Fighting for Love (2 page)

I nodded quickly, but nothing was going to take away the pain of my loss … of both of my losses. Was it karma rearing its ugly head and taunting me for making the wrong decisions in life? Could it honestly be that cruel to make me pay with such a high price? The desolation and despair I felt in my chest was like a blunt-edged knife burrowing deep into my soul, ripping me from the inside out. I honestly felt like I would die from the torment because it was so overpowering; it was as if the shadow surrounding me sucked away every ounce of happiness I had ever felt.

How can I go back to the way things were?

The answer was simple … I couldn’t.

THERE WERE TIMES IN MY
life when I’d just sit and wonder … wonder what my life would’ve been like if I’d stayed and followed my heart; if I’d done things differently. I knew I wasn’t the only person in the world who felt regret, but what I wanted to know was why did I feel so alone? I had everything I could ever want, and yet it still wasn’t enough. Would it ever be enough?

“Shelby, what are you doing here? I thought Bryan told you to take the day off? Not to mention, I figured you’d be hung over after last night’s festivities,” a voice from behind me scolded playfully.

Ah yes … last night.
My boss, Bryan Winters, did tell me to take the day off, but I hadn’t had one in so long I forgot what they felt like. After winning two National Journalism Awards and getting a promotion, I definitely deserved to celebrate. However, I think I over did it with one too many martinis and getting a little too comfortable with a guy I met at the after party.

Gazing out of my office window at the San Francisco Bay, I didn’t have to turn around to know it was Lexi Martin, my headstrong best friend and other half for the past ten years. I could see her reflection in the window, and like always, she had her bright blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail with her Nikon camera securely wrapped around her neck. She never went anywhere without taking pictures of something. There were more pictures of us in college than there were of me as a child.

With a sly expression on my face, I peered at her over my shoulder and replied, “Lex, you know I practically live here at the office. Besides, Jace fixed me one of his cure all smoothies this morning so I feel fine. I guess his studies in Nutritional Science paid off. Anyway, it takes a lot more than that to get me down.”

I really need to figure out what he puts in those drinks, I thought to myself as I turned back to the window.

Jace Harding was one of my closest friends and currently sharing a house with me now that Lexi had moved out to live with her fiancé. I thought it would be a little difficult explaining Jace to the guys I dated, but once I told them he was gay it all worked out just fine. It wasn’t like I went on many dates, anyway. Jace and I had lived together for the past nine years, and not only was he a wonderful friend, he was family; more like the protective brother I never had since I grew up an only child.

Sometimes I hated not having any siblings. Lexi had a younger sister she was close to, and for that I envied her. They always spent time together, and had a bond that I would never have. Maybe that was a reason why I focused mainly on work and not relationships; work was my significant other.

Staring at my reflection in the window, it was hard to believe that my face now appeared in every issue of the prestigious,
Physique Sports and Fitness Magazine.
In college, all I ever wanted was to work for a prominent magazine and I got my wish. The only thing about my success with
Physique
was that the articles I wrote and became well known for were under my pen name, Paige Monroe. For some reason, I didn’t think Shelby Dawson sounded marketable so I changed my name and my whole appearance in the process. It felt good being someone else for a change. Most people at the office usually called me Paige so in a way it felt like I lived a double life. Only Lexi and my boss called me by my real name.

If I was going to be someone else I might as well play the part, right?

My shoulder-length hair was no longer a dull shade of ashy brown—like it was for all of my life—instead, it was now a dark, chocolate brown with honey highlights that matched the color of my eyes. It was also longer in length, which worked great to throw it up into a messy bun on those lazy days.

I graduated from Berkeley with a journalism degree, earning numerous awards among my peers, which happened to get me noticed by the right people. Three weeks after graduating, I found myself in a swank office with a wonderful view and doing what I loved. In the process, I was able to bring Lexi along with me so that she could put her photography skills to good use for my articles.

To get my attention, Lexi tapped her fingers on my desk and cleared her throat. “Hey, no amount of spacing out is going to get you off the hook of giving me details. You never called to tell me what happened between you and Caleb last night. You know Hayley brought him specifically to the party to meet you, right?”

Wide-eyed, I quickly turned around and gasped in disbelief, “What? I had no idea.”

Lexi smiled, batting her eyelashes innocently at me, but she wasn’t fooling me; I knew that look. Her and her fiancé, Will, have tried numerous times to set me up with some of his friends, but none of them interested me. They were all arrogant and completely self-involved, and most of all they were boring. Somehow, it didn’t surprise me that Hayley wanted to try next.

Hayley was Lexi’s younger sister by only two years, and a dance choreographer with numerous music videos under her belt. Her parents made her visit me and Lexi at Berkeley in hopes that we would convince her to go to college instead of pursuing a career in dancing. Hayley had always been headstrong and determined to get what she wanted, so it was no surprise that after high school she followed her dreams against her parents’ wishes. She had guts, and I loved that about her.

Crossing my arms at the chest, I glared at Lexi and sighed. “She didn’t want to tell me because she knew I would get pissed if she brought a blind date to my party, right?”

