Long Shot: An MMA Stepbrother Romance

by Whitlow, Lexi

  I stand there, frozen to the spot, minutes after the door has closed and Josh has disappeared again. My deeply unsatisfied, angrily aroused body wants something. When I move, I’m slow as molasses, heading toward the smell of pancakes in the kitchen. I fix myself a plate without thinking, making my stack seven pancakes high, and I drown it in syrup and butter. Standing at the counter, I methodically eat my way through the stack. And even when my stomach is full, I still feel a nagging emptiness that has nothing to do with hunger.

  Silently, numbly, I get ready for my shift while Beatrice watches me. The cat meows every now and then, like she’s worried about me. I look down at her and scratch her head as she massages her face against my leg and kneads my foot, trying to get my attention.

  “It’s fine, Bee. He’s his own man. He can do whatever shit he pleases.” I still crave the release of his body next to mine, him entering me, owning me. I try to let it go while I get ready to go to work far too early, but even after the comfortable daily routines, I still feel undone.

  And when exactly hasn’t this man undone me?

  When I head out, I leave the door unlocked so Josh can get back in when he comes back—if he comes back.

  CHAPTER NINE

  The drive back to my apartment is the worst—and longest—drive of my life. My shoulder still smarts, so I’m mostly driving with my right hand. The damn sling is in the passenger seat. I try not to look over at it, because it makes me think of Natalie, and it makes me think about how much of an idiot I am. It was foolish of me to ever show up at her house. I should have known I’d be bringing trouble with me. I always do. That much hasn’t changed in three years.

  Katy had told me on the phone that Frank was looking for me, trying to find out where I’d gone. She said he’d been around to my apartment three times, even though she kept telling him I wasn’t there. Even Katy sounded scared shitless when she described what Frank was doing with the newest kids, getting them roughed up before they even stepped in the cage. But it’s Ash’s words that stick with me.

  “He wants you back here, Josh,” Ash told me. “He’s getting angry, and I tell ya, he needs to think you’re still part of his crew. I don’t have a girl—or anyone I care about around here—but you do. He’ll find Nat if you stay there a day longer.”

  I think of the horror movies where the kid stays in one place like a fucking idiot, and you’re screaming at the TV to get them to move, move, move, because the serial killer is right behind them. That ain’t going to be me. It can’t be. It’s not just me anymore, and I hadn’t fucking thought that through.

  I beat against the steering wheel as I pull into my apartment complex. I run up the stairs, holding my left arm against my body, wondering how I’m going to convince everyone at the gym I’m ready for training again. I pick up the manila folder I keep at the edge of the counter—if Frank’s sniffing around, wondering where I am, this’ll be his first stop. And I’m fucked if he finds this folder. I stuff the folder into a grocery bag and grab a pair of shorts, my boxers, an extra shirt. I’m not ready to go back to the gym, but I have to.

  I hear a muffled knock at the front door. My first thought runs to Frank, if he’s come looking already. He knows I needed at least a week to recover, and with the bruised ribs, maybe more. If he wants me to be back—to really fight, he’d leave his top fighter alone for more than a few days at a time. But hell, he’s only interested in the bottom line.

  “Fucking asshole,” I mutter under my breath. I pause for a moment, hear the thudding at the door again, this time louder.

  Fuck. It’s Frank. It’s gotta be. My heart races. I wonder if he’s been looking for the place I’m staying, or if he came here first. Natalie. I have to protect Natalie—by staying away or by going back to her?

  I walk over to the front door, my step falling into the practiced swagger of a fighter. Instinctively, I clutch my hands into fists, even though it sends a shooting pain up my left arm. Like Frank taught me a long time ago—before I figured out what a worthless piece of shit he was—I was always prepared to fight, always prepared to defend myself.

  Fists raised, I put my hand to the old brass doorknob and listen for signs of more than one person lurking around outside. I turn the knob, and I feel the soft gasp of air as the door creaks open. I fling the door open hard and step outside, ready to shuffle, ready to strike.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I almost can’t process what I’m seeing—it’s not Frank standing in front of me, but my coach.

  “Fucking hell, Joshie. One bad fight left you kind of touchy, no?” I relax my hands, and the anxiety starts to fade from my body. Even at my own apartment, I’m afraid of Frank—of what he can do. And worse, I’m afraid of Natalie, of what I’m doing do her—what she’s doing to me. I think back to last night with Natalie, how perfect her body matched mine, how much I wanted her. I shudder, and my stomach drops. With my right hand, I wipe sweat away from my forehead. Not much scares me, but even the idea of Frank finding Natalie activates the deepest reactions in my subconscious—fear, rage, the instinct to protect what’s mine.

