“Attention, honored guests!”
Everyone fell silent, and Skye felt exposed in front of the crowd. Even in the designer dress. She longed for a wrap or even just a coarse blanket to wind around her shoulders. There was nothing but Aaron’s arm. He steadied her stance, and Aaron deflected the confused stares and the hushed whispers. Skye imagined a world where this could become normal, where she might even hold court in time and feel comfortable in fresh skin. Say this much for Aaron; he had come to collect her and hadn’t run scared after the first blush. So she seemed destined for this man, and the coin in his pocket, really in his father’s, that would keep her all kinds of comfortable.
“What the hell?” Aaron gasped.
The main door had burst open, and Skye lost her breath at the sight of Ben rushing toward her. His beard was thick, his eyes like that of a wild man, and Skye started to hide behind Aaron’s back when Ben lunged and pulled her closer to his side.
“Don’t do this,” he pleaded. “It’s not what you---”
Skye cut him off with a sharp slap to his face. Ben’s head whirled over his shoulders, but he never lost his footing as Skye grabbed his face and forced him to look into her eyes.
“You come here tonight?” she cried. “Thought you had so many better things to---”
“Not what you think, Skye!” he said. “He said… he said he wanted you close to stick it to the old man. And I… I was paid to set the table.”
She didn’t want his words to sink in, wanted him to be spinning a story in his favor. But as her mind worked overtime to make sense of the situation, so many things clicked into place. Why had Aaron offered her the job in the first place? Why was he was in the right place at seemingly the right moment?
“Ben…”
Skye could hardly form another word as she started to fall into his chest. But Aaron reached for her, his hand rough against her shoulder when Ben backed him off and glared at the heir to the throne.
“No more,” he said. “Here.”
Ben flung a stack of bills right back in the man’s face, and he touched his hand to Skye’s back as he extended his chin into the air.
“I won’t let you do this to her,” he said. “Not when… not when I know how special she is.”
And at the sound of his words, any ice around her heart that might have been meant for Ben thawed, and Skye forgot the crowded room as she lightly kissed his lips.
Chapter 7
Skye clung to Ben’s arm as they started to exit the party, Aaron’s rage bubbling over and seeming to swirl all around them as they took their leave of the party. In spite of the rich boy’s tricks, she felt a pull on her heart. No doubt he had only made the move out of desperation and what he thought had to look like love. Stopping in her tracks, she gently moved her fingers and gave Ben’s hand a gentle squeeze as he cocked his head to the side and looked at her with confused eyes.
“Skye?” he muttered under his breath. “What are you… please don’t say that you’re changing your mind? Not when this has been killing me for so long.”
She softly shook her head as she turned on her heel and extended her arms.
“Aaron,” she started, “I… I never meant to hurt you.”
“Didn’t you?” he hissed as he folded her arms tightly across his chest as his jaw locked and he furiously tapped his toe to the floor. Skye felt every eye in the room on her, and she didn’t want to finish this scene before an audience. Better to ask him if he would take a moment alone with her, and she tried to touch him when he flinched away from her.
“Don’t even think about touching me you piece of trash.”
As his voice trailed off and he narrowed his eyes, Skye felt a gulp forming at the base of her throat. So let it be in front of everyone if that was his choice. She’d still be the pariah, and maybe she could leave with her head held like something close to high if---
“I would have given you everything,” he said. “This house. My land.”
“Ain’t exactly yours yet, Aaron,” Jesse said. He wheeled around to face his brother, and just when she felt sure that he would go off and strike his youngest sibling in the jaw, Aaron turned back around and he snatched the sleeve of the gown that Skye never had business wearing and tore hard, shredding the fabric as Skye fell to her knees and tried to shield her exposed breasts from the gaping crowd.
“What the hell, you son of a bitch!” Ben cried out. He looked like he wanted to seize Aaron by his throat and drain the life from his body. But instead he collapsed to her side and stripped off his coat, protecting her from the gasps and the smirks as he looked up with hate in his stare.
“Just want her to do the walk of the shame in the proper attire,” he scoffed. “Or lack thereof. Thinks she can do a man’s work? A man would have the brains to know a chance when it came his way. This one is just fetid trailer trash.”
Skye started to shift to her feet as Aaron’s brothers tried to hold him back, telling him to take a walk, maybe get another drink or at least a breath of fresh air. Jesse was suddenly the more insistent of the two, but all three boys fell silent as their father stepped into the fray, staring his sons down.
Skye shuddered some at Ben’s side, and she pressed her arm to his heaving chest, whispering into his neck that they should just be on their way when Powell snapped his fingers and pointed towards the way out.
“Think you should be on your way, girl,” he said, hardly hiding the sneer in his tone as Ben brought Skye closer to his side and peered into the man’s eyes.
“We can find our own way,” he said.
“Sure you can find your way around a lot of things, boy,” he said. “But just for kicks, I’ll show you out. Wouldn’t want you nicking the silver or anything else on your way out.”
