Finding Perseverance (The Unexpected Love Series Book 3)

by T. E. Black

  She’s more gorgeous than I’ve ever seen her. My eyes travel over her black tank with Max’s Bar and Grill scrolled across the chest and then down to her extra short, blue jean shorts.

  “Are You going to invite me in?”

  “You don’t need to ask, Leigh. This is your apartment.”

  She smiles a sad smile at me while I move aside, letting her in. I watch as she walks through the apartment, into the kitchen and places the case of beer on the counter.

  “We need to talk,” she declares, turning to face me.

  I knew this was coming. Because, we do have to talk. And, I’m going to have to start from the beginning. She needs to hear everything.

  “Grab me a beer, please, and I’ll tell you everything.”

  She grabs two beers and we move to the living room, taking opposite seats on the couch.

  “So how did you meet her, Lauren?” she asks.

  “So we are jumping right in, are we?” I try to lighten the mood a bit, but she just blinks, waiting for my answer. I lose a deep sigh before trying again. “Through the league. Her husband, Mark, is a trainer, but not mine.”

  “Okay. So, what’s his deal with you then? Why would he try to set you up for her murder? I don’t see anything in it for him.”

  “He wanted me out of the picture, so he could slip his fighter in my place. The more wins for a fighter, means more money for the trainer assigned to that fighter.”

  “So, what was his plan? He planned on killing his own wife to get a paycheck?” Her tone is skeptical.

  “He and Lauren were getting a divorce, at least that’s what they told everyone. She hit on me, we fucked, and I fell in love with her. I thought she loved me back, but the night of the fight, she told me it was all a lie.”

  Leigh scoots closer on the couch, placing her soft hand on my cheek. I nuzzle into it, letting her touch comfort me the way I need.

  “I’m sorry, Rook. That’s not something anyone should have to go through.”

  “It was my own fault. I should’ve known something was up with her. I should’ve known something was off when she was still living with him. I should’ve known I couldn’t have both—the career of my dreams and love. I should’ve known nobody cared about me then.”

  “Tell me the rest,” she offers, taking a pull from her bottle, “I care about you.”

  I don’t want to rehash this horrible memory with Leigh, but I don’t have a choice in the matter. I have to get it out or it’ll eat me alive.

  “Rook,” she says softly. “You can tell me. I wouldn’t ever judge you.”

  I know she’s telling me the truth. There isn’t a judgmental hair on Leigh’s body. So, with reluctance, I nod and begin talking.

  “I needed to get out of there,” I begin. “I needed to breathe, so I walked out of the arena, on the road to anywhere. I’m pretty sure I walked myself in circles if I’m being honest. All the street signs blurred together. The roads and people began to look the same.”

  I watch as she nods in understanding and I take a deep breath. “I can see that.”

  “After walking for what felt like hours, I ended up back at the arena.” I chuckle sarcastically. “Ironic isn’t it? I walked back to the place I tried to get away from in the first place.”

  Leigh’s body stiffens and her eyes water. I almost feel as if she realizes this is where shit is going to go from bad to worse.

  “What happened when you got back to the arena?” she whispers, her voice shaky.

  “I heard her scream.” I close my eyes, fighting off the morbid visions of Lauren’s body pinned against a dumpster while Marc’s hands squeeze her throat.

  “I climbed through the hole in the fence, and ran as fast as I could, but I couldn’t stop the outcome.” My nerves take hold of me, and before I realize what’s happening, Leigh is putting her arms around me and pulling my head onto her shoulder. I don’t fight it.

  “They were fighting about me,” I confess. “I wanted to believe it wasn’t her, but I knew deep down, it was. He was so mad at her for telling me about their plan to fuck me over, and she wasn’t helping herself.”

  “What do you mean?” Leigh asks, rubbing her smooth fingers over my upper arm.

  “She told him she loved me.”

  Lauren’s voice travels through my mind until it has my heart aching. “Please! Please! Stop! You’re hurting me! I’m sorry, Mark. But, I love him! You made me do this! This was your idea!”