  “Goddammit, Ash. What the fuck?” I shuffle on my feet again, still poised to fight. Ash reaches over and lowers my hands to my sides, but they’re still coiled into fists. I breathe deep, the relief of seeing Ash flooding through my system. Even though the dude looks scary as fuck—a scar running the length of his cheek, his red hair cropped close, making him look like an Irish mobster—he’s the only good thing that’s ever come out of Frank’s Gym.

  “Katy said you might be back here. It’s about time, man. You need to be training, and you can’t be around your lady when Frank’s going off the rails like this.” Ash smiles, laugh lines appearing around his eyes. I clap Ash on the back, and as I usher him inside, I look around to see if anyone else has seen us.

  My heart speeds up again, and I think of the cage, how I need to get back—and how far I want Natalie away from it all. Ash stands by the door, looking uncomfortable, hands in his pockets. I stare at him for a moment, wondering why he ever got involved with Frank—and why he ever took me on after all the shit I did for the man. Ash showed up at the gym right after I left Nat that night, and I never saw anything but loathing for Frank in Ash’s eyes. Ash had been a thug in New York in the years before, but he never mentioned the jobs he’d done—or the debts he might owe to Frank.

  “What the hell, man? I’ll be training soon. And then I’m in for the next fight in the arena. I thought you knew all that shit, Ash.”

  “It’s not that, Joshie. I know even with that fucked up shoulder, you’ll do fine in the fight. Hell, you’ll probably win in the first round. What I’m worried about is Frank. Right now, he’s telling everyone that he’s looking for you, that he wants you back in the gym—”

  “Fuck man, I thought I had a few days before he expected me back.” I cross my arms. I don’t let it on, but the shoulder hurts like shit. Natalie would be shitting frisbees and throwing me back in my sling before I could say a damn thing if she saw me posturing like this, getting ready to give in and go back to fighting before I’d healed. I grin and lean back against the wall to take pressure off my shoulder.

  “He’s keen to what you’re doing, Josh—with the kids. I think he’s saying, you know, get Josh back here so he can train, so he can be an example for the gym, but he knows you’re doing shit he expressly told you not to do.” My heart starts to pound a little harder, fire running through my veins. My throat tightens, and I swallow hard. I’d always figured Frank would be too caught up in his own shit to notice what I was doing.

  “That’s it? That’s why you came here?”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” Ash pauses, studying my face for a moment. “I was worried, Josh. With Frank getting wise to what you’re doing…” His voice trails off. Ash points at the scar on his face, the one Frank gave him when he found out Ash had his own gym, was running his own fights.

  “How much does Frank know?” I try to make the question sound n
onchalant, but Ash raises an eyebrow.

  “He doesn’t know about the gym or me selling mine, and it’ll stay that way for a little while longer, I think. Is there anything else I should know about, Joshie?”

  I dunno, Ash. Copying records, keeping files, saving money, shit that would get me sent to the hospital if Frank knew it—or to the damn morgue, in a body bag.

  “Nothing,” I say. I flex and release my arm, like Natalie showed me. “I should probably still be recovering.” I look at Ash, trying to read his face. The scars, the lines that age him past his thirty-five years—they show nothing. But his blue eyes are worried.

  “Joshie, it’s not just that we need you back—I do need you back around, to train. You’re not going to be ready for the fight, man.” Ash pauses. “But it’s Frank too—he’s bullying the fighters more than usual. He beat in Cole’s face after he lost the fight last night.”

  “Fuck, man. You know we can’t do anything about that. All we can do is make sure Cole’s okay right now—”

  “He’s at the damn hospital, or he was when I talked to him last. We need you now more than ever, Josh. The kids depend on you.”

  I crack my knuckles, shuffle from side to side. I should be training, prepping to take the welterweight title in five weeks, like I was meant to—instead of sitting around here pining after a girl like a little bitch.

  “I swear I’ll be back at the gym in two days. Hell, maybe less if I can get myself in reasonable shape. I was going to go back to—”

  “Natalie? The stepsister right?”

  “Yeah, but she’s not really my stepsister anymore. I mean, her dad is dead, and my mom is—wherever she is—” If Ash could raise his left eyebrow any higher, it might escape his head and fly up the ceiling. “And I was just going to go back to explain, to say goodbye for now. I’ll be back at the gym in the morning.”

  “Listen to me, Joshie. If this is what I think it is, you’re better off leaving her alone right now.” There’s a trickle of fear running through me. I need to be here right now, but I’d do anything not to hurt Nat again. And this will. If I were smart, and I’m often not, I’d leave her completely alone again. But I think of the taste of her lips, her tongue against my cock. It was everything I’d ever imagined, and hell, I think it made me stronger, better. My better half. I purse my lips for a second and nod sharply at Ash. He’s right. He’s fucking right.

  “Could you train me with my arm like this?” I point to my shoulder. “It ain’t that bad.”

  “Yeah, kid. You’ve been through worse. We can get you some HGH too. Should speed things along.” I nod. It’s not as bad as the steroids, but not exactly harmless either. But hell, I’ll do it this once if it means keeping my head down, keeping out of Frank’s line of fire.

