Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (28 page)

Mason throws a high right
hand and Jones ducks it, lunging forward and taking Mason down to the ground.

I’m screaming for Mason
to get up, but Jones is already on top of him, raining down blows wherever
Mason’s not guarding.

Behind me, Logan’s
shouting, “Guillotine! Guillotine!”

Mason’s arm comes up a
little, his elbow more pushing than striking Jones’s head. Jones is trying to
pull his head back, but Mason’s arm closes around the other’s neck and he wraps
his legs around the lower part of Jones’s upper body.

Jones’s flank is exposed
and Mason slips his left hand from under his opponent and capitalizes on the
moment with repeated punches to the ribs.

They’re in this position
for more than a minute, and it’s not entirely clear who’s inflicting the most
damage at any given moment. I’m sure I’ll never say this to Mason, but if I
wasn’t so sure this had to be painful, it’d actually look pretty hot.

As it is, though, Jones
finally manages to get out from Mason’s grip and it’s while he’s getting to his
feet that I see it. Jones’s hand starts toward his right side, but he quickly
redirects the motion.

He’s hurt.

That’s not stopping him,
though, as he swings a wide kick, striking Mason in the shoulder. Jones’s
foot’s not even completely down before he’s throwing up a follow-up punch and
then another and then another, pushing Mason back as the latter tries to
nullify as many of the blows as possible.

Mason catches Jones in
the mouth with an upward elbow, but Jones leans back then lunges forward,
taking Mason to the ground for the second time this round. This time, Mason’s
struggling for position until the announcer shouts, “Round!”

Eventually, the two
separate, but there’s a growing enmity between them. Mason jumps to his feet,
but as soon as he’s back by me, Logan and Tom, he turns away and hunches
forward a little.

He stands back up
straight again, but continues facing the center of the ring. The reason he’s
facing the center is, I’m pretty positive, the same reason he covered his mouth
and nose when he started to laugh between the last two rounds: He doesn’t want
to get any blood on the rest of us.

I’m a nurse, and I know
for a fact that he’s clean, but I greatly appreciate the gesture all the same.

While Tom is tending to
Mason, I lean forward, saying, “He’s hurt on his right side. It looks like
around the area of the fourth rib—do you know where I’m talking about.”

Mason nods in front of
me.

“He’s trying to hide it,
but he’s favoring that side,” I tell him.

It’s a good thing Tom’s
standing a little to one side, because I can see the little drops of red coming
out with Mason’s words, “You sure? I didn’t see it.”

“He went to grab for it
when you were getting to your feet the first time, but he moved his hand away like
he didn’t want anyone to know,” I tell him.

“You sure you’re training
to be a nurse?” Mason teases. “Why not come to the dark side? You can be my
carnage coach.”

“Can you go after him
there?” I ask.

“You bet your ass he
can,” Logan says. “You know what you gotta do. Do it.”

Mason nods and the ref is
getting the fighters’ attention.

That’s when it hits me.

I turn toward Logan. “If
all the championship fights are happening right now, why are you here?” I ask.
“Mason says you could handle yourself well against the pros? What happened?”

“Don’t worry about it,”
Logan answers, his eyes focused somewhere behind me.

“We’re both going to be a
part of Mason’s life for a while,” I tell him. “We may as well get to know each
other.”

It feels awkward the way
I say it, but I don’t really know how to approach Logan about anything yet.

“I didn’t enter,” he
says. “I told Mason I was winning matches so he’d keep his head in the game,
but tournaments aren’t my thing. I’d rather support my boy.”

I can feel Logan’s body
tense a little as I give him a quick hug, but he gives me a pat on the back
before I’ve pulled away. “You’re a good friend,” I tell him. “Maybe we’ll have
to have you over for dinner sometime.”

Logan shushes me.

I turn back around when I
hear the announcer yelling, “Round four!”

Mason looks tired, but
determined as he steps toward his opponent again. He waits until Jones comes at
him with a hook before dodging and throwing his first hard punch into the weak
area of Jones’s ribcage.

Jones winces and I can’t
help but feel a little bad. Then again, he’s trying to beat up my boyfriend.
Screw that guy.

“Take him out, Mason!” I
shout.

Jones is a little slower
with his next punch, but it connects, rocking Mason backward a little, but my
man comes hard with a hard kick to what could seriously be the exact spot he’d
landed the punch.

Jones staggers back,
clutching his side a moment and everyone in the crowd who didn’t know what was
going on knows now.

“Right side! Right side!”
people all around me are yelling and I’m pretty proud of myself as Jones’s eyes
go wide.

