“Ladies and gentleman, we have time for one more question. You in the back with the green hair. Go ahead.”
Groans and curses from reporters who’d been snubbed waved throughout the room, but Xander barely noticed. As soon as he heard the words “green hair” he’d jerked his eyes up to see who Dana had called on. As everyone else in the room sat, he saw her, and his chest squeezed the air from his lungs.
“Mr. James,” she began, her melted chocolate eyes boring into him, “I couldn’t help but notice that despite your incredible win in your first fight back to the UFC, and winning the bonus for best submission of the night, you don’t appear very happy. Why is that?”
His opponent had landed forty-three punches and sixteen kicks in the two and a half rounds they battled in the octagon. But none of those blows had even come close to knocking him on his ass like the relief at seeing Sophie threatened to do in that moment. So many things were running through his mind faster than bolts of lightning, and he wasn’t sure which ones he should be trying to catch and hold onto. Why was she here, pretending to be a reporter, no less? “It’s not that I’m not happy with my fight or my win. I fought hard to get here, and I don’t intend to go anywhere for a long time. But…” He hesitated. Fucking hell, the woman made him lose the plot time and time again. He’d never been so unsure of himself.
“But?” she prompted.
All right, gorgeous. If this is the only way you’ll hear me out, then so be it.
“But, unfortunately, my win tonight is overshadowed by what I lost more than a week ago.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Yeah” he said. “Losing your wife is very serious indeed.”
The room erupted in a collection of gasps and hurried whispers. Those who caught on to what was happening started taking pictures of both him and Sophie. Reporters began murmuring to each other, trying to figure out who might have the inside scoop on the fighter’s failed love life. He barely registered any of it, too focused on the insecurity Xander saw in her eyes. She wasn’t sure of how he felt, and that was bloody unacceptable.
Resting his forearms on the table, Xander leaned into the microphone in front of him and nailed her with the truth. “But I don’t intend for her to stay lost. Not if I can help it.”
She nodded for a few seconds as she considered her next words, and in the stuffy room that was climbing in degrees by the minute, the fifty or so people waited, their pens and recorders at the ready.
“I think that if I was her,” she said carefully, “I’d feel terrible about not giving you a chance to explain things. I’d regret thinking the worst of you simply because I’d been let down by people who claimed to love me in the past. Because in reality, no one ever came close to loving me the way you did.”
Tears glistened over her eyes, then spilled over her porcelain fine cheeks. Xander pushed to his feet, ready to end this and haul her back to his room, but she gave him a slight shake of her head, freezing him in place behind the table. Grinding his back teeth together in frustration, he did as she asked. This was her way of atoning to him, and she wouldn’t feel the guilt lift unless he let her get out everything she needed to say.
“If I was her, I’d miss hearing you complain about finding my wet towels on the floor, or my vast—but totally justifiable—shoe collection spilling over from the bedroom walk-in to the hall linen closet.”
Some soft chuckles. A dozen camera flashes.
Then her voice turned serious to match the sadness in her eyes. The knife twisted deeper.
“I’d find it impossible to sleep without your arms holding me and your scent surrounding me.” Sophie’s tears were no longer drops, but steady streams. Her lips were red and swollen from crying, her cheeks ruddy, and he now noticed the dark circles under her eyes. She was fucking killing him. “I’d be s-so incredibly sorry for everything, but nothing more than taking the joy out of the thing you love most in this world. Of all the things, I think that’s the most unforgiveable.”
Fuck this. Xander turned his hat backward, braced a palm on the table, and launched himself over it to land on the other side. “You’re wrong.” Xander hopped off the small stage and started walking toward her, the people parting for him like the Red Sea. “Fighting is my passion. It’s in my blood, and there’s nothing I’d rather do than one day be a UFC champion. But it doesn’t even come close to registering as what I love most in this world. If something happened and I could no longer fight, it would be hard to deal with, but I’d get over it and move on.”
