Rough Around the Edges

by Ranae Rose

  He gave some guy who was blocking his way his fiercest glare and was satisfied when the stranger moved out of his way, clearing a narrow path to the door. He shoved it open, abandoning the noise and heat of the gym.

  The March night air was a stark contrast to the packed venue. The chill quickly permeated the insubstantial weave of Ryan’s shorts and the somewhat thicker cotton of his sweatshirt. Still, it didn’t slow him down – nothing could’ve slowed him down as he made his way toward an irresistible silhouette. “Hey.”

  Ally was leaning against the brick wall in a casual pose, doing nothing in particular. As soon as he spoke, she turned, her eyes widening in surprise.

  “Hey.” She stared, and for a moment, he indulged in thinking that she was just as incapable of breaking eye contact as he was. Fueling his fantasy by holding his gaze, she exhaled, releasing a cloud of breath that fogged the air, making him wonder what it would be like to feel her breath on his lips. “That was some serious ass-kicking. Cameron’s never going to let you skip a Friday now – you know that, right?”

  His smile stretched into a grin. “That’s all right with me.”

  She raised an eyebrow, the arch accentuating the graceful shape of her eyes. “Really? No work or family obligations to keep you from showing up here every week?” She continued to meet his eyes, her expression almost scrutinizing, as if she expected him to backpedal and admit that he wouldn’t be able to fight every Friday after all.

  That wasn’t going to happen. His work schedule was perfect for fighting at night, and family? He couldn’t even remember the last time there had been someone waiting up for him to come home. “I’m a roofer – we quit when it gets dark. And family? No. I’m free to spend my nights however I choose.” Visions of spending a night with her exploded in his mind, startling in their vividness.

  “Oh.” Her eyes widened the tiniest bit, and her voice was softer than before.

  The unexpected silkiness of her reply added plenty of fuel to the fire that was blazing in his imagination. As he imagined the feel of her skin, he didn’t just want to talk to her anymore. In fact, the idea of leaving after their brief exchange was more agonizing than the throbbing pain the night’s events had left in his sides. “About how I spend my nights…”

  Silver lights plagued him with renewed intensity, bursting in front of him like fireworks. He braced himself against the wall, pitching forward as his equilibrium wavered. Luckily, he managed to catch himself before the movement became overt. Judging by the way Ally parted her lips, just barely tracing the inner rim of the lower one with the tip of her tongue, she thought he was just trying to get close to her.

  And the closeness was nice, even if it hadn’t been intentional. “Want to get something to eat after the fights are over?”

  Her lower lip was shining faintly where she’d touched it with her tongue, the thin layer of wetness catching the glare of a distant streetlight. As his question hung in the air between them, she widened her lips a little more, and his heart slammed against his ribs.

  “I can’t. I came here tonight with my mother.”

  Disappointment hit him like a physical blow. For half a second, she’d looked like she’d wanted to say yes. That fact kept his confidence from failing him as he repressed a sigh. “Another time, then. Like I said, all my nights are free.”

  “I don’t date strangers. Sorry.”

  Something inside him plunged all the way down to his toes. His heart? No, that particular organ was still beating hard against his ribs, speeding long after it should’ve slowed in the wake of his fight. The adrenaline supply pumping through his veins had been waning steadily since his cold shower; the reason for the cardiac rush was standing right in front of him.

  “All right.” If that really was her personal policy – and hopefully it was exactly that, not just a way to get rid of him – then he couldn’t expect her to abandon it for him. “But I won’t be a stranger forever. You’ll be seeing a lot of me, even if it is just at the gym.”

  Still leaning against the wall, he fought to see past the silver lights messing with his head and searched her eyes for some sign – any indication – that she’d be willing to reconsider in time. God knew he had nothing but time.

  It was hard to see past the lightning-like spots and zigzags, but he was so close that he could sense her body heat, which infused the night chill with the barest hint of warmth. He savored it like he would have the last drop of water on earth.

