The Beat and The Pulse Box Set 2

by Amity Cross

  I watched her as she disappeared through the cemetery, a black smear against the rows of gray, my heart numb and my body frozen.

  She just walked away, and I didn’t do a thing to stop her.

  30

  Lori

  A few weeks passed, and I settled into Pulse like it was a second home.

  Ash was a good boss and was more like a mate most days than an employer. His wife, Ren, was pretty awesome, too. Things were really beginning to work themselves out—my heart was slowly repairing itself, my bank balance was finally filling up with legit money, and I hadn’t seen Hamish once. That last part wasn’t a good thing.

  The man I’d fallen in love with had excised me from his life like a weed even after all the things I’d said to him at his mother’s funeral. Which, in hindsight, was probably as stupid as going to see her in the hospital had been.

  That miserable day at the cemetery, I’d hoped for a miracle because that’s what grand declarations were all about, but real life had let me down once again. I couldn’t make Hamish forgive me, and I definitely couldn’t make him love me back.

  Now I was a part of something good even though it was among a group of expats from The Underground. Seriously, I even ran into Steel, who was the last guy I’d expect to see in Ash Fuller’s gym considering Ash Fuller was the one who put him in hospital. I never knew him personally before, but it was like our past experiences with the place had brought us all together in its wake. Apparently, he was in training to become a police officer. Talk about a total one-eighty.

  I’d worked at The Underground, but I’d never really been a part of it. Now that I was at Pulse, I was beginning to feel a sense of belonging, and it felt real good. It was the fresh start I needed, and wherever Hamish was, I hoped he was finding his feet again, too.

  Closing down the computer at the end of another busy day, I gathered my things, slung my bag across my shoulder, and turned off all the lights. Thundering downstairs, I whistled at Ash—who was finishing up another day of training with his two protégés, Ryan and Cole—to let him know I was clearing out.

  Opening the back door, I stepped out into the cool Melbourne evening. The days were beginning to lengthen, winter finally lifting its icy touch from the city. It would be a hot summer this year, and I wasn’t looking forward to it at all. One day, I’d be able to afford a new car that had air conditioning. That would be a blast. More than a blast, it’d be bloody epic.

  Fumbling for my keys in the bottom of my bag, I cursed as my fingers kept grazing over them. I had to clean out this thing stat because I couldn’t find anything I wanted when I actually needed it. Glancing up, my gaze smashed into the last person I was expecting to see for as long as we both shall live.

  Hamish.

  He was leaning up against the side of my shitty excuse for a car, his hands wedged into the pockets of his denim jacket, looking the epitome of the bad boy who waited by his girl’s ride after school. Probably so they could pash until they both got suspended for indecent behavior by the campus security. Total teen movie cliché.

  I stopped in my tracks, not sure if I should run back into the safety of Pulse or go and face the music. Whatever tune it might be in.

  “Hey,” he said, his lips quirking. Pushing off my car, he straightened up to his full height—his full, formidable, muscled, handsome height—and sauntered toward me.

  I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. As per usual, he’d mesmerized me into a stupor.

  He looked tired. His eyes were ringed with dark circles, and it definitely wasn’t from a couple of well-aimed punches. I knew he would take his mother’s death hard, but seeing him like this six weeks after the fact… I couldn’t imagine how he felt. It was wrong of me to even try to understand the things he’d endured on his own.

  Finally, after what felt like an age, he stood before me. He was just as I remembered him. His scent, his presence, his voice, his…everything. I’d never forget him, and as I began to tremble, I knew my body wouldn’t, either.

  “Lori,” he said, my name escaping his lips as a sigh.

  A storm of emotions began to swirl inside me. I couldn’t allow hope to override all the things I’d been working toward these past weeks. If I allowed myself to believe he was here to ask me back, I wasn’t sure I could come back a second time.

  After a moment of stunned silence, I murmured, “Hey…”

  “I played out this moment so many times,” he said. “I thought about all the things I wanted to say to you, but now that I’m here…” He ran his hand over his face and scratched his jaw.