Ben marched her to the door, Powell’s breath racing down the back of her neck. She dared one last glance over her shoulder. Jesse gave her a weak wave as Oliver regarded his older brother and the girl with equal amounts of disdain. Aaron stared for the bottle as he looked out at the other girls waiting in what wasn’t quite the wings, and just as quickly as he was ready to link their lives, he moved on to what he had to think were greener pastures. Skye bit down on her tongue, fearing that she might draw blood when she and Ben were out, and she clutched his jacket closer as she looked up into Powell’s eyes.
Don’t tell me that you’re not happy about this,” she said. “You said it was the last thing that you wanted. Well, maybe I feel the exact same way.”
“But you gave consent,” he reminded her. “Seemed all too eager to weasel your way into this family.”
“Until I knew the truth,” Skye shot back. “At least Ben told me that much.”
“And I told my son that I would pick up the pieces,” Powell said. “Can tell you that I had a few sleepless nights worrying that you would make it through the other side. Not because I didn't like you sweetheart. I actually admire your grit and hard work ethic, but I have to look like I'm siding with my son. I would sell him out right here and now if I didn’t have my other boys to think about or their mother’s memory,” he said. “But there’s no reason that you all should be caught in the crossfire.”
“You being straight, Sir?” Ben asked.
“I wouldn’t lie to you, Ben,” he said. “But you sticking around here won’t work for any of us. So…”
He pressed his hands into his pockets and revealed a stack of bills.
“So go far away,” Powell said. “Make her an honest woman. I’ll look to my other sons. And maybe someday, if you want to come back…”
“That can’t happen,” Ben said. “But we still thank you, Sir.”
Ben hurried her into the cab of his truck, and Skye rolled down the window as she touched her fingers to the old man’s arms.
“Bet someday you’ll have a patch of property to rival mine.”
“I’ll do my best, boss man.”
Powell did not blanch at the sound of her words, and as soon as Ben drove away at a fast
slip, Skye fell into his shoulder and felt his warm muscles sliding around her body.
“You okay?” he whispered as he kissed the top of her head.
“I think so,” she murmured. “Feel a little bad about taking the man’s money.”
“We’ll pay it back,” he said. “When we’re far away and I don’t have to think of his hands on…”
Ben glided off to the side of the road, his knuckles growing white as he twisted the steering wheel in his hands and released a heavy sigh.
“And you were with him?” he muttered.
“Yes,” she confessed. “I was lonely. I was… I was weak.”
Ben released the wheel and folded her into his embrace.
“Never say that,” he whispered. “I should have stuck close. Not doing that was weak.”
“So you can let it go?” Skye asked. He tenderly kissed her lips, and when their eyes locked, they shared a smile.
“I’ll let go of anything but you,” he said. “Skye, I---”
“Don’t say another word.”
Stretching forward to claim his kiss, she felt his arms growing stronger around her frame, and as soon as their lips parted, Skye stroked his cheek.
“You have me,” she said. “Wherever I go next, I… I want it to be with you.”
His body relaxed against hers, and Ben kissed her brow as his he turned back to the wheel.
“Then let’s move out,” he said.
They started to race deeper into the night, and Skye rested her head to his chest with a small sigh.
“I missed this,” she said. “Only one time, but---”
“One time counted for everything,” he said. “God knows I missed you.”
She kissed his mouth before settling back into his strong embrace, and as they drove deeper into the moonlight, Skye basked in the right choice and the idea of the sun drifting over the horizon to light the way to a new day ahead.
TAKEN BY THE FIGHTER
Chapter 1
Dan didn't like to think about his job anymore. It was just kind of something he did to pay the bills. Or at least that was what he told himself when things weren't going so well. Lately, things hadn't been going that well, so he'd been telling himself that a lot. He tried not to think about what he thought life was going to be like when he started fighting professionally. He had had all these dreams about being someone, and now that he was the person who he thought he'd wanted to be, he was finding that he didn't like it so much anymore. Not that he'd liked it all that much to begin with.
Kind of like boxing was for inner city black kids, MMA was for a lot of young white men. Not that there wasn't a very eclectic group of ethnicities present in MMA, but if you were black and good at boxing, you were a boxer. Maybe it was like apples and oranges, as a lot of people were fond of telling Dan when he made the comparison. But for him, it was fair to say that because he really believed it, and because he was living it. And not just living, but thriving. As far as that was getting him anyhow. It wasn't like he was any less beat up than the next guy that had to fight for a living but wasn't doing so well.
Maybe it would have been better to not do so well. Unlike boxers, it wasn't possible for him to just fight a few matches a year and somehow make ends meet with so much money he was stuffing mattresses with it and using it as kindling in his fireplace. That just wasn't the way the industry was for people like him. He had to fight a lot, nearly every month, and sometimes that didn't work out well. Because there really was no way to avoid getting knocked around a little bit. Sure, you could make a pretty good go of doing the whole Floyd Mayweather run and gun, but that was only going to get you so far in UFC. And in UFC you could end up hurt in a hurry if you lost a match badly.
