And then he reached out, encompassing her forearm with his palm. “I need you—” He swallowed and faltered. “I need you in my corner, Caitlyn. I don’t have anyone else.”
Wide-eyed, she covered his strong fingers with hers. Reassuringly, she squeezed, reveling in the contact as warmth flooded the places where their skin touched. She was comforting him in what was clearly a difficult conversation for them both.
He needed her. More important, he needed her to validate his choices, no matter how crazy they seemed.
A little awed by the realization, she nodded because speaking wasn’t an option as he rested his forehead on hers, whispering his gratitude. She closed her eyes against the intimacy of the thank-you, feeling as if she’d just fought an exhausting battle, only to look up and see the opposing general’s second flank swarming the battlefield.
“I’ll take you to Falco,” she promised, her voice croaking, and wished she only meant she would take him to the building housing the empire he’d founded called Falco Fight Club. But she suspected she would really be taking him back to his former self, when he was Falco, a champion fighter who regularly took blows to the head.
God help her for enabling this lunacy.
* * *
Caitlyn insisted on driving to Falco, and Antonio humored her only because his pounding head had blurred his vision. Slightly. Not enough to give the doctor’s ridiculous CT-scan idea any credence. He’d had plenty of brain scans in the past and the final one had ended his career.
He’d given up trying to understand why he could recall the last CT scan he’d endured, but couldn’t remember the woman he’d been married to for—what? Four or five years? He didn’t even know. He couldn’t even fully picture her face, just bits of it in an insane collage.
They picked up Antonio’s prescription on the way, but he waited to take a pill since the warning said the medication might make him drowsy. He definitely wanted to be alert for this first trip to his place of business.
The building came into view and Caitlyn pointed at it, saying Antonio had bought the lot and built Falco from the ground up, approving the architect’s plans, surveying the drywall as it went up and hand selecting the equipment inside.
He waited for some sense of recognition. Pushed for it with widened eyes and a mostly empty mind. But the simple glass and brick looked like hundreds of other buildings in Los Angeles.
Falco Fight Club. The red-and-black letters marched across the brick, signifying this as the headquarters for the global MMA promotional company Antonio had founded. Under the name, a replica of the falcon tattoo on Antonio’s pectoral had apparently been worked in as Falco’s logo.
He briefly touched the ink under his shirt. This was part of his past, and likely his future as well, though he knew nothing about the business side of Falco. Nor did he have a driving desire to reclaim the helm...not yet.
He was here for what happened inside the ring.
Grimly, he climbed from the Range Rover Caitlyn drove more carefully than a ninety-year-old priest, and hesitated, suddenly fearful at crossing the threshold. What if he climbed into the ring and none of his memories came back? What if Caitlyn was right and additional trauma to his head actually caused more problems? He was a father now; he had other people to think about besides himself.
Caitlyn’s presence wrapped around him before she slipped her smooth hand into his. It felt oddly...right to have her by his side as he faced down his past. She didn’t say a word but stood with him as he surveyed the entrance, silently offering her unconditional support, even though she’d been adamantly against him fighting.
Somehow, that made his unsettling confusion acceptable. No matter what happened inside Falco Fight Club, he’d found his old life, and after a year of praying for it, he’d count his blessings.
The falcon emblem on his chest mirrored the one on the bricks in more ways than one—both decorated a shell housing the soul of Antonio Cavallari, and somewhere inside lay the answers he sought. He wouldn’t give up until he had reclaimed all of his pieces.
“Is the company still in operation?” he asked, wishing he’d unbent from his bad mood enough to ask the question in the car. But his headache had grown worse as the day wore on, and he was weary of dealing with pain and questions and the blankness inside his head.
She nodded. “I get monthly reports from the interim CEO, Thomas Warren. He’s been running it in your stead, but I have no idea if he’s doing a good job or not. I was hoping you’d want to take over at some point, but I think everyone would understand if you didn’t do so right away.”