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But I can’t shake the feeling that there was something real between us. Something worth pursuing.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I just know I need to see her again.”

Marcus sets his mug down and glances toward the hallway that leads to the east side of the cabin.

“What’s with all the construction stuff in the spare room?” he asks.

I tense, not ready to explain the project I started three days ago in a fit of what can only be described as hopeful insanity.

“It’s nothing,” I say, too quickly.

Marcus raises an eyebrow. Clearly, he’s not buying it. “Nothing? There’s a busted wall and enough lumber in there to build a small house.”

I sigh. “I’m converting the guest room into an art studio.”

“An art studio?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Since when do you paint?”

“I don’t.” I take a deep breath, preparing for the judgment that’s sure to follow. “It’s for her.”

“Who?”

“Elizabeth.”

His eyebrows shoot up. “You’re building an art studio for a woman you spent one night with?”

When he puts it like that, it sounds insane. Maybe it is.

“She went to school to be an artist,” I explain, hearing the desperation in my own voice. “Said she wanted to get back into painting again.”

Marcus gives a low whistle. “Damn, you’ve got it bad.”

“Fucking tell me about it.”

As he walks back to the kitchen, his elbow knocks an envelope from the counter. He bends to retrieve it, glancing at the contents before handing it to me.

“Oh shit, your brother is fighting Reyes this weekend,” Marcus says, examining the tickets more closely.

I grunt in response, turning back to my coffee. “Yeah, he is.”

“You going to go?”

I snatch the tickets from his hand and toss them back on the counter. “No.”

“Why the hell not?” Marcus picks them up again. “These are ringside seats. Do you know how hard these are to get?”

“You know exactly why not,” I say, my jaw clenching.

I turn away, staring out the window at the mountains. The complicated history between Ben and me isn’t something I talk about, not even with Marcus. Twenty years of silence doesn’t break easy. Ben was a kid when I left to join the Marines, still trying to figure out who he was and who he was going to be. By the time I came back, he was a grown man with his own demons, his own anger at the brother who abandoned him to deal with life alone.

The tickets started arriving last year when Ben moved to Cooper Heights to train at the Worthington Gym. Every fight, like clockwork, an envelope would appear with two ringside seats. No note. No message. Just the tickets. An olive branch I’ve been too stubborn to accept.

“This is a huge fight,” Marcus cuts through my thoughts. “If he wins against Reyes, he moves on to the title fight. Your little brother could be a world champion.”

My little brother. The words twist something in my chest. He’s thirty-three now, hardly little. But in my mind, he’s still that skinny kid begging me not to leave, promising he’d be good if I just stayed.