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

by Ashley, Ava

  I can’t watch, I am too terrified. But I also cannot look away.

  The Maneater throws a cross and Cooper blocks it, but the impact of the blocked cross on Cooper’s arm is still strong enough that I hear the sickening thud of the Maneater’s blow on Cooper’s flesh and wince in empathetic pain. Cooper throws a jab and the Maneater is too slow to block it. Cooper gets him right in the center of the abdomen and you can see that it is the kind of jab that really hurts. I wait with bated breath for just a moment, hoping against hope that it would have gotten him in the gut or something. But, just as before, the Maneater seems to be fueled by the pain instead of allowing it to slow him down. He lets out the most terrifyingly gruesome roar and springs back into fighting stance like a wind-up toy. How can you possibly defeat an opponent who only seems to get stronger with every attack you manage to get in?

  Cooper is my everything. He is my sun, my stars, the light of my life. Without him, every moment of the rest of my life would be spent bemoaning the fact that I am here alone to suffer a miserable existence without my love. I have not been able to open up with someone the way that I could with Cooper since the death of my mother and sister. I had closed myself off from emotion for the longest time, for years and years, and I didn’t think that I could ever be open to letting someone in again. But somehow, in the most unlikely of all circumstances, Cooper managed to not only break down my defenses and emotional barriers, but become more important to me than anything else in the world.

  And now he is up in that ring, essentially being fed to the wolves in front of hundreds of people, all for me. If anything happens to him, it is my fault. If he dies in the ring today, all of my greatest fears will have been realized. I didn’t want to let anyone get close to me for the fear of what that could do to them. I was afraid that if someone got close to me, they would get hurt and it would be all my fault. And it would not be worth it. But with Cooper, I know that he thinks even dying for me is worth it. I know that even if he knew that he would die in the ring today, he would still do it all over again. Knowing that makes the possibility of losing him hurt all the more, because that kind of love and loyalty is rare. Most people never find that kind of love, not in their entire lives, but I have found it. And now I might lose it.

  The Maneater catches Cooper in a half-bind and starts just pounding on him, like he is a human punching bag. The crowd is eating it up. “MANEATER! MAN-EATER! KILL HIM!”

  I think I am going to be sick.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Cooper

  I ignore the pain searing through my shoulder and twist with all my force, freeing myself from the half-bind and knocking the Maneater in the back of the head with my balled fist on the way up. There is an ‘oof’ of pain, but I know that the punch didn’t do much. At this point of the match, it is concuss him or nothing and since he is not spinning, the blow didn’t rattle his brain enough to be worth shit.

  The Maneater is, hands down, the best fighter that I have ever been up against in my life. We are so closely matched that, in any other situation, I would say it is a toss-up as far as which one of us will win. Sure, I have made him bleed and he will probably not be wanting to get out of bed tomorrow morning, but I am feeling pretty beat-up, too. We have been at it for twenty minutes and, at this point, both of us are staggering. I sock him in the gut. He slugs me in the jaw. I deliver a swift roundhouse kick to the back of his knees and he wraps his arms around me as he goes down, slamming me under him on the ground. We both stagger to our feet, bloody and disoriented.

  I am not one for false humility, so I mean it when I say that either one of us could win in any other situation.

  But in this situation, where my losing would mean abandoning Savannah, there is no question. I am going to win. I have to. The thought gives me new steam and I slug him hard, pairing it with a hard knee in the stomach in quick succession. I hear the crowd picking up in volume a little, but the only voice that matters to me at all is Savannah’s. And, just as it has been for all of the fight so far, her voice rises above the cheers of the crowd at a volume I would have thought impossible before today.

  I am going to win this for my love.

  The Maneater retaliates, getting me hard in the eye socket. I can feel the blood welling up behind my eyeball and my vision goes blurry. After that point, I can’t even keep track of the moves. The fuzziness in my head and ringing in my ears suggests a concussion, but rattling my brain isn’t my concern at the moment. My concern is staying alive.

  My body goes on autopilot, years of Navy SEAL and mixed martial arts fighting experience combining to keep me blocking and counterattacking even when I am too hurt to focus on strategy anymore. My body fights on its own and whenever that isn’t enough, the push from Savannah’s voice echoing in the fuzzy recesses of my mind drives me forward to carry out the next move. My love is counting on me. I am not going to let her down, no matter what.

  But then the Maneater has his meaty paws around my neck and starts to shake. The drop in my oxygen levels shocks me back into clarity and I realize that this is it. This is the moment of all or nothing and, for Savannah, the answer has to be all. I have let a comrade down before, but I will not let my love down now. With everything left in me, and then some extra oomph from who knows where, I go full he-man on the Maneater. I elbow his arms apart, prying them off of my neck. I fish hook him, hard, in the mouth and use it to spin him around a hundred and eighty degrees. Then I pile-drive him into the ground and he’s lying there, two hundred fifty pounds of steroids and muscle, as I am pounding him, over and over and over, in the back of the head.

  The crowd is going wild. It is as clear to me as it is to everyone else that the Maneater is not recovering. He is going to die there as I pound him, over and over and over, in the back of the head. The next thing I know, five big guys are in the ring with me, pulling me off of the Maneater. The room is spinning and I have a splitting headache, blood running into my eyes, but I am able to make out one thing.

