitted that he loves me. He’s already convinced I’d pick Luke over him anyway. By confessing this, he knows that’s a good possibility.

  But what if she’s actually pregnant with his baby? Can I handle knowing that the love of my life has a baby with someone else?

  How do I deal with my feelings for Travis? Even though they emerged out of a trick to separate Luke from me, Travis is still a very important part of my life.

  “The pictures Luke said he received?” I ask.

  “Katelyn,” Travis confirms. “She thought Luke would insist you choose between him and the tour.”

  “But he didn’t do that, did he? He believed I’d betray him and didn’t believe me when I tried to explain.”

  “I can’t fault him for that, Andi. I can’t say I wouldn’t believe the proof a picture shows,” Travis admits.

  “Does he know that they’ve caused all of this?” I ask.

  “No, he doesn’t know any of it yet. Although, I did tell Syndi she has to tell him herself,” Travis replies. “I think he’ll have a change of heart about you once he hears the truth.”

  Turning to look him in the eye, I narrow my eyes at him. I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “Do you want me to go back to him?”

  “Do I want you to go back to him?” Travis repeats my question as he quickly stands and stalks around the room. “Hell no, I don’t want you to go back with him. If I thought I could talk you into it, we’d be on my bike and riding off into the horizon right now. I’d take you as far away from him as physically possible.

  “I don’t want to share any part of you with him. If I had my way in this, you’d be head over heels in love with me instead of him and we’d live happily ever after. But I have to face the truth.

  “If Syndi hadn’t stolen the ring, if you hadn’t seen her wearing it, and if you hadn’t believed that Luke gave it to her, you wouldn’t have made love to me that night. You’d still be waiting for Luke to come to his senses. Because you love him,” Travis finishes.

  “That may be, Travis. But the fact is Luke and I had been through this whole picture thing before. It all boils down to this—he doesn’t trust me. I’ve never given him any reason not to trust me. He should’ve given me the benefit of the doubt, even if for no other reason than he was wrong before and nearly destroyed us then, too,” I counter.

  I want to console Travis and take his pain away.

  I want to run to Luke and tell him about what Katelyn and Syndi have done to us.

  I want…to figure out what I really want.

  I can’t be here right now. I need to figure out which part of me will win this fight—my heart or my head. I also need to figure out where my heart really is.

  “Travis, can we go back to L.A. tonight? I don’t want to wait until tomorrow.”

  “We can do whatever you want, Andi,” Travis smiles.

  There’s no way to get out of this whole mess without someone getting hurt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  LUKE

  Coming down off the high of winning a fight like that is nearly impossible. Seeing Andi in the ring hugging Shane for winning his fight and then returning to her seat with Travis comes pretty damn close, though. Part of me thought she’d be here to watch Shane’s fight, and a secret part of me wished she’d be here to watch me fight, too. But none of me wanted Travis to be here for any of it.

  My only consolation in his being here is that he now has up close and personal knowledge of the kind of damage I can do to his pretty-boy face. Let’s see how his next concert goes when he can’t even speak, much less sing, after having his jaw broken.

  Watching Andi leave the arena with Travis kills me. I want nothing more than to run to catch her and carry her back to my room and make her talk to me. I’ve called her and texted her, but she hasn’t answered me at all. I don’t know how she can stand just ignoring me unless she’s really over me. Being wrapped up in America’s most wa
nted bachelor probably helped with that.

  Mack and Joe have a mandatory meeting set up with their boxers in the locker room immediately after the main event, so I can’t leave the premises yet. I’m so juiced up now that I could jump back in the ring and take on the next guy with no trouble. Sitting still is driving me fucking crazy. At least Syndi had a phone call to make so I have a few minutes alone. I decide to use this time to my advantage.

  “John, I have to go up to the room for a minute,” I lie. “I’ll be back for the meeting with Joe and Mack. Text me if they do it earlier than planned.”

  “Okay, no problem,” John agrees.

  Going as fast as I can, I make my way up to my suite. Andi has ignored calls from my cell, but I wonder if she’d answer a call from the hotel phone. Hopefully, she’ll think it’s someone else and answer her phone. Just two minutes of her time—that’s all I’m asking. Two minutes for me to beg and plead to get her back.

