Fight for Her #4: MMA New Adult Contemporary Romantic Suspense (3 page)

The driver gets out and opens Jo’s door. “Your fight with Viper isn’t even scheduled yet,” she says. “So you have plenty of time to train.”

I slide along the seat and get out. I’m not sure I’ll even do the fight, but I go along. “Is Colt’s team going to manage this? Or Brazen?”

“Colt didn’t say. You’ll need more than just Brazen, though. This isn’t small time anymore.” She leads us into the gym. “You’ll need a media coordinator. Possibly your own medic. If you and Colt end up fighting on the same nights, Doc won’t be able to go both places.”

Even more to think about. I pull open the door to Buster’s and let Jo in ahead of me.

I should probably get this out there. “I don’t know if I’m even going to fight,” I say.

“You still thinking of taking the security job in her building?” Jo asks.

The lemon smell of Buster’s Gym is familiar and comforting. No one’s in the front room.

“I don’t know if I still can. Maddie said she was going to block my messages other than Thursdays, when I can talk to Lily.”

Jo stops and turns around. “She can do that? Hold you to Thursdays?”

“It’s part of our agreement. I signed it a long time ago.”

Jo frowns. “I think you should go train in New York. Stay close.”

“Maddie won’t like that.”

“Why am I arguing the side that you should be on?” She tilts her head at me. Jo is shorter than me, but right now I feel intimidated by her gaze. She’s stronger than I am, mentally. I can see it. Nothing gets to her.

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s so complicated.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” she says. “Come on. Get changed. Punching something always makes me feel better.”

“That’s why we do what we do, isn’t it?” I head toward the men’s dressing room.

“It is,” she says softly. “It really is.”

Colt is inside the changing room, stuffing a bag inside a locker.

“Hey,” he says. “Didn’t go well with Maddie, I take it.”

I jerk open a metal door to a locker. “Nope.”

“Brazen’s given me clearance to handle the details with Viper. You in or not?” Colt sits on a bench that runs alongside the row of gray metal lockers.

“Maddie won’t even talk to me. I guess there’s no reason to quit the fight until I know for sure.” I pull a pair of fight shorts from my bag, but instead of changing, I sit on the other end of the bench. “Shit.”

“You think if you stop the fight, Maddie will be all right?”

“She won’t even talk to me. Blocked her phone. Someone has got to be threatening her.”

“I can call Jax.”

“No. I just need to find Lani, or whoever it is. Shut them down. Shut this whole thing down.”

“I can put off Viper’s team on scheduling the fight. There’s no rush on this.” Colt stands up. “Give it a few days. See if Maddie comes around.”

“That’s what Jo said.”

“Jo knows,” Colt says. “Now suit up and come hit something.”

“Jo said that too.”

Colt laughs. “Then what the hell are you doing in here talking to me?”

He heads out.

My suitcase doesn’t fit in a locker, so I shove anything valuable into the space and leave the bag itself in a corner. Brazen still has all the gear, but I can borrow some gloves. Punching something does sound good.

The banging of the weights and blur of a speed bag are calming, like I’m home. I head to the back room, where Jo and Sammy are sparring in the cage. More of Jo’s girls are on a mat, propped in a plank position.

Cam is there. I haven’t talked to her since that day on the bus when she showed me the video that went viral. I never thanked her for making that compilation of all my wins. A big reason I got the fight in Vegas was due to her work.

I head over to them. Killjoy is standing near them, holding a stopwatch. “Ninety more seconds, and no whining,” he says.

One girl’s face is beet red, vivid against her white-blonde hair.

Cam has her chin tucked down, but her arms are shaking. She keeps dipping down and then straightening again.

I drop next to her in a plank.

“Awesome,” Killjoy says. “Nobody gets to quit until Power Play does.”

A chorus of groans comes from the girls.

“Don’t make me add thirty seconds for whining.”

“Shift your elbows out a little,” I say. “It’ll give you a new set of muscles to help out.”

Cam spreads her arms and nods.

“I wanted to thank you for that video. I haven’t seen you.”

She turns her head. Bits of her curly mop have come out around her forehead. Her face is also bright from the effort of holding the plank. “You’re welcome,” she says.

Killjoy’s voice is a boom as he says, “Flirting gets you an extra thirty seconds.”

