by JJ Knight
She sits down, her hand running across the fabric. “Maybe he is.”
We kick off our shoes, the sounds of the waves crashing filling the space. The wind is high out on the ocean, and the water whitecaps beyond the cove.
In this protected space, though, the breeze is gentle. A seagull swoops in and lands nearby, its hopeful eyes resting on our basket.
“We have a visitor,” Chloe says.
“Did you and your dad feed them?” I ask.
“It’s not good for them,” she replies. “But yes, we always did.”
The seagull circles us for a while, then returns to the water.
“We were too slow,” I say.
“Maybe.”
We sit next to each other, legs outstretched, my hand on hers, our faces turned up to the sun.
Everything has gone well since the showdown at The Cure’s. The General has left us alone. I’ve had two legit matches and won them both.
And last night, Colt asked us to dinner. He told us they’d found the guy involved in Chloe’s dad’s death. He was in jail, and The Cure was watching the case. If the courts didn’t take care of things, he’d make sure the man had no freedom to live an easy life on the outside either.
That’s why we came here today. To hopefully start healing that open wound of Chloe’s.
Not that it will ever fully close. I know that, and I never even knew my father.
The gull returns to check on us, sees the basket is still closed, and returns to the water.
“I think he wants us to eat so he can steal something,” Chloe says.
“Happy to oblige,” I say. “Hopefully he won’t tell all his friends.”
Chloe flips open the basket and pulls out a container of grapes. “Feed me, servant,” she says with a laugh.
“Happy to serve,” I say, popping open the lid.
Chloe arranges herself with her head on my lap. I hold a grape over her mouth.
“I like this,” she says.
I lift the grape and lick it, then pop it between her lips.
She lunges out of my lap. “Euuuwww! I have your cooties now!” Her body collapses on me, knocking me backwards. The grapes spill all across the blanket and roll into the sand.
“Hey!” I say, then stop when her lips land on mine. I put my arms around her. We didn’t need those grapes anyway.
The gull calls out, and the waves continue their rhythmic crashing. Chloe and I move together, partially wrapped in the blanket, a small precaution in case someone else should appear on our beach.
Her skin is warm with a light sheen of sweat. I kiss great swaths of it in the bright afternoon sun. And then I do everything else.
When her bikini is back in place, and we can flatten the blanket again, we look out with surprise at the small family of gulls waiting patiently in the sand.
The grapes are gone.
Chloe laughs. “They’re waiting for the next course.”
We unpack the rest of the food. Sandwiches, cheese, water bottles, and wine. We toss our crusts as we eat, trying to favor the littlest gull who keeps getting pushed away from the best bits.
“This has been a good afternoon,” Chloe says. Her hair is wild, sand stuck throughout it. She’s a goddess.
“You ready for classes to start?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she says. “It’ll be nice to finish my degree.”
My stomach quakes a little. I’ve been trying to broach my next subject for a while, but we haven’t really known each other that long. Three months. The best months.
“So, it’s pretty far from your place with Zeba to campus,” I say.
She elbows me. “I know. That’s why I’ve been spending half my nights with you. So I can cut some of my future drive times.”
She’s just made it easy. “So how about you cut all of them?”
Her eyes meet mine. “You want me to move in with you?”
“Zeba’s graduating. She’s looking at the job in Portland. Won’t you be without a roommate?”
She nods. “But that scholarship I got more than covers rent. I don’t need a roommate.”
“So save the money. If you decide to throw me over, you can always find a new place.”
She bites her lip. The littlest seagull moves closer, and Chloe tosses her a bite of cheese. The other gulls squawk in protest.
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s do it.”
“Didn’t we just…”
She nudges my arm. “Be nice.”
I drag her closer to me. “I’m the happiest man in the world.”
“Good,” she says. “Because you owe me some grapes.”
And I kiss her. It’s impossible to imagine that we could get this far based on that first night. Jail. The Cure. Our realization that we were on opposite sides of something so important to us both.
But we’re here. I no longer do illegal fights. She no longer busts them.
As it turned out, those things were only part of who we were.
And everything else about us is absolutely, recklessly perfect.
~*´`*~
This is the end of this series!
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***
Want more fighter drama?
Try Uncaged Love (Colt & Jo’s story)
or Fight for Her (Parker’s story)
See a list of all JJ Knight’s books.
Thank you for reading!
Love, JJ
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J Knight and Her MMA Trainer
JJ began writing “Fight Class Updates” in early 2014 when she got a chance to train with some seriously buff fighters at a small gym in South Austin. There she met Ryan, who was extremely encouraging and fun.
Despite a lot of tears, pain, and days when she sat in the parking lot, too weak and shaky to even drive home, JJ learned a whole heck of a lot about MMA fighting and had the war wounds to prove it. She never felt as fit and strong as she did during that period.
Ryan left the gym (to JJ’s and many of the fans’ dismay), so JJ also trained with another guy who ended up on the cover of Fight for Her #1. At the time, her JJ pen name was a secret, so none of them knew the girl they were training was an author writing MMA romance.
When Deanna decided to out her MMA pen name, she tracked down Ryan and they did a photo shoot. It ended a tremendous year with the JJ Knight pen name.
If you would like to see everything Deanna writes, here are links to her pen names:
JJ Knight
(contemporary romance)
Annie Winters
(romantic suspense — slightly hotter on the scale)
Deanna Roy
(full-length emotional new adult romance)