by Katie Cross
Fighter
Katie Cross
Fighter
Contemporary Romance
Fiction
Text copyright 2021 by Katie Cross.
This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, events, or incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity or resemblance to events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the US Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the author. For information regarding permission, send a query to the author at [email protected].
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Visit www.katiecrossromance.com for more information about the author, updates, or new books.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Epilogue
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Also by Katie Cross
About the Author
To Husband
My favorite fighter.
And the one that's shown me my own power.
1
Serafina
The moment I walked into the MMA Center, I knew exactly what would happen: snap judgments, a stare of concern, and maybe even annoyance. But I walked in anyway, because desperate times called for desperate measures.
This fat lip wasn't going away fast enough.
On purpose, I stepped inside at 8:50 pm, ten minutes away from closing. Easier to avoid a conversation I didn't want. My old black backpack was slung halfway across my back and my maniacal brown curls tamed into something of a ponytail.
Ready for this.
There weren't many people left here, which wasn't surprising. The MMA Center was a place for athletes across the country to train in mixed martial arts, not an everyday gym. But Benjamin Mercedy, the owner and founder, had been forced to pack it with weight machines and treadmills and ellipticals for the average mortal to use to pay their mortgage.
Or so the small-mountain-town rumors said, anyway.
The giant mats taking up most of the room, however, belied the casual jogger's attitude. This was a serious place.
A girl across the room spritzed down gym equipment with a bright spray of cleaner, then wiped it with a cloth. A heavy-set guy huffed away on a treadmill below a TV with the news streaming across it, ticker-tape style.
My gaze honed in on the girl. Medium height, just like me. Strong, but unassuming. She was way wirier than me. I had thighs thick enough to be proud of, as Mom said, but I sensed an understanding soul in this girl. She'd get me. No judgment from a fellow woman. I turned toward her, but stopped when a deep voice to my left asked, “Can I help you?”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I paused midstep. Just the man I didn't want to encounter. Benjamin Mercedy himself.
“I just had a question about classes,” I responded without looking his way. Maybe I could slip in and out of here without him seeing my swollen face.
“We have a full schedule on the website.”
“Yep. Saw it.”
Silence answered. I closed my eyes and sucked in a slow breath. Obviously, this was awkward. He had to see the lip. I couldn't talk to the mats on the other side of the room without looking like a total weirdo.
Finally, I turned to face him.
As expected, Benjamin stood behind a counter, both of his hands on the desk. He peered at me through golden eyes framed with eyelashes thick enough to flutter away. Dark hair framed his face in a short cut that, only a few weeks ago, had been shoulder length. The absence of hair gave him a swoony, chiseled facial structure. His neck coiled with muscles all the way across his shoulders and down his arms. Said muscles probably rippled down his back, too.
His Adam's apple bobbed as our gaze collided. I stared right at him to avoid looking at the rest of him and forced my voice to remain normal. “I . . . I just wanted to see if you offered self-defense classes.”
His gaze immediately dropped to the fat red line down the middle of my lip. Maybe I could have passed it off as dry skin or some weird condition, except for the swollen state of the lip beneath it. Two days later, it still stung.
When his eyebrows crashed together, I realized I'd lost the game. I dropped all sense of pretense to lean on the counter in an intentional mimicry.
“Look.” I leaned forward and waved a hand around my face. “I know what this probably looks like, particularly considering my need for a self-defense class. But I'm not an abused woman in a relationship with a crappy boyfriend. That's not what this is. That's not my jam.”
A flicker of amusement traveled through those honey-gold eyes before he nodded. “No, we don't offer self-defense classes right now. We tried, but no one came.”
“Well that's stupid,” I muttered.
He lifted an eyebrow.
My tense body felt like I was preparing to meet a blow to the stomach. That wasn't the case this time. I was just preparing myself for his inevitable judgment. The quiet talk about what my resources were and how I deserved better. Um, no. Not again, please. I'd already been through this with Bert, my boss.
This wasn't that.
Except . . . it wasn't far off from that, either. I was potentially one more bad situation away from being a statistic, which was why I just needed someone to teach me the basics.
“Do you need some help with whoever did this?” he asked with a nod to my fat lip.
There was an underlying promise of vengeance in his words that sent a little chill through me. This guy didn't even know me, and I'd very intentionally not allowed myself to know him for the last eight weeks. What could he possibly want retribution for?
“Nope,” I replied cheerily. “Tiptop over here.” I leaned forward again, affecting a casual air. “Do you have any plans for opening a self-defense class in the next week or two?”
