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He knew at some point he would get over her. He just had no idea when.
His phone rang again, and he begrudgingly grabbed it off the charger on his nightstand. His eyes were still blurry, but he could see that he hadtwenty-eightmissed calls and messages. He began to scroll through names and saw that it looked like everyone he’d ever known in his life was trying to contact him. Parents of the kids he taught, students and teachers he used to go to school with, coaches he’d trained with, reporters, and fighters from his days competing in MMA.
“What thefuck?!” he sat up in his bed.
Beside him, there was a low, menacing growl.
“Relax, Mojo. This is my bed. You have a bed on the floor.” Keaton pointed to the overpriced luxury dog bed that his very grumpy, very pampered chihuahua had sniffed once when he unboxed it then showed zero interest in.
Mojo burrowed down farther into the blankets so as not to be disturbed and Keaton moved even closer to the edge of the bed to give him the space he demanded. How a five-pound peanut of a dog took up more room than his six foot four, two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame, he’d never understand. But somehow, he did.
Keaton’s head throbbed as he winced down at the screen to try and figure out what the big emergency was. The night before he’d gone to his cousin—who was more like a brother—Knox’s wedding and he’d had one too many. Scratch that ten too many drinks. The overconsumption was very out of character for him and also explained the reason why there was an army of woodpeckers pecking at his brain.
He hadn’t intended to drink as much as he had, but he’d been feeling sorry for himself, and he’d decided to share his troubles with a friend named Jack. Jack Daniel’s. Once he’d had his third double whiskey, he’d made the executive decision to get obliterated. The reason was simple, to numb himself. He hadn’t wanted to feel. Or think. Orfeel.
Over the past few years that he’d lived in the small town of Whisper Lake, he’d had a front-row seat to at least a dozen people falling in love. Real love. Lasting love. Soulmate love. The kind of love that inspired beautiful poetry and catchy pop songs. The kind of love he’d always thought only existed in romance novels, angsty soap operas, and cheesy rom-coms. The kind of love that he’d thought he had with a woman he’d only known for two weeks.
Being witness to so many other couples experiencing the love that had slipped through his fingers like sand in an hourglass with an expiration time, had had more of an effect on him than he’d realized. It seemed he’d been burying his emotions for years, denying just how much he wanted that love, and last night his feelings surfaced and would not be ignored.
Over the past few years, Keaton had been aware that he’d been restless, but he’d attributed the anxiety to missing the career he’d given up in a wasted effort to prove that he could settle down. But last night he realized that the empty edginess he felt had nothing to do with his former career and everything to do with the owner of the castle which just happened to be the location of his cousin Knox’s wedding, and about a dozen other weddings he’d attended over the years. She was also the woman who had starred in his X-rated dreams over the past half a decade.
Avery Stone.
Keaton had always been good at compartmentalizing his feelings. It had served him well growing up in a childhood that had its share of tragedy and rejection and continued to serve him in his adulthood. His career in MMA had meant a lot of traveling and training that could be very isolating and difficult. It meant missing birthdays, holidays, and graduations. But when he had a fight coming up, nothing else existed in his life. He was able to put emotional blinders on. The coping mechanism had been great for his undefeated record and multiple world championship titles. Not so great for his personal life.
It took a second for Keaton’s eyes to focus, but when they did, he saw the first message was just a link to a news article from CNN.
He clicked on it and read the headline.
MMA World Champion Keaton Savage to Join the Cast of the Rebooted Reality Dating Show Fairytale Love Filming in his Hometown of Whisper Lake
“What the fuck?!” he repeated his earlier sentiment.
After scrolling down, he saw photos of himself that were taken in the cage after he’d won his last belt six years ago. The article reported that sources have confirmed that he was joining the cast of the dating show.
The only connection he had to the show was that Ivy and Iris, his twenty-three-year-old nieces were interning on the show. Had they said he was going to join the cast?
“Why would they say that?” he asked Mojo, whose only response was a loud sigh indicating he did not want to be a part of this conversation.
In addition to the first article that he clicked on, he saw that there were half a dozen others. He thought gossip traveled fast in Whisper Lake, but this was on an entirely other level. News outlets in Australia, Japan, Brazil, and the UK were reporting on this false development. This “announcement” had gone global.
It had to be a slow news day because why anyone would care about this crap was beyond his understanding. Maybe, if he was still fighting, he could understand the interest. But his last match was six years ago. During his retirement, he’d kept a low profile. He’d opened up an MMA studio called Legacy in Whisper Lake and kept his head down.
Why this fake news was popping up on CNN, he had no fucking clue.
He was racking his brain, trying to come up with where this source could have gotten their information and a vague memory of a conversation with Iris, his niece who was technically his oldest cousin’s daughter but who he’d always considered a niece, came back to him.
Last night, when he was already three sheets to the wind, Iris had talked to him about the show and mentioned something about him being on it. But all he could remember was laughing at how ridiculous that was.
How in the hell had this story come out of that conversation?
He tried calling Iris several times, and she wasn’t picking up. Since she wasn’t responding, he texted her twin sister Ivy who was widely known as the more reliable/responsible one.
Keaton:Where is Iris?
The reply was instant.
Ivy:We’re at Dad and Chrissy’s for breakfast.
