by Naomi Niles
FIGHTING FOR LOVE
By Naomi Niles
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Naomi Niles
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Chapter One
Talen
I could hear the clash of sound echo all around me. It felt like a war zone, a moment of contained chaos that would break the moment I made contact. Rhesus Carrow looked like a stone gargoyle, an indomitable, colossal of a man with hands of steel. His eyes were so dark I could barely make out his pupils. That was better – it was easier to think of him as a machine rather than a man.
The ring seemed to shrink as we circled one another, waiting for the sound that would spur us into action. I wanted to move; my legs were shaking with anticipation and my arms were aching to be used. I could feel the burning heat of adrenaline course through my body, reminding me that to fall in this ring would be worse than a failure. It would be sacrilege.
Amazingly, through the blaze of sound, smell, and blurred vision, I heard my name being chanted in the crowd. I could even recognize voices. It was my family, cheering me on as though I had already won. They didn’t understand, cheering was pointless.
I would have preferred silence. I would have preferred prayer. It was a senseless thought; I was not a praying man. And yet, when I was ensconced in the claustrophobic euphoria of the fight, I found myself calling on a higher power.
Then the bell sounded and the world slowed. I saw him coming towards me, the titan of a man who was now a machine in my eyes. Rhesus Carrow came boldly forward, with his massive frame, his powerful arms, and his intimidating eyes. He already believed he had won. I saw that in his leer, in the pervasive smile that caught my attention just before he sent a punch for my face.
I ducked, and he missed, but just barely. He was fast, faster this round than in the previous, and I knew that he wanted to end it soon. An early victory was always a sweeter one.
But he was underestimating me. I was younger then he was, I wasn’t as physically imposing as he was, I wasn’t as experienced as he was – but I was hungry. And, I was determined.
That determination came from knowing that this was all I had. This opportunity would not come a second time, and now that it was here, I needed to make my mark. I needed to make an impression because without it, I was lost. This was more than just about victory for me. This was about survival.
The fight transformed into a living, breathing beast right before my eyes. I had never thought so clearly or moved so swiftly before. I cut off the world and focused only on the machine charging towards me. He was not invincible, no matter what title preceded his name. He was not undefeatable. He was my future, and I needed to secure it by taking him down.
He sent another punch for my face. But this time, I predicted the move and avoided it easily. I spun around, under his arm, and came up behind him. He turned, but my fist was already hurtling towards him. I made contact with the edge of his jaw, sending him reeling into the ring’s elastic boundaries. A roar went up around me, but I refused to celebrate. This was just the beginning.
The machine’s eyes narrowed, and I knew I had taken him off guard. I knew I had unsettled him. He was starting to realize that this would not be an easy victory. It certainly wouldn’t be a quick one.
I took advantage of the new realization in his eyes and came at him with single-minded purpose. I had his head in my hands, pushing him down between my knees. He was struggling to breathe, but I made sure he was weakened before I let go.
He was on his knees, coughing, stuttering, and struggling to rise. I walked around him, aiming my next punch on his back. His giant body fell to the ground, but his arms and legs still fought to stand. But it was over… I could see it already. Defeat was written on every muscle on his body. I backed away as the crowd went wild.
I blinked my eyes open, and I was back in my shitty studio apartment with the sound of blaring traffic just outside my window. I stretched out my sore arm, trying to ignore the tender splint of pain that ran down it. Almost a week later, and I still had pain. I rose from my single bed and felt the bedsprings squeak in relief as I released it of my weight. It took me only three long strides to get to my kitchen.
I opened the fridge and checked what was inside. There was only half a loaf of stale bread and a cup of instant noodles. I got out the noodles and popped it in the microwave. I waited till it was ready and then took two long strides to my dark brown couch and sank down into it. I ate my instant noodles, reliving the fight in Vegas again, but by the time I finished, I was still hungry.
I decided to head to the local market and restock my cupboards. I was just about to reach for my coat when I heard a knock on my door.
“What?” I yelled.
“Let me in, doofus.” Sam’s voice was impatient.
“It’s open,” I said.
A moment later, Sam stepped into my apartment. He was dressed in his uniform with his shiny silver badge on the front of his shirt.
“Nice look,” I said, only being semi sarcastic.
“I’m a lieutenant now,” he replied. “I’ve got to look the part. You look like hell.”
“Didn’t sleep so good last night,” I replied.
“Your arm?”
I nodded.
Sam shook his head at me. “Go see a fucking doctor,” he told me, collapsing onto my bed while I remained on the sofa.
“Waste of time and money,” I insisted. “I’ve just got to rub some dirt in it.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “That sofa needs to be buried,” he said. “I think it’s on its last legs.”
I smirked. “It was on its last legs when I found it by the dumpster two years ago.”
He laughed. “Dude, you really need to get yourself a better place. This apartment’s a shit show…if you can even call it an apartment.”
