Her eyes widened.

“You think I’m not dying inside right now?”

Amery stepped between them. “Molly, get back to work.” Then she looked at Knox. “My office.”

She scooted behind her desk and pointed to the chair opposite it.

But Knox ignored her and placed his palms on her desk. “Ronin wasn’t bullshitting me through voice mail? She’s gone to Japan?”

“Yes. And sit down.”

He dragged the chair closer. “Talk.”

“You first. What happened?”

“After Ronin made her Shihan? I needed time alone to think things through. I came back into town today, ready to deal with the demotion, ready to do whatever it took to keep her in my life. And I discover she’s moved out of her leased penthouse? None of this was even on my radar, Amery.”

“It wasn’t on ours either.” She tapped her fingers on the desk. “I suspected the reason you two always fought is because you were fighting your attraction for each other. I’m guessing you’re good for each other. I’m also guessing it’s never been casual.”

He shook his head.

“Ronin is being pulled in ten different directions. I told him not to implement changes all at one time, so I’m just glad he’s not doing it all himself and he’s passed some of the duties on to you.”

“You mean that he demoted me?”

Now Amery looked confused. “He swapped titles, but your responsibilities as dojo GM didn’t change. Ronin said you didn’t give him an answer about taking over more of the Black and Blue Promotions duties while you’re studying for your next belt-level test.”

“Whoa.” He made the time-out sign. “What are you talking about?”

Amery slammed her hands on the desk. “I fucking knew it! I told Ronin not to lay all of this on you at once! I warned him after he dropped the news about the Shihan thing first that you’d be in shock and would zone out and not hear a goddamn word he said about anything else.”

“How’d you know?”

“It happens to everyone. Hell, it happened to him, and he’s conveniently forgotten that.”

“So getting shitfaced immediately after that because I believed my career with the dojo was over . . . was premature?”

“That’s what happened?”

He sighed. “Yeah. I know Shiori came over. I don’t know what the fuck I said.”

“Knox. That sucks.”

“Have you talked to her?”

She shook her head. “No one has. We’ve all tried to call her, and she hasn’t responded. I did reach out to Tammy, their mother, and she said Shiori was in Tokyo.”

“I stopped by her place. She moved out, sounds like the night she came to see me.” Knox laced his hands on top of his head and closed his eyes. “So yeah, I’m thinking it was something I did or said. How the fuck do I fix this, Amery?”

“What are you willing to do to fix it?”

“Anything. Everything.” Images of Shiori flashed behind his lids. “I want her for the long haul.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Knox opened his eyes and frowned at her. “I’m lost.”

“Yes, you are. You don’t know what you said that might’ve chased her away. Words can hurt, but words can heal too.”

“You sure?”

Amery shrugged. “Relatively. Unless you told her something like she’s a spoiled rich bitch you were only fucking because you were bored and you felt sorry for her since she’s ugly, fat, uncoordinated, not to mention she’s a failure in the sack, and you’d rather slit your own throat than spend another second with her.”

His jaw dropped.

“Those kinds of words can’t be taken back. But I doubt you said those to her, even under the influence, because you love her. And she loves you.”

He let that statement lie. Amery didn’t need to know Shiori hadn’t told him that she loved him yet.

“The last big fight that Ronin and I had before we were married, I stormed out because he was acting like a selfish dick. Ronin’s the man who swore he’d never chase after me, but he did. A few hours later he was at my door, apologizing, telling me right and wrong could be sorted out as long as we did it together. That’s stuck with me. Sometimes it’s not the words that carry the most weight but the action behind those words.”

The image of Shiori dropping to her knees and kissing his feet in the club jumped into the forefront of his mind. She’d tracked him down and had shown humility in her apology. He needed to do the same.