All of Me by Tiffany Patterson

Chapter 24

Gabe

“Lena,” I called right before my office door slammed. I waited for a beat, but she didn’t return.

I glared at Preston.

“He’s renting a house about an hour forty-five minutes outside of Harlington,” Preston said, unfazed by my anger. “We need to pay him a visit.”

I looked once again at the door Lena just vacated. I hated the lingering doubt in her eyes, but Preston was right. It took us a while to track down Eli’s address. We needed to speak with him in person since he was still dodging our calls.

And the address he initially gave us when he first moved to Harlington turned up a dead end. The owner of the home said an Eli Gatlin never lived there.

“I’ll drive.” I grabbed my car keys from my desk drawer.

Less than an hour after Preston barged into my office, we pulled up in front of the small, one-story home. I noted the white sedan in the driveway, which I knew wasn’t Eli’s.

“You sure this is the right place?” I asked.

Preston double checked his phone. “This is it.”

I nodded. “Let’s go.” After months of this bullshit, I was ready to find out what the hell Eli had going on. Between his history with betting, entering underground fights, and now, missing practice, he was skating on thin ice.

“I can’t believe he’s still pulling this shit even after that exhibition fight.”

I nodded at the ire I heard in Preston’s voice.

“Look,” I said, jutting my head toward the house. There was movement from behind a curtain.

Preston and I hopped out of my car at the same time. We strolled up the driveway, and I was the first to knock. I could hear movement behind the door.

“Who is it?” a female voice questioned.

“Gabriel Townsend and Preston Scott from No Sweat.”

The lock unlatched, and slowly, the door opened. A petite woman with dark brown eyes and a suspicious crease in her forehead stared at the two of us. “Can I help you?”

“We’re looking for Eli Gatlin,” Preston answered. “Is he here?”

She glanced between the two of us before shaking her head. “There’s no one here by that name.”

It was bullshit.

“This is twenty-one Glenn Dale Court, isn’t it?” I asked, already knowing.

“Maybe you wrote down the wrong address,” she said, trying to close the door in our faces.

“We don’t give a damn if you’re shacking up with Eli or whatever,” Preston said, his patience waning.

“We need to speak with him. He hasn’t shown up for training in weeks,” I added. “Is he here or not?”

“I already told you my answer.” She went to close the door in our faces again, but the roaring engine of Eli’s Thunderbird caught all three of our attention.

He pulled up directly behind my Camaro and hopped out of the car, a look of surprise on his face.

“What are you doing here?”

“That’s what you want to ask right now?” I demanded. “What the fuck is wrong with you that you keep throwing your career away?” I was pissed and ready to beat the hell out of him from months of pent-up frustration.

“You two don’t need to be here,” he said, trying to bulldoze past us to get inside.

“Fuck that,” Preston insisted, grabbing Eli by his shirt. “We put our necks on the line for you, and you keep fucking up.”

“I’m not a fuck up,” Eli countered.

“Then why are you acting like one?” I asked.

His gaze swung between the two of us, an uncertainty filling his eyes. Finally, he looked back at the woman who remained at the door.

“You should tell them the truth,” she said.

“Someone needs to start talking,” I insisted.

“Look, if you got a kid we don’t know about or whatever …” Preston said.

“I’m not anyone’s father,” Eli said sharply.

“Then what is it?” I demanded.

Sighing, Eli pushed a hand through his hair. His shoulders sagged as he stepped through the door. “Follow me.”

I gave Preston a look before entering the house to follow Eli. The living room was essentially bare save for an old recliner in the corner, a wooden coffee table, and a television that sat on the floor.

Eli went through the living room and turned down the hallway. I followed, and as soon as I entered the hall, a medicinal smell hit me. It immediately brought back memories of my mother’s illness when nursing staff and healthcare workers were in and out of the house.

My mother’s one request was to die at home, so my father had their room outfitted for all of her medical needs. I recalled the sound of beeping monitors that stood beside her bed.

Eli stopped at the closed door on the left. “Is she asleep?”

I turned to see the woman from the front door had followed us. She nodded.

Eli carefully pushed the door open, and the medicinal smell increased. At the center of the room sat a low-sitting bed. On the far side stood a heart rate monitor and some sort of IV drip. Most important, though, was that in the middle of the bed, an older woman.

She looked small in the center of the bed, even though it wasn’t that big. She was propped up on pillows.

“This is my mother,” Eli said in a voice just above a whisper.

I glanced back at Preston before turning back to Eli.

“She had a massive stroke last year.” He glanced down at her in the way a son stares at his ailing mother. The way I imagined my twelve-year-old self, peering down at my mother as I sat at her bedside while she slept.

“Can we take this to the living room so she can sleep?” he asked.

I nodded, and we went back out the way we came.

“I’ll stay with her,” the woman who’d answered the door told Eli.