At last he reached her. The room was in a frenzy around them, but his attention was on this woman—his woman—and the rest was nothing more than white noise. “But I won’t ever get over you, Sophie James. You stole my heart, mind, and soul. If I no longer have you, then I no longer have any of those, either. I’d only be a shell of the man I once was until the Lord sees fit to take me.”
Lifting his hands, he dried her cheeks, only to have her eyes leak again and undo his attempt at calming her. “All I’ll ever need is you.”
“Then…will you marry me?”
He quirked up one side of his mouth. “I know there’s not much of it in the memory banks, but I’m fairly certain we did that already.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “There’s no law that limits you as to how many ceremonies you can have.” A sweet smile spread over her face. “It’d be nice to remember at least one of them.”
“Then, yes,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “I would love to marry you. Again.”
As the crowd around them cheered and clapped and snapped so many pictures it looked like they stood under a strobe light, Xander kissed his wife slowly and thoroughly, not giving a rat’s arse what anyone else thought.
When they finally came up for air, they were no longer the center of attention. Everyone either left to get their stories in or chatted with each other about whatever tickled their fancy.
Glancing at his T-shirt that sported the ridiculous pineapple wearing sunglasses logo, she asked, “Why is Jax your sponsor? I thought you never wanted to ask him.”
He shrugged. “When my other sponsor backed out, it was either ask Jax or accept the favor from your uncle in exchange for filing for divorce. There was never any question which I’d choose, then or now. Those papers were never mine, Soph. Caldwell tried bribing me weeks ago, but I refused. The day you found Tami in my office, I’d planned on asking you that night if you still wanted to dissolve the marriage after the trust was transferred. I was hoping you’d say no, but I was prepared to win you back either way.”
Sophie tried to contain the rage that boiled at the thought of her uncle’s constant scheming and made a mental note to officially kick his ass out of her life. “And Grams’s care? Stephanie told me what you did.”
He swore under his breath. He’d thought there’d be some kind of privacy clause or something. “I didn’t mean for you to find out about that. It didn’t matter to me whether we got back together or not. I’ve saved money from my amateur fights and now that I’m pro again, I’ll make even more. I wasn’t about to let Marjorie get kicked out of there because of your fool uncle.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them back. “I’m so sorry I bailed on you. I promise not to do it ever again. I love you so much.”
His heart swelled one hundred times its normal size at hearing those words coming from her lips. “Not as much as I love you, gorgeous.” Then he bent his head for another lingering kiss.
When they came up for air, she beamed up at him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and asked, “So, what’s it feel like to be back in the UFC and get a huge victory right out of the gate?”
Xander swept her up and cherished the feeling of her cradled against him. This was where she belonged, in his arms. “My victory in the cage felt bloody fantastic, that’s for sure. But winning your heart, Sophie James…that’s the sweetest victory of them all.”
Epilogue
New Year’s Day
90 days…after.
Fake Elvis shifted his hips from left to right, striking a pose that mimicked the true king, but Xander thought he looked more like he had an itch on his arse he couldn’t scratch. If Xander were half as shitfaced as he was at his first wedding, he’d likely be on the ground in a fit of laughter. This time he was stone-cold sober. He wanted to remember every moment of this day.
“Well all right now,” Elvis said, addressing them. “Do you, Alexander James, take Sophie Caldwell-James to be your lawfully wedded wife…again?”
Gazing into Sophie’s dancing eyes, he couldn’t imagine a more perfect moment. The first time had been for a noble cause, but this time, Xander was claiming her as his wife for nothing less than love—the kind that filled him up and encompassed his soul. This was the start of the rest of his life, and he couldn’t be happier.
“Yeah, I do,” he said, emotions making his voice come out raspier than he’d like. “Today and every day forward, until I draw my last breath.”
Elvis put his hand over his heart and cocked his head dramatically. “Aw, that was beautiful, man. Really, I mean that, very touching.”
Sophie rolled her lips between her teeth to hold in her laugh, but Xan arched a brow in the man’s direction. When he didn’t immediately catch on, Kristin helped from where she and Billy sat, once again acting as their witnesses.