  “I’m going to head inside. It’s cold out here.” She held his gaze for another brief moment before stepping past him.

  “See you soon.”

  As she disappeared back into the building, he remained against the wall, leaning forward into nothing as a wave of pain swept through his head, saturating the hard shell of his skull and the softer matter of his brain. He braced against it, pressing his elbow hard against the unforgiving bricks as he kept his shoulders rigid, refusing to let them slump just in case anyone was looking.

  Realization hit him just as suddenly as the pain had – Ally had done him a favor by turning him down. If they’d gone out that night, he would only have embarrassed himself. He was in for a night of misery, and not just because she’d declined to have dinner with him.

  * * * * *

  “I’ll be there next time,” Ryan said, meaning every word as Ally stood a few scant feet from him, halfway between the heavy bag he was working and the gym door.

  She didn’t quite look like she believed him. “We’ll see.” She held his gaze as she delivered her reply, but a distinct light passed through her eyes, making it seem as if she’d say more.

  She didn’t. A moment later, she strode to the door and exited the gym. He watched her go, his eyes settling on a name written across the side of her gym bag in bold black letters – Rivera.

  Ryan’s muscles – which still ached from his Friday night fights – relaxed in her wake, leaving him feeling as if he’d just deflated. Maybe it was weird that her departure had that effect on him, but their brief conversation had left him feeling bad – a little guilty, even.

  He’d had every intention of attending the women’s fight night on Saturday and watching her compete. Missing it had seriously grated on him, but he hadn’t had a choice. No way could he have shown up there in the state he’d spent the weekend in. He hadn’t even been capable of driving. Mixed waves of frustration and regret swept through him, quickly spiraling into outright anger. Damn it, he’d missed a chance to see her, to connect with her – to take another step toward becoming more than just a stranger.

  It might not make complete sense why that was so important to him, but it was.

  He took it out on the bag, throwing elbows hard enough to send the heavy cylinder swaying on its chains. When he’d signed up at Knockout, he’d looked forward to having bags to vent his frustrations on. But he hadn’t counted on meeting someone who made him feel even more frustrated than usual in the first place.

  Not that it was her fault. Not at all. It was him – the things he couldn’t do, even when he wanted nothing more than to do them. She made him want to do things and be things that he couldn’t – at least, not that past weekend, anyway.

  He dealt the bag another punishing blow, then laid into it with a kick that would’ve sent a man his size flying. Next time, it would be different. He wasn’t like that all the time. He’d jump on the next chance he got to spend time with her.

  He practiced combinations until he’d worked the heat of futile anger out of his veins and his mind. When he was finished on the bag, it felt like only a few minutes had gone by. The way his body ached told him it had been longer.

  “Hey man, wanna do a little sparring? The ring is open.”

  Ryan turned to face a man about his age with short-cropped red hair. What was his name – Blake, Black, something with a B? “Sure.” The bag had suffered the brunt of his anger and he’d calmed down enough to spar.

  Ryan and the other man were among just a few fighters wh
o were currently in the gym. Knockout was experiencing a weeknight twilight hour – one of those narrow blocks of time during which people who worked typical daytime hours were about to get off work and those who worked evenings or nights were getting ready to report for duty.

  The day trainers had mostly filtered out, and the evening ones had yet to arrive. Until then, Ryan and the other guy would have the ring to themselves.

  Ten minutes later, Ryan was getting winded. They hadn’t been sparring hard, but he’d gone all out working the bag and his cardio endurance had definitely lagged since being discharged from the Marine Corps. Without intense, regular training, his physical fitness had declined from a high peak.

  He’d change that. He had to change it. Despite the fact that he bore scars, sometimes it felt like his body was more his own than his mind.

  So they grappled for a few minutes longer, until Ryan tapped out the other man with a chokehold.

  “I’m gonna hit the showers.”