Eli ran a hand over the back of his head and neck, blowing out a heavy breath, once we reached the living room. He looked tired and a lot older than his twenty-three years of age.

“She was doing okay with her rehab, but I couldn’t afford to keep taking her and the medications she needs,” he explained. “She’s had some setbacks in the last few months. While I was in New York, she fell.” He shook his head. “She didn’t break anything, but she was badly bruised. They had to keep her in the hospital for a couple of days.”

I pushed out a harsh breath. “That’s why you entered the underground fight.”

He nodded. “The stroke almost took her out. It happened when I was in Thailand.”

“Which was why you left abruptly,” I concluded.

“She wasn’t going to make it. All the doctors told me I should count her out, but that ain’t my mom. She’s a fighter.” He stopped to swallow. “She survived, but her recovery has been slow and expensive.”

It all started to make sense. Eli needed money for his mother’s care. Which I said out loud.

He nodded. “The insurance she had was bullshit. A new fucking bill shows up every other day. The cost of the medicines she’s on now, the rehab, all of it keeps mounting.”

“There’s no one else that can help?” Preston asked.

Eli shook his head. “It was just mom and me coming up. She worked at a nursing home my whole life. She made me promise not to put her in one of those places.” He looked between the two of us. “I’m a lot of things, but I keep my word when it comes to her. I can’t afford all of the care she needs, but I was able to find Sunny.”

He jutted his head toward the hall, and I assumed he meant the woman who’d answered the door.

“She’s a CNA, but she’s also in nursing school. She lets me pay her under the table to be here when I can’t. I got a job at a moving company, not too far from here. They pay in cash, but the job hours are sporadic.”

“Which is why you’ve missed practice,” I said.

He shrugged. “And I had to get my money from that fight. Not for me, but …”

“We get it,” Preston said, his voice and demeanor noticeably less angry than when we first arrived.

“What about those two fights you lost as an amateur?” I asked, still confused since they’d happened before his mother’s stroke. “You lost those on purpose.”

“Coach Wolcott came to me months before that first fight,” Eli started. “He knew I was working hard to get into the league and working nights to save money. I always wanted to get to a place where I could retire my mother. She had high blood pressure and often fainted at work. Her job was killing her.

“Coach said if I threw a couple of fights, he’d throw some money my way. I knew the shit was wrong, but I wanted the money.”

I sighed, feeling relieved to find out Eli’s secret. It dawned on me to ask him why the hell he hadn’t confided in us sooner, but I knew the answer. Pride.

Eli, much like Preston, myself, and most other men in our sport, was proud. Sometimes too proud to ask for help.

“Look, I know this isn’t what you all expected when I signed with you. But she deserves to be taken care of.”

I held up my hand. “You don’t have to explain shit.”

“We take mothers very seriously,” Preston added.

“My mother was a nurse,” I said, ignoring the lump in my throat. “I still know a few of her nurse friends who are retired and probably can help with your mom while you train.”

Eli shook his head. “I’m already stretched too thin. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay them.”

I braced his shoulder. “You won’t have to. We’ve got you covered.”

Preston nodded in agreement.

“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“You didn’t ask,” Preston said. “And it’s not up for debate. We’ll see what we can do about getting those sponsors to pay out upfront. Your performance in the exhibition should give us some leeway to negotiate.”

“For real?” Eli’s eyebrows lifted. “You still think so?”

I nodded.

His shoulders sagged in relief.

“But,” I added, “you have to quit the underground fights.”

Eli’s eyes got big.

“It’s not up for debate,” Preston warned. “Those fights could cost you your career. And ours.”

He nodded.

“Let us know right now if you’re hiding anything else,” I insisted.

“We can’t help you if you keep shit from us,” Preston told him.

“I know. I didn’t know who to trust. My last coach and manager, he set me up with …” He shook his head.

I frowned, wishing I could put my foot through Roger Wolcott’s ass for taking advantage of a scared kid like he had. If the bastard weren’t dead, I would’ve killed him myself.

“We’ll square it with Coach Branson,” I said. “I’ll have those nurses contact you by morning.”

“I don’t know how to thank you.” He still looked tired but less stressed than when we began this conversation.

“You thank us by showing up and performing,” Preston said.

“I will.”

We talked with Eli for a while longer. Sunny came up the hall and formally introduced herself. Eventually, his mother woke up, and we introduced ourselves. Her words were difficult to understand, but the love she had for her son shined in her copper eyes that Eli inherited from her.

Watching as Eli fed his mother lunch, I vowed to get him everything he needed to be successful in his career and to be able to take care of her.

“Your gut isn’t full of shit after all,” Preston said in my car about forty-five minutes after we first arrived.

“About time you paid my gut some respect.”

He sniffed. “I’ve got a few calls to make back at the office.”

I had more work to do also, but at the forefront of my mind was getting ahold of Lena. I still didn’t like the way she stormed out of my office earlier.