Page 6 of Dirty Fighter

It was a stilted, barebones exchange of sympathies between warring factions within Ed’s family, probably lasting less than thirty seconds total. And truthfully, with the sunglasses, I couldn’t say for sure that Jason looked my way even once.

Not that I could blame him. The man had every right to hate me for the chaos I brought into his life.

That I continue to bring.

I suddenly have a very bad feeling I’ve got the answer to a question that’s been eating at me since I found out about the will: Why didn’t Jason challenge it?

He called it his cabin. And more to the point, he’s here.

“Maybe we⁠—”

“Don’t.” He’s on his feet in a flash, those winter sky eyes narrowing into the closed-off, hostile stare I know all too well. “Don’t tell me he left the cabin to all of us. He wouldn’t.”

A throat clears, reminding us of our audience.

The dickhead with the baby face and man bun— Baby Bun —who called me a stripper holds up his phone, mumbling something about needing to make a call. The other two nod, shuffling toward the door, making noises about getting some air and “checking out the sister island for signs of babes.”

The screen door closes with a clack behind them.

And then it’s just me and the beautiful grieving man who was, at one time, my hero and secret crush but, through no fault of his own, became a threat to the only stability I’ve ever known.

“The will.” I swallow hard, forcing myself to ask, “You didn’t read it?”

He blinks, a splinter in his confidence there and then gone. “The lawyers handled everything. But Dad wouldn’t do that. Marsha hated the cabin. You’ve never even been here. He wouldn’t.”

For months, I wondered how Ed, the kindest, most generous, and loyal man I’ve ever met, could leave this property to my mother instead of the son he loved beyond measure. And more, how Jason let it go without a fight.

But when I asked my mom about it, her answer had been 100 percent on brand. A biting dismissal about a self-centered boy who’d become a man too obsessed with his own celebrity to care about anything so trivial as an old cabin on a lake that clearly meant more to his father than it ever meant to him.

It didn’t sit right with me then. But now, it makes sense in the most awful, heartbreaking way.

Jason hadn’t fought for the cabin because he didn’t know he’d lost it.

Now, he’s furious, staring at me from across the room with his massive arms crossed, wearing a scowl as menacing as his reputation on the ice.

“I’m so sorry, Jason.” I’d ask the universe what I’d ever done to deserve being the one who has to tell him this, but I already know. “Your dad didn’t leave this place to all of us. He left it to my mom. And I’m here to get it ready to sell.”

3

Jason

The guys are out front. Rowan is inside. And I’m trying to hold my shit together behind the shed after leaving a message for my lawyer, Lenard Pheil, to call me.

That bomb Rowan dropped leveled me, knocking me back with its potential for utter devastation.

For a minute there, my heart was in my fucking throat. A wound so raw and deep opening inside me, I couldn’t breathe through it. Because… How? I don’t understand how my dad, my hero, my best friend could⁠—

But then? Nope.

Just… No.

He wouldn’t. I know my dad. We were close. Despite the fact that his marriage to Marsha resulted in a physical distance once I moved out, emotionally, we never drifted.

We talked all the time. He visited regularly. He was there in all the ways that counted. And this place was ours.

The executors of Dad’s estate sent me the damn keys.

But even if they hadn’t, he would never have left something he cared so much about… that I cared so much about… to a woman who’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t care about it at all.