Joel raised his eyebrow.
"Shawn knows me, he knows I work at a bar. He knows you're a hot head. Tell him you came to the bar where I was working last night and saw some guy giving me a hard time. One thing led to another and you ended up like this."
"I think he'd probably question why I couldn't defend myself against a drunk," he argued.
"Fine, tell him it was a group of guys if that satisfies your macho need to look tough," she said. "Anyway, if he questions how beat up you look, just say 'You should see the other guys.'"
Joel laughed. "That might work."
"Tell him to call me if he doesn't believe you. I'll convince him."
Joel smiled and leaned forward, giving Amber a gentle kiss on the lips. "You're amazing," he said. "No matter how much I fuck up, you're always there to bail me out."
She kissed him back. "How about you stop fucking up for a little while?"
Joel kissed her again. "I'll try, Amber. I promise. I know living with me isn't simple."
"Sometimes I think getting in the ring with you might be easier," she teased.
Joel's look became serious as he pulled his head back a bit to look at her. His blue eyes seemed to draw her in as she waited for him to speak.
"I think I love you," he finally said.
Her heart was pounding in her chest. She hadn't been sure he would ever be able to tell her that. "I love you, too," she replied. "And I don't have to think about it."
He leaned forward and their lips met, and then he bent down and swept an arm under her knees, lifting her from the ground with a little wince as he carried her to the bedroom.
"Are you sure you're up for this?" she asked, giving him a little kiss on the earlobe as she held tightly around his neck. He was injured, but she still hoped he'd say yes.
Joel nodded and smiled at her as he lowered her onto the mattress and slid alongside of her. "Just be gentle with me."
She giggled and swung a leg over her waist, pulling herself on top of him as she looked at his battered face. It didn't matter what he looked like, she really did love him. "Fat chance of that." And then she lost herself on his lips.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Joel
Joel took a couple of days off to heal before heading back to Rock House, at Amber's insistence. When he returned, Shawn asked him to come into his office.
Joel was impressed when he stepped into the owner's private room for the first time. Plaques and framed magazine covers adorned the walls from when Shawn was still a competitor. There were trophies and medals on display as well, but he didn't have time to examine them as much as he would have liked.
"So a bar fight, eh?" Shawn sat down behind his desk and picked up a little blue stress ball, working it in his hand as he looked up at his young protégé.
Joel nodded, sticking to the story he had already gone over on the phone when he had called to tell his trainer that he wouldn't be in for a couple of days.
"Joel, I know I made myself clear the first night that you weren't supposed to continue your after-hours fighting, although obviously if this was really just a case of you defending your girlfriend, that's another situation altogether."
"If you'd like, you could call and talk to her. She should be home, she doesn't work today."
Shawn's gaze drilled into Joel, his bottom lip pulled down below his teeth before he finally put the ball down and exhaled heavily. "I have no doubt she'll tell me the same thing," he said. "Look, Joel, I don't know what happened for sure. Maybe your story is true, and maybe it isn't. And since I don't know for sure, I'm not going to do anything about it. But let me be clear. If anything like this happens again, you're out.
"I know shit goes down, but you're going to have to learn to walk away. If something comes up that makes you think you can't handle shit on your own, I want you to come to me first. Let's see if we can come to a solution together. I know you haven't had an easy time of it, which is why I gave you a shot here. I see potential in you. Don't fuck it up."
"I understand," Joel said.
"Now get out of here and go train. Lay off the sparring for a few days while that nose heals a bit more. You don't want it any more crooked than it already is."
As soon as Joel closed the office door he let out a long hard breath that he'd been holding. Shawn obviously didn't completely buy his bar fight story, but at least he was still training. He needed to make sure he didn't fuck up again. He may not have earned anything from his fight with the Executioner, losers never did, but he already had enough money from his previous fights to keep paying rent for a few more months. Until then he had time to figure something else out. Maybe he could ask Shawn if there really were any odd jobs around the gym that needed doing - turning his initial lie into a reality.
For now though, he needed to do as Shawn suggested and double down on his training. He needed to stop being distracted by other things.
He walked over to the free weight section. Most importantly, he needed to start working on his power, like Chris had suggested. He wouldn't let brute strength be his undoing again.
It was already past dinner when he left that night, one of the last ones to go home. As he walked through the parking lot toward the bus stop, he heard someone calling his name. It turned out to be the bald guy that he'd seen at his fights a couple of times.
"Hey Joel, how's the face?"
"It's healing," he said. "I hope that other guy's fists will be okay though."
The other man laughed. "At least you can joke about it."
Joel nodded. "What are you doing here? Looking to join a training camp?"
The other man cocked his head. "You don't remember me, do you? I didn't think you recognized me, but I wasn't sure. I looked a bit different, of course. Had a goatee."
