Page 34 of Bedding The Best Man (Bedding the Bachelors)

“Yo! Yo! Where’s your head today, man?”

“Sorry.” Gabe touched gloves with his sparring partner, whose head he’d nearly taken off. “My bad, man. I lost my cool.”

The other guy shrugged it off, but Sam wasn’t willing to let it go so easily.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked, pulling Gabe aside.

Gabe didn’t know how to answer, and took his time removing his mouth guard. He focused his eyes on his gloves, until Sam slapped him hands down.

“Don’t avoid me, kid. Answer me. What’s the matter? I can’t have you coming to my gym and giving my guys brain damage, no matter how far back we go.”

“I’m sorry,” he muttered. What was it about Sam that made him feel like a little kid all over again? Some scared punk off the street.

“Sorry only goes so far.” He opened the door to his office, ushering Gabe inside. “Talk to me.”

Gabe sat down. It had been a mistake coming here, sparring, when he had so much going on inside him. A workout was one thing. A heavy bag couldn’t be hurt. He should have left it there, punched out his feelings and let them go. No, he’d decided to spar, instead.

“What’s happening in your head?”

Instead of a direct answer, Gabe asked a question of his own. “Why did you take me in?”

“What?”

“Why me? Why didn’t you let me go into the system?”

“It was what I did,” Sam said. “What I still do. Taking kids with anger inside them, and putting that anger to good use. Teaching them how to deal with it. It’s what somebody taught me, a long time ago. What do they call it? Paying it forward?” He snorted sarcastically.

“I think I’m still that kid sometimes,” Gabe muttered. “The one you pulled out of the system.”

“We’re all still that kid,” Sam said. He jerked a thumb at his Olympic medal. “You think I don’t look at that thing every single day and ask myself how a kid from the streets ended up on the podium, listening to his country’s anthem being played? You think I don’t relive that moment every time? And most of the time I think to myself,Nobody would have seen it coming. Nobody was in my corner except for my trainer. No family, nothing but a bunch of shaking heads and shaking fingers in my face. That was it. And I still think about that, all these years later. What would they think of me, now?”

“You don’t seem like you think you’re that kid,” Gabe pointed out.

“Most of the time, neither do you. Who started his own business from scratch? Who rubs elbows with billionaires now? Eating caviar and whatever fancy shit you people eat when you get together? A long way from standing in front of a judge, wouldn’t you say?”

“A long way,” he agreed. “I wish I felt that way now, is all.”

“That’s something you’ve gotta get right in your head. Because let me tell you something.” Sam leaned forward, looking Gabe in the eye. “I’m no poet, I don’t do philosophy, but I know that it doesn’t matter how much money you make. If you don’t feel like you’re worth it, it’ll never be enough. Why else do you think so many people get it all, then lose it all? Because they don’t feel like they deserve it.”

Sam’s words rocked Gabe to his core.

“I don’t want to lose what I have,” he said. And even as he said the words, he knew what he really meant. Not his job. Not his money.

Brianne. He didn’t want to lose Brianne.

“You shouldn’t. You’ve worked too damn hard for it.”

“I slept with my best friend’s fiancée.” He hadn’t intended to blurt it out, or to tell Sam at all. It just came out.

“Too much information, kid.” Sam held his hands up.

“You wanted to know what’s up with me, that’s it. A big part of it, anyway.”

Sam sighed, and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Where’s your best friend in all this?”

“He ran off. On their wedding day.”

“Then I guess they’re not engaged anymore are they?”

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