His gaze narrowed. “What do you need?”
The blood of my enemies, I wanted to say. What do you think I need?
I quelled the burst of inner sarcasm. My bad mood had nothing to do with Benjamin Mercedy. Actually, scratch that. It did. The quiet power in the way he held himself, his muscular frame, and the unassuming way he lived his life was all way too attractive for me to deal with constructively. Here was a human that never had to worry about defending himself.
Instead of answering, I glanced back to the equipment sprinkled through the gym. My gaze lingered on the lifting equipment, treadmills, and a few other things against the far wall, near the mirrors.
Actually, his question had been a fair one. There were different types of self-defense, from what my quick online perusal showed. What did I need? Confidence. I needed confidence. Power. Quick reflexes. I needed to be a fighter, and all of that
sometime before 3:00 pm tomorrow when Amber showed back up.
“Safety,” popped out of my mouth instead.
He lifted the other eyebrow.
“Wait, stop. I take that back.” I waved my hands in the air, thoroughly annoyed now. The smell of marinara and chicken carbonara wafted through the air as I tried to fix this. “Ignore my dramatics. I'm in a safe . . . well, mostly safe . . . situation. I just need to be able to defend myself for a few more weeks.” My voice elevated a pitch too high. “Not a big deal!”
He stayed cool when he asked, “The one that hit you already?”
“Yes, if you must know,” I ground out, then pointed to him. “And he is not my boyfriend or my fiancee or my husband so don't even go there. I'm not a victim. He's not . . . an attacker either. It was all an accident. I think,” I tacked on, then regretted it when his lips tightened.
Except I was sort of a victim in the way that any woman would be against a much larger man she couldn't exactly escape. Or his crazy girlfriend, but that was a whole other bottle of worms. The murky details didn’t matter.
Benjamin frowned. “Look, our roster is full. There's literally no mat time available to host a self-defense class.”
A curse word slipped out under my breath, but before I could back away, he held up a hand.
“But maybe you and I could figure something out.”
“What does figure something out mean?”
He tilted his head to the side. “I'll teach you a few things. Self-defense isn't that hard to get started with. We'd need an hour, tops, to cover the basics.”
“That fast? Really?”
He nodded. Despite having a larger-than-life presence with his body, he had a calm way about him. Quiet. Just the way he lived. Powerhouse on the mat, quiet as a calm summer day otherwise. Coming in here had been one of the hardest things I'd ever done, and some days, that was saying something. I appreciated the calm mein more than he'd ever know.
“Why?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Let's just say I'm a sucker for a damsel-in-distress.”
Three seconds passed while I comprehended that comment. Then my blood boiled. For three more seconds, I saw the world in shades of red. Is this how Talmage felt? Is this why I had a big fat lip? Some genetic predisposition to instant rage when helpful people were just trying to help?
Maybe I had too much pride.
Or maybe that was just a dumb thing to say.
Without realizing it, I had taken a step back sometime between the word distress and my indrawn breath of rage. His eyes widened.
“Then find someone else to rescue,” I snapped. “This damsel can save herself . . . with a few well-placed self-defense lessons from someone that isn't you,” I added for good measure. “I have some pride, no matter what you've judged of me.”
I spun and shoved out the door.
Cool spring air washed down my face as I headed for the mountain bike I'd parked close to the back, out of sight. My bike had been stolen before, and thankfully recovered, but I couldn't afford another fallback. It was my only transportation.
My cheeks had exploded with heat in the ten seconds it took to tell him off. Humiliation had a way of coloring me bright crimson, and I hated it. Damsel-in-distress? Seriously? I wanted to throw his own arrogance back at him. I wasn't sitting at home, waiting for the next fist and prince charming, thank you very much.
Geez.
Fuming, I jerked the backpack on the rest of the way, grabbed the bike handles, and had one leg almost over the bike when a hand grabbed my leg to stop me.
On reflex, I kicked back with a grunt. Whoever had my leg shuffled at the shifting weight, but didn't budge. They released me. I whirled around to find Benjamin there. My helmet swung from my hand as I wheeled it toward him, but he dodged the flying foam missile like a featherlight ninja, then took a step back and held up two hands.
“Sorry,” he quickly said, “I shouldn't have touched you.”
Chest heaving, blood thumping, I let my hand rest at my side. The helmet hit my thigh uselessly. Embarrassed at my overreaction—but seriously, he touched me?—I took a deep breath.
“What?” I snapped again. “You made your position very clear.”
“I want to help.”
