Fight for Me

by Bethany Bazile

  “You still have it,” he said, gazing at my Camaro. I saw the corner of his lip rise slightly, but his somber expression didn’t change much. I watched him turn and walk away, wondering why I didn’t feel as happy as I thought I’d be to get him out of my life.

  ~*~*~

  Lexi shut me out. Two days of constantly calling and trying to persuade her to hear me out got me nowhere. I was restless at night and exhausted by day because I was training like an animal. No matter what was going on with Lexi, I was still the fighter everyone knew as Hawk, and I had a title to defend.

  At the end of the third day, I was so wiped out and stressed over Alexis I couldn’t think straight. I’d been staring at the envelope David gave me for days. I wouldn’t say I was afraid to open it, but I didn’t know how I was going to react to a letter left behind by a man who was like a dad to me. I shoved my worries to the side and tore open the envelope.

  Ryder,

  If you’re reading this, the cancer won and I’m long gone. I want you to know that one of the best moments of my life happened watching you grow up and win that championship.

  You’re probably wondering why the hell I left the gym to your father. The truth is I did it to force you to face him. You’ve been like a son to me from day one, but I could never replace David in your life.

  You’re angry at him for ruining the tight-knit family we had, and I get that. But I also understand what David did. I was there when he fell in love with Vanessa, and I watched him fall apart after giving her up. He never regretted his decision because his choice brought you into our lives.

  What happened with Vanessa was wrong, but I forgave him. Sometimes love is thrown our way, and no matter how many roadblocks we put it in its path, there’s no stopping it.

  With me gone, I don’t want you to be alone. We’re Hayes. We fight hard and stick together. If you’re reading this, then you’re at least on speaking terms with David. I’m not asking you to do this for me. I’d like you to do this for you. If you let go of the hate, then maybe you can see that David is still the same man who always loved you. He’s just not the hero you built him up to be. He was a man defeated by love. Maybe one day you’ll meet a girl who you’d destroy your entire life over. And then maybe, just maybe you’ll understand David’s mistakes.

  Just when you thought you got rid of me, I’m still meddling in your life. This is my final goodbye. I love you, Ry. Fight hard, love harder, and be the champ I’ve always known you to be.

  Uncle Drew

  I was right. The letter had a strong effect on me. I cleared my throat to unclog the emotions beginning to swell there. The man was always right. Even in death, he knew how to come back and shake some sense into me.

  Despite his words, I just wasn’t ready to deal with David. I felt overwhelmed with my feelings for Lexi, the pressure to hold on to my title, and then my uncle pushing David in my face as his final wish.

  I needed some air. It was all too much for me, so I jumped in my car and rode to a bar where nobody would know me. I sat at the bar for hours, drinking way too much and thinking even more. I wanted to fix things with Alexis, so I decided the first step was to get Leah out my life. I should’ve realized going to see her while I was drunk wasn’t a good idea.

  ~*~*~

  “I really need you to back off,” I said when she finally agreed to come out and talk to me. She tried to get me to come in, but one thing I knew about Leah was she wasn’t shy when it came to tempting a man. Leah leaned back against my car, crossed her arms, and looked down the street as though she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “Leah?” She forced herself to look at me, a deep frown on her face.

  “What do you want from me, Ryder?”

  “I want you to stop calling me in the middle of the night. I need you to stop coming to my place and making Alexis uncomfortable. And stop plotting with my mother to break us apart.”

  She sighed, her shoulders hanging heavily.

  “We’ve been through so much together, then she just walks in and you forget what we were.” She pulled herself off the car, looking me directly in the eyes. “We were good together, but you’re pretending we never meant shit. I was with you when you were a nobody.”

  I took a step back from her and swiped a hand over my face before facing her hurt gaze. “I never meant to make you feel like what we had didn’t mean anything.”

  “Don’t give me that shit, Ryder. I had a good life and a good job. I gave up everything to move up here and be with you. Now I can barely afford to stay here.” She waved at the condo she was renting. “If Jacob doesn’t get picked up by the UFC this year, we’ll have to move.”

