by K. M. Scott
I shook my head and smiled. “Maybe in a little while. I just want to enjoy how incredible you look right now.”
He grinned a guilty smile as he traced his finger across my lips. “I love you, Serena. You don’t have to worry about me ever wanting another woman. You’re all I want.”
“Because of what my mouth can do?” I asked with a giggle.
“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “Because of what every part of you does to me.”
He looked at me like I was the only one in the world that mattered to him, and I wondered how I could be so stupid as to think that he’d ever want someone like that Kitty.
* * *
Even though I didn’t want to let my jealousy get the best of me, I couldn’t help it. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t get the image of Kitty draped all over Ryder out of my mind. Every time he left to go to a fight or train, my mind filled with thoughts of them together.
“I’ll be back late tonight,” he said before kissing me goodbye.
“Okay,” I said sweetly as I decided this would be the night I found out if my suspicions were correct or if I was just being stupid and irrational. “I’ll try to wait up.”
Ryder smiled. “I like when you do, but if you’re too tired, don’t push it.” He cupped his palm over my belly and added, “You’re sleeping for two, you know.”
When he said cute things like that, I wanted to believe that nagging feeling in my gut was totally wrong. That he would never betray me like that.
“I don’t think that’s how it goes,” I said as he lifted my t-shirt to press a soft kiss to my skin.
He looked up at me and grinned. “Well, however it goes, I understand if you can’t wait up. I’m not fighting, so you don’t have to worry.”
“Okay. I’m going to try, though.”
“I love you. See you in a few hours.”
As he backed up toward the front door, I blew him a kiss. “Love you. Stay safe.”
The door clicked closed, and I hurried to put my shoes on and grab my sweater. Ryder was driving my car, so I ran down to the garage and jumped into the one car I knew my father wouldn’t even notice was missing. Never a fan of Janelle’s choice of buying a Jeep, he never drove it and made sure it was parked in the part of the garage farthest from the door to the house.
At the front gate, I turned on the charm and lied through my teeth to the grey-haired guard named Jack, eliciting a promise from him to keep my leaving a secret since I was going to buy my father a surprise birthday gift. He’d worked at the gate since I was a little girl, and although I knew he might tell someone I’d left the estate, I gambled that he wouldn’t since my father never even bothered to call him by name, instead referring to him as Joe or John or any other name that began with J when he bothered to speak to him at all.
Just as I suspected, Ryder drove to the warehouse. I parked far enough away to hide the Jeep but still be safe and snuck in through the side door into the dark hallway that led to the huge center room where the fights occurred. I stayed in the shadows to avoid being seen, and crept along the wall until I reached the room where the fighters’ dressing room.
I saw no one in there, so I continued toward the second door and opened it a sliver to peek through. Unlike when I’d been there for fights, the place seemed empty now. Floyd, another man, and Ryder stood in the area where matches were held talking before the two of them backed away and began sparring while Floyd barked out commands for what he wanted them to do.
Was this what he’d been doing all these weeks? How was he making enough money so we could get away by hanging out with Floyd here? And was this where he saw Kitty and she left her disgusting perfume on him?
A noise startled me, and I turned around to see Dylan standing in the doorway to the dressing room. Quickly, I walked toward him, explaining, “I was just watching. Please don’t tell Ryder I was here, okay? He doesn’t like me to see him fight, and I’m sure he’d feel the same way about his training.”
Dylan smiled and motioned toward the dressing room. “Come in here. They’ll be going at it for a while since I’m not due out there for another half hour.”
I followed him, and we sat down across from one another on two metal folding chairs. Hoping he could put my fears to rest, I asked, “Is it usually only you guys here at night like this?”
He didn’t seem to understand what I really meant and simply nodded. “Yeah. There are a bunch of us who spar together.”
“Nobody else comes here?” I asked, hoping to lead him to where I wanted him to go.
“You mean like your father? Nah. He doesn’t show up except for fights. Nope, nobody other than us.”
“I guess it’s strange to see a female here then,” I said, sure that would help him talk about any other women, if any ever came around.
Dylan chuckled. “Pretty much. This isn’t like MMA. There aren’t females who fight like we do.”
His answer made me feel foolish for doubting Ryder even as it made me happy. I’d been so stupid. He probably hadn’t even smelled like her that night. My mind was probably just playing tricks on me.
I stood to leave, pleased with the answer I’d gotten. “Well, I guess I better go. Don’t tell Ryder I was here, okay?”
“No problem,” he said with a smile. “I don’t think he’d mind. With all the training and fighting he’s been doing, you guys probably don’t see much of each other anymore.”
“You’re right. He’s here training every night, it seems.”
“That’s in addition to the two or three fights he’s in each week. He’s got himself on a grueling schedule, but he says he has to. Strike while the iron’s hot, I guess,” Dylan said, shrugging.
Two or three fights a week? My father only had him fighting a couple times a month, so who was he fighting for?
Was that how he was making the extra money?
A chill ran up my spine as I thought about what my father would do if he found out Ryder was fighting for someone other than him. If Dylan knew, then others did too. How long would it be before someone let it slip and my father learned the truth?