"Have we met before?"
"Not officially. I was one of the fighters in the tournament at Golden Dragon. My name is Darien."
As soon as he said it, Joel remembered him. He'd fought against Carlos and gotten creamed. "Oh right, I remember now. Sorry I didn't recognize you before."
Darien shrugged. "No worries. Anyway, I still train at Golden Dragon. With Carlos."
"Oh," Joel said. "I guess you aren't one to hold a grudge then."
"A fight's a fight. Nothing personal. Carlos is damn good and he beat me. I figured if I'm going to train from someone, it should be someone like him."
Joel didn't say anything. He had his own feelings about the big Hispanic.
"You hear he was signed to a fight with Titan? It's going to be television in a few months."
Joel nodded. It was a big opportunity for a fighter. If you did well in one of these smaller televised events, it sometimes led to a bigger contract shortly after with a more well-known organization.
"Anyway, he wants to talk to you. He asked me to find you. He told me you were training in the Rock camp now."
"What does he want?"
"You'll have to ask him yourself. I have a car here, we can go right now."
Despite his feelings about Carlos, Joel was intrigued as to what the other man could possibly want to talk to him about. As far as he knew, the enmity between the two of them went both ways. He nodded and followed Darien to his car, but his body felt tense. He would be ready for anything.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Amber
As much as Amber enjoyed being able to help nurse Joel back to health during the last couple of days, it wasn't how she wanted to spend the rest of her life. There just seemed to be some sort of self-destructive streak in that man that she couldn't seem to figure out how to shut down.
She hated that he had lied to her, but she understood why he'd done it. Or at least, she understood why he felt that he had to do it, although she still didn't really understand why he felt that way in the first place. To understand that, she would really need to know more about his past.
The last time she had dug into his family life had ended up in a huge fight, but they'd gotten through that. During the last few days, J
oel had actually started to open up a little bit about his childhood. Nothing major, but enough that Amber could see he was making an effort to let her in. Nevertheless, she was worried that it wasn't going to be fast enough. There was no telling when the next time would come that he'd self-destruct.
After finding out about his father, she had hoped it would change things. One demon of his past was vanquished, but something else still hung over him. There was still a part of him that wouldn't give himself over to her completely. He still seemed to be waiting for the other shoe to drop. As if he was surprised any time he came home to find Amber still there, waiting happily to greet him. It broke her heart to imagine what could have caused such hurt in the man she was growing to love so much.
So although she knew the potential to completely backfire was high, she still felt like she needed to dig a little bit deeper. She needed to go somewhere that Joel may never forgive if he found out, but if what he'd said about his past was true, he probably would never find out anyway. He'd left all that behind, and it didn't seem like he was ever going to go look for it again.
She picked up the piece of paper that she had written the number on and picked up the phone. She held it in her hands for a few minutes before her shaking fingers started to dial.
"Hello?" came the voice on the other end.
"Is this Mrs. Slater," Amber asked.
"Yes. Who is this?"
"Do you have a son named Joel?"
There was a long pause on the other end of the phone. She was about to say something, thinking she may have been disconnected, when she finally heard the other woman answer quietly. "Yes. Is he...?"
"No, oh god no, he's fine," Amber said. She hadn't even thought about what a call like this from a stranger, out of the blue after so many years, might sound like to Joel's mother.
"I'm a friend of his. His girlfriend, actually. I was wondering if I could come and talk to you?"
Chapter Fifty
Joel
Darien drove them back to the club where he'd first met Carlos, the Golden Dragon Dojo. He had a bad taste in his mouth surrounding the place, still believing them to be a bunch of crooks after they had required him to pay $300 to join just so he could fight in the tournament. That was one membership he never planned to use.
Darien dropped him off at the door. "He's just inside, the door should be open. The club is officially closed right now, but Carlos has special after-hours privileges."
Joel watched as he drove off, wondering if coming here was such a good idea after all. He'd promised both Shawn and Amber that he would behave, and he couldn't afford to break that promise again. But if he was going to meet up with Carlos alone in an empty dojo? There was no telling how that would play out.
The sign on the door said closed, but when he gave it a yank found that it was unlocked, as promised. Inside he was surprised at how different the place looked than it had when he'd last been here. Of course, at that time it had been set up for a tournament, with bleachers and a ring. Those were all gone now, and instead the floor was covered with mats. There was some seating along the side of the room, but there were only fold up chairs. Unlike Rock House, there was no workout equipment in sight. It was a more typical Dojo than MMA training house, which made sense. The tournament he had fought in had been co-sponsored by Tiger Strike. That training camp had their own facility.