  My eyes followed his every movement, and I began to realize just how not over him I was.

  “Hamish…”

  “The worst thing I ever did was let you walk away the day of the funeral,” he blurted.

  I shook my head. “No,” I replied. “I should never have laid that on you. Not there. Not then. I made the same mistake as that day in the hospital…”

  “No,” he said firmly, making me hesitate. “You were right all along. I was the one who was wrong. About all of it.”

  I frowned, totally and utterly confused. “I… I don’t…”

  “I should have let you in, Lori. I should have told you about Ma. I should have been there to introduce you while you had the chance to know her. I should’ve fought for you.” He bowed his head and sniffed. “Am I too late?”

  My heart swelled, and my knees began turn to jelly. Was he too late?

  When I hesitated, Hamish grabbed my hands and sank to his knees like he was about to ask the ultimate question while I just stood there like a useless lump. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. Hamish McBride had KO’d me.

  He stared up at me with such hope in his eyes, and he said, “Will you let me love you, Lori Walker?”

  This was it, the moment I’d been too afraid to hope would come true. Now that it was here, I was still teetering on the edge, afraid of the plummet into the unknown, afraid that I’d still lose, no matter what I did.

  His grip tightened on my hands, and his eyes sparkled with what looked like tears. Hamish ‘Goblin’ McBride, terror of The Underground, was crying over me? Lori Walker, a nobody?

  Tugging his hands, I urged him to his feet and pressed against his chest. My forehead came to rest against his jaw, something inside of me almost too shy to let him kiss me despite all the obliterating sex we’d already had. Our bodies fit together, our arms winding around one another, finding familiarity in the darkness.

  He moved, and his lips brushed against my forehead. I tilted my chin up, taking one final chance on the mess that was Lori and Hamish. Hamish and Lori.

  His mouth found mine, and every nerve ending inside my body came alive as he kissed me softly, his touch tentative and gentle, nothing like the night he’d first kissed me at The Underground. He kissed me like he had a million things to say, a million words to whisper, a million roads to travel. He kissed me like I was the most precious soul in the world.

  Breathing heavily, I trembled against him, wanting nothing more than to sink into his arms, grasp him tight, and never let go.

  “Yes,” I whispered against his mouth. “Love me like I love you, Hamish McBride.”

  He groaned, the sound echoing through his chest and into me. “Thank fuck.”

  We stood out the back of Pulse for what felt like a million years, just wrapped around one another, feeling all the things neither one of us had dared feel until right now. Love, longing, completeness… It was a lot to absorb in the wake of such sadness.

  “For a moment there, I thought you were going to ask me to marry you,” I said, winding my fingers around his T-shirt.

  His lips curved into a wicked smile, and he leaned his forehead against mine. “Not yet.”

  “Not yet?” I teased, totally lost in everything he was in that moment.

  He smiled, his green eyes sparkling with mischief. “For now, let’s just go with the flow.”

  SURGE

  #7 The Beat
and The Pulse

  1

  Josie

  I stood in the hallway and watched the door slam shut.

  Flinching as it crashed home with a bang, I turned away, feeling awful for what I’d just done. Breaking up with my on-again, off-again fighter boyfriend, Hamish McBride, in the middle of my best friend’s wedding was the lowest thing I’d pulled in a long time.

  Today of all days? You’re real switched on, Josie Cunningham. Real switched on.

  Pivoting on my heel, I shifted my gaze to the patio, and the moment the assembled wedding guests saw I was looking, they all went back to their dancing and drinking, pretending like they hadn’t been listening in.

  What was I thinking about that switch in the on position?

  Hamish was such a good guy, but he wasn’t the one. Our lives were pulled in different directions—mine to Sydney and the AUFC and Hamish to The Underground in Melbourne—and neither of us felt strongly enough about the other to want to change. Breaking up for good was the only way.

  We’d called it quits so many times, but now this was it. I’d told him there was someone else, and there was, but not really.