  I’m dying without her.

  The elevator takes an eternity to reach my floor. The keycard takes ten tries before it opens my door. Finally, as I race to the hotel cordless phone, I pull my cell out of my pocket to look up Andi’s cell number. Yes, I’m one of those people—the ones who’d never be able to call anyone if my contacts got wiped out of my phone because I haven’t memorized anyone’s number.

  When I open the contact info on my iPhone, I nervously dial her cell number from the hotel phone. My thumb scrolls the screen down as I listen to the ringing, and something odd jumps out at me. At the very bottom of the info screen, it reads “Unblock this Caller.”

  What the hell? I’ve never blocked her. Quickly unblocking her, I search for any missed texts or phone calls from her, but there are none.

  After the fourth ring, I hear her voice mail pick up, and her sweet voice tells me to leave a message.

  “Andi, this is Luke. Please call me. I love you. I miss you. I’m sorry. I’m such a jerk, and I want to make it up to you every day for the rest of my life. I don’t want to do this without you—not even one more day. I love you, baby. With all of my heart, I love you. Call me. Please.”

  Hanging up, I don’t even care that I sounded like a completely desperate idiot. That shoe fits like a glove. Or whatever.

  From the corner of my eye, I catch a slight movement and whirl around to get a better look.

  “Syndi, what the hell are you doing in my room again?” I demand.

  Her guilty look conveys her nefarious intentions, and being caught trying to sneak out the door undetected is a dead giveaway. I pin her with my deathly stare, and she lowers her eyes in response.

  “I needed privacy for a phone call,” she lies.

  “And my room is the only private place? How’d you get a key?” I challenge.

  “The front desk.” She shrugs. Not a complete lie, but she’s definitely withholding information.

  “What’s that in your hand?” I ask, narrowing my eyes. Surely that’s not what I think it is.

  She takes a step backward but doesn’t answer me.

  “Tell me right now what’s in your hand!” my voice booms.

  Opening her hand, the velvet ring box that contains Andi’s engagement ring is on full display.

  “Why the hell do you have Andi’s ring?” I ask through gritted teeth. I can feel my jaw muscles ticking, and my blood pressure is climbing quickly.

  Sighing, the tears roll down her cheeks. “I was trying to put it back before you realized it was gone,” she admits.

  “What? How long have you had it?” I ask, snatching it out of her hand. Opening it, I find the pendant that Andi wore as her part of my dog tag necklace. “Why the fuck do you have her ring and her necklace?”

  “I have a lot to tell you, Luke. And you won’t be happy about any of it,” she admits reluctantly.

  “Yeah. I’m already getting that impression. Talk fast.”

  She tells me the whole sordid story of how she and Katelyn conspired to get Andi to leave the tour. Katelyn had Syndi assigned to me, to get close to me, and to make Andi jealous so Katelyn could have Travis to herself. One little hiccup threw a monkey wrench in their whole plan.

  Syndi really fell for me and had to find a way to keep Andi and me separated.

  “First, I had to make sure you stayed busy so you didn’t have much time to talk to her. Then, when I was afraid you’d call her in the middle of the night, I went in your phone and blocked her in your contacts,” she confesses and then hesitates.

  I immediately know the next admission will be even worse than the others.

  “You made the fake pictures?” I ask.

  “No, that was Katelyn. A few were altered to look like they were Andi, but they weren’t. The picture on the playground is real, but they weren’t really kissing. It’s just how it looked from the angle the photographer Katelyn hired was in when he took the picture,” she says as she wipes away a tear.

  “Then what else did you do?” I ask. If it’s worse than the pictures, she may not want to be in the same room with me for the next decade or so.

  “I wore her necklace and her ring when I knew the press would see them. You were secluded for your fight training, and you’d been avoiding the news anyway, so I knew there was little chance you’d see it. According to Katelyn, Andi saw it, though, and that’s when her relationship with Travis really took off,” she says quietly. “That’s when he started sleeping on Andi’s bus instead of his.”

  Turning to walk away from Syndi before I explode, I put the velvet box back in my dresser drawer. When I start to walk back to the living room, she’s standing in my doorway, waiting for some kind of reaction from me.