  Ryan nodded as his sparring partner rose, sweaty, and looked toward the locker room. “Yeah. Think I’m gonna do the same here in a few.” Evening was descending on the city – a fact he hadn’t realized until he’d glimpsed the darkening street beyond the front door just a second ago.

  “All right. See you around. You comin’ out again this Friday?”

  Ryan nodded.

  “Yeah, me too. Hope it doesn’t come down to the two of us in the end, because I really want that prize cash.” He flashed Ryan a wry grin.

  “Same here,” Ryan said, returning the expression. He did want the cash – hell, he needed it – but not as badly as he wanted to fight. A few minutes’ freedom in the ring and the mental afterglow were worth more than money, even if he did need the prize purse.

  “See you then, either way.”

  Ryan was left alone in the ring and the near-silence of an almost empty gym. As eager to procrastinate heading back to his apartment as he was to alleviate the quiet, he climbed over the ropes and made his way to a speed bag. He worked it for a few minutes, striking with less focus than usual as he forced himself to come to terms with the idea of walking home.

  He wouldn’t have minded as much if he’d had his Mustang – he liked driving. But it was in the shop, recovering from a fender-bender. His apartment was within walking distance of Knockout, which was lucky, even if it didn’t feel like it.

  He abandoned the bag and hit the shower in the locker room, rinsing briefly beneath the lukewarm spray before dressing in jeans and his default black jacket, which he zipped up to his collarbones before slinging his gym bag over his shoulder.

  Time to go home.

  When he emerged from the locker room, resigned, Melissa was several steps ahead of him, leaving through the front door.

  “Hey, I’ll see ya Friday, right?” Cameron stood leaning in the doorway to his office, his eyes fixed on Ryan.

  “You’ll see me before then.” Every day. Ryan had no intentions of sitting around in his apartment after work when he could be at the gym instead.

  Cameron grinned. “I figured. Tomorrow, then. I need you to kick some more ass on Friday – the crowd loved it. They’re probably tellin’ their friends right now.” Cameron’s expression wavered somewhere between hopeful and greedy. “We’ll have another full house, for sure. I’m looking into renting a larger venue, too.”

  “You can count on me being there.” He’d be there, and he wouldn’t lose. He wouldn’t – couldn’t – for his own sake. If that made Cameron happy, so much the better.

  His answer seemed to satisfy Cameron, who disappeared into his office with a wave and final goodbye.

  The gym was empty for about half a second before two guys entered through the front door.

  Ryan strode past them and stepped out onto the evening street.

  It was cool out, and relatively quiet. The combination tempted Ryan’s mind to wander, and he let it. As his shoes hit the sidewalk, he thought of Ally. Nothing specific about her, at first – just the way she looked and sounded, and the way he imagined she’d feel beneath his hands. His thoughts were just taking a more specific turn along those lines when his gaze flickered over a silhouette a block or so ahead, where someone else walked the lonely sidewalk.

  At first, he didn’t know what was wrong, only that something was. A sharp bolt of unease zipped down his spine and made the hair on the back of his neck rise.

  Then his mind caught up with his senses and he zeroed in on exactly what was wrong with the picture in front of him – the shadows to the side of the solo-walker were moving, stepping out of the dark shelter cast by a looming four-story warehouse.

  The shadows belonged to two men. The person who’d just been about to walk past them was undeniably a woman – tall but slender, almost willowy.

  Clearly, she hadn’t realized they were there. She jumped, falling back into a defensive position with a sound of surprise. “What are you doing?” Her voice was familiar, though he’d never heard the distinct note of fear in it before. So was the sheen of her black hair as she edged backward, toward the hazy circle of light cast by a streetlight.

  The woman was Melissa, and the two men were closing in on her.

  Ryan dropped everything – literally – and burst into a sprint.

  He was halfway there by the time the noise of his bag hitting the cement echoed from behind him. Everything rushed by in a blur of brick and light, his surroundings dimmed by the intensity of his focus on the three people ahead. All he saw was Melissa and the danger that was closing in on her in the form of two men. One of them reached for her just as Ryan arrived on the scene.

