Until the Bell Rings: An MMA Fighter Romance

by Roxy Wilson

  Those friends of his, the people he’d been getting involve with—they’d always rubbed me up the wrong way, and I’d often worried about their effect on Mason.

  “Killing yourself in the process,” I added, swallowing thickly.

  “I had to disappear. It was too dangerous after what I’d done. What if Foster’s buddies had come poking around? What if they’d hurt you to get to me? He wasn’t a good man, Taryn. He was dangerous.”

  “I cried at your funeral,” I told him, voice cracking. Under my palm, his heart shuddered. “I held my pregnant stomach at the six-month memorial of the fire. I was sick every day and I still don’t know if it was the baby or you who did that to me!”

  I yanked back my hand, Mason reaching out to stop me, but I couldn’t let him.

  “If I’d known about the baby…” He trailed off, mouth moving like he couldn’t find the words.

  Bitterly, I helped him. “You never would’ve faked your own death and let me and your sister grieve over a stranger’s body?”

  He sighed. “Yeah.”

  “It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?”

  I turned to leave, once and for all this time, but Mason’s voice halted me as I opened the door to the church. “The little girl.”

  “Your daughter,” I clarified, keeping my back turned. If I looked, I risked caving into him. It was always like that when we fought, all those stolen years ago.

  Not stolen. Purposefully hidden.

  “My—my daughter.”

  “She doesn’t even know her father,” I said roughly, my hand gripping the doorframe until my knuckles turned white. “And we should keep it that way. As far as I’m concerned, I buried him ten years ago.”

  I walked away, slamming the door closed behind me. The door to my past, to the man I used to love. I’d thought it shut a long time ago, but how wrong I’d been.

  Outside, in the sunshine of the church yard, I felt dizzy. Everything was too bright, the happy chatter of the guests too blaring, the air too fresh. I staggered to a wide tree trunk, leaning under it to catch my breath and ease my spinning head.

  “Taryn!” Anna’s voice came on a shout from nearby, getting closer. “Where the hell have you been? We need you for the photos.”

  “I need to—” I started hoarsely. Leave? Yes, I really wanted to leave this place. But Anna needed me, and she deserved to know. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Are you okay?”

  I looked over at the photographer setting up a shot of Ethan and Daisy. I would’ve found it adorable fifteen minutes earlier, but with Mason’s words ringing in my head, I suddenly felt afraid.

  I nodded, told her, “I’m fine,” and allowed her to drag me to join the rest of our family in front of the photographer.

  I felt anything but fine. I felt my skin itch and my eyes sting, an overwhelming flight-or-fight reflex trying to grip me. I wanted nothing more than to get away, be alone with my spiraling thoughts.

  As the photographer snapped his pictures, I kept myself between Ethan and my daughter, torn between rationality and swelling panic. I’d always thought Ethan’s father a good man, a pillar of our small community, but if what Mason said about him was true, could I have been wrong about Ethan, too?

  I’d been wrong about Mason.

  “I’ll meet you guys up at the estate,” the photographer told Anna and Ethan, finally getting his last picture.

  They seemed intent to chat for a while, longer than I could bear the thought of, and I felt myself start to sway. I had to move.

  I hunted Justin down near the gate, kneeling to play with his niece. “I have to go, could you watch Daisy at the reception?”

  My brother stood, startled by my abruptness. He gripped my arm before I could walk away. “Whoa, Taryn, what the hell? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  I huffed a humorless laugh. “You have no idea.”

  Daisy looked up with her big green eyes and I could barely hold her gaze. “Mommy, aren’t you coming to the party?”

  “I can’t, honey.” I pressed a trembling hand into her curls. “Mommy has to go and deal with something today, okay?”

  “Sis,” Justin prompted, but I shook my head violently.

  “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

  I launched into a quick walk, my head bowed as if I could avoid any kind of confrontation. I couldn’t, not today of all days, and Anna’s voice shouted down the street after me.

  “Taryn!”

