UNDYING: A Bad Boy MMA Romance (Midwest Alphas) (Book 3) (9 page)

Rick pulls away, his amused grin still twitching along his lips, and stands up from his chair. “I’ll see you in five days.” As he steps around the table, he fires a wink at me. I feel it in my bones, cold and frightening, keeping me in place as he wanders off into the busy crowd with his Kings.

Tobias jerks his shoulder from Pike’s grip and turns from me without a second glance. He walks away with Ryan and Amy following close behind him.

Pike lingers back with me. “You agreed to that awfully fast, Claire,” he points out.

“Yeah,” I mutter.

His lips curl into a knowing smile. “You don’t plan on going gently into that good night, do you?”

It’s a logical conclusion, one that surely crossed his mind the instant I agreed to it. “No,” I answer.

“Well…” He clears his throat. “You know where to find me when you need
help
.”

I shake my head. “I got it, Pike—”

“Claire.”
He spins on his heel. “No, you don’t.”

I watch as he walks away, knowing that he’s one-hundred percent right about that.

If the Kings win, I will go back to Rick. I made that deal and I intend to keep it, but like he said, I won’t go gently. Pike’s the only person I know that understands the full weight of what I’ll have to do if that happens.

He’s the only person I can trust that’s gotten away with murder.

Chapter 7

Our Team Is Broken

Tobias doesn’t say a word on the drive home, not that he could get a word in anyway. Amy and Ryan argue in the front seat, bickering back and forth since the moment she started the car.

“I told you didn’t want to be involved in this, Amy,” he repeats for the third time.

I see her roll her eyes in the rear view mirror. “I didn’t have a choice,” she says. At this point, I can probably mouth along with this banter. As perfect as they are for one another, I can’t help but wonder how much successful communication actually happens between them. Certainly more than Tobias is offering me in this moment, that’s for sure…

“You
easily
could have said no to that,” Ryan argues. “There are
plenty
of Alpha fighters willing to go to the mat for this league—”

“And you aren’t?” She takes her eyes off the road for several long, deadly seconds to stare at him.

Ryan bites his tongue.
“Amy…”

“No, just go ahead and said it,” she barks. “You don’t care about any of this. In fact, you’d rather see your old boys club take over Missouri like a plague of woman-hating locusts.”

“That’s not—”

“Say it, Ryan!”

“They aren’t all horrible people, Amy! Even the Alphas have their fair share of bad apples. It certainly doesn’t affect your opinion of them as a whole.”

“We’re not talking about the Alphas!”

“We were a minute ago!”

I lean forward in my seat. “Amy, can you please just watch the road?”

She twists her face to the front, but continues talking. “It’s too late to back out anyway. You have to fight.”

“Yeah, no shit,” he mutters. “I have to fight against the very people that took me in when I lost my job, that gave me a place to live when I didn’t have a roof over my head — all because
you
couldn’t think straight under pressure.”

Amy inhales, ready to continue her argument, but thinks better of it. She blows a growl and slaps the steering wheel with her palms, refusing to even look at him as she slams her foot even harder against the gas pedal.

Ryan stares out the window with his arms crossed about his chest, embracing her obvious silent treatment for several long moments.

I look to Tobias in the seat next to me. His face sits without expression, frozen solid as if it were chiseled from stone. A seed of doubt sprouts in my mind. Pike has always been willing to fight for the Alphas — no matter what the conflict. Ryan clearly doesn’t want to and Tobias… I can’t even tell where he stands right now.

Our team is broken, cracking at the seams. It’s only a matter of time now until we fall apart completely. I stare out the window, shaking from fear and cold. Maybe I should have just stayed in Kansas City; hidden away in a dark corner where no one would ever find me. Sure, others would have died, but people die every day, right?

I cringe at my own thoughts, tasting bile in my throat.

“Ryan,” Tobias says, his eyes lingering on the world outside.

“Yeah?”

“What do you know about the Kings Rick brought with him?”

Ryan sighs. “Well, they aren’t exactly amateurs. All of them were recruited in before I was.”

“We met one before,” I say, meeting Amy’s eyes in the rear view mirror. “At the gym.”

“His name is Kevin,” Ryan says.

“Yeah…” she sneers. “The douche that touched my boob.”

“You did kind of start that,” I point out.

“Whatever — I’m sure he’s a
real
great
guy
.”

“Who are the others?” Tobias asks quickly before Ryan can respond to her tone.

Ryan pulls his eyes away from Amy. “The little one in the hat was Frankie. He’s pretty much the very definition of a loose cannon.”

“And the other?” I ask. “The one in the turtleneck.”

“That…” His voice falls. “That was Owen and
ironically
… he’s my cousin.”

“What?”
Amy asks. The steering wheel slips from her fingers, but she quickly rights the car before swiping the truck in the right lane.

“Yep,” he answers. “He trained me, so luckily, I have a pretty good idea of what to expect.”

Amy’s jaw sags, dangling open as shock refuses to pass through her. I see her eyes flinching around behind her perfectly mascaraed lashes, full of apology and regret, but she doesn’t say it out loud.

“Rick has to choose between the three of them for the tournament,” Tobias says. “We can assume Owen will be one of them. He’ll hope it’ll rattle you enough to drop your guard.”

“Yeah, I’d do the same thing…” Ryan mutters.

“Who else would you choose?” I ask him.