  “Stop!” Melissa’s voice was higher now, her tone somewhere between definite fear and a threat. She began to draw back her right arm, like she was going to strike the man closest to her.

  But there were two of them, and they laughed as she tensed, telling them to leave her alone.

  The man’s fingers brushed Melissa’s upper left arm – the arm where her purse hung. But it wasn’t the handbag’s strap that he attempted to latch on to; it was her bicep.

  He never got a chance to establish a firm hold. Ryan reached for the man and gripped him hard by one shoulder, jerking him back.

  The guy wasn’t much smaller than he was, but he’d been so focused on Melissa that he hadn’t noticed Ryan approaching until too late. The force of Ryan’s jerky movement went through the man’s body, causing his neck to snap back.

  Chapter 3

  Ryan drew his fist back and let it fly in a movement he’d practiced so many times that his training had blurred with instinct. The fact that there were two men meant that he had to move fast, and full speed left no room for mercy. Not that either of them deserved it.

  The man’s expression of surprise had just transitioned into anger when Ryan’s knuckles landed squarely in the center of his face. The crunch of cartilage was loud. Ryan wasn’t sorry – it seemed natural to relish the sound of damage, if only because it meant he was succeeding at what had suddenly become the most important thing in his world – protecting a woman in trouble.

  The man crumpled, catching himself with a hand thrown backward against the sidewalk as he clapped the other to his face, swearing. The expletive came out muffled, the word broken just like the speaker’s nose.

  “Fuck!” The other man’s curse rang loud and clear, echoing down the street as he took a step backward from Melissa, eyeing Ryan warily.

  Ryan lunged for the man, but he was already running, leaving his friend to fend for himself.

  Apparently reluctant to be abandoned, the injured man scrambled to his feet and hurried in the same direction, mumbling a string of curses that mixed with the wet, bubbling sound of blood flowing through his damaged nasal passages.

  Ryan’s muscles quivered with the instinct to give chase, fueled by bitter adrenaline. Taking control and reining in the urge, he resisted, staying at Melissa’s side instead. The whole point had been to protect her, and he couldn’t do that if he l
eft her alone. “Are you all right?”

  She met his gaze with eyes that were still wide. “Yeah… Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  He nodded.

  “I had no idea you were out here,” she said, looking from side to side as if wondering where he’d come from. “When you pulled that guy away from me, I think I almost collapsed from relief.”

  “I left the gym about a minute after you did. I was only a block away when those shitheads crawled out of the shadows.” Now that he stood beside Melissa, it was obvious that they’d been lurking in the adjacent alley and had come out when she’d walked by. They’d probably been lying in wait for someone to mug – or worse.

  The sheer relief evident on Melissa’s face said that she realized that. “Thanks,” she echoed. “Really, thank you.”

  Ryan shrugged, instinctively trying to put her at ease. “What kind of idiots try to jump someone this close to an MMA gym?”

  That did the trick – Melissa laughed, though the sound was faintly shrill. “I don’t know, now that you put it that way.”

  Ryan slipped a hand into his pocket. “I’m going to call the police and report this – if I see those guys around here again, I want to be able to call in and have something done about it. What do you say we wait for an officer to respond?”

  Melissa hesitated for a moment. “I’ve got work, but… No, you’re right. We should report this. I’ll stay.”

  It didn’t take long for a pair of officers to arrive at the scene. Ryan and Melissa both answered their questions, and Ryan was careful to give as much detail as possible. The thought of two thugs lurking near Knockout ready to ambush women made his gut cramp up with hot anger and sharp worry. What if they waited for Melissa again? Or Ally? His blood ran cold as he imagined what might happen if either of the women were ever attacked and no one else was around.

  Yeah, they both knew how to fight, but that didn’t make them invincible. Far from it. They were both a lot smaller and lighter than Melissa’s assailants had been, and what if the men were armed next time?