Cam looks back down at the mat.

“You’re a real prince, you know that, Killjoy?” I say up at him.

“Thirty more,” he fires back.

“Shut up!” the blonde says.

I stifle a laugh.

Another girl on the other end of the mat collapses.

“Get back in there!” Killjoy shouts.

She kneels for a second, shaking out her arms, then returns to her plank.

Killjoy walks down to her, away from us.

“You’re the reason I got the Vegas fight,” I say quietly. “I owe you one.”

Cam turns her head just slightly. “No, you earned that fight. I just made sure people noticed.”

I watch her a minute, her arms trembling again. She shifts positions, in pain but determined to keep it. I admire her tenacity.

The blonde girl falls, shakes, and gets back in it before Killjoy can storm over.

“I hear you might turn down the fight with Viper,” she whispers.

“I might.”

“Why?”

I’m not sure how to answer that. “Just might be time to move on. Lots of people think it’s time for me to do something more respectable.”

“Nobody here wants that,” Cam says. “Sounds like you’re listening to the wrong people.”

“They’re people who matter,” I say.

Cam looks directly at me. “Seems to me that anybody who cares about you would want to see you do what you’re good at. What you love.”

I drop to the mat and roll on my back. I know Cam is right, but Maddie is important too.

“What sort of kindergarten planking was that?” Killjoy shouts. “I’ve got a pet gerbil who can plank longer than you.”

The girls all collapse out of the plank.

“Guess I’m washed up,” I say and jump to my feet. “I’ll leave you to train these new recruits to become the fighting machines I’ll never be.” I pat him on the shoulder.

Before he can say anything else, I head to the weight room. I don’t want to be around all the people I’m going to disappoint if I don’t fight.

And I need to decide what I want. If it’s the league spot, the thing I’ve worked for all my life.

Or if it’s Maddie and how I want to spend the rest of it.

Chapter 6: Maddie
 

The messages have stopped.

It’s been four days since I got back to New York from Vegas. Three days since Parker showed up at the hotel and I made him leave.

Lily’s back at school. I’ve had to return to work. Delores flat refuses to let me install a security system at home. I’ve considered doing it anyway. It’s not like she’ll rip it out of the wall. But since Parker left, I’ve heard nothing. They must know I’ve done what I was told to do.

Tonight is Thursday, so Parker will get to talk to Lily. I plan to let her do the dialing and the talking. I won’t even get on the line. I’ve gone so far as to pick up one of those cheap cell phones you buy minutes for. That way the call can’t be traced to me if anyone is watching Parker. I’ll text him on it first so he’ll know it’s her.

I avoid the MMA sites. I don’t want to know what he’s doing. But I ran into Amanda’s father, Barry, at the grocery store yesterday and he asked if Parker had set a date for the big challenge match for the league.

I told him I didn’t know. But his question probably means Parker’s career is still going forward. If he wins, he’ll be fighting all the time, and it will be harder not to notice him.

But I will try.

Lily is so excited at dinner that she barely eats. Every few minutes, she says, “Can I call him now?”

I’ve made up excuses the other days as to why she shouldn’t call. He’s working. Or on an airplane. It hasn’t been easy.

“Take your plate to the sink,” Delores tells Lily. When she’s gone, she says to me, “Are you ever going to explain what happened in Vegas?”

I shake my head. “It just didn’t work out. That’s all.”

Delores sets her napkin on the table. “Well, I won’t say I’m not relieved. But you sure are moping about.”

Lily comes back. “Now? Now? Is it time yet?”

I push back from the table. “Yes, sugar pea. Let me get your special Lily phone.”

I showed her the phone yesterday when she threatened to have a meltdown over calling Parker. The burner phone is pink, which got her excited.

I send a quick text to Parker from it, asking if he’s ready to talk to Lily. I explain that this is her number.

He replies that yes, he’s home.

I hand the phone to Lily. “He’s ready,” I say.

But when she takes the phone in her hand, she frowns. “There’s no video button,” she says.

Crap, I didn’t think of that. “Just talk to him today, okay?”

Her face crumples into disappointment, but she says, “Okay.”

“I made a daddy button,” I say. “Just push the tic-tac-toe.” I show her the pound sign. “And then number one.”