“Excuse me, Mr. The King or Padre Elvis, or whatever you call yourself. Can you move things along, please? We have a reception to get to.”
Elvis gave her a lip-curling grin and pointed at her with a “you got it” finger gun. Xander would bet he also needlessly winked behind his aviator sunglasses. “And do you, Sophie Caldwell-James, take, for a second time, Alexander James to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
Sophie’s eyes shined bright with tears as she smiled wide at Xander and answered, “You bet your blue suede shoes, Elvis.”
A chorus of muted laughter rose up from around them but was quickly cut off when the old lady sitting at her electronic keyboard shushed them. The apathetic look on her face didn’t exactly match the scolding tone. He couldn’t imagine how many hundreds, maybe even thousands, of these ceremonies she’d witnessed. She might have even been there the first time he and Sophie got married. Likely, nothing surprised her anymore, but that didn’t mean she approved. She took this business a little too seriously, considering their officiant was wearing a white bedazzled jumpsuit and stick-on sideburns.
Moving to the side of Xander, Elvis said, “And do you, Reid Andrews, take Lucie Maris-Andrews to be your lawfully wedded wife? Again?”
Xander looked around at the men who’d become like his brothers, and the women who’d healed their souls and stolen their hearts, just as Sophie had stolen his. When they’d planned their second—and very, very sober—Vegas wedding, Sophie had the idea of asking his friends if they’d like to renew their vows with them. He’d loved the idea from the start, but it was no wonder why. They were his best mates, after all. But he’d been curious as to why Sophie would want to extend the offer. Her answer?
“Because they’re your family, which now makes them mine. I don’t know them all that well yet, but I will, and years from now, I’d like us to look back and remember this as the day we all finally came together.”
Yeah, it was safe to say he fell a little more in love with his wife in that moment, if it was even possible. He’d had to start kissing her and carry her off to bed so she wouldn’t notice his eyes getting all shiny with man-tears.
Reid smiled down at the glowing woman in front of him, due any day now with their first child. “My sweet Lucie,” he said, his voice tight with obvious emotion. Though Reid used to be a UFC fighter, he was also a damn good artist, and that poet’s soul shined through every time he gazed at his wife. “I paid a hundred grand for the chance to make you mine, but you’re worth more than a hundred times that. So yes, I definitely do.”
Elvis continued, “And do you, Lucie Maris-Andrews—”
A choked sob wracked Lucie’s petite body as the tears flowed unchecked like rivers down her cheeks.
Xander’s eyes widened.
“Yes,” she said at last, placing her husband’s large hands on her big belly. “I do. Forever and ever, I do.”
With Reid’s soft kiss to the heart-shaped freckle near the corner of her eye and some whispered words, Lucie seemed to calm down some. The man had warned them her hormones were a bit extreme, but Xan felt that was a bit of an understatement. Sophie—and he was certain every female in a ten-block radius—melted with a mewled awwwwww. Meanwhile, he and Jax had to school their looks of sheer terror. Irish had gone through it with his wife, so he wasn’t fazed in the least.
“Jackson Maris, do you take Vanessa MacGregor-Maris?”
Jax pressed their joined hands to his chest where he’d tattooed a sea star symbolizing his wife over his heart. “I do. She’s my pupule wahine. There’s no one else for me.”
Vanessa aimed a wicked grin—the kind she used in court as the ADA nicknamed Red Viper—at her Hawaiian husband. “You’re lucky this crazy woman loves you, smart-ass. I do.”
“Ooh, she’s a fiery one, like a Hunka Hunka—”
Without glancing away from Vanessa, Jax growled at the king. “I wouldn’t finish that sentence.” He might be the most playful of their group, but when it came to V, he was as territorial as they came.
“Okay, then, moving on,” Elvis said, his voice a little higher than what his character called for. “Last, but not least…Aiden O’Brien, do you take Katherine MacGregor-O’Brien etcetera, etcetera?”
Never one for flowery words—or many words in general—Irish cleared his throat and shifted his weight. The guilt and pain he’d carried for years before meeting Kat had been replaced by the intense love he had for his wife.
