Chapter 22 *

Chapter 22 *
Emery's POV
The thing about the way he said it — there was no softness in it. No you poor thing in it anywhere.
My throat closed.
The first tear got out before I could stop it. Then the second. I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth and turned my head slightly, which was useless because he was already looking right at me, but I did it anyway because there are things you do even when they're useless.
"I know," I said. It came out rough. "I know. You're right."
I heard him move. Then he was reaching past me, and I registered that he was taking something from Damon, who had apparently materialized behind him at some point. A small pack of tissues.
He held it out. "Cry," he said. "I'll wait."
I laughed.
It came out at the exact wrong moment, halfway through a breath that was already doing something else, and it sounded absolutely terrible and once it started it took the edge off the crying which meant I was doing both at once.
I took the tissues.
"This is not what crying looks like," I told him, wiping my face.
"I know what crying looks like."
"Then you know this doesn't count."
"I've been standing here for two minutes," he said. "It counts."
I took a breath. Let it out.
I looked at the side of his face in the streetlight. Something tugged at the back of my mind. The line of his jaw. The way he stood —
"Have I met you before?" I said.
He turned and looked at me.
His eyebrows went up. Very slightly. "That's your line?"
"I'm serious. You look—"
"You're asking a man you've known for days if you've met before," he said. "That's a terrible pickup line."
"I wasn't—" I stopped. "That wasn't a pickup line."
"The execution suggests otherwise."
"I was genuinely—" I pressed my fingers to my temple. "Forget it."
He was already turning toward the car. I followed him.
The backseat was quiet. I sat with my bag in my lap and watched the city move past the window.
"There's a fight card in two days," Logan said. "Ironridge, regional circuit. I need you there."
I turned. "For what?"
"Evaluation cycle. Observation phase." He was looking forward, one arm resting along the window ledge. "You've been out of competition for three years. Before I put you in front of anyone, I want to know if you can read a fight in real time. Matchmaking strategy, how a card is run, how the energy in a venue shifts round by round." He paused. "The logistical side. Most fighters don't pay attention to it until they're already inside it and losing."
I thought about it for a second. Departure, transit time, training window before and after, how much this would compress the week's schedule—
"When do we leave?"
"Tomorrow morning." He finally looked over. "Early."
I let the silence settle back. Outside, a stoplight turned green and we moved forward.
"What did you like about him?"
I stopped.
Logan had turned slightly in his seat. His expression was unreadable.
"Keaton," he said. "What was it. His face?"
The honest answer was that Keaton was conventionally good-looking — structured jaw, broad shoulders, the kind of green-eyed thing that photographed well at pack events.
I was about to say something approximately in that direction when Logan's face was right there, in my direct line of sight, and I found myself doing an involuntary comparison that I immediately did not want to be doing.
Logan was—
He was—
Keaton was not—
Okay, this was not a productive train of thought.
"He was—" I started.
"Was he good in bed?"
The front partition went up.
I don't know if Damon pressed a button or if the driver did it on instinct, but it went up smooth and silent, and suddenly the backseat was very private and very small and Logan was still looking at me with that same level expression.
My brain ran four responses simultaneously and discarded all of them.
Was he good—
I mean—
We didn't—
"I wouldn't know," I said.
A beat.
Logan's expression didn't change. "You were married for three years."
"I know how long I was married."
"And."
"Why do you care?" I asked.
He was quiet for a moment.
"Your state going into the evaluation affects the results," he said. "Your results affect the investment logic for putting you on the Ironridge roster." His voice was even. "My money is in this. I care about the return."
I stared at the side of his face.
He had said it with the particular clean authority of a man stating a business position. Which meant it was either exactly what it sounded like, or it was something else wearing the right clothes.
With the current relationship between us, there was exactly one version I was allowed to reach for.
"The evaluation won't suffer," I said. "I don't bring personal stuff onto the mat." I looked out the window.
The city was thinning out. We were moving toward the highway.
Something slid across the center console toward me.
A paper bag, no eye contact, pushed to my side with one deliberate movement.
He was looking out the window.
I opened the bag.
Coffee. The cup was warm. And underneath it, a container from — I went still for half a second.
It was from the spot on Delancey, half a block from Derry's gym. The place that did the egg and cheese on the everything bagel.
"How do you know this place," I said.
"Low blood sugar affects judgment," he said. "You went through a significant physiological stress response in the last hour. Food before a long drive is practical."
"That's not what I asked."
A short silence. "Less sugar, extra shot. It's better for cortisol regulation during a training cycle." He said it with the measured authority of a man delivering professional guidance. "That's a recommendation from a performance standpoint."
I stared at the side of his face for a long moment.
Inside my chest, Yara started laughing. A completely unhelpful laugh.
He knows your coffee order, she said. He knows your coffee shop. And now he's explaining it to you using cortisol.
Stop, I told her.
I'm not doing anything, she managed, still laughing.
Logan was watching the passing streetlights with his jaw very carefully set.
I decided not to push it.
I set the bag aside, pulled out the coffee, and held it in both hands. "Tonight," I said finally.
Logan didn't move.
"I know my state wasn't — I know I wasn't operating well back there." I kept my voice level. "But I want you to know it's not because I still care about him." I paused, finding the right words. "It's not — it's not grief. It's more like. You spend three years getting used as a prop for someone else's story, and then it's over, and the actual loss isn't the person. The loss is the time. The loss is realizing how long you agreed to be nothing." I turned the cup slowly in my hands. "That takes a minute to move through the system. That's all. It's metabolizing."
Logan turned his head, and looked at me directly. "So you're okay," he said.
"Yeah," I said. "I'm okay."
He held my gaze for one more second.
Then he nodded and looked forward.
"Good," he said.
I brought the cup to my mouth and took a sip. The coffee was exactly right.
In the dark reflection of the window glass, if I'd been paying attention, I might have caught it: Logan turning his chin down slightly, one thumb pushing at the cuff of his sleeve. And the corner of his mouth going up.
He pressed it down.
It came back.
He let it sit there, just for a second, just in the dark of the car where nobody could see it.