As Dan trained, he thought of all of this. It was something that never left his mind, the sport of UFC. He was even going to start going to a trainer to help sharpen his game a little. The doctors were telling him that he just couldn't get knocked around that much anymore, that maybe the next shot to the head would leave him terminally punch drunk. Dan wasn't so worried about that, though. It wasn't like he was going to be doing UFC forever. Or at least that was what he liked to think when his body started to really disagree with him. Sometimes when he woke up in the morning everything creaked, groaned, and cracked. He was like an old man on some mornings, and on even the best mornings he was no spring chicken.
Youth was fleeting, he would remind himself as he worked the speed bag. Youth, good looks, the ability to get beat up all the time and still keep coming back for more. All of that was very fleeting. And there was no way to add any time to it, as far as Dan was concerned. All he wanted to do was throw fuel on the fire while he could. He needed this to work out for him in the long haul sense. He wanted to be one of those guys that retired into the world of coaching at a gym. It wasn't much of a life, but it beat breaking his back on a highway somewhere, trying to spread asphalt around like some kind of real working man. Dan didn't want to end up being that guy, the father who was so burned out by the age of forty that they could barely stay standing at their children’s soccer games. There was just a lot on the line, at least in Dan's mind.
So, he'd work the bag extra in hopes that some of it would really pay off, and he'd stay longer hours at the gym than he needed to. And now he was hiring a coach to tell him how to fight, even though he already knew how to fight. How was this person going to help him? The fact that she was a woman had nothing to do with it, he would tell himself as he skipped jump rope by an empty ring, way after hours, when no one was in the club. That was just the way he did things though, working late and always applying himself. Maybe if he would have applied himself a little bit more in school he wouldn't have had to put all his might into the whole MMA thing, but that was the distant past now. Now he needed to win the next fight, because it was big.
Chapter 2
Walter Whitman, or WW as people liked to call him, was a Russian man as big as a bear. He was a man that as a child actually grew up wrestling bears, so it was fitting that he was now as big as one. His reach and his strength were renowned—in fact, he had even killed the last two men that he had fought. Dan sat watching the fights where WW got in the two or three finishing punches that he always ended with a crushing blow to the head. In American UFC the judge would have jumped in way before the last blow would have delivered a death knell, or at least that was what Dan liked to tell himself.
WW had something of an underdog story going for him as well because he had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks, or so the story went. Dan was never very sure of all the details since so much of the information about WW came straight from his publicist’s mouth, but he figured there was probably some truth to the tales about him fighting for scraps of food when he was a kid—some truth. Dan wasn't buying all of it though.
Dan shook his head and told himself that he needed to focus on his own training and not be so worried about the stories other fighters circulated about themselves. He was pulling into a gym that was new to him to work with his new trainer for the first time. The gym was one of those little ones that thrived back in the day but had recently fallen onto hard times because of the influx of people going to the twenty-four hour fitness gyms that had popped up all over the place like dandelions in recent years. Dan had heard that the trainer, Samantha, was former military and a real hard ass. That was the reason that Dan wanted to work with her so much.
Were there trainers who would love to work with him that were a little more well-known? Sure. But Dan wasn't trying to work with someone based on the reviews that their gym had online, or because they helped newbies to the fighting world get their start. Dan wasn't a newbie, he didn't need someone to tell him how to hook and jab, or how to roll with a punch. He needed someone to suss out his weak spots and then really hammer on them so he could start to make some real changes. This was imperative to him. Dan been hearing rumors of how WW was watching hours upon hours of video of him fighting, and that all his trainers were mimickin
g his fighting style when they sparred with WW.
Dan didn't worry about much, but that had him worried. Mostly because for a long time, he had taken a bunch of heat from the talking heads of the MMA media world for never working with a trainer. In the past it wasn't something Dan had felt would really be worth his time. But now, walking into the old gym, he felt like he was doing the right thing by finally working with someone who was really going to be hard on him. He needed that, needed to grow and change so when he got in the ring with WW things didn't fall apart—so he didn't get taken apart.
Dan surveyed the gym as he walked back to the locker room to change. The lighting was that kind of harsh fluorescent lighting that flickers quickly, but just slowly enough so that there is almost a strobe-like effect. The floors were freshly mopped, but it had been a very long time since they had been replaced. The walls had old school vents for AC and heat, the metal kind that turn brown with rust that can't be easily scraped off, as if it is actually part of the metal instead of being something on the surface. There were a few water fountains. Dan checked both of them and they both worked. The ring in the center of the place was well worn, and there was a brown spot in one of the corners where someone's blood had stained the white mat. There was still some looking around to do even though the place was small, but for the moment Dan was satisfied.
“Did the place pass muster?”
Dan whipped around to see a smiling, lithe, female figure leaning up against one of the walls. It had to be Samantha, his new trainer.
“Yes!” Dan said. “Everything looks great! Well, there are a few things that have probably seen better days, but I'm kind of that way as well in some spots. Wouldn't have it any other way.”
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