“It suits me fine,” I said shortly. Sam got on my case about my apartment every few months. I dealt with his persistence by changing the subject. “How are Mia and Renni?”
“Both good,” Sam nodded, a smile lighting up his face.
He was a changed man ever since he had met Mia. I was happy for him, but a part of me felt distanced from him, too. Of all my brothers, Sam had been the most similar to me. Now with Mia in his life, even he seemed far removed from the cynical man that I was.
“Renni wants to start planning the wedding immediately,” Sam told me.
“Maybe you should take a page from Peter and Madison’s book and skip the whole engagement period completely,” I suggested. “Go down to town hall and get married without all the fuss and hoopla.”
Sam laughed. “Mia deserves a nice wedding,” he said. “Plus, I think she just wants to enjoy being engaged for awhile. We’re not in a rush to get married.”
He was silent for a moment, and I could tell he was reliving the moment he had proposed to Mia. His eyes softened considerably, and he kept touching his finger as though there were a ring already on it.
“Fuck, Vegas turned out to be a huge weekend huh?” Sam said. “Alan and Jessica had just come down from their honeymoon. Mia and I got engaged, Peter and Madison decided to skip the planning and just g
et married in an Elvis chapel, and you won the big fight.”
“It was something,” I nodded.
“It was more than something… It was an amazing weekend,” Sam laughed. “There was so much excitement that I actually thought Kami’s water might break.”
“It’s lucky John’s a doctor.”
Sam smirked. “He’s a plastic surgeon.”
I smiled, but really, I was just trying to cover up the fact that I was being left behind. I shook away the thought. If I was being left behind, it was my own fault. I had distanced myself from the family years ago and now that the habit had cemented itself in my personality, it was hard to let people in, especially my family. They just knew too much about me. It made me feel self-conscious and exposed…as though my flaws were on display for everyone to see.
“You coming over for Sunday dinner this weekend?” Sam asked.
“Uh… I’ll try,” I said evasively.
He looked at me pointedly. “That sounds suspiciously like a no.”
I rested my head against the back of the sofa. “It’s not.”
“I know Mom would love to see you,” he said gently.
“I saw her only last week.”
“We were in Vegas with the whole family,” he pointed out. “There was no room for one-on-one time.”
“I was never very good at one-on-one time,” I reminded him.
“What do you think we’re doing right now?” Sam challenged.
“That’s different…you’re my brother.”
“And, she’s your mother.”
“I’ll try and make it this weekend,” I said, even though I already knew I wasn’t going. It was easier just to pretend sometimes.
The truth was I tended to avoid family dinners when it was just a few of us sitting around the table. Alan and Jessica didn’t live in Colorado, and neither did John and Kami. It would just be Mom, Sam, his fiancée and his stepdaughter, Peter and his wife. There was more room for conversation then and it was never as easy to hide out in a smaller crowd of people. I couldn’t explain that to Sam, however; he just wouldn’t understand.
“Have you heard anything?” Sam asked. “About the fight.”
I ran my hand through my short-cropped hair. “No…not yet,” I said, trying to sound unconcerned.
“It’s been a week hasn’t it?”
“Almost,” I said. “Five days to be exact… But who’s counting.”
“Someone will get in contact with you,” he said confidently. “Anyone who watched that fight last week will know by now what a brilliant MMA fighter you are. You deserve to go pro. You deserve to make it to the big leagues.”
I suppressed a sigh and turned my eyes away from Sam. Nothing had ever come that easily for me. I was different from my brothers in that regard. They all had their careers, their callings, and they excelled in their respective fields.
Sam had started as a rookie fire fighter, and now he was a lieutenant. Peter had started out as a small time cop, now he was a respected detective. Alan had spent his childhood in swimming pools, now he was an Olympic gold medallist. John had begun as a young plastic surgeon, and now he co-owned a plastic surgery clinic in California.
We were all so different from one another, but I had honestly believed that we’d had one thing in common at least. We, the Burbank brothers, were eternal bachelors. That is what I had always thought. And yet, slowly, over time, each of my brothers had paired up. They’d found their partners, despite constant protests that the single life was the best kind, and everyone had settled down. Which left…me.
“We’ll see,” I said, staying loyal to my cynical faith.
After Sam left, I headed down to the grocery store on the corner. They weren’t really known for carrying the best produce, but they were the cheapest store on the block. I bought a value pack of instant noodles for fifty cents a cup, some wilted vegetables, a few pounds of fatty meat, and a couple of cartons of juice at a reduced price. Satisfied with my bill of eight dollars and seventy cents, I headed back home.
I put away my groceries and checked my phone again. No missed calls and no messages. The sun was going down, but I had gotten into the habit of keeping the lights off at night to save on electricity. I walked around my apartment under the shadowy glow of the streetlights outside my window. It was a ghostly existence, but appropriate in my case. There were days when I felt very much like a ghost.