  “We have a winner!” the announcer yells. “Cooper ‘Veni Vidi Vici’ Quin has defeated the Maneater!”

  And then my love is up in the ring, her little arms wrapped around me, and I finally feel peace.

  “I love you, baby,” she says. I don’t answer. Instead, I just kiss her, right there in the middle of the ring, in front of everyone.

  She is mine now, forever.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Savannah

  I can’t believe he did it. The fight was close the whole time, but towards the end it really looked like the Maneater was going to win. And then, out of nowhere, Cooper seemed to be seized with some superpower and just destroyed him. It was clear to everyone that Cooper was going to kill the Maneater up there, so Daddy waved his personal guards, the biggest guys in the Santos motorcycle club, aside from the Maneater, to go pull Cooper off of the Maneater before he killed him. It is a mercy that Cooper would not have been shown if roles were reversed, but as a Santos motorcycle club member and one of Dad’s favorite men, at that, he saves him from the death that would have been Cooper’s fate. All is well.

  I didn’t care who was watching or what Daddy would think or what people would say. I jumped out of my seat and ran up onto the ring to be with my man. I wasn’t willing to wait one more moment to be near him again. And then he kissed me, and even though he was covered in blood and sweat, both his own and the Maneater’s, it was one of the best kisses of my life. It was a possessive kiss, where he claimed me in front of everyone, their opinions be damned. From now on, we will be together forever.

  When the kiss ends and we pull apart—all too soon, considering that I would like it to go on forever—my father is standing up in the ring next to us.

  He laughs and takes the microphone from the announcer. “I was skeptical of this...friendship...between my daughter and Cooper ‘Veni Vidi Vici’ Quin when I first learned of it,” he booms. “But the pretty boy has proved his worth. Cooper Quin is now officially an honorary member of
the Santos Motorcycle Club. He will take on the full rights and responsibilities of a member of the Santos Motorcycle Club, including the right to shred the streets on a badass, tricked-out Harley.” He pauses for several minutes until the screaming and cheering of the crowd dies down enough for him to be heard again. “But most of all, I have to say that I will be proud to call him my son.”

  At this, the crowd really loses it. Dad thumps Cooper on the back and I can only imagine how much it must hurt, after all the injuries Cooper sustained in the fight, but he just grins and turns to kiss me again. I melt into him, but make myself pull away before I completely lose control. We step around the medics kneeling around the Maneater’s massive, immobile body, now a harmless mound of bloodied flesh, and climb down out of the ring.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Savannah

  Even though he is injured and limping a bit as we walk down the aisle, Cooper has his arm wrapped protectively around my shoulders. He pushes his overeager new fans back and glares at the rest. The ‘don’t mess with me’ look on his face, still covered in both his own sweat and blood, and that of the Maneater, suffices for all but the boldest of the fans. Vlad is already waiting at the exit of the warehouse and, as I never saw him arrive at the fight, I am a little surprised to see him there. But it makes sense that he would be, as Cooper's best friend.

  "Well done, son," Vlad says, giving Cooper a quick man-to-man hug.

  "Thanks," Cooper says. "And thanks again for everything you have done for me—for us."

  "Don't even mention it," Vlad says, waving it off. "But I hope you aren't about to tell me you're planning on going home." He gives Cooper a skeptical look.

  "Well, actually..." Cooper begins.

  "We're going to the hospital," I say.

  "But I'm fine," Cooper protests.

  "Listen to your woman," Vlad says, nodding. "You just took on the fucking Maneater and I know it wasn't just my imagination that saw him rattle your head around a bit. I am not a betting man, but I would put a month's wages on the fact that you have a concussion."

  Cooper opens his mouth like he is about to protest again, but winces and puts a hand to his head instead. "Fine," he concedes, through gritted teeth. "Let's go. But no ambulance."

  "Deal," I agree, popping up on my tip-toes to give him a kiss on his cheek.

  "I'm pretty sure Savannah can take it from here," Vlad says with a smile at me. "So I'm going to go get Bettina and we will see you two at the hospital."

  "Sounds good," I agree.

  "Which hospital will you be going to?" Vlad asks.

  "Weiss Memorial Hospital, right?" I say, after briefly considering which one was probably closest.

  "Yeah," Cooper says. He winces when he nods his head and I hold on to his elbow a little tighter. For once, I am the one providing the physical support for him. After all he has done for me, I am more than happy to be able to return the favor, even just in this smallest of ways. Cooper leans on me, and a feeling of loving and being loved spreads through my chest like the spreading glow of a candle's flame.

  "See you soon," Vlad says, as we part ways just outside the exit of the warehouse. Vlad heads to the parking lot to get in his car while we head to the street corner, where I flag down a cab.

  "Weiss Memorial Hospital, please," I say, as we climb into the cab. "And as quickly as possible."

  We are at the hospital in a flash and, once the receptionist notices who Cooper is and gets the obligatory autograph on a piece of hospital stationery, Cooper is immediately given a room and assigned a doctor. A nurse brings us to a private treatment room and runs the concussion tests, then leaves us alone while she goes to take a look at the test results.