  She had a right to be angry. I let her have hope where there was none. I always knew she loved me more than I was ever capable of loving her. I let her risk everything for me and gave her nothing in return. I stepped around the car, pulled open the door, and grabbed my checkbook from the glove compartment.

  She glowered at me as I scrawled on it. I ripped it off and handed it to her. She took it, glanced at me, and then rolled her eyes. “You think you can buy me off because you feel guilty. You never let me in, and it ended us.”

  “I’m not trying to buy you off. I cared about you, and I don’t want to see you struggle. You were there for me, so let me do this for you.”

  She stuffed the check in the back pocket of her jeans. “Did you ever love me?”

  “We just didn’t work together.”

  She pushed a finger into my chest. “That’s because you were too caught up with her. You like to pretend that I fucked us up, but your heart left our relationship before I ever met Carter.”

  I cringed at the mention of Carter’s name. I couldn’t pretend it didn’t still piss me off she slept with that asshole. On the other hand, I was thankful he woke me the fuck up and made me realize what I felt for Leah wasn’t real. If I felt for Leah half of what I felt for Lexi, I’d never have walked away so easily.

  The only mistake I made was not cutting Leah completely out of my life. We got into this sick little arrangement where we were free to date whoever we wanted, but we continued to fuck. She never complained or tried to get in between me and another woman—until Lexi. I realized she never felt threatened by another woman before. She had it in her head we’d fix things and get back together, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

  “You’re right. I won’t lie to you and say my head wasn’t fucked up after I pulled Lexi out of that ocean. She’s had a special place in my heart since we were kids. It doesn’t matter where we went wrong. All that matters is we did, and we can’t fix it.”

  “So you never loved me.” Her eyes misted over as she choked on the words.

  “Come here.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her closer. I didn’t come here to hurt her. We’d exchanged enough hurt between us over the last five years. “I loved you, but things changed between us.”

  “We’ve been here before,” she whispered. “You always come back.”

  “Not this time.”

  She closed her eyes, leaning her forehead against mine as tears poured down her face. I held her. She sighed. I couldn’t say it wasn’t hard to say goodbye to us. She was my constant at one point. I met her at a time when I was lonely.

  I was a young, up-and-coming fighter, a hothead who fought in the day and fucked at night. She caught my eye at a fight. She’d been there with her brother, quietly watching me with this look in her eyes. After the fight, I couldn’t find her, but she’d found me at the bar we all went to for the victory party. I knew it was fucked up of me, but her eyes reminded me of Alexis, so I took her home and never let her leave. I doomed us from the beginning. I didn’t know it then, but I did now. I’d let her represent what I wanted. When I almost lost Alexis, I couldn’t continue to lie to myself about me and Leah. I became distant, and she’d slept with someone to fuck with me. She threw it in my face to hurt me, but it was like she’d opened the door I’d been stuck behind and set me free.

  Leah gri
pped my shirt, tipped up her head, and pressed her lips against mine. At this point I should’ve pushed her away. I let the alcohol and the guilt I felt for hurting her rule me. She whimpered desperately against my lips, begging for that last connection. So instead of pulling away, I slid my hand into her hair and kissed her back. She melted into me and moaned, her tongue sliding into my mouth. When we pulled away, I saw in her eyes that one goodbye kiss gave her more hope than she had moments ago. I fucked this up.

  I should’ve stayed home.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Alexis

  A knock at my door interrupted my sleeplessness. After flipping out on Ryder, I holed up in my room for days. It was like I was hoping the darkness of this room would swallow all my pain in its depths. I’d been addicted to sadness for so long I felt like a new person with Ryder. To find out that was a lie crushed me.

  My mom slipped through the door when I didn’t answer and turned on the bedside lamp before sitting on the edge of the bed. “Ryder called.”

  I hated the little flip that happened in my heart with the mention of his name. He’d always been my weakness. He changed everything in the past week, making me see the possibility of happiness.

  “He was worried about you.” She continued.