I was doing push-ups between my bed and the sofa, ignoring the pain in my arm, when a call came in on my phone. I jumped to my feet and made a grab for it. It was an unknown number. I took a deep breath and answered.
Chapter Two
Brittany
My tennis shoes slapped the side of the pavement in a humdrum rhythm. I kept trying to find the music in it, but there was none to be found. My iPod had finally given out last week, which meant I no longer had any music to accompany me on the walk to work. All I had was the incessant rustling of shivering leaves and the sound of my own movement.
I turned the corner to the sight of Danny’s Diner nestled comfortably on the adjacent side of the block. The theme had always been pink and green. It was a clash of color that looked garish, rather than whimsical, but that apparently was what Danny had been going for. He wanted colors that were eye catching, and his argument was that the more mismatched the concept, the more people remembered it. It was a theory that had worked well for him in the eight years since he’d started the diner, but personally, I believed that people came to the diner despite the décor.
The sign on the front of the diner read “closed,” but I disregarded it and pushed it open. The diner didn’t open till seven o’clock, and I was twenty minutes early. Lacey was on one of the bar stools, leaning against the breakfast counter. Danny was on the other side, leaning towards her in his usual flannel shirt and apron. It was obvious that they were chatting about the party they had been to last night.
“Morning, ladies,” I greeted, removing the bulky brown coat from around my shoulders.
Danny didn’t exactly have a uniform that he required Lacey and I to wear. But he had stated on numerous occasions that the sexier, the outfit the better. I tended to disregard that piece of advice more often than not, but Lacey had always taken it to heart.
She was wearing a short, low-rise red skirt, combined with a white crop top that bared her toned stomach and her belly piercing. She had paired the outfit with her favorite ankle-high boots. The color of her skirt perfectly matched the flaming red hue of her hair, which was cropped short like a guy’s, spiked slightly at the top, and hugged her perfectly angular face.
In comparison to Lacey, I looked drab and modest. I had worn my favorite pair of jeans with my softest long sleeved black t-shirt. It was so old that it clung to my body like paint, but felt as though I wasn’t wearing a thing. I shook my hair out in an old habit that had cemented itself in childhood and took a seat next to Lacey.
Danny eyed me critically as he looked me over with blatant disapproval. Lacey and I had worked for him for five years now. He had become something of a surrogate brother to the both of us, and it was probably the main reason we had stayed with him for so long. It was out of loyalty, pure and simple.
Following his divorce, his ex-wife had made out with their car, the house, and everything in it, including the two mixed Scottish terriers that Danny had rescued a few years before. But at least Danny had managed to get away with enough money to start his own diner.
“What?” I demanded under his brown-eyed gaze.
“That shirt again?” he asked, with raised eyebrows. “I swear, it’s like you own three things.”
“Five, actually,” I corrected. “And, this one is very versatile.”
“It shows off your shape, I’ll give you that much,” Danny conceded. “But it’s boring, it’s blah, it’s…dull.”
I sighed. “Must we have this conversation every week?”
“We wouldn’t have to if you didn’t wear the same thing every week.”
I rolled my eyes at her. “Umm…no thanks.”
Lacey looked at me as though she were offended. “Are you trying to tell me something about my fashion sense?”
I laughed. “It’s a little much for me,” I admitted.
Lacey gave me a wink. “A little too sexy for you?”
“That’s the word I was looking for,” I nodded.
“Why didn’t you come to the party last night?” Danny demanded, changing the topic abruptly like he usually did. “It was amazing.”
“I was tired,” I said with a shrug.
Lacey and Danny exchanged an exasperated glance. “We’re all tired, Brit,” Lacey said. “But we go out anyway. Parties like this are worth it, in any case.”
“How good was it?” I asked.
Danny pushed a cup of coffee towards me. “It was off the chains,” he replied. “The music was particularly good. Perfect music to make out to.”
“And, did you?” I asked. “Make out, I mean?”
“Of cours,e I did,” Danny winked at me. “You can’t go to a party and not fool around with a complete stranger. That’s practically unheard of.”
I laughed. “What about you?” I asked, turning to Lacey.
“She was doing the walk of shame this morning,” Danny answered, before Lacey could.
“His name was Bryan… Or Ryan… Or something like that,” Lacey laughed. “He turned out to be quite the animal in bed.”
“Urgh,” Danny complained.
“Oh yeah,” Lacey nodded appreciatively. “Two orgasms in one night.”
He rolled his eyes. “Only?” he said critically. “I’ve given women more orgasms than that in one night.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be divorced right now.”
“My sexual prowess kicked in after the divorce,” Danny replied seriously.
We laughed together. This had become an early morning ritual between the three of us. It was the reason Lacey and I came in early. We had a chat, shared some breakfast, and set up for the breakfast shift. By the time I had finished my coffee, it was seven. I headed to the door and turned the sign over as Lacey popped freshly baked pastries into the clear cloche on the counter.