  “You don’t love him, Lauren!” He snaps.

  “I do love him. I want to be with him, Mark. That’s why I told him. I couldn’t keep secrets anymore.”

  “I watched his hand wind into her hair,” I swallow the bile now rising in my throat. “He hit her head so hard off it—the dumpster. I watched as her lifeless body slide down it, and slumped on the ground.

  Mark stands over here, panic taking over. His hands fly to his hair and he curses profusely. He doesn’t even check if she’s okay. Instead, he backs away two steps at a time.

  Time resumes and my mind puts together all the horrific things I’ve just witnessed. Lauren!

  “Lauren!” I scream, sprinting toward her.

  Marks head snaps to where I’ve been standing the entire time. When he sees me barreling at him, he spins on his heel and takes off into the darkness. I don’t bother chasing him. I’ll deal with him later. First, I have to make sure Lauren is okay.

  Stopping in front of her, I kneel down in the stone of the alleyway, The gravel crunches beneath my weight. I take her head in my hands while a crimson liquid coats my palms and fingers. The sheer sight of the blood dripping down the back of her head is enough to squeeze a strangled cry from my chest.

  No.

  “Lauren. Baby!” I plead. “Look at me, Lauren. Please look at me. I’m so sorry!”

  No movement. No response to my voice. No anything.

  My teeth chatter as I’m suddenly freezing. It feels twenty below zero out here, but I know for sure it isn’t. With shaking hands, I pat my shorts down for my phone but of course, I don’t have it. I walked out of the ring, not caring about grabbing my damn phone.

  “Fuck! There’s so much blood, Lauren! I don’t know what to do!”

  A sob rips through me like never before. It stings down to my core. Every inch of my body is screaming out in agonizing pain although there isn’t a scratch on me. This shit is emotions. Something I’ve learned to turn off. Something I’ve put on the back burner. That is until I felt Lauren’s mouth on mine—until she took a piece of me and kept it as her own. She owned every single sliver of my heart without me knowing. She consumed me, broke me. She destroyed me, yet I’m the one who’s still breathing. I’m the one who’s covered in her blood with no idea what to do.

  Get it together, Rook. Think. Think. You can’t leave her here.

  The ringing of a phone beneath me catches me off guard and the next moment is like a epiphany. I move quickly, digging in her jean pockets for the ringing until I get her phone in my hand. I silence the incoming call and dial as fast as I can.

  “911. What’s your emergency?”

  “Rook?” A soft voice says my name, and it sounds like angels singing. “Get out of your head. You don’t have to let them win. Come back to me. I’m so sorry.”

  The world starts to focus again through my eyes, and the first thing I see is Leigh staring down at me with love and compassion. God. She’s more beautiful than I remember.

  “Don’t apologize, Leigh. I finally realize the woman whom I thought I loved wasn’t real. She manipulated everything about herself to make me fall for her, and like an idiot, I did,” I take a deep breath. “I’m sorry she’s gone. I really am, but the truth is, I didn’t even know her. So, how can I miss her? How can I love someone I didn’t know? She sure as shit didn’t love me.”

  Leigh gives me a sad smile. “Rook,” she starts off quiet. “you have every right to feel the way you do. I get it more than anyone. What she did to you was horrible. I can see wh
y you don’t miss her the way everyone thinks you should. You don’t have to apologize for not missing someone who’s gone.”

  I look into Leigh’s watery eyes, and my heart thuds in my chest. “That night will haunt me for the rest of my life. I’ll have to live with not stopping Mark before he killed her. I’ll have to find the strength to go on with my life, my career, standing in an octagon and not letting myself think about her. How is that going to work? Because, honestly, I don’t see a way anymore.”

  Leigh scoots closer to me, intertwining our fingers together. She looks me straight in the eye as she speaks. “I know you, Rook Wallace. You were born to be a fighter. You are a fighter. I also know you won’t let anyone keep you out of the ring—even her,” she pauses. “You will get through this. I promise.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Ryleigh

  “So, why are you hiding out here? You don’t have to let everyone else win, Rook.”