  Her heels clacked on the sidewalk, fast and catching up. It wasn’t fair; I couldn’t do this to her. I couldn’t bear to leave her in the dark, and I couldn’t bear to tell her either. Just another explosion of chaos Mason had left me to tidy up.

  I turned around and Anna’s immediately concerned face felt like a punch to the gut. “Hey, what on earth is going on with you?”

  “I don’t know how to say this.” My breath hitched, my face scrunching up, and Anna gripped my shoulders, her frown deepening. “Mason. It’s Mason. He’s—he’s alive. He was here, he pulled me aside and he told me—”

  I was babbling, and Anna started shaking her head—the same denial I’d felt back in that storage room. “What are you talking about, Taryn?”

  “Mason faked his death, all those years ago, and he was here, he was at your wedding!”

  “No,” Anna said slowly, her hand moving to press against her chest—actions betraying her words. “He can’t have. That’s impossible. It’s insane.”

  “I know, but it’s true.”

  “And you spoke to him?”

  “I’m not going crazy, Anna!” I yelled. “I stood face-to-face with him; he told me in his own words.”

  I watched as all the color slowly drained out of Anna’s face, the realization dawning. It made my heart start to pound again, that terrible feeling of being trapped rearing up.

  “How could he…” She trailed off, her voice small and insubstantial.

  “I don’t know, but I have to get out of here.”

  “You drop that bombshell and now you’re just gonna leave?” Anna asked, outrage in the way she held her arms wide.

  I was. I had to. I turned, feeling my hair fall from the elaborate up-do the stylist put in just a few hours before, and I walked away, with the sound of Anna’s tears heavy behind me.

  Chapter Two

  Mason

  The cheap hotel room drywall broke under my fist, cracks webbing out from the point of impact.

  How could I have been so stupid? Rolling up to my sister’s wedding a decade after “dying,” expecting Taryn to accept what I’d done?

  She’d been a vision after all these years, the pictures online hardly preparing me for the reality of her dark eyes and expressive face. I hadn’t realized just how badly I’d missed her.

  And a child—a daughter. Taryn was right, that little girl deserved better than to know what her father was. A killer, a mercenary for hire, a thug. Someone who existed solely in the shadows, known only to the shadiest of people. Clients passed my employers a name and I killed for the profit—more than that, I killed for the rush of ridding the world of another scumbag. When I looked into Mr. Foster’s eyes before I lit the match, his prone form laid out on the hay-strewn floor of his own ranch, I felt nothing but satisfaction.

  Who needed a father like that? Someone who was, ultimately, no better than the man who made me—William Foster himself.

  I couldn’t stay locked up in my self-pity, though. I had to investigate Ethan Foster before I left town again, making absolutely sure he was nothing like his father. I had to do it for Anna’s sake.

  Then I could leave in peace, try to put this place to rest once and for all.

  My phone buzzed and I picked it up impatiently, hand still aching from the wall. “Yeah?”

  “You’re not in New York,” came a voice down the line.

  My old colleague Jay, I realized with a frown; the scrawny sixteen-year-old from across town who was recruited not too long after I wa
s. He’d chosen to stick around this place, and I hadn’t seen him in years. Not since the last time we bumped into each other on the same job in Colorado.

  “No. You stalking me?”

  “Swung by that fancy Foster wedding today, you know how it is,” Jay drawled, meaning he had business there—a strike against Ethan’s character, as far as I was concerned. “And who do I see but my old buddy, Mason. It’s your lucky day—I got a job that’s perfect for you. Meet me at the usual place, nine PM?”

  I gritted my teeth. “Now’s not a good time.”

  “I don’t really give a fuck, dude.”

  I scoffed. “Your manners haven’t improved much.”

  “Just meet me. You might like what’s on the table.”

  There was a hint of amusement in his voice, and I hadn’t seen the idiot in long time. I figured what the hell and told him, “Fine, but you’re buying.”