  “You okay?”

  I turned at the sound of Dean Hayes’s deep, sexy voice and sighed.

  “Smashing,” I drawled, smoothing my dress down. It was a red silk number I’d picked for Hamish because I knew he liked the color against my hair and skin.

  “Was he a jerk to you?”

  I shook my head. “I dumped him. He has every right to be mad.”

  I grimaced as I caught sight of Ren through the glass door. She looked like she was about to pound somebody into the ground, and it wouldn’t be much of a stretch considering she was the female version of her hulking fighter husband, Ash Fuller.

  “Ren isn’t a ball of sunshine right now,” Dean said, glancing back at the patio.

  “Yeah, well, I could’ve picked a better time to drop the bomb on Hamish,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Her wedding will forever be known as the day ‘that girl’ had a very public break up.”

  “It could’ve been worse.”

  “Yeah, like a hole in the head.”

  I frowned and turned my attention back onto the twin. The same twin I’d used as an excuse to get out of my merry-go-round relationship with Hamish. Partly true since I did harbor a little crush for the guy. Dean Hayes was part bad boy and part nicest guy on the planet. He’d have to be with a brother like Lincoln. Bad boys were my thing.

  The only way I could tell the Twins apart these days was by the full sleeve tattoo Dean had gotten the year before. It snaked up his arm and over his shoulder, ending right at the crook of his neck. It was a tribal design that flowed with the muscles in his arm, but it wasn’t the white trash kind of tribal. It was reminiscent of the designs etched on the skin of Pacific Island warriors—New Zealand, Polynesia, and Tahiti—and for those in the know, it told a story about courage, sacrifice, and status.

  It was all a little deep for a guy like Dean, but he seemed to know a lot about it, picking carefully before he even let a needle close to him. Though the guy was an easy mark, so I tried not to tease. But I did. Mercilessly.

  I was pretty sure the main reason he’d gotten tattooed was so people stopped mistaking him for Lincoln. The Twins were pro MMA fighters and had been lumped together from the beginning even though the sport was very much a solo affair. They trained together and rode the PR train side by side, but when it came time to step into the octagon for a fight, they were their own men. I could understand why Dean wanted to be set apart. The constant comparison would grate after a while.

  And that’s where I came into the equation.

  A few years ago, after becoming friends with Ren Miller, her dad, Coach Andrew Miller, hired me to work PR for the Twins. I was more than happy to leave behind my stuffy admin job in Melbourne for the bright lights of the Australian Ultimate Fighting Championship, or the AUFC as it was known. Hot men and testosterone, TV cameras and media scrums…it was the life I didn’t even know I’d wanted—and damn, I was good at it.

  I just didn’t count on developing a crush on the one guy it was inappropriate to fixate on…considering I took my job extra super serious, and Dean took his womanizing to the extreme. His brother had settled, but Dean? I couldn’t see it happening anytime soon, which was why I pushed my attraction into the crush column.

  Then there was the scene that had just played out with Hamish.

  So many reasons why tangling tongues with fighters wasn’t the greatest plan in the playbook.

  “Do you want a drink?” Dean asked, pulling my attention back. “You might need a little liquid courage.”

  I snorted. “I needed it ten minutes ago.”

  “You haven’t spoken to Ren yet,” he said with a chuckle.

  “And I’ll avoid it for a long as possible.” I grabbed his hand and dragged him through the house back out to the patio.

  “Where are we going in such a hurry?” Dean asked, trying not to laugh.

  “You’re dancing with me.”

  “Me? Dancing?”

  “I’m using you as a human shield.” Half-truth, half lie. I just wanted to dance with the guy and pump up my deflated ego.

  I opened the patio door and delighted in the fact I had Dean Hayes off-kilter. “Don’t sound so panicked. You just sway from side to side. Surely a fighter who knows how to duck and weave can handle a little two-step.”