  I’m completely drained and deflated from hearing Travis has been sleeping on Andi’s bus. I know what that means. No further explanation is needed. I can’t sing her to sleep with love songs. I can’t compete with the sexiest man in the universe. She’s with Travis now, and I’ve lost her for good.

  “Is there anything else I need to know?” I ask, gripping the dresser so hard I may break it.

  “Yes,” she says hesitantly. “I made Katelyn believe I may be pregnant. I’m sure Travis and Andi know by now.”

  “Get out,” I say flatly to Syndi. This fiasco isn’t all her fault, God knows I added plenty to it, but a lot of it is because of her. I don’t want her anywhere near me ever again.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I really do love you, Luke. If it doesn’t work out with Andi, you know how to find me,” she says sadly as she leaves my room.

  An alert on my phone has me scrambling to see if, by some miracle, it’s Andi replying to me. Disappointment seems to be a way of life when I realize the message is from John, telling me to get my ass back down there for our meeting. Replying to let him know I’m on my way, I put my fighting face back on and leave my room.

  All I really want to do is just stay here and wallow in my self-pity.

  When I walk into the locker room, the first thing I notice is that Charlie and Artie are here. They’re both smiling at me like the Cheshire cat who just ate the canary whole. I get a really bad vibe from these two men, and the way they just cut in on Joe solidifies my opinion of them.

  “Luke, we have good news for you, son,” Artie starts.

  “Yeah? What’s that?” I ask, unenthused.

  “We’ve decided to pick you up as one of our fighters.” Charlie beams.

  Mack immediately jumps in. “Over my dead body!”

  “That can be arranged,” Artie replies without any humor in his tone.

  Stepping in front of Mack, I pierce Artie with my gaze. “Don’t you dare fucking threaten him. I will tear you limb from limb.”

  Shane and Brandon step up, flanking me, and display their solidarity in my threat.

  “I don’t think you know who we are, Luke,” Charlie boasts.

  “I don’t think I care who you are, Charlie,” I clarify. “If you or Artie threaten Mack again, you’ll find out who I am, without a doubt,” I promise.
>
  “It’s that very bravado that we want to capitalize on, Luke.” Artie smiles appreciatively. “You don’t back down from anyone. You’d take on the baddest man in boxing just out of sheer grit and determination.”

  “We know you’ve had a little problem with your girlfriend. Or ex-girlfriend now. Trust me, when we’re finished promoting you, there will be plenty more mermaids in the sea, just begging to be your own personal love slave.” Charlie grins lasciviously. “You won’t even remember what’s-her-name before long.”

  “The thing is, Luke, you won’t get anywhere without us. We’ve taken an interest in you. We’ve backed one of your fights. Everyone in the business will know you’re our fighter, and they won’t go against us. You won’t fight if you don’t fight for us,” Artie adds.

  “I’ll take my chances,” I reply. “I’m good, and people know it. There’s only so much you can do to keep me down. I’ll gladly tell everyone with a microphone what you’ve threatened me with here. When the others see that I’m standing up to you, they will too. What exactly do you think I have to lose?”

  “We’ll just see about that,” Charlie says as he and Artie leave in a huff.

  “You know they’ll try their best,” Joe says, his voice holding a tone of warning.

  “Let them try their worst,” I say. “I refuse to be in league with the likes of those two.”

  “Even if it means your career never takes off?” Joe asks.

  “There are worse things in life,” I reply. I know from experience just how much worse things can be.

  Joe nods in understanding. “You can take the day off tomorrow, Luke,” Joe offers.

  “I don’t want a day off. I’ll be there tomorrow,” I tell him. I’ve had enough time in my own head, replaying what I’ve lost and what an idiot I’ve been. Training is a welcome distraction.

  “Tomorrow at noon, then. Cardio workout only,” Joe agrees. “No sparring for a while.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Joe finishes giving his instructions out to the rest of his boxers and dismisses us all for a good night’s sleep. Somehow, I doubt that sleep will come for me tonight. It’ll be a long night of replaying everything Syndi told me, everything that she did to tear Andi and me apart, and how well she succeeded.