Sheepishly, Lexi slumped down in her chair. “Yeah, kind of. She was almost positive you would like him, so she offered me two tickets to see One Direction in concert if I added her boyfriend and Caleb to the after party list. It worked out great, didn’t it? He’s cute and you both seemed to hit it off pretty well. Since you didn’t know it was a blind date, there wasn’t all of that blind date awkwardness that you hate so much.”

Yeah, that’s true, but it could’ve also been the martinis that helped.

“And you never answered my question,” she stated impatiently. “What happened between you and Caleb?” She sat at the edge of her seat, her eyes twinkling with mischief, as if I was going to tell her some big secret. Sadly, there wasn’t too much to tell.

“We just kissed, Lexi. That’s it, I promise,” I replied, taking a seat at my desk and grinning from ear to ear. “He also gave me his number.”

Caleb was a great guy; the first man in a long time that actually made me laugh and smile. I had a good time with him, flirting and talking, and once the night was up I let him kiss me goodnight. He left the ball in my hands by giving me his number, so it was only a matter of calling or not calling him. However, underneath that carefree attitude of his and boyish smile, I couldn’t get over the color of his majestic, emerald green eyes. That color haunted me because they were the same hint of green as the guy I left ten years ago. It was almost like I could never escape the memories of my past.

“Well, are you going to call him?” she asked excitedly.

When my smile faded, Lexi sighed and reached for my hand across the desk. Over the past few years I’d dated different men and I actually slept with a couple of them, thinking that the intimacy would help me move on. I was twenty-seven years old; I wanted a long lasting relationship. So far nothing had worked.

“Shels, you need to stop this. Moving on isn’t easy and I understand that, but if you don’t honestly
try
to then it’s never going to happen. Whether you call Caleb back or not, you owe it to yourself to be happy. You can’t punish yourself forever. You
are
worthy of a relationship, you know.”

Her words were the truth, but it didn’t stop my heart from wanting to hold onto the past just a little while longer. There was always that part of me that said,
Don’t give up, there is still hope.
I’d been saying that for ten years and nothing ever came of it. You could only hold out for so long before life passed you by.
Do I honestly want to waste more time?

The answer was no.

Hanging my head and closing my eyes tight, I blew out a shaky breath and finally found the courage to admit my secret, “You’re right, Lexi. I have been punishing myself by holding onto the past, but the truth is that I don’t know how to move on. I can’t seem to let go.”

Squeezing my hand, Lexi breathed a sigh of relief, and with a smile on her face, uttered happily, “Well, it’s about damn time you admitted you have issues. That’s the first step to moving on. Why don’t you call Caleb and hang out as friends? Take things slow and see where it leads. It doesn’t hurt to see what could be there.”

Getting to her feet, she adjusted the camera around her neck and ambled toward the door. “All right, now that I’ve given you a day’s worth of good advice, I have to go. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll take the day off and use that time wisely.” She stopped by the door and turned around, gazing out the window behind me with a sly grin on her face. “You know, it’s a beautiful day out there. A day at the beach would be the perfect time to relax and get to know someone without the pressure of other people around. Just saying …”

She winked at me and disappeared out the door. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what she was suggesting, so the only issue was if I was going to heed it. Staring at my computer screen, an email from Bryan popped up, but instead of opening it up I turned off my laptop. Today was supposed to be my day off, so I was going to treat it like one. If Bryan’s email was important it would be in my inbox tomorrow morning. For now, it was my time to let it go and enjoy a day at the beach.

It was going to feel good to do something different, and it was only the beginning.

THE MUSCLES IN MY THIGHS
and calves burned as I raced through another mile … and then another. Every morning before going to the gym I ran at least three to four miles per my coach’s order, but at the moment I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to go harder. The more I pushed myself the better I became. It was something I learned a long time ago. Some people had things handed to them, while others just sat on their asses not giving a shit about making themselves better. I, on the other hand, worked hard for all that I had, and not a day went by when I didn’t strive to move up another step. It was all I lived for: training and fighting.

Even during the off season I trained just like I would if I was competing. Now my off time was over, and in a couple of days I would have my first fight in the Golden State MMA Tour at the Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento.

Fuck Sacramento.

It was the one city I loved once before, but now hated. I had a worthless excuse of a father who left my mother when I was eight years old with nothing to help support me or my sister. Every day since then I’ve worked my ass off, doing various jobs for our neighbors so I could help keep us afloat until I got old enough to get a real job. As soon as I saved enough money, I packed up my mother and younger sister and left, never once looking back. Recently, my mother followed her dream and opened up her own hair salon, and my sister was in her third year of college studying Marine Biology.

My mother refused to come to my fights because she said it wasn’t intended for a mother to have to watch someone else try to hurt her son, but my sister was a different story. She was my biggest fan and had promised to come to a couple of my fights this month since the tour was going to be in California. The only thing I hated about her being there was the worthless, douche bag fighters that always tried to hit on her when I turned my back. It was a pain in the fucking ass.