  I felt eyes beginning to fix on me, but I ignored every single pair as I turned Dean around to face me. A slow song was playing, and couples around us were wound tightly together, including Dean’s brother, Lincoln, and his girl, Violet.

  “Here,” I said, as the twin hesitated.

  Curling my fingers around his wrists, I guided his hands to my waist and his big hands settled in place. All at once, I was aware that he was touching me like Hamish had only moments before. Dean looked awkward, but I was fairly sure it was because of the dancing part of the equation. He wasn’t trying to get out of it, so I took it to be a good thing. He wanted to touch me.

  A shiver traveled down my spine, and I resisted the urge to close the space between us. That’d be poor form five minutes after Hamish, Ash’s best man, left after I’d smashed his heart.

  Sliding my hands over his shoulders, I smiled as he turned his gaze away.

  “See?” I declared as we began to sway back and forth to the slow beat. “Easy, right?”

  “Nothing about this is easy,” he murmured, turning his green eyes back to my blue.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, my heart beginning to swell of its own accord, but his attention had shifted over my shoulder and off into the distance.

  “Is that…” he began, sounding surprised.

  I followed Dean’s gaze back over my shoulder, and instantly, my lip curled.

  Monica Miller stood just inside the house, lingering on the edges of her half-sister’s wedding. The same sister she had sold out to Hammer, the piece of shit who tried to beat and rape Ren. It had been a ploy to get her sister out of the way so the bitch could sink her claws into Ash, but for Hammer, it had been to get the fighter out of the way so he could win the Championship at The Underground. A win in that place netted a fighter a few million dollars. The shit people did for money.

  On that night, Ash had shown up at the gym and found Hammer about to…and all hell had broken loose. I remembered it all like the back of my own hand. I wasn’t at Beat, the fighter gym owned by Ren’s father, when it happened, but she’d turned up on my doorstep right after in tears. Then Ash had gone missing…along with Hammer. Everyone thought Ash had done the unthinkable until Hammer turned up alive and well, but it was months before Ash surfaced again.

  Totally screwed up if you asked me.

  For Monica Miller, the cause of so much pain and heartache, to show her face here after all these years was nothing short of insulting…and at Ren and Ash’s wedding! That bitch had balls.

  Dean’s grip loosened on my w
aist, and I realized he was about to ditch me to go over and talk to her. There was no way I was letting that happen, not when I knew he used to harbor an epic hard-on for the woman. Talk about misplaced affection.

  “Don’t,” I hissed, trying to shove the jealousy down. “Keep this to yourself, and don’t tell anyone. I’m going to get rid of her.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” I snapped. “This is Ren’s wedding. She can’t know Monica is here, do you understand?”

  Dean’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded sharply. He knew the story. They all did.

  My hands slid from his shoulders, and I turned, threading my way across the patio toward Monica. As I approached, her eyes widened. I wasn’t sure if it was fear, but damn right, I hoped she was shitting bricks. Big, painful bricks. If I was ever going to get into a catfight with another woman, I’d throw myself headfirst at her with fingernails bared. Truthfully, I’d let Ren take the first swing because she’d go full fist and knock the bitch flat on her ass. Probably KO her, too.

  “You have a lot of nerve,” I drawled, grabbing Monica’s arm and yanking her through the kitchen, away from the patio and any chance of Ren finding her.

  “Nice to see you too, Josie,” she replied, wrenching her arm away.

  Ugh, she was just as pretty as I remembered her. Tall and willowy with long, wavy chestnut hair, pouty lips, and big, brown eyes. Ugly beautiful. Meaning, she was so good-looking it bordered on hideous. She could star in a porn movie, rising to the top, and men would pay a premium to pretend to jizz all over her boobs in the privacy of their own home.

  “What’s your game, Monica?” I asked, placing my hands on my hips. “It’s too late if you’re wondering. The knot has been tied.”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” she argued.

  “I don’t give a fuck. You don’t get to come here,” I said, itching to slap the bitch and pull her hair from her scalp. “Not today and not ever. Do you understand me?”