Page 15 of The Clinch
To the version of me that once existed in public, under lights, with expectations attached.
The life I ran from.
The past I thought I’d escaped.
It’s all over the internet now.
Permanent.
Inescapable.
The club entrance is chaos—phones raised, voices shouting over one another.
“Lionheart! Who’s the girl?”
“Was that Travis Drake?”
“Are you two together?”
Jessica cuts through the noise like a blade. “No comment. Mr. Carver has nothing to say at this time.”
We pile into Nate’s SUV, all six of us wedged together in tense silence as it pulls away from the curb.
I angle myself toward the glass and stay there. My arm still aches where Travis grabbed me. Leo sits beside me. Too close. I can feel the heat radiating off him. Smell the copper tang on his knuckles.
Travis’s blood.
Leo just destroyed his career for me. A woman he barely knows. A woman whose birth name he didn’t know until five minutes ago.
Eden will pay for it too, whether she ever says it out loud or not.
The weight of that sits heavy in my chest.
Jessica’s phone buzzes nonstop. She scrolls, eyes flicking between screens.
“How bad?” Leo asks.
“Bad,” Jessica says flatly. “Every major outlet picked it up within minutes. TMZ’s already runningBoxing Champ in Bar Brawl. Someone identified Drake as a former MMA fighter. They’re digging.”
“Let them,” Leo mutters.
“Oh, they will,” Jessica snaps. “And when they pull the footage where he’s calling her his wife—” She stops, eyes lifting to me. “And calling you Lillian.”
Her words cut to the bone.
“I need your previous legal name,” she says, calm but unyielding.
“Lillian Richardson,” I barely manage. “We’re divorced. Legally. He just... doesn’t accept it.”
Eden swears under her breath and takes my hand, squeezing hard.
Jessica is already typing. “Okay. Controlling ex. You left. You filed. You rebuilt. He shows up uninvited and gets aggressive.” She glances at Leo. “You step in to stop it. That plays.”
“I wasn’t playing anything,” Leo says sharply. “He put his hands on her.”
“I know.” Jessica doesn’t look up. Her tone softens, just a notch. “But the public doesn’t. Right now all they see is you punching a man on camera. We need to get ahead of this before it turns into ‘violent athlete loses control.’”
The car pulls up to a luxury high-rise in Williamsburg. We move through the lobby in silence. Up the elevator. Into Leo’s apartment.