“I better go. Nice to see you again, and take care of yourself.”
He smiled at my concern like Ryder did whenever I told him to be careful. “That’s next to impossible in this business, but I’ll do what I can.”
Hurrying out into the hallway, I took one last look at Ryder sparring with that other fighter and then ran to my car. My fears that he was cheating on me were nothing but jealous nonsense, but now I had bigger fears about what my father would do to Ryder when he found out about what he was doing behind his back.
Chapter Twenty-One
Ryder
After everyone left and the warehouse wasn’t The Pit anymore but just a vacant building again, I sat in the room that at one time was my home and waited for the pain to subside. If it was just the normal aches and pains from a fight, I could have handled them, but as I sat there on that old metal folding chair wishing I was home submerged to my neck in a hot bath, I knew nothing about how I felt was normal.
I’d had two matches this week, and they’d followed two fights the week before. I’d won all of them, but those wins hadn’t come without a price. The guy in the second match last week had been a fucking monster with fists the size of my head. Even though I was faster and ended up running circles around him just to stay on my feet, when he caught me on the right shoulder with his last few jabs, he got me good. Barely able to lift my arm a few inches, I’d been in searing pain nearly every minute since then.
If I didn’t have a damn good reason to be fighting, I would have hung it up after that match. But I did, and every night when I returned to the apartment and saw Serena sleeping peacefully in our bed, I didn’t have to remind myself of why I said yes to every fight Floyd could get me.
Closing my eyes, I tried to push away the pain in my ribs from that night’s fight. The guy I’d defeated had used my sides like a punching bag for the first half of the match
, and even though he’d definitely gotten the worse of it after I got back up on my feet, those blows hurt just as bad.
Between my shoulder injury from last week’s fight and my ribs from tonight, merely moving hurt enough that all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and sleep for three days. Hell, I’d take a straight eight hours.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re exactly what those people say you are. A beast. I can’t figure out how you’re doing it, but whatever it is, don’t stop,” Floyd said as he pulled up a chair next to me.
I opened my eyes and turned to look at him, groaning with each inch I had to move my head. “Right now, I feel like what the beast shit out.”
He studied me for a moment and shook his head. “I’m wondering how long you can keep this pace up, Ryder. Four fights in two weeks looks like it took a toll on you.”
Moving my head slowly, I looked up toward the ceiling, unsure how long I could keep fighting like this too. I didn’t have a choice, though.
I’d barely made enough to get us away from the estate, but with a baby, we wouldn’t be able to just stay anywhere. Over the years, I’d saved nearly thirty grand, but by my last estimate, I had to make at least five grand more to be sure we could afford a decent place safe enough for a newborn and everything a baby needed, and that was just for the first few months. I’d get a job doing whatever I had to in order for us to live, but I didn’t want Serena or the baby to go without because I hadn’t done enough now.
“I just have to make it a little while longer, Floyd. I can do this.”
“Well, how much are we talking about here?”
I knew when I told him his eyes would probably bug out of his head. Five grand in our business was like a million dollars.
Without looking at him, I answered, “About five thousand dollars.”
The sound of surprise I expected from him didn’t come, so I slowly turned my head and looked over at him. “I figured I’d get some reaction from you on that.”
He nodded and said, “Normally, I’d say that’s a number you’re not going to see for a while, but I heard from a friend of mine who got into the fight game a while ago and is doing pretty well for himself. He’s a big deal in this town called Keyser in West Virginia. Not anywhere I’d want to spend my time, but different strokes for different folks, you know?”
As Floyd rambled on, my spirits soared at the mere thought that this guy he knew in this place I’d never heard of could get me closer to what I needed to get Serena and me away at last. When he stopped badmouthing this Keyser place, I jumped at the chance to get him to the point of his rambling.
“That’s nice, but can your friend help me out?”
Floyd’s eyes narrowed to slits. “Didn’t I just say that?”
“No. You said anything but that. So what’s the story with this friend of yours? What’s he up to and how much is the take?”
“Nate’s arranging a pretty big event in that town of his. Seems the cops are as crooked as a witch’s nose, so he doesn’t have any worries in that department. The place is pretty much a dead end in every way, so he’s got no shortage of guys willing to risk themselves for even a small payday. It’s a typical Appalachian town, you know?”
I thought about what I knew about typical Appalachian towns. The answer was not much. I’d seen something on TV one night when I couldn’t sleep about how those places were fucked up from meth and things didn’t look like they were going to get better any time soon. Other than that, I never cared to know anything about them until that moment.
But how much money could I possibly make in a place even Floyd had called a dead end? It didn’t sound so great now.
“I’m not fighting some meth head, man. I’m desperate for money, but I’m not that desperate. You ever see those fuckers? They look like their faces are peeling off from that shit. And I know from experience guys high on something have the strength of like five guys.”
Waving my concern away, he tried to reassure me. “No, no. It’s nothing like that. The place is poor as fuck, but it’s out of the way enough that big spenders like to bet on his fights. He’s good at flying under the radar, if you know what I mean.”