She pushes the combination. “It’s ringing!” she says.

After a second, she says, “HI, DADDY!” like she needs to shout it all the way to LA.

I put my finger to my lips and then I walk away. I don’t even want to hear the conversation. Everything related to Parker is painful right now. It’s all too raw and fresh.

My room is quiet and dark. I sit on the bed to wait out the end of the call. Lily’s voice still echoes through the house, but it’s too far to make out the words.

My makeup vanity glows white in the low light from the hall. I remember turning around in front of it with the sponge to take the clown paint off Parker. When he put his hands on me. When everything started again.

My body flushes with the memory of him. It’s not the old feelings anymore, the ones from when we were young. But all the last weeks. In this bed that weekend he stayed over. In his hotel. In the window in Vegas. In the shower, our last time.

Just acknowledging that, the finality of it, threatens to tear me in two. I bite hard on my lip, refusing to cry. I can’t help what happened, that people hate him, that he’s involved with a dangerous crowd. It’s not just me I have to think about. It’s Lily.

I hug myself, wrapping my arms across my belly. For the first time I think about another baby, a brother or sister for Lily. She’s already four. There will be such a gap soon that it won’t even be like having a sibling. I could have had that. If Parker and I had gotten married in Vegas, I could have had another baby whenever I wanted.

But I can’t. Not with everything that is happening.

Grief at the situation courses through me. It isn’t fair. Not right. I should never have gotten mixed up with him when we were young. None of this would have happened.

But then I wouldn’t have Lily either.

Her small silhouette appears in the doorway. “Daddy wants to talk to you,” she says.

“Tell him I don’t feel well,” I say and lie down on the bed. “I can’t do it right now.”

Lily comes into the room. “Mama is sick,” she says into the phone.

She’s right beside me now, and I can hear Parker’s low voice in the receiver. He’s so close. Close enough that I could just take the phone and say, “Come back. I didn’t mean it.”

But I don’t. I won’t. I can’t.

“Yes, Daddy,” Lily says. “Come to Newwork, okay? Bye.”

She holds the phone in front of her face, making it glow. “I don’t know how to turn it off,” she says.

“You always know those things,” I say.

“Is it the green one?”

“Give it to me,” I say.

I take the phone. The call is still ticking away the seconds. Parker’s still on the other end, waiting for her to hang up. I could talk to him. It would be so easy. Just lift the phone and speak. “It’s this button,” I say and show her the red one that says “Talk.”

And I punch it.

The seconds stop rolling and the screen fades to black.

Lily crawls up on the bed beside me. “I’m sorry you hurt,” she says. She curls up on my chest. “You want me to sing you a song?”

“That would be nice,” I say.

And she does. “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” I am soothed. I am keeping her safe. And that’s what I will always have to do.

Chapter 7: Parker
 

The girls don’t think I’m listening from the cage.

Sammy and Cam sit together on the bench, watching me spar with Jo’s brother, Hudson. Hudson has a long way to go in training, and he’s bent over, trying to breathe. I’ve accidentally knocked the wind out of him. Hudson needs to toughen up.

The girls keep talking. They must think I can’t hear up here.

“I think he’s better,” Cam says to Sammy, her voice low. “He’s not hitting the bags like he wants to kill them anymore.” She’s talking about me.

“Agreed. He lost total focus there for a while,” Sammy says.

I don’t look at them. And they’re wrong. I’m not any better. I’m just getting good at not showing it. It’s been two weeks since Vegas. Two phone calls to Lily where Maddie refuses to talk to me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be better.

Cam has taken to showing up whenever I’m at the gym. I don’t know how to put her off. Everybody seems to think we’ll get together, but I don’t see it. I’ll probably be hung up on Maddie for the rest of my damn life.

“You all right?” I ask Hudson.

He stands up. “Yeah.”

“Let’s just do targets.” I head over to the wall of the cage and pick up a pair of punching pads.

Sammy and Cam go quiet when I get close. Cam smiles up at me, hopeful. I decide it’s best to not even acknowledge her.

Nobody can really help the situation now. Lani has disappeared completely. Colt asked me again if I wanted Jax to step in, but I said no. She’ll crawl out of the woodwork like the rat she is, eventually. I can’t believe how she’s changed since we were kids. Maybe I just never saw it.