  “I don’t want to talk about Ryder,” I mumbled into my pillow.

  “Alexis, look at me.” The seriousness in her tone caused me to turn toward her.

  “Do you know why we asked Ryder to look after you?”

  I stared at her but didn’t answer. I didn’t realize there was a reason besides her obsessive worrying.

  “That day you walked into the kitchen and saw Ryder—I saw it. That look you gave him.” She smiled softly before continuing. “For the first time since Alec died, your mask fell off. There was real emotion on your face instead of empty smiles, and I saw real passion. He affected you, and I wanted to push you toward the only person who got you to feel in years. And the way he looked at you…”

  “Mom, I hate to burst your bubble, but that was just lust.”

  “Maybe it was that day, but I’m sure it’s blossomed into more since then. Ryder’s been calling all night, worried sick about you. That’s not a man in lust. He didn’t agree to the deal David made him, Lexi. Talk to him, okay?”

  She left. I sulked. Then I picked myself up and decided to stop letting things drag me down. I showered, threw on my workout clothes, and drove Mom’s car down to the gym.

  ~*~*~

  “So where’s your watchdog?”

  “Don’t start, Jacob.” He’d been avoiding me, but mostly because Ryder was always glaring at him. Ryder wasn’t here to scare him off.

  He threw up his hands in self-defense and took a step back. “I just wanted to know if it was safe to talk to you.”

  “Again, what do you want?”

  “Can’t we be friends?”

  “Not if you’re waiting for Ryder to dump me so you can sweep in and—”

  “Okay, maybe I was a little…”

  “You were a big jerk for saying that.”

  “Okay, I was rude and disgusting, but I really do like you. I don’t want to watch you get attached to Ryder when he’d never let go of my sister.”

  “They’re over.”

  “They didn’t look over last night.” The tight corners of his mouth gave him an unusually serious expression, but I knew he was trying to push us apart by making me doubt Ryder. He looked down as he began to bind his hand with a strip of hand wrap fabric. “I know you don’t want to believe me, but Ryder was at my place last night talking to Leah, and going by the kiss he gave her, they didn’t look over.”

  “Come on, Jacob. This is really petty. Would you just let me get back to my workout?” I started the machine and began running.

  “If you don’t believe me, ask him. It’s kind of written all over his face anyway.” He nodded toward the door, and I turned to see Ryder walking in with his head hung low. I lost my footing on the treadmill and stumbled before turning it off. Ryder looked my way but shied away from eye contact, quickly turning and heading straight to Ty.

  In the week since we’d officially gotten together, Ryder was never in a room without touching me or constantly flirting with me with his sexy gaze. A knot formed in my gut as I looked back at Jacob, who just shrugged an ‘I told you so’ and walked away.

  I really didn’t like that I was leaning toward believing Jacob, but after being so adamant about talking to me, why was he ignoring me? It made me uneasy to think everything Ryder had finally gotten me to believe was a lie. The words he whispered to me at night made me trust his heart was as invested as mine was.

  I felt like something was off because the energy between us wasn’t the same, but I was afraid to confront him. So I ran and ran and ran until my legs ached. I stalled even longer in the shower, and I almost talked myself into leaving the gym without asking him what was going on. I didn’t want to know if what I’d been afraid of from the beginning was happening. In the end, I couldn’t stand the doubts and suspicions eating me up.

  I decided to confront him.

  “Can we talk?” I asked as I approached him. He glanced over at me, then went back to training with Ty. Ty looked my way with a puzzled expression. He cocked his head to the side while he tried to figure out what was with Ryder’s attitude.

  “I’m busy,” he grumbled.

  “Ryder?” He ignored me, hopping around on the balls of his feet, hitting the speed bag aggressively.

  I grabbed his arm, annoyed with his dismissal.

  “What?” he said in an aggravated tone.

  I snapped. “You’ve been badgering me to talk to you for days, and now you’re shutting me out.”

  “Well, you can’t expect me to wait around ‘til you’re ready to give me your time. I don’t want to play your games, Lexi. Grow up.”

