Tapout (The Submission Fighter Book 3) (6 page)

Alice took out her cell phone once more and placed her first call to Jeffrey to instruct him that she was ready to be picked up. Then, she searched her messages from Micah. Nothing.

When he had left her that morning to head off for his twelve hours of grueling gym time, he had seemed concerned for her, almost upset that she would put herself through impossible leads and a revisiting of her attack. He had urged her not to go, to let the case grow cold, at least for her emotional sake. But she had promised that she would be alright, that this would be routine and would only take a small amount of time. She swore to call when she was done.

Alice had hoped that when she had not called him in over three hours that he would show some concern, but her phone was blank. Nothing from Micah whatsoever. She called him instead, figuring that the message would go straight to voicemail, considering he was supposed to be at the lap pool. When she heard his voice, cool as ice, answer, she stumbled, “It’s me.”

“What’s wrong?” He whispered into the receiver, yet she could hear the soft, elevator style music in the background. It was a far cry from the booming bass she was used to hearing whenever she caught him at the gym. A woman’s voice laughed heartily near to wherever he was.

Alice began to get goose pimples. Something was not right. “Where are you?” she asked, not bothering to be polite about it.

“I’m out to brunch with a business associate.” The sound of the woman laughed again, muddling the end of Micah’s explanation. “
C
an I call you back in a couple of hours or later this afternoon? I’m really busy.”

He didn’t wait for Alice to give consent. Instead, she heard the click of her phone call as it ended and the complete silence from the other side.

Chapter 6: Commitment to Your Craft

Lucy Hamlin sat across the table from Micah. Her boisterous, confident laugh floated throughout the nearly empty restaurant, as she playfully touched Chris’s leg. He had just finished praising her for all the good things she had done for his friend during his career. Frankly, she couldn’t remember a thing about the client he was speaking of, but she still wanted to come off as humble as she was confident. Plus, it never hurt to flirt a bit with a potential client’s head coach. She knew that they pulled all the strings.

From the corner of her eye, she watched Micah, studying him as he turned his back to answer his cell phone. He was as handsome as she had thought—the perfect fighting specimen. If she wasn’t so interested in her commission and fees, she would not mind pursuing something with him herself.

But she knew better. Her own beauty had gotten her in trouble before. Long-lined, curvy figure, with perky breasts, in her earlier days as a rookie agent, she had allowed herself to get wrapped up in men like Micah. It only backfired, leaving her with less money and some broken hearts. Instead, she turned cold. While she still used her figure to get what she wanted, she was there for one thing, and one thing only: business—the business of Micah Anderson.

Lucy had made her fortune and her reputation on managing the careers of athletes just like Micah: young, rebellious, and headstrong to a fault. What she saw in the man listening quietly to the woman on the other end of his phone call was not the impassable, off putting man that he appeared or even pretended to be. Instead, she saw a man that she could mold to her own will—a star with the potential to do great and be great under her tutelage and efforts. And when she found that rare, almost unobtainable type of athlete, she couldn’t help but watch as the dollar signs flashed before her eyes.

In fact, she quickly learned that this type of man was most likely to be found in specialized fighters in particular. The men, and sometimes women, she found were so focused on their actual skills and talents that she would get more freedom to do what needed to be done. They did not resist when she presented her plan of attack. They had no reason not to.

Managing the needy sponsors or objecting to this commercial or that was just not part of their operating manual. These were men who pushed their bodies to the limit, allowing themselves to get beat to a bloody pulp so that they did not have to do the boring stuff. When they got to the top, it was outsourced out and tucked away. As long as the paychecks were coming in, they were satisfied.

But even in their first minutes of meeting, Lucy Hamlin could tell that Micah Anderson was a bit different. She had done her research after his phone call. He had a winning story, a great hook that the media should be biting to get a taste of. It was Cinderella for the fighting world with him going from rags to riches under the direction of a fairy godmother like coach—all while he supported a grandmother who raised him. He worked long hours at the gym to pay his way; he took on matches that were almost impossible to win just for the potential purse; and he endured injury after injury just to get to the top.

However, that storyline was getting hidden in the headlines by this whole Romeo thing. His idiotic move of publicly coming out as someone’s boyfriend or lover was just a rookie mistake. While it may endear him to an older crowd of women, that kind of audience was few and far between. It was certainly not the audience that flocked to him or his sponsor’s products when the dust settled on this. 

Micah taking that phone call from the “mystery woman” was the perfect opportunity for her to learn more about the situation. She needed to hear it directly from him, to feel out just how big a deal this woman was to him. Testing the water here was her best course of action, but she knew she had to be cautious with her words. The last thing she wanted to do was to prematurely offend him.

She leaned across the table and turned her body square towards him, exposing the curve of her legs and the hint of the lace of her stocking around her thigh. “Honey, sweet,” she said. “Micah, I hope you do not mind me asking, but who just called you?”

She tried to sound genuinely interested, almost concerned. But she could give one guess to who it was. If he told the truth and admitted it was his girlfriend, she would have to work around the love interest part. However, from her experience, if he tried to conceal it or even change the subject away from the phone call, she may have a bit more flexibility than she originally thought. She could even take a shot at proposing playing different angles of the romance story.

“Oh, it was, uh.” He hesitated to find the right words he was searching desperately for. She could tell that he was conflicted. Lucy leaned forward, almost willing him to lie. He continued, still staggering, “A friend. She needed some legal help. I’ll call her back later.”

And with that response, she couldn’t help but curl her lips into a knowing grin. She could make this one work in her favor.