The main part of the Dojo was empty, but he heard laughing coming from one of the rooms at the back so he made his way across the mat. There were a few doors along the back wall which looked like they led to offices and change rooms. The men's room had a light on and the door was not closed all the way. The sounds were coming from in there.
"Hello?" he called through the opening. There was laughter coming from inside, both male and female voices. He wasn't sure anyone heard him so he said it again, louder.
"Come in," yelled the male voice. He recognized the accent as Carlos immediately.
Joel wasn't prepared for the sight before him as he stepped through the doorway and turned toward the source of the voices.
Carlos was sitting on a long bench that he'd pulled up next to the lockers and he was leaning on them. His long pony tail was still slicked back, but he was only wearing pants. What surprised Joel, though, was that he wasn't the only one shirtless. There were three women sitting with Joel, all of them only wearing bottoms.
The first girl, a brunette, was in jeans and on his lap. Carlos had his arm around her bare chest, covering only the nipples of her very large breasts.
There was another brunette on the bench leaning against them on their left side who was in a short black skirt. As she saw Joel enter she giggled and put her hand over her smaller breasts, covering both of them completely.
The third girl, a blond, was sitting on a second bench that had been pulled perpendicular to the first. She was facing the other three with her bare back toward Joel. She looked over her shoulder as he came in and smiled.
"Hey ese, it's been a while," Carlos said. He had a little smile on his face, but his attention was clearly split between Joel and the girl on his lap. His hands were moving around her chest as he spoke, and she brought her own hands up to grab his to keep them in place. There were two empty wine bottles on the floor, and double that many beer bottles. A half-filled bottle was on the bench to Carlos' right.
"Carlos," Joel nodded. He still hadn't a clue what the man wanted, although he was fairly sure it wasn't to join him in an orgy.
"I hear you've been talking trash about me at one of those little underground fight clubs," he said. His fingers squeezed the girl on his lap and she let out a little yelp.
"I wouldn't say that," Joel said carefully.
"Darien tells me that you said I was lucky that we didn't get to fight. He said you wanted to kick my ass. What do you think girls? Do you think this little runt could kick my ass?"
The girls all giggled. The brunette on his lap shook her head.
"Maybe we should find out, eh ese? We could go right now, let the girls judge the winner?"
"You're drunk," Joel said. "It would be easier than normal and then you'd have an excuse about why you lost."
Carlos' eyes darkened and his hand flattened against the bench as he launched himself to his feet, throwing the brunette off of his lap, her big breasts bouncing freely for a moment before she covered them up and scampered off to sit on the other side of the bench. The other brunette slid over to sit next to her.
"Even drunk I could take you," he roared, spit flying from his mouth.
"I'm not here to fight you, Carlos," Joel said. "Is that all you wanted to talk about?"
"Darien told me you got your ass handed to you the other night. Your pretty face doesn't look so pretty anymore," he laughed, his earlier anger already dissipated. "I wonder, how did you explain that to Mr. Rock? From what I hear, he has a zero tolerance policy for after-hours fighting. Maybe I should call him and ask him why he made an exception for you?"
This time it was Joel who could feel the temperature in his neck and face start to rise. "Is that your plan to get rid of me? Sabotage my training? You didn't strike me as the type to be scared of a fight."
"Scared? Of you?" Carlos threw his head back in an exaggerated laugh. "Like I said, if you want to fight right now, let's do this." The big Hispanic started to open and close his fists by his sides, as if loosening them up.
It took every ounce of willpower that Joel possessed not to leap forward and knock Carlos in the teeth. "And like I said, I'm not here to fight right now. But I think it's a great idea. It's time we got in the ring."
"Name the time and place," Carlos said. "Do you think your master will even let you off your leash?"
That was the problem. Shawn Rock would be furious if he fought Carlos outside of an official fight, and he'd probably kick him out immediately. But perhaps there was a way he could swing it.
"You let me worry about Rock House. You worry about Tiger Strike and Golden Dragon."
C
arlos laughed again. "Neither of them have any rules about what I do outside of training hours," he said. Joel's eyes quickly shifted around the room to the three women he was partying with in the Dojo, the blond winking at him as he met her gaze. Clearly.
"Fine," Joel said, turning on his heel and exiting the way he'd come. "I'll set it up. It's finally time we do this." He left before Carlos could say another word. If he hurried, he could make it back to the club before Shawn left.
Chapter Fifty-One
Amber
Amber almost drove through a red light, the honking horn of a passing pickup the only thing pulling her mind back to driving. She was already late, although it wasn't as if there was a set time she needed to be at the club. There were only a few times a year that Rock House allowed spectators in to watch training, ostensibly to entice new sign ups, but on those days it was open the entire day. Still, she had told Joel she would be there in the morning, and it was already almost lunch.
Silver and Chrome: A Bad Boy MC Romance Page 59