“Kevin is all brawn,” he answers. “Frankie is very fast, and extremely unpredictable. Honestly, it could go either way.”

“Then we prepare for both,” I say. “Good thinking on asking Rick to pick from the men he brought with him, Amy. It gave us some advantage.”

“Yeah, well…” She keeps her eyes forward. “
Sometimes
I think just fine under pressure.”

I catch Ryan glancing at her, his eyes glowing with the same apologetic light, but just like Amy, he stays quiet and looks out the window.

***

I step out of Amy’s car and look up into the pale, white sky as small snowflakes tap the bridge of my nose. Winter keeps inching closer, tormenting me with colder air with every passing day. Soon, this whole farm will be covered in a blanket of snow and ice. This used to be exciting to me. Winter meant hot chocolate and snow days and little, chewy marshmallows. Now, it frightens me to death.

Tobias closes the car door and steps towards the barn. I watch him from my seat as flakes fall into his black hair, wondering what he’s thinking beneath it all. He slides the barn door closed behind him, a firm statement of solitude if there ever was one. I step outside the car and linger next to the driver’s side door.

Amy rolls her window down a few inches. “We’ll be back to pick you guys up tomorrow,” she says. “I’ll check for hotels tonight — no sense in driving back every night before the tournament. You should pack a bag for a week.

I nod, barely registering the words passing through my ears. “Yeah…”

“See you later,” she says. Ryan issues me a small wave from the passenger’s seat before she rolls the window back up and the two of them drive off down the driveway.

I follow Tobias’ fresh footprints and pull the barn door open.

“Claire,” he says as I step inside. He sits on the ground with his back against the hay bales in the corner. “I could really just use a few minutes to myself here.”

I look at him, remembering my first summer here. “The last time you sat there, you told me you just wanted me to sit with you for a while.” I slide the door closed behind me, refusing to leave.

For a brief second, I can smell the air from that night; thick and warm. He sat there, covered in fresh bruises, blood, and sweat, and fought through his pain to kiss me for the first time.

Tobias glances up at me and shakes his head. “That was a long time ago…”

“Feels longer than it really is.” I cross my arms to block the chill.

“Go inside, Claire,” he urges. “Get warm.”

I step forward and lower myself to my knees in front of him. “I think I’d rather just sit with you for a while.”

He sighs, but doesn’t fight me on it.

I look up at the open window as a gust of air sends the falling snow inside, covering my perfect getaway spot. It saddens me for a moment as I realize I won’t be able to read a book out here until spring comes back again. I actually miss reading about Mary’s romance heroes and their dramatic women. It’s a gentle escape from my own troubled existence.

“I almost gave up.”

My eyes fall from the loft. “On what?”

“I woke up that morning — the one before you came back home — and I thought,
I’m done
.” He stares at the ground between us. “I looked around at my life and I didn’t recognize it anymore.”

“Tobias…” I say with comfort.

“This is all I was,” he continues. “I was a
fighter —
when all I ever really wanted to be was your man, but I couldn’t be. Every morning, I’d wake up and the drive would be there to find Rick and bring you back home to me.” He bites his inner cheek. “But that morning, for the first time, I started to lean the other way. I almost gave up on us and that…” His voice fades.

My eyes sting behind my lashes. “I woke up screaming that night.”

His eyes jump to me. “What?”

I wipe a falling tear off my cheek and pull my glove off my hand. “I kept dreaming about you and Rick, fighting...” I present my palm to him and he takes it, his eyes instantly finding the fresh scabs left behind. I close my fist, showing him with my nails how the marks got there, feeling the painful pressure against my broken skin. “Every dream ended the same way… with Rick covered in your blood.” I look up at him and he stares back at me with soft eyes. “Believe me, Tobias, I know a little something about wanting to give up. My mother contacted Charlie and he came all the way out there to ensure me that you were still okay, but I didn’t believe him. I
couldn’t
. Not when every sense inside of me told me otherwise. I wanted to come back to you every single day, even before I ever had a good reason to”

He lets my hand slip from his fingers and I pull the glove back onto my freezing knuckles. “This life… is
exhausting
, Claire,” he whispers. “No matter what I do to try and get away from it, it keeps pulling me back in and I don’t…”

“Don’t what?”

He rubs his dry lips. “I don’t think I can beat him this time.”

“I do.” I lean in closer. “You’re a better man, Tobias. You always have been.”

“That won’t matter if he’s the better fighter.”

“You
are
the better fighter.”

“Your dreams think otherwise…”

“My dreams were
lies;
I know that now. I mean… I
thought
they meant he was more powerful, but now I see that it meant what I already knew and that’s that
we
are stronger together than we are apart.” Tobias pauses, listening closely to me. I reach out and force my fingers around his. “I looked into his eyes today and I saw who he really is…
He cannot beat you
, Tobias. He’s been running from you for six months because he
knows
that. I think the fact that he felt he had to frame you for murder proves it even more...”

“And if he wins?” His fingers twitch in mine. “You’ll leave with him?”

“He won’t.”

“But if he
does
…”

“Then…” I take a breath. “Then the Alphas will be gone and you won’t have to be so exhausted anymore.”

“I can’t let him take you. That’s not okay.”

“I’ll be fine.” My chest trembles. “I refuse to picture a scenario here that doesn’t end with me finding my way back to you and this place.” He finds my eyes again. “This is my home, Tobias, and I will fight to keep it. All I ask is that you do the same.”