Carlos leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees, his easy smile gone. Most people never saw Carlos without a smile. Between us, Carlos was considered the happy one, those big brown puppy eyes of his drawing ladies in like honey to bees. He’d played up the role with ease, hiding a darker interior almost no one knew about. That he trusted me enough to show his true self now and then was something I’d never take for granted.

“No change?” he asked.

“Not enough. I’m behind on the mortgage payments by a few months. Bank is breathing down my neck.”

“What about this Kyle Garret?”

Six months ago, a guy named Kyle Garret approached me about buying the gym. After looking into him, Carlos and I found out he was a big real estate mogul, buying up property all over Boston and the East Coast and turning it into swank condos and housing developments.

“I’m not that desperate.” Okay, I was. But this place had been everything to me growing up. It was filled with ghosts of my past, and while some of them were painful, others kept me going. All had to do was walk through the gym, and I’d remember: the juice bar in the lobby where mom would greet Jake, Carlos, and me after school with banana shakes and a big smile. Studio B where Jake and I took our first punches and truly learned why boxing was the Sweet Science.

My brother Dean and I used to hide under Dad’s desk and play “spy.” Which was to say, Dean would play spy and I’d humor him. That was until the day my parents slipped into the office for a quickie and didn’t know we were under there. Some memories aren’t pretty, but they were mine and they were all I had left. I wasn’t about to lose that too.

Carlos sighed. “You know if you got back into the game, I could set up a match—”

“No.” It wasn’t a shout but it damn near felt like one in my head. A cold sweat broke out on my lower back as I glared at Carlos. He damn well knew I was out of boxing. For good.

His expression was empathetic. “Look, man, I know. But I don’t think Jake would want—”

“I said no.”

Just thinking about Jake opened a hole in my chest. Best friends from the cradle, closer to me than my own meathead brother, we’d had each other’s backs. Both fighters. Both headed for greatness. Hell, we had greatness in our palms. Until an unlucky hit to the temple ended his life.

A greasy lump of horror and shame slid down my throat. Losing him was hard enough; knowing that Dad lost a crap ton of money because he’d bet on Jake and lost tainted every memory I had of both of them, of boxing.