Well, that sounded a little better. Still interested, I pressed him to talk money. “Okay, what kind of prize are we talking about, Floyd?”
He grinned and leveled his gaze on me. “You’d end up with just over three grand after I got my cut.”
Three grand! That was equal to a couple weeks’ worth of fights. I wanted to jump at the chance to make that kind of money, but nothing this good came without having to give something.
“So what’s the catch?” I asked, sure he was holding back some important detail.
Shaking his head, he frowned. “No catch. He wants a great fighter to go up against his best guy, and I thought of you.”
“So what’s the glum face about?”
I still wasn’t convinced he wasn’t holding out on me.
“I can’t believe you would think I wouldn’t tell you everything about this. You go down, I go down, so you can trust me.”
“Yeah. You know how it is. If something sounds too good to be true, you better believe it is. No probably about it.”
Floyd nodded. “Usually, I’d say I agree with you, but not this time. Nate’s a decent guy, as far as promoters go, and he wants a good fight more than anything else. I think you can give him that. That’s why I told him I’d talk to you about it.”
I didn’t have to hear any more. The money was good enough for me to travel to some two-bit town in West Virginia, and if Floyd’s friend Nate wanted a good fighter, I was his man.
“I’m in. When’s the match?”
Tilting his head left and right, Floyd grimaced. “That’s the tough part. It’s at the end of next week. You’ve got a fight for Robert just a few days after. Do you think you can do it?”
Whether I could do it or not had nothing to do with the answer I had to give. I needed money and fast, and this fight could give me it.
I stood from my folding chair and felt a whole new group of aches settle into my back and legs. Even Floyd would start to think I couldn’t do it if I looked like a beaten up eighty-year-old guy, so I pushed down the urge to groan about how much like hammered shit I felt and flashed him a shit-eating grin.
“I’ve done it so far. You giving up on me?” I joked, hoping he didn’t see how much fucking pain I was in just standing there.
With a smile, he shook his head. “No way. You’ve got a date with destiny, son. I’m convinced fate loves you, even as she’s a fickle bitch with everyone else in the world.”
“Good. I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
He said something about me taking it easy until then, but I wasn’t listening anymore. The only thought in my mind at that moment was getting home and making it to that tub.
* * *
Robert stood pouring himself a drink at the bar on the far side of his office as I walked in for a meeting he’d called for with me just an hour before. Thankfully, he hadn’t ordered me in for one of his talks the night before because I probably wouldn’t have been able to pretend I wasn’t in agony. As it was, soaking in the tub for over an hour hadn’t helped as much as I had hoped it would, but at least if I had to sit in front of him now, I could act like I wasn’t feeling like shit.
He turned around and headed back toward his desk to sit down before he began talking. “So how is training going, Ryder?” he asked in a voice that made me wonder if he knew what I was up to on the side.
“Good, as always. Floyd’s got me in great condition, and sparring more often than before has made me even sharper.”
All of that was true. The lie was that I was training just for his fights.
Raising his eyebrows, he opened his eyes wide. “I hope he’s not working you too hard. I need you in top condition for this next fight, and a tired fighter isn’t going to get me what I want.”
My blood ran cold for a moment as I studied his e
xpression. I expected he knew how often I trained with Floyd, but did he know the real reason?
“No, I’m good. I’ll do what I’m supposed to that night. You don’t have to worry.”
Robert’s mouth turned up in one of his terrifying crocodile smiles. “Oh, I’m not worried. If you don’t, Floyd better worry, though, because I’ll be looking at what he’s been doing with you in the past few weeks.”
I hated the idea of Floyd paying the price if I didn’t win. He was sticking his neck out as much as I was sneaking around behind Robert’s back.
“Floyd’s good. He knows the ins and outs of this business better than anyone else I’ve ever met. He won’t do anything to hurt my chances.”
“You two go way back. I forgot about that. He was the one who let you live in my warehouse before I found you. I’m just wondering if he’s being too hard on you.”
A nervous chuckle escaped from my throat. “I’m a big boy. Whatever he’s doing in training is nothing compared to what other fighters can do to me. It seems to be working, so why fix what’s not broken?”
Robert appeared to think about what I said and nodded. “As long as you don’t get broken. I can’t make money off a fighter who can’t fight.”
“I haven’t found too many who can do it so far,” I joked, hoping our conversation would end so I didn’t have to sit there and dissect every word he said in an attempt to figure out if he knew what I was up to or not.
He let out a hearty laugh and threw his head back. “You’re still one cocky son of a bitch, aren’t you, son? Still that same kid I met that day who’d never been beaten, even though you’ve had your fair share of losses since then. I can appreciate someone who believes in himself. You remind me a lot of me at your age.”
Sure I had no idea what he meant by that, I smiled and nodded while I wished he’d get bored talking to me and turn to that laptop of his. He didn’t, though, and changed the subject abruptly.
“How is Serena? I haven’t seen her around the house in weeks. Where has she been hiding?”
His sly expression told me he knew exactly where she was, so why ask?