  I hung up, tossing my phone on the bed. I needed to change out of this uncomfortable suit. I needed to sort my damn head out. I wished I could banish the image of Taryn, the life I could have had, but she was fixed in my mind like an impossible daydream, lulling me into this awful sense of longing.

  My concentration kept slipping.

  I rarely refused jobs, having hard-earned my reputation as one of the most loyal and sought-after guys on my boss’s books. I couldn’t start now just because of a pretty face from my past.

  No, she was more than that, but I had to wrestle that particular monster back into its box.

  Taryn deserved better. That little girl—my little girl, a tiny voice in my head said—deserved better.

  I showered and changed into something more appropriate, slipping on a leather jacket over a dark-colored hoodie. Outside, I pulled up the hood, stuffed my hands into my pockets, and walked the few blocks to The Royal bar, a place that was anything but.

  Quickly, I descended the concrete steps to the basement entrance and let myself in.

  Nothing had changed about this place. I remembered coming here for the first time, just a kid eager to impress his cool new friends. This place had been the shit back then, but the thrill had worn off and now it was just plain shit.

  I didn’t recognize the barman, but I spotted Jay at a corner table, eyeing me up with a smirk.

  “Get me a whisky, would you?” he called over, turning the sparse few heads in this joint—barely lucid alcoholics and guys with bad news written all over them, who looked like they might quite literally kill for a whisky too. That was just Jay’s shtick: cause a bunch of trouble and leave me to fight my way out of it.

  “I thought you were buying,” I quipped back, getting us two drinks anyway.

  The barman looked the usual kind for this place: mean-faced and silent. I spotted a baseball bat hanging up on the wall, no doubt for troublemakers, its wood soaked with brown stains that could only be old blood. I knew those stains intimately.

  I put the glasses full of liquor on Jay’s table, pulling up a wobbly stool.

  “I should warn you that I’m not in the mood for this, Jay,” I said darkly, tipping half the liquid back—cheap as all hell and burned just as viciously.

  “Look.” Jay held up his hands in placation. “This is a job you’re gonna want, okay?” He was still a twitchy fella, hadn’t managed to pack on many pounds since I last saw him. “You specifically.”

  I frowned. “Get the hell on with it, then. This ain’t The Voice.”

  Jay leaned down, rummaging in a bag at his feet. I watched him, tapping my fingers against the sticky table-top and rapidly losing patience. My head was filled with Taryn, with Anna, with my daughter. I wanted to drink whisky until those images were scoured out, banished to nothing but white noise. Until I could sleep without the smell of smoke choking me awake.

  I should never have come back here, I knew that now.

  I knew it until Jay placed a file on the table, one with a name emblazoned across the top that made me freeze.

  “He’s the target?” I asked, wanting to be very sure.

  “Yup.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered.

  “Thought you’d like it.”

  Jay knew my history—all the boys around here did. They’d helped me disguise my very first kill; they got me a job working my way up the ranks of my boss’s organization. Jay knew exactly what this name meant to me.

  I looked down at the file with my gut churning. I should’ve felt vindicated, righteously pleased, but all I felt was hollow.

  Ethan Foster, it said, mocking me.

  The universe had a warped sense of humor, that was for sure.

  “You’re taking it, right?” Jay asked, like it was obvious.

  “It’s been a shitty day,” I said roughly, trying to disguise this—implacable emotion with a growl. “Can you give me a goddamn minute? The bastard is marrying my sister right now, for God’s sake.”

  “All the more reason for you to want him dead.”

  It was a fair point. I did need a minute, though. I’d killed strangers, corrupt politicians, drug dealers, traffickers, every bad guy imaginable, but since that night in the ranch, I’d never killed someone who had a personal connection to me.

  I’d be breaking my sister’s heart all over again.

  But if it had to be done, if Ethan Foster was a psychopath just like his father and his name on that list for a good reason, I’d be making up to her the years I’d left behind. I’d be protecting her like I should’ve been for the last decade.