They all waited for his answer.
“Aiden,” Kat whispered. “This is the part where you tell the nice Elvis if you want to be married to me.”
“You know I fuckin’ do,” he said in his thick Boston Southie accent right before he blanched and palmed the head of Xander’s two-month-old godson in Kat’s arms. “I mean, I freakin’ do. Sorry, Alex.”
Kat chuckled softly. “You’ve got a couple of years before you have to worry about swearing around him, big guy.”
Jax snorted. “Yeah, but it’ll take him at least that long to clean up his filthy mouth. Don’t worry, bruh, I’ll get you some Orbitz gum.”
“Fuck off.”
“I rest my case.”
Irish tossed a rueful look over his shoulder at Jax, tacking on a middle finger for good measure. Kat cupped his jaw with her free hand to bring his attention back to her. As always, her touch was all it took to soothe Irish. Aiden had found a woman who—despite fighting demons of her own—had been strong enough to save him from himself.
“What do you say?” Irish lifted his hand and stroked a thumb over her freckled cheek, then asked her in his low, gravelly voice, “You still with me, kitten?”
“Yes. I’m still with you, Aiden.” Kat glanced down at their son, sleeping in her arms, then smiled up at him. “Always.”
As Irish and Kat got lost in each other, Xander turned his attention back to his own stunning bride. With her jewel-toned hair pinned up in large ringlets, her makeup applied softer than usual, and the sleeveless white cocktail dress that hugged her fit figure, he could barely take his eyes off her. Elvis began rattling off the last of his spiel about who gave him power to do what and pronouncing them all as newlyweds twice over, but Xan didn’t pay attention to any of it. All he wanted to do was get her home, get through their combined reception (which was a fancy way of saying they were having a party with friends), then kick everyone out so he could give his wife a wedding night to remember.
“Love your ladies tender, gentlemen.”
When all the guys looked at Elvis funny, Sophie chuckled and said, “This is what you get after too many concussions.”
Kristin piped up from be
hind them. “It’s the kiss, geniuses. Kiss your women!”
Xander and the boys didn’t have to be told twice. He framed Sophie’s face and took her lips in a sinful kiss that would have burned the place down had they been in a real church. When that last part of the ceremony had been thoroughly taken care of, the electronic organ struck up with vigor from their disapproving music lady, probably trying to usher them out quickly to bring the next party in.
“Let’s go, people. There’s a reception gathering at Chez James, and there’s a bottle of Patrón with my name on it.” Kristin clapped her hands together like she was rounding up a class of children and ushered each couple back up the aisle: Reid and Lucie, Jax and Vanessa, Irish and Kat, and finally, Xan and Sophie.
“Patrón?” Jax smirked down at his wife. “Hey, V, you up for a game of Bullshit Body Shots?”
“I don’t know, Maris, you planning on cheating like you did last time?”
He laughed. “If it means getting to lick—”
“Ow.” Lucie stopped mid-waddle and clutched her belly. Reid was instantly on alert, as was everyone.
“Luce, you okay? What’s—” Before he could finish, their plans for the night changed. “Oh shit,” he said, panic straining his voice. “Your water just broke!”
Lucie looked up at him with wide eyes. “My water just broke.”
Vanessa squealed in delight. “The baby’s coming, Jax! I’m going to be an auntie again! Oh my God, I’m so excited.”
Kat beamed at the soon-to-be-mother. “I’m so happy for you, Lucie!” Then to Sophie, “Don’t worry, we’ll still have your party soon, I promise.”
Sophie waved her off. “Screw my party. I’d rather have a welcome home thing for Lucie.”
“Hospital,” Reid barked. “We need to get her to the hospital.”
Chaos erupted with everyone shouting orders and plans and gently guiding the pregnant woman into the lobby of the chapel. Sophie started to follow, but Xander pulled her back. Things were about to get crazy, and he just needed a moment with her, alone.
Sweet Victory (Fighting for Love) Page 22