She spent the morning trying to outline therapy plans for two new clients she’d picked up at LOCAL. But after a few hours of creating plans, being dissatisfied, and starting over again, she gave up. It didn’t help that Blaine knocked on the door every half hour, trying to get her to talk to him, or that she couldn’t stop thinking about Tobias and continually vacillated between being angry—at herself, at him, and at her brothers—frustrated with her inability to have walked away from Tobias in the first place and sad because even now, with as hurt and angry as she was, her thoughts kept scrambling back to the look in Tobias’s eyes when she’d asked him if what Blaine said was true. She’d seen confirmation, but she’d also seen regret and about a hundred other emotions she’d been too shocked to decipher.

Even with his confession, she still couldn’t believe it. She needed proof, and after pacing her living room for forty-five minutes, she forced herself to search Tobias Riggs online. The headlines gutted her anew. KEVIN “NAPALM” ARLO KILLED BY UP-AND-COMING FIGHTER TOBIAS RIGGS. There was a picture of Tobias standing next to an MMA fighting cage. His hair was short, the tips bleached blond, his face was clean-shaven, and he was smiling like he was on top of the world. He looked so different from the brooding—broken?—man she knew, she didn’t believe it was him. She couldn’t stomach reading the article and closed her laptop, shoving it across the table.

She’d thought she was getting to know him with the little bits and pieces she’d learned about him, but she hadn’t even known he was a fighter. She looked up at the ceiling, missing Ashley. “I really wish you were here right now.” Tears streaked her cheeks.

With her mind reeling and her heart in pieces, it took nearly two hours for her to regroup and find her footing again. She was emotionally exhausted, and in the hours since, she’d tried to read a manufacturing and distributing proposal she’d received earlier in the week for her expansion, but she was too distracted to retain the information and spent the rest of the afternoon watching movies, doing yoga, trying—and failing—to come up with new card designs, staring into her empty pantry, and experiencing every emotion known to man. She heard motorcycles come and go and ignored every knock at the door, which brought an onslaught of other emotions she didn’t want to deal with.

Evening found her sitting on the dining room floor with a notebook on her lap, working on ideas for cards again. She heard her front door rattling. Still not in the mood to speak to her brothers, she shouted, “Go away,” just as the door opened, and her mother peeked her head in.