  “I’ll leave it with you,” Jay said, snapping me out of that same damn saccharine daydream of a family I neither had nor deserved. “Take the file and call me when you decide.” He stood up, downing his whiskey in one go and clapping me on the shoulder. “Be quick about it, yeah?”

  “Sure.”

  I didn’t watch him leave, ordering another drink instead. So much for investigating Ethan—now I’d been given his damn name on a hit list. And if I didn’t do it, whoever wanted him dead would just hire someone else anyway.

  I needed to speak to Taryn. She was always the most forthright and level-headed person I knew, and I was crippled again by the image of her, the knowledge that I was just looking for flimsy excuses to go banging down her door.

  But the wedding was still going on, so I’d have to wait.

  Tomorrow, then, I decided. Tomorrow, and I would delve right back into the past I’d been so hell-bent on escaping a second time.

  Chapter Three

  Taryn

  Sleep eluded me most of the night.

  With a steaming cup of coffee clutched in my hand, still in my sleep shorts and oversized t-shirt, I called Justin to check on Daisy, hearing all about how she’d danced the night away at the lavish reception Ethan had put together for him and his new wife. It was a huge outdoor venue at their country house, white marquees and more pink roses and a live band. It sounded wonderful, and I was sad I’d missed it.

  Damn Mason for destroying that precious day.

  “Mommy?” Daisy asked quietly down the line.

  “What, honey?”

  “Auntie Anna missed you. She seemed really sad all night.”

  He’d ruined it for Anna, too.

  I shut my eyes tight, a guilt that shouldn’t have been my responsibility weighing on my shoulders. “I didn’t want to leave. I just had something real important to deal with.”

  “More important than Auntie Anna and Uncle Ethan?”

  If only I could’ve begun to explain. Daisy’s father was out there in the world, the man I’d told her stories about for years, the man she’d sweetly mourned in that way only a child could.

  “Very, very important,” I stressed.

  I said my goodbyes and sent my love to both of them. It felt good to speak to my baby, at least, and I flopped back onto my sofa with a long sigh, having no clue what I was going to do with my day.

  I couldn’t just lay lie around and feel sorry for myself again like yesterday, mulling over the details of a murder committed by
my daughter’s dad, which may or may not have been justified.

  Would William Foster have deserved to die if he had, in fact, murdered Mason’s mother? I wondered if my mother had been killed, would I want the murderer to pay in blood.

  Yes.

  Could I have done it myself, though? With my own hands? For that, I couldn’t process what kind of man Mason was—brave and reckless, or a cold-blooded psychopath. And for the misery he’d put us through—ten years of loss, my daughter’s entire lifetime spent thinking her father was in the ground. What kind of man does that?

  A desperate one, a tiny voice in my head said. An angry and scared young man without direction.

  That was no excuse. A reason, maybe, but not an excuse.

  A knock on the door startled me out of my reverie. I stood tiredly, my joints creaking, and, with an almost dull feeling of inevitability, saw the shape of Mason through the frosted glass.

  “Oh look,” I drawled, opening the door as many inches as the chain would allow. “It’s my resident ghost.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Are you gonna let me in or are you just gonna be sarcastic at me through a door-crack?”

  “Third option.” I slammed the door in his face, turning and pressing my back to it. My heart was flip-flopping over and over, my stomach squirming. Just seeing him was difficult, looking into his familiar and not-so-familiar face.

  “Taryn!” He banged a couple more times. “Open the damn door.”

  “Go away.”

  “I’ll stand out here all day if I have to.”

  “Then I’ll just have to call the police,” I called back, feeling an instant chill. What would they do? I wasn’t sure I could expose Mason like that, no matter how angry I was.

  It didn’t scare him off, though. “Please,” he said softly, a tone of voice that surprised me. “I have something really important to tell you. It’s about Ethan and it affects you all.”

  I stood with a sinking feeling of dread. “What about Ethan?”

  “Not through a closed door.”

  He didn’t demand anymore, letting me take my time. I turned, slowly, and took the chain off, and there he stood, slouching and a little sheepish, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He was trying to look less intimidating to me, I thought.