Chris, however, was less than amused. He eyed Micah from across the white linen covered table. He obviously knew what was going on as well as she did. The only one naive enough to play ignorant was Micah. Boldly, he exclaimed, “Micah, we talked about this. If you are gonna take Lucy for her worth, she will need to know.”

Lucy continued to grin like a fool, as Micah sat back in his leather chair, a fork, prong side up, grasped firmly in his hands. He took his green napkin and tossed it on to the table. He looked as if he was going to bolt out of the room at any second.

This was Lucy’s time to shine. “We can stop this,” she said insistently. She looked at both Micah and Chris, as they glared at one another, each more annoyed than the other. She continued, “I know who it was, actually. We do not have to play games here. Micah, your story is everywhere. You could not expect me to come here today without putting in the time and effort to read and research my potential client. I’d be a sorry excuse for a salesperson if I had not come prepared to talk about this.”

Before Micah or Chris could speak, she raised her hand to stop them from going any further. Using her other free arm, she reached into her red leather bag and handed Micah a shiny black folder with his name written in gold on the top tab. Inside were hundreds of clippings and printouts from newspapers and blogs. It was practically every piece of media he had ever gotten in his career from the very beginning up until yesterday. On the top of the pile was the image that had haunted him for the last few days. Micah narrowed his eyes to the picture of him embracing Alice, as he quickly shut the folder’s top, hoping that it would all just magically disappear.

He turned to her as he tossed the folder back onto her empty china plate, nearly missing hitting the remains of her pale orange mimosa. “What is this? Is this some joke? My personal life is not something to be spun. It’s my personal life.”

Lucy let out a small laugh. Nearly every one of her clients said the same thing in the beginning. She laid it out for him and said, “I would hope you would be smarter than that. It’s not just your personal life. You and her both have to come to terms with this. If you try to hide it, which I suspect you did given this embrace and sudden media attention it got you, the press will find out, and they'll make you pay if they suspect you lied. On the other hand, if you talk too much about it and let it become your story, you’ll always be known as the man who would rather play someone’s whipped boyfriend than hear him be called a victor at the end of a bloody fight. Obviously, neither is the correct solution.”

Micah could only think of one response for her, “Her name is Alice.”

Chris leaped in, trying to keep the conversation focused on Lucy’s point, “So, in your expert opinion, what is the solution for this…” He had clearly wanted to end his question with the word
mess,
but he backed down. Instead, he chose, “situation.”

“Here is what I tell all of my clients, both married, dating, and single: Relationships are boring. While you may be riding high on a wave of attention for your fifteen minutes of fame, as soon as that girl, uh Alice, becomes just a part of your routine, she's not interesting anymore. Instead, they'll try to tear it down, bit by bit. They’ll look for ways to claim you are cheating, abusing, lying, et cetera.”

Micah was frankly horrified to hear it, but he still understood. This was part of the role he played. He and now Alice were at the mercy of the press. This is what would come when he chose to provide for her first. “I obviously do not want that. I plan on making this relationship a very long term thing. How do I keep them preoccupied?”

“You give them something else to talk about. You play them right back. You go back to being Micah the bad boy or Micah the rebel. You banish Micah the lovesick doll from their thoughts.” Lucy reached into her bag and pulled out a second black folder with his name on it. This one was smaller and lighter. She placed it in Micah’s lap.

He refused to look inside. “What about Alice?” he asked. “Does she just stay behind? I don’t want to hide her anymore.”

She opened up the first page of the folder. “Do you know this woman?” Lucy pointed to an image of his physical therapist, Sarah. “You need to play up some possible interest with her. Flirt out in the public. Go visit her work one too many times. Talk about getting an amazing massage from her… you know the drill. I'll help you, as well. I have gossip plants all over the sporting world. I’ve already had my assistant make a couple of phone calls.”

Micah looked disgusted, almost sickened by this woman’s approach. “And what am I supposed to tell my girlfriend? That I'm fake cheating on her so the media will forget about her? How does that work?”

Lucy shrugged her shoulders. “You tell her what you need to tell her. If she loves and respects your career, she will understand.”   

The fighter gritted his teeth. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue, but the way she put on this air of knowing all there is and having solutions to every problem, he could not help but trust her guidance, at least in this arena. “What else would I have to do?”

She flipped to the second page. “You need to be a bad boy again. Before you leave the airport for Chicago on Saturday morning, you’re gonna do something reckless and stupid. Just enough to get you press, but not enough to get you arrested. I say that you curse out a security guard at the airport. Maybe he’s annoying you by taking too long checking your bags. Raise some haunches and attract some attention. We’ll have a plant there posting about it on social media. Press will pick it up by the time you land.”

Micah let out a loud, exhausted sigh as he rubbed his temple with his fingertips. “So this is how it’s gonna be from now on? I'm just supposed to follow the steps in this black folder.”

“We have to do what we have to, Micah. I'll say jump, and you'll jump. Chris will say punch, and you'll punch. This is gonna be a team effort, but we'll make you a star as long as you follow along.” Lucy had said this so many times to other clients, especially reluctant ones. It was almost as if it, and her taking out her lengthy contract, was just part of her script.

Chris nodded approvingly at Micah, as he studied the long form before him. He pulled out the last page and handed it back to her.

He stood, no longer wanting to be a part of this scheme anymore. As he placed some money on the table to cover the bill, he turned back to his new agent. Her beaming and enthusiastic face unnerved him. Yet, all he could think to say to her was, “When do I jump?”