One Last Fight - Part Two (The One Last Fight Series Book 2)

by Ashley, Ava

  My shirt is completely drenched in sweat by the time Vlad grabs the bag and pulls it to the side.

  "Is there something I need to know about?" Vlad asks, in his usual calm manner. Vlad isn't one for big displays of emotion. He has an almost completely inexpressive face ninety-nine percent of the time and you can barely notice the difference in his mood from when a fighter loses a match or when one wins one. He is the physical embodiment of the discipline over emotion principle of Mixed Martial Arts fighting. It is no wonder that he is known as one of the best fighters in the MMA. There is power in his stillness, and though there aren't many guys that I would confide in, or trust, Vlad is up there.

  "No," I say, pulling my elbows in and turning away from him. I take a few sideways jabs at the air, bouncing on the balls of my feet.

  "I will repeat myself," says Vlad, slowly and calmly, "Is there something I need to know about."

  This time, it is not even a question. Vlad has been training me since I came back from my last Navy SEAL mission, the one that ended everything, and he brought me to fighting. He taught me the sport and probably saved my life. Hell, I was all kinds of messed up when I came back from my last tour.

  Just thinking about it brings back the memories. I'd been a tough kid, growing up in a tough world with poor chances of ever breaking out of my small, unpromising existence. I was the son of a teen mom with the dad long out of the picture before I was born—hell, probably before she even started showing. I grew up living in a trailer, hearing my own mom's moans when she brought back strange men with potbellies and cigarette breath in the middle of the night. I grew tall on Spam sandwiches with white bread, because wheat bread and meat that didn't come out of a can weren't part of the food stamp program. Instead of being on a fancy soccer team with cleats and pristine white uniforms, I kicked around empty beer cans outside, bare-footed, with my friends. By the time I was in high school, I wasn't too interested in books or learning or anything but girls and fighting. I took bets on myself in fights in order to earn a quick buck, so I could take out more girls.

  But I lived in a pretty small town and word got around fast. By the time I was sixteen, no one in their right mind, even the stoners, would bet against me in a fight. I never lost, even then. I needed something else, because I damn well knew that I liked girls and I knew that the prettier the girl, the more likely that she'd at least expect dinner. Don't get me wrong. I never had a problem getting girls to want me through looks and charm alone, but I didn't want to commit to one girl for a regular bang. I'd rather spend the money than spend the time, or waste the opportunity to get with other chicks. So I knew I needed a job.

  I started working mowing lawns for rich people the summer before junior year of high school. One of those yards that I mowed belonged to a top officer in the marines. The same top officer who, when I was twelve, was at a career fair that the government put on in our neighborhood—if you can call the sad collection of trailer homes that. I stopped by partly out of precocious curiosity and more out of a hope for free food, around lunchtime. His wife and daughter came to bring him lunch. His wife was a manicured wife, one of those perfect status symbols with the head-to-toe designer mom-wear and little quilted, paisley handbag. The daughter was the single most beautiful person I had ever seen in my life. I forgot all about my pursuit of a free lunch and focused, instead, on getting closer to my new crush. Just as I was heading over to introduce myself to her, her mother said, "Sarah, let's go." And just like that, they disappeared out of my life in a cloud of dust stirred up the wheels of their shiny, blue car.

  Until one especially hot day that summer when, after finishing mowing the backyard of that ritzy ranch house, Sarah came out of the house with a glass of ice cold lemonade.

  "I thought you might be thirsty," she said, handing me the glass with a smile. She had grown up well. She was just the right kind of petite with just the right amount of curve, not one of those twigs with hipbones you hurt yourself on and thighs that don't beg to be grabbed. She was sexy, but also so beautiful that you almost didn't want to fuck her. You just wanted to hold her, instead, and then make slow love to her.

  By the end of the summer, we were pretty hot and heavy. Every other thought I had was about Sarah. I started checking books out of the public library, a place I'd never stepped foot in before, in academic subjects. I wanted to better myself for her, so that I could offer her the kind of future that she deserved. There was no doubt in my mind that this was the girl I was going to marry.