In the dimming spring light, shadows bathed his face. A glimmer of something showed in his eyes, and he tucked his hands into his front pockets. He normally stood with his arms at his side, like a god come to life. His face was usually analytical and serious. Now it was . . . concerned.
Faaaantastic. I engendered pity in the man I'd secretly tried to ignore for months now. And maybe—just maybe—that whole stomping out had been a bit of an overreaction. Mom always said that defensiveness meant there was truth in what the other person said.
So . . . there was that.
“I'm sorry,” he said. “That came out as arrogant and it’s not entirely true. I don't see you as a damsel-in-distress or whatever. I just . . . I want to help you better your situation however I can. I want you to be safe.”
My racing heart calmed. I studied him for another short eternity. “I overreacted,” I said. “I'm sorry too.”
He lifted his eyebrows. Was it a surprise or a follow-up question? Going with the latter, I stumbled over my own thoughts. Did I want to trust him? Yes.
Could I?
Also yes.
At least I could sense that much beneath the layers of vulnerable bravado and muscle that held something of a charming man. He was coiled quiet. Deadly precision. Probably moved faster than I could think.
Not probably, he definitely could.
I'd seen the videos of his last fight where he'd destroyed his opponent in a crushing career-builder, then retired and left the MMA world in a sense of reeling shock. No explanation. Just walked away at the top of his career and disappeared into a quiet mountain town bubble.
There was nothing normal about Mercedy, but something told me that everything in him wanted to be.
“I just need someone to teach me the basics in case I need them.” I ran a hand through my hair, which had fallen from the loose ponytail and gone full-curl-powered-frizzy at some point. “Like poking eyes or groin kicks or something. I'm pretty open in the afternoon. I work from six to three at the diner Monday through Thursday and noon to closing on Saturday.”
His gaze followed my gesture to The Diner across the way. For several moments, a machine seemed to move behind his eyes.
“Come at 9:00 tomorrow,” he finally said, “just after we close. I'll teach you what you need to know. But it's not going to stop someone that's determined to hurt you. If—”
“You'd do that?”
“Yes.”
I rolled my eyes. “Because you want to be the hero?”
“No,” he said softly. “Because I want you to be.”
My natural snarky response froze in my throat, and all I could do was nod. Geez, what was I doing? Giving Mercedy—it was easier to picture him as a non-god if I called him by his last name—attitude. Not only that, but I'd be alone with him.
For an hour.
“Okay, I'll take that.” I nodded, hair waving around my face, and held up a finger. “But wait. Can I pay you?”
“I don't need the money.”
“Great! Then I'll bring food. Dinner is on me. And it won't be from the Diner. I'll make it.”
A hint of amusement appeared like a crack in his veneer. “It doesn't matter where it's from. And you don't have to bring me food.”
I tilted my head back and forth. “Yes, I do need to give something back. I demand it. Do we have a deal?”
Feeling a sense of euphoria for the first time in weeks, I stuck my hand out. It had been too long since I had a real win, and I wanted this one more than I thought. Only a few seconds passed before our hands came together. Then I comprehend that I'd likely be touching him tomorrow.
Him.
Mercedy.
Whom I had quietly stalked from behind the Diner windows and tried to i
gnore all at the same time. When he gripped my hand in his, tiny little fireworks erupted under the skin of my palm and electrified the rest of my body. His hand seemed to swallow mine. I adored the physical response and tried to soak it up. The pooling collection of heat in my belly caused another shiver through me.
Falling was always the best part.
He gave me a short nod, and I couldn't help but wonder if he ever smiled. “Deal,” he said.
“Thank you. I appreciate it. Oh! Do you have any allergies?”
“Nah.” He took a step back, our hands falling apart. “I eat just about anything.”
Like a madwoman, I wanted to rush forward and snatch his hand back. To cradle his in mine. To imagine what that thrumming touch would feel like on my shoulders. My neck. My cheek. Instead, I let my hand drop back to my side.
“You got it, Mercedy.”
His head tilted back in amusement, as if he didn't know what to make of me. He certainly wouldn't be the first. I climbed on top of my bike, one leg bent as I put a foot on the pedal.
“What's your name?” he asked.
“Serafina. You can call me Sera.”
I shoved off, my bike tires humming on the pavement as I pedaled away.
2
Benjamin
My six-year-old daughter Ava snored like a rockstar.
When I pulled the inflatable mattress out from under the front desk, the lights in the gym were already dim. It was 10:00, and I'd managed to finalize everything just an hour after closing. A new record. Everyone else had left, and now we could finally go home.