  He just gives me a long look, gets up, and moves to the kitchen. I sit, pondering what I said wrong, but then he returns carrying two fresh beers and a new bottle of Jack Daniels. He hands one to me and then takes the seat next to me. “There’s a lot of heat on me right now. I may not be guilty, but there are thousands of people who have their own ideas and opinions. I can’t just walk into the supermarket like a normal guy these days.”

  “I get it.” And I do. Rook has always turned heads, but add fame and a scandal and any sense of normality went right out the window.

  “I wish the cops held me for five more minutes so I didn’t have to hear Mark tell a swarm of media assholes I killed his wife. Five minutes would’ve been perfect. All the damage would’ve been done, and I wouldn’t have had to stand there and witness it.”

  Laying my head on Rook’s shoulder, I blink back tears for him.

  “Hey, don’t sniffle for me.” He turns his head so it rests against mine.

  “I’m not. I’m fine. It’s all right.” I lift my head and turn away, taking a deep breath. When I turn back, he’s watching me. Then very slowly, he reaches out and cups my cheek with his hand. Every nerve in my body is aching with desire from one, innocent touch.

  This is what I didn’t want to happen. I don’t want to feel anything, but it’s natural, right? To feel affection for someone you spent so many years loving, to want to protect someone you have so many good memories with. Especially when you’ve had a tiny bit too much to drink.

  “Do you ever think about old times?” I pull away from his touch and steer the conversation to safer waters.

  “All the time.”

  “I think the best was when we told Trent he could fly.” I chuckle, leaning back into the couch cushions.

  Rook lets out a hearty laugh, nodding his head. “He was pissed off at us until he was fourteen.”

  “How about the time I mowed our initials in the front lawn? Both of our moms were so pissed.”

  We both laugh, thinking about how our mothers made us finish mowing the lawn in the rain to get rid of it.

  “I’ll never forget the day you got your license. You were a terrible driver.” He throws a jab.

  Smiling, I agree with him, but I don’t tell him so. “Hey! I was a fantastic driver. I never got a ticket. That’s more than you can say, Mario Andretti.”

  The smile on Rook’s face is genuine, and it warms my heart a million degrees. I haven’t seen him smile since he got here. There’s no denying his life has hardened him. But, life also hardened me. All the drama, heartbreak, and bullshit stole my innocence and replaced it with something more stern. It made me act like an adult and forget the child who lived inside me once upon a time.

  “What’s one thing you’d go back and change about your life?” I ask, picking at the label on my bottle.

  “Jesus, there are so many things I’d change.”

  “Like what?”

  “What would you change?” I barely notice him turning my question around at myself.

  “I’d go back and keep Trent from fucking up. That’s number one on the list.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When he was young, he had so many plans—so many hopes and dreams. He wanted to work hard for something, and he did with the tattoo shop. But then things fell apart for him, and I should’ve stopped it from happening. I shouldn’t have sat by and let him slip into the dark. I should’ve helped him sooner than I did. I was so angry with him. I let my stubbornness get in the way of family.”

  “You helped him, Leigh. Don’t sell yourself short. You said he’s doing better, great even. So, don’t think back on shit like that. You’ll eat yourself alive.”

  “What would you change?” I ask, studying how gorgeous Rook is now.

  His brown hair is a bit shorter than it was when I saw him after his mom’s funeral and his face is clean-shaven. His eyes are the same, though. Just like when we were kids, his eyes tell everything he’s feeling at the moment.

  Scanning over the rest of him, I let myself linger on the intricate tattoos on his arms. He’s always had some ink, but never this many. It looks damn good on him. He wears it well on his large, muscular arms.

  “You want the truth?” he asks, catching me staring.