  But her dad didn't agree. To him, I was just a piece of white trash from a trailer home, good enough to recruit to the lowest ranks of his battery but not good enough for his daughter by a long shot. Getting good grades and jumping to the front of my classes didn't impress him. Learning strategic thinking and college-level mathematics wasn't enough, either.

  I knew what I had to do and I did it.

  Once I’d joined the military, I worked my way up through the ranks really quickly. I excelled at hand-to-hand combat and my physical skills paired with my ability to predict my opponent's every move made me unmatchable. I made it to Navy SEAL in the shortest time on record, since before I was even born. The day I became a SEAL, I proposed to Sarah. She said yes. It was the happiest moment in my life.

  Then I went on tour. We wrote all the time, with her sending me emails three or four times a day, just to tell me how much she loved me and how much she couldn't wait to marry me. I came home for a week-and-a-half, during which we made all the wedding arrangements and I paid the deposits on the location—a nice venue, with catering and everything else that she wanted. It was more money than I'd ever spent on anything, but my salary as a SEAL was high and my girl would get everything and anything that she wanted. My next tour was just a quick one, nothing too crazy compared to what I had handled before, and we were going to get married as soon as I got back.

  I was out in an armed vehicle with my best bud, John, on a reconnaissance mission. It wasn't anything exciting, but I was happy to be there. John was like a brother to me. We were smiling, talking about John's new baby girl waiting for him at home with his wife, but still focused on keeping an eye out. We knew what we were doing.

  I was the one driving. The roadside bomb took out the whole left half of the vehicle. When I woke up in the base hospital days later, they told me that John had died immediately in the explosion. When I became a SEAL, I swore an oath to protect my men. I was driving the vehicle when John died, and I felt like I single-handedly killed my brother. I felt like the scum of the earth that I survived and John died. I didn't know what I would say to his wife. To his daughter, when she was old enough to understand. I didn't deserve to live on.

  I developed mild PTSD, but I had always been a fighter and I would bounce back. The psychologist on base said the prognosis was much better than expected and physically, I'd heal, too. It would just take some time.

  Then another guy in my team brought me my computer. I checked my email, knowing Sarah must be worried sick about me. I wanted to write her a reassuring email. But then I saw an email already in my inbox from her. Just a single email, even though I hadn't checked it for days and I knew she must have gotten some sort of notification from the Navy when I was brought back to the hospital in critical condition.

  But she was my Sarah. Maybe they had told her not to send any more emails, since I wouldn't be able to communicate, and maybe they thought a flood of emails would stress me out further. I opened the email.

  She was leaving me.

  In the email, she sent me her 'condolences for my loss,' wished me a 'speedy and full recovery,' and explained that she was not 'up to the task' of dealing with someone with PTSD. She 'hoped there would be no hard feelings,' but she didn't want to see me, ever again.

  Just like that. In a fucking email.

  I was in physical rehabilitation programs for a while, then I applied to go on tour again. My application was rejected. I had to choose a new career path in the military. Something with a des
k job, not in the field. Since I'd had PTSD, even though it was just a mild form, I was too much of a liability for them to send me out on a mission as a SEAL again. They explained that this could actually mean a payday step-up. With my experience, any branch would be happy to have me and there were many lucrative positions available for someone like me. Hearing that made me feel like a complete dirt-bag. I’d taken an oath to protect my comrades and I couldn't do it. Now they wanted me to sit in an office and make a lot of money while other people risked their lives and I just sat there typing away on a keyboard in my A/C with my swivel chair.

  I couldn't do it.

  Vlad, a former mentor when I’d first joined the SEALs, kept me from letting my failure to save John lead to my own self-destruction. He kept me out of the bars, off of the streets, and in the gym for those first dark months and I've been grateful to him ever since. He took a broken soldier and helped me recover myself and create the Cooper “Veni Vidi Vici” Quin that I am proud to be today. He's also the most solid friend a man could ask for.