  He turned back to the bag but paused when I asked, “Where’d you go last night?”

  He turned narrow blue eyes on me, and then he looked past me, glaring at Jacob like he was going to kill him.

  “Just answer one question and I’ll leave you alone.” He still hadn’t looked back my way. Jacob was slowly moving farther away from us, afraid of Ryder’s wrath. I pulled on his tightly strained bicep to get his attention. Once he looked into my eyes, I asked, “Did you kiss her?”

  He flinched ever so slightly, then looked away guiltily. I dropped my hand away as though he’d burned me. He looked at me as I stepped back.

  “Can I explain?” He looked nervous, guilty, and relived of the burden all at once. I shook my head because I didn’t want the details.

  “You don’t need to. I think I understand. You say it wasn’t about the gym, but the minute you get it back, you run back to her.”

  “No, it wasn’t like that.”

  I held a hand up, cutting off his explanation. A bitter laugh escaped me before I turned and walked out of the gym. I stepped from the building and made a mad dash for my mom’s car.

  “Hey! Where are you going?” Jacob was hurrying to catch up with me. I glanced at him as he sprinted to my side, trying to keep up with my swift pace.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “Away from him.”

  “Was I right?”

  I stopped abruptly, causing him to take a few steps back to face me. I glared.

  “For what it’s worth, I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

  I sighed, taking a deep breath and letting go of the anger that wasn’t even for Jacob. “It’s fine. I’m glad you were straight with me.”

  “So what now?”

  I shrugged. I honestly didn’t know what was next. I wanted to go back and hit Ryder the way he’d been hitting that bag, but more than that, I wanted to curl up in a corner and lick my wounds. “Are you coming to the fight tomorrow?”

  “I was planning to, but now…”

  “You can still go. I’ll even pick you up.”

  I shook a finger in front of his face. “That’s not going t
o happen.”

  He chuckled. “Okay, I get it. You’re not interested in me.” He raised an eyebrow and smirked, showing off his cute little dimple. “Though I can’t figure out how you can turn down all this sexy.” He wiggled his eyebrows and flexed the muscles in his arm, while kissing his bulky bicep.

  I screwed up to conceal my smile. He was incredibly annoying but funny in a silly way. “Can I leave now, or are you going to continue following me?”

  “I’ll let you leave if you let me pick you up tomorrow.”

  I shook my head. “Ryder won’t like it.” Why did I care? I couldn’t even explain that one.

  “Good, even more reason for you to come with me. You can watch me in action, and when I win, you can watch me kick Ryder’s ass. Then we can rub our love in his face.” He laughed when I frowned at him. “I’m just kidding.”

  “Fine, I’ll come with you, but I’m only agreeing because I don’t want Ryder to think I’m there for him.”

  “Hey, I’m easy. I’ll take you any way I can get you.” I furrowed my brow, cutting him my evilest look. He laughed and threw an arm over my shoulders as we walked up the street. “I like you, Lexi.”

  “Well, I don’t know how I feel about you yet.”

  He raised an eyebrow with a boyish smile on his face. “As long as you feel something, I’m satisfied.”

  “Do you ever quit?”

  He shook his head vigorously. “I was a really hyper kid. It’s something I’ve never grown out of.” He tilted his head, squinting up at the sky as though deep in thought. “I think it’s terminal. I might need a woman like you to rein me in and cure my wayward ways.”

  I grinned up at him. “Okay, I’ve decided. You’re irritating as hell.” He frowned. “But cute.” I continued.

  His face lit up with a silly smile. “I knew it. You like me.” He teased as he quirked an eyebrow. I pinched his side as we stopped in front of my car. He embraced me in a tight hug, which I didn’t return. “Don’t forget to send me your address,” he shouted as he walked backward toward the gym. He didn’t notice Ryder standing a few feet away, a stormy expression on his face and arms crossed over his large chest. Jacob bumped into him, glanced up at his scowling face, and then shrugged before heading back to the gym. Ryder stood there radiating angry intimidation.