  “Can you get me back to the gym, Ash? The ride over here was hell. I shouldn’t have driven.”

  “Yeah I can take you. You did the right thing, leaving her for now. You can go back when it’s all done.”

  “She’s expecting me to disappear at any moment. It won’t exactly surprise her when I live up to her low-ass expectations.” There’s a pang in my chest at the thought of Nat. I came to her because I wanted to possess her, to take her and make her mine once and for all. I was fooling myself to think that I wouldn’t pull her in, that I wouldn’t drag her down with me when I started to fall.

  “You ready?”

  “Fuck no,” I say. He shrugs, and I follow him out to the car, the plastic grocery bag slung over my shoulder.

  CHAPTER TEN

  On the ride over to the Outer Banks Hospital, my body feels like a live wire, sparking with uncontrolled electricity. I know my lips are swollen from kissing Josh, that my hair is tousled and messy. I’m fucking unsatisfied, stuffed with pancakes and butter, and angry as all hell.

  You’re a grown woman. No one’s going to know what you’re doing with your free time. No one’s going to know that you were kissing a boy—a man—you shouldn’t have been kissing. No one’s going to know that he left you again this morning.

  “No one’s going to know,” I mumble as I pull into a space. I keep repeating it to myself, like a mantra, as I walk up to the revolving doors outside of the hospital. And why would anyone care? It wasn’t like I was committing a sin, putting my medical license in danger. Well, I had done that on the first night Josh had come to me. I used my lifted morphine on the son of a bitch, and I’d stitched him up at a clinic I didn’t even work at anymore. I smile, thinking of him stumbling in the hallway—and then catching me so fast, holding me in place so that I couldn’t move. A jolt shoots through me at the thought of him pulling me close, his thumb making circles on the delicate skin of my lower back. And then there’s anger, hot and searing.

  I shouldn’t be angry. He didn’t promise me anything. Last time, he did promise. Somehow, it feels worse now. Even if everything he said was just to get into my pants, his words felt like they held hidden promises. His touch felt like it held something greater than just a hookup.

  “How’s Josh?” My friend Summer Colington’s voice is chipper, even though she’s probably closing out her own sixteen-hour shift. I haven’t seen her since the night Josh came to my house. I haven’t exactly been avoiding the one person who knew Josh had come to find me—but I hadn’t been seeking her out either. “Did you get my texts today? Or were you...busy?”

  “I was... I just didn’t check my phone.” I sit down on the bench in front of the lockers and pull off my stretch pants, carefully avoiding Summer’s gaze.

  “Is Josh still at your place? I went by the gym on my way in, but I didn’t see his car there. I assume if he’s not training...”

  “He was there until this morning. Now he’s gone back to training. Guess the shoulder he got me to fix is all better.” I shrug. “No big deal.”

  “No big deal? This is the first time he’s shown up in three years and—”

  “You know I don’t talk about him anymore, Summer.” I pull on my pants, and my body still feels wired, shaky from my anger—and still, from my unfulfilled lust. I blush, hard.

  “But he was at your house. He’s coming back, right? And your hair’s not straightened—and you’re blushing.”

  “Summer, I don’t want to talk about this—”

  “Because you’re as smitten as you were in high school? Or because he’s sneaking off again? Or because he might not come back? Or because he didn’t apologize—”

  “I wasn’t smitten in high school.”

  “You were. Remember when he showed up at prom? You barely paid attention to your date. You were with Josh the whole time. And Josh only had eyes for you.” She crosses her arm and tries to meet my gaze.

  “This isn’t high school, and it’s definitely not the prom. I’ve got a seriously injured fighter who ran off and is trying to get back to training.”

  “So you guys are talking? I was wondering if he was going to tell you about the fight—”

  “How do you know about the fight, Summer?” I cross my arms and look at her. Her face is inappropriately, unabashedly cheerful. I’ve been so boring since I’ve been back, and hell, probably most of my life. And now Summer is pleased as punch that she’s got someone to tease.

  “I hear things. I go down to the fights sometime. Hang out with Ash every once in a while.” Summer looks away for a second. I catch her blush, but it disappears after a moment.

  “Oh yeah? He’s a lot older than we are.” I cross my arms and sigh. Why was I the last person on the face of the earth to know about Josh?

  “I’m a year older than you, anyway. He’s only thirty-five. He’s in the same generation, isn’t he?” I shake my head and nearly burst out laughing, but Summer’s face is serious.

  “Definitely not. I don’t think anyone is going to accuse Ash of being a Millennial.” I smile and bite back my laughter.

  “So, Josh... Dislocated shoulder, right?” I nod. “Did you snap it back in place?” Summer’s face lights up with morbid glee, and I c
an’t help but laugh. Somehow, that one laugh helps me let go for a moment, undoes the tension in my body.