  What was I thinking, that I could play it off cool in front of Vlad?

  "There's this chick," I say.

  "A girl?" Vlad raises an eyebrow as I stop jabbing at the air and turn back to face him. "Since when do you get bothered by a girl?"

  "I'm not bothered by her," I say maybe a little too hasty to fight off the accusation. "She's my new roommate."

  This makes Vlad's usually expressionless face take on almost a look of mild surprise. "You're roommates with a girl you're sleeping with?"

  "I'm not sleeping with her." Vlad stares me down for a minute, but I don't budge. I'm telling the truth.

  "You're this wound up about a girl you're not even sleeping with?" Vlad asks.

  "I don't know, man." I run a hand through my hair in frustration. "I don't know what it is about this girl. She's an eleven out of ten, no question, but there's something else about her that just makes it hard to look away."

  Vlad laughs and claps me on the shoulder. "Bad move, Cooper. She's your roommate. She's off limits now. "

  "I just said she's nice to look at. I'm not interested." I shrug him off and stomp off to the locker rooms. I'm not feeling much interest when I think about picking up Wednesday at the bar for our usual fuck, though she's wild in bed and always bare like a porn star, but I'm going to. I need to get this out somehow.

  Chapter Seven

  Savannah

  As a Santos, I've never worked a day in my life. It wasn't expected of me and it would never have been if I didn't run away. Other teenagers had part-time jobs after school in high school, but I didn't. Anything I wanted, I could ask Daddy for. I'm not suggesting that my life wasn't blessed and that I wasn’t incredibly fortunate to come from so much money and power, but the real value in money is freedom. It's the freedom to do what you want when you want to, the freedom to have what you want when you want it.

  I didn't have that freedom, even with all the money in the world. Money meant little to me. I like pretty dresses and nice shoes as much as the next girl, but none of that could buy me happiness. And all the money in the world couldn't buy me what I really want. There was no amount of dollars, pesos, Euros, pounds, or yen that could buy back my mother and sister.

  The idea of getting a job, with pay that's all mine to do with what I please, is thrilling to me. I have to admit that imagining having anything left after rent, food, and bills was perhaps romanticizing my situation, but still—I am finally responsible for myself.

  I already unpacked my few belongings into the worn drawers of my dresser, so now I just double check that the folder with my freshly printed resumes is in my backpack, along with a yellow notepad and several blue, ballpoint pens that I picked up at the printer's yesterday.

  The folder is there, so I head out on my job hunt. I have a pretty basic plan of attack. I'll start with the highest end tattoo parlors, which are most likely to be able to afford to hire a new artist and most likely to have the highest pay. I do need money and I need it now.

  The first place I walk into is in what's clearly “the right” part of town, in the proverbial right-wrong dichotomy of luxury versus poverty. There are floor-to-ceiling mirrors making up two whole walls, with various orthopedic-style tables and armchairs for clients to sit in while they get their tattoos. The waiting area could double as an upscale lounge, with luxurious carpeting, glass end tables with artfully arranged stacks of alternating light reading material and intellectual journals like Science and Psychology Today. There is a hostess gliding quietly between the waiting area and tattoo area to refill drinks and offer hors d'oeuvres and small, rolled towels on a heated tray. The doors to the back rooms for bodywork are a rich, red mahogany with ornately carved crystal doorknobs.

  The receptionist politely takes my resume, scans it over, hands it back, and without blinking or changing her expression, bids me on my way and suggests that I consider reapplying in a few years, after developing a strong portfolio. I ask to show her my portfolio, but she declines, already looking over my shoulder to wave the next person in line to the front.

  I've never been so summarily rejected before. No one would dare to, with my dad's rep known far and wide. But I remind myself that I'm not gliding by on the Santos golden carriage of life anymore and that it's all up to personal merit now.

  With that steeling thought, I head into the next parlor. It's a scaled-down version of the first, but the response my application elicits is much the same.