  As soon as the door closes, Cooper pushes himself up onto his elbows on the bed. "I think you owe me something."

  I slide a hand into the neck of my shirt, pulling the folded-up note out of the left cup of my bra. "Your victory kiss," I say, with a smile. "There is nothing I would rather do." So I kiss him—sweet and slow and deep, like a love that suddenly has years and years and years to unfold. We don't have to cram our passion into an intense few moments. We can delight in it for the rest of our lives. In that moment, the sterile smells and anxious sounds of the hospital fall away and I feel what it is to be unencumbered and happy.

  There is a knock at the door and I assume that it is the nurse, respecting our privacy by knocking before entering, so I walk over to let her in. Instead, I see my father there, motorcycle helmet in hand.

  "Hello, Savannah," he says, as somberly as ever.

  "Father," I say. I don't know what to say to him. I am emotionally torn between being angry at him for putting Cooper and me through all of that and making Cooper risk his life, and being happy because he is my dad, one of the only family members I have left, and he is here and talking to me. Since I can't figure out what I should say, I just leave it at that and step aside, letting him into the room.

  He walks over to the chair by the doctors cabinets, a good two or three yards away from Cooper, and takes a seat. He puts his helmet down on the cabinet, surely breaking a hundred hospital rules at once about sterility and whatnot, then leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and interlacing his fingers.

  "I came here to say three things," he says, in his usual even, neutral tone. "First, I wanted to congratulate you—both of you—for standing up for your love today and winning the good fight. Love like that is rare and you should treasure it forever. The last time I've seen, or shown, love like that was when my wife was still alive." It's the most personal, emotional thing I can recall him ever saying and I am floored. I have to remind myself not to let my mouth hang open like a fly trap.

  "Second, I want to apologize to you, Savannah." Here, I start wondering if I am the one with the concussion. Did I hear that right? Did Flint Santos just apologize for something? Impossible. And yet...

  "I want to apologize for sinking so deep into the motorcycle club life after your mother's and sister's deaths that I completely forgot to honor that you and your brother are still alive. And I made you give up your lives to the motorcycle club life, too, and that was wrong of me." He cracks a wan smile. "But you're a Santos and, true to form, you weren't going to let anyone tell you what to do. I'm proud of you, daughter."

  I feel a tear sliding down my cheek and wipe it away. I am not sad, just overjoyed and overwhelmed. "It's okay, Daddy."

  My father shakes his head. "No," he says. "It isn't okay. But I am going to try to do a better job as a father going forwards. And that brings me to point three." He turns his gaze to Cooper, who pushes himself up to a fully upright sitting position. It is clear that he is the one who will be primarily addressed next.

  "Yes, sir," Cooper says.

  "I made you an honorary Santos motorcycle club member today, because you earned it," Flint started. "But because you are important in my daughter's life, I don't want you brought into this thug life any more than you want to be in it. And so I make you an honorary member in title, but excuse you from all duties associated with full membership."

  "Oh, Daddy!" This is it, I finally lose it. I run over to my father and wrap my arms around him in the first hug we have shared in over a decade. After a brief moment of stiff shock, he hugs me back.

  "Thank you, sir," Cooper says.

  When Vlad and Bettina, a small, round woman with a big smile and silvering hair, come into the room a few minutes later, followed closely by the nurse, the three of us look like the perfect tableau of a happy family, smiling, and laughing, and catching up on so much lost time.

  I do not know what the future will bring, but I know that I am excited to find out, with Cooper by my side.

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Cooper

  I get sent home from the hospital a few hours later, with a mild concussion and the instruction to stay in bed and take it easy for a while. After all I've been through, that doesn't sound so bad. Especially with Savannah here, lying warm in my arms.

  “I love
you,” Savannah whispers.

  “I love you, too,” I say. But there’s an unspoken ‘but’ hanging in the air on her side. “Shoot.”

  “What?” she looks confused.

  “I know there is something else that you need to say,” I say. “So say it. I am listening. We have all the time in the world.” I wrap my arm over her, hugging her securely to my chest.

  “It’s not a ‘but’ about loving you,” Savannah starts. “Because I do! I really do. But...now what?”

  “Now what?” I repeat, raising an eyebrow.

  “I was terrified, absolutely beside myself with fear for your life, during that fight,” she says, her voice catching with emotion. “Every time he hit you, I didn’t know if that was it. If that was the time that you wouldn’t get back up.”

  I kiss the top of her head, hugging her to my chest, “I wasn’t going to abandon you. I promised.”

  “I know,” she said. “But people can’t always keep their promises. And if the Maneater killed you...I, I just don’t know how I would have been able to go on.”

  “I love you,” I repeat. “And I am going to be here for you. You can count on me, now and always.”

  “Yes,” she nods, her head moving on my chest. “But it’s not even just that. Our entire relationship has been built in the context of strife and drama and discord. We couldn’t be open with each other, we were fighting everything, including ourselves, to be together, the odds were so strongly against us. Everything should have kept us from working, but we worked. We made it.”