  “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

  “I’ve been thinking …” He pauses as if he’s gathering his thoughts. “I’ve thought about things I’ve done and things I wish I’d done. Fighting, Lauren, my fans, my life—but it all comes back to you and my choice ten years ago. Trying to decide if I took the right road when I left. I think that maybe if I had stayed, things wouldn’t have ended up this way. Everything would’ve been different. I would’ve turned out different.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, my hopes bursting at the seams.

  “After I left you and went to California, I was lonely, Leigh. I met so many people who only wanted me because of who I might be in the future. But none of them were you.”

  He turns to me, and the sorrow combined with the love in his eyes is enough to take my breath away.

  Is he saying what I think he is? Is he telling me what I’ve been dying to hear for ten years? Is this the closure I needed all along?

  I hang on his every word as he continues. “There was always a void in my heart that no one could fill—not even Lauren. The love I felt for her was jaded, Leigh. It was tainted because I never really loved her for myself. I loved Lauren because she was practical for my situation. She understood the business. She was tough enough to take all the shit I endure on a daily basis. But—”

  I cut him off, repeating what he said before. “She wasn’t me.”

  We both stare at each other, the intensity of our talk weighing on both of us in a way we never knew possible. Hearts exploding, truths being told—we’re clean, pure even. There’s nothing unsaid, only the truth.

  “I’m sorry for what I did to you. I know it doesn’t mean much ten years later, but I never forgot about you. You were always there, even when you weren’t.”

  It’s as if he read my mind. All the things I wanted to hear, slipping from his perfectly shaped lips and absorbing right into my heart.

  “You don’t need to apologize,” I whisper as his face moves in closer to mine and his eyes flick between my eyes and my lips, causing my nerves to spike sharply. His lips are so close that if I were to lean in a tiny bit more, we’ll be touching.

  Slipping his hand around the back of my neck, I melt into his touch like I always have.

  “Do you want this, Leigh?” he mumbles while rubbing his lips over mine ever so softly.

  Every ounce of my mind tells me to run as far away as possible. But my body has other plans. Plans that don’t include clothes and do include touching, tasting, loving every inch of each other.

  “Yes,” I breath with an unsteady tone in my voice.

  Then, his mouth is crashing into mine. It’s a feeling I’ve longed for since the day he walked out, and I invite the sensation of his kiss into my heart.

  The smell of
his cologne surrounds me as he deepens the kiss, his tongue slipping into my mouth with desire. The quicker his tongue moves against mine, the more inclined I am to strip him down bare so I can feel his skin on mine for the first time in what feels like forever.

  “You taste amazing,” he murmurs against my lips.

  “I need you.” My voice is barely audible as I pull away from him.

  He watches intently as I stand from the couch. With a confidence I only have with him, I grab the bottom of my tank top and tug it over my head at a slow, steady pace.

  “Fuck me. You’re gorgeous.” His eyes are drinking me in as the words fall from his perfect lips.

  I continue stripping in front of him, moving my hair to the side to unclasp my black lace bra. Before I get to release it, Rook stands so we are face to face, and he reaches behind me to halt my movements.

  Dipping his face close to my ear, his lips brush against my skin as he whispers, “Take off my shirt.”

  My mouth waters at the opportunity to touch him. I know what lies underneath his tight, black T-shirt, and it’s gorgeous.

  I do as he asks, and before his shirt hits the floor, his hands are on me—everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and I love it. They are are gritty and rough, strong but not painful. The feeling of his skin against mine combined with his hot mouth on my neck, jaw, and lips is enough to have me ready to explode.

  He moves us to the bedroom, switching our positions before he sits on the bed in front of me. His hands move and he pops the top button of his jeans before pulling out his cock. Like a goddamn magician, he pulls a condom from his pocket, rips it open, and rolls it over his shaft.

  “Climb up,” he says in a husky voice. “I wanna feel you wrapped around me while you ride the hell out of my dick.”

  Good-bye panties. It was nice knowing you.

  I shimmy out of my shorts and panties and then position myself on Rook’s lap. As I hover above his length, his lust-filled gaze burns holes in me.

  “Do you want me to make you scream, sweetheart?” he asks in the sexiest voice I’ve ever heard.