  The same is true of the third parlor, the fourth parlor, and the fifth parlor, though the sixth parlor says that they might give me a call to reapply if they have the need for another artist. The fact that the woman telling me this barely looks up from her cell phone the whole time, however, is unpromising.

  By the time I make it to the last parlor on my list, my shirt is sticking to my back and I'm pretty confident that I could fry an egg on my forehead. Not that I'd want to.

  I don't let the boarded-up window on the storefront next to the parlor get to me, nor do I let the faded lettering on the sign steer me away. I need a job.

  "Hi, I'm Savannah." I introduce myself to the single occupant of the shop, a woman dressed in head-to-toe faded black denim. She sizes me up, takes in my folder and hopeful expression and summarily dismisses me.

  "We're not hiring."

  "I'm a great worker," I argue. I'm getting desperate. "I'll work for little and am always punctual, polite, and thorough. I brought my portfolio with me."

  "We're not hiring," she says again, but she's a little slower with her rejection this time. I jump on that hesitation as my opening.

  "Here, just take a look." I hand her my portfolio. She shakes her head, but takes it.

  First, she's just flipping through it dismissively, clearly trying to get me back out of the door, but then she slows down. Her eyebrows inch up her forehead in intervals as she takes in the photographs and sketches.

  "Where did you work?" she asks, when she finally hands my portfolio back to me. "You're way too good for a place like this."

  "I haven't worked before," I admitted.

  "Friends?" she asked.

  I nodded.

  "You did all that without training, just fucking around with friends?" She shakes her head, this time in disbelief. "If I could do that, you bet I wouldn't be working in this dump. Hun, you have talent." She looks me sternly in the eyes. "I mean real talent."

  "But first I need experience," I said, "No one will hire me with a blank resume."

  "Eh." She acknowledges my point, scratching her chin in thought. "I really wish I could offer you something, hun, but we aren't making rent as it is on this place. We really can't afford to bring someone else on. I'm Anna-Lynne, by the way."

  "Thanks, and I understand," I sigh. "Honestly, I'd do it for free. But I have to pay my rent, too, you know?"

  Anna-Lynne nods in companionable silence for a moment. Then she says, "Sorry, hun. I don't know what to tell you. But whatever you do, don't give up.
"

  I nod. "Thanks." The encouragement feels good after being on my own for all these weeks.

  Unfortunately, encouraging words won't keep a roof over my head, nor will they get me any closer to my dream of being a tattoo artist.

  Chapter Eight

  Cooper

  Wednesday is at the bar, waiting for me like a good girl, when I get to The Tipsy Steer. Some loser is trying to buy her a drink, but she waves him off impatiently, leaning forward on her stool to watch me walk towards her. A slow, sultry smile spreads across her face. I know what that smile means.

  "Let's skip the drinks," I say, sliding a hand down her back. "I need something else now."

  She arches her back against my palm in response, bending her head to nuzzle my neck while simultaneously giving me an A-grade view straight down her shirt to her impressive breasts. I cup one as she kisses down my neck from my ear, then pull her down off of the stool.

  "We're going," I declare, my voice already a little gruffer as I start to feel the excitement building in my pants. We're barely halfway across the parking lot when I undo the clasp on her bra, pulling it free from under her tight tube top. Her erect nipples strain against the shirt and she moans, reaching a hand the back of my neck and pulling me in for a kiss. I pull her into me deep, my frustration building.

  "In," I say, yanking the passenger side door of my truck open.

  She steps in, already flushed, hair mussed, and lips plump and just a little open. I change my mind.

  "Backseat," I command. She climbs over the divider and I yank open the back door, getting in. I pull her tube top over her head, freeing her breasts. She moans, arching her back to bring her chest closer to me as she pulls my shirt over my head. I'm lying down on the seat and she's on top me, kissing down my chest. She undoes my belt, giving me a coy smile before she unzips the fly and takes my hard member in her mouth. Her tongue swirls over the tip as she strokes the base and I close my eyes.