Mason doesn’t let up,
either. Not all of his strikes go toward Jones’s right side, but enough of him
do that the latter is really starting to slow down.

For the first time in the
match, Mason is out-striking his opponent.

Jones lunges forward
desperately, trying to take Mason down the way he had so easily in the previous
round, but Mason chastises him with a hard knee to the right side and then
another.

Mason’s got Jones in a
grapple now and he’s just pummeling his now-frequently-blinking opponent with
knees and fists.

Jones finally gets a leg
between Mason’s and uses it as a fulcrum to take Mason to the ground, only this
time, Mason has every advantage.

“Arm bar! Arm bar!” Logan
is shouting behind me.

I don’t even know what
words are coming out of my mouth, but I’m shouting, my blood pumping. Honestly,
I could probably do pretty well in a fight, myself, right about now.

Mason gets Jones’s arm
between his legs when the announcer shouts, “Round!”

Seemingly every voice in
the room—Jones’s excepted, naturally—seems to say, “Aww,” at the exact same
moment.

Mason lets his opponent
go and the two get to their feet.

Tom does his thing and
Logan and I just stand behind Mason, silent. As far as I can tell, he knows
what he has to do and he’s doing it.

When the ref signals to
the fighters, Mason glances back at me and we share a look that may as well be
a conversation. His eyes are fixed on mine as mine are on his and without even
consciously thinking about it, my head starts nodding on its own.

Mason nods once and then
turns back toward the ring as the announcer shouts, “Round five!”

Both Mason and Jones
almost run toward each other, coming into a grapple. Mason tries to get a knee
into Jones’s ribs again, but the latter’s wised up since the last round.

Still, Jones is hurting
and when Mason takes him down, the fight is all but over.

“Arm bar!” Logan shouts
again, and I’ve just decided that I’ve really got to learn some of these terms.

Mason has Jones’s arm
held with both hands and one leg. He swings his other leg up, trying to close
it around Jones’s arm, but Jones pulls away so hard I’m worried the guy’s going
to dislocate his shoulder.

The move works and Jones
slips out of Mason’s grip and both of them get to their feet. It would have
been nice if Mason could have ended it there, but he’s got the advantage now.
It’s just a matter of time.

Mason takes a step
forward the same time Jones does, the latter throwing an uppercut and just like
that, Mason’s off his feet, landing limply on the ground.

I lunge forward the same
time Jones does, only Logan holds me back as the ref basically throws himself
on top of Mason, waving his hands and calling out, “It’s over!”

Logan releases me and I
beat Tom to Mason’s side.

Epilogue

The Falling In

Ash

“How are you doing?” I
ask Mason as we sit in the parking lot. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Probably not,” Mason
answers, “but there’s not a lot I can do about that.”

That championship fight
against Ben Jones was the last match Mason ever fought. Maybe someday that’ll
change, but for now, he’s much too busy focusing on school.

After that fight, I
thought he was going to be devastated, but to him, it just seemed like the way
that part of his life had to end.

Now, we’re sitting
outside the county jail, waiting.

Testifying against mom
and dad turned out not to be necessary. When the police started going through
all the paperwork mom and dad were fortunately too dumb to throw away, the real
villain became clear: Johnson B. Witherton VI, Esq.

My parents are certainly
not innocent, but when their former lawyer was confronted with the pages of
handwritten notes my father had taken about every topic he wasn’t actually
supposed to write down, he confessed to everything. The fraud had been his idea,
as had every single one of my parents other schemes over the years.

They tried to tell the
press they didn’t know what they were doing was illegal because it came from
their lawyer, but nobody, least of all me, bought it.

On the bright side,
though, the two of them
did
get a
reduced sentence when it was explained to them at great length that these
crimes weren’t actually their own idea.

“Here we go,” Mason says,
and we get out of the car.

“What up, Brossels?”
Chris calls when he spots us as he’s coming out of the jail.

“Brossels?” Mason calls
back.

“You know,” Chris says,
“like the country in Belgium.”

“I think your brother
might be an idiot,” I murmur to Mason.

Mason smiles and laughs,
saying, “I know it for a fact.”

Chris finally gets to the
car and gives Mason a hug. “Thanks for coming to pick me up, man.”

“I’ve had some time to
forget about all the crap you’ve pulled over the years,” Mason says, playfully
shoving his brother. “Give it an hour and I’ll probably be trying to get you
back in here.”

“Let’s not do that,”
Chris says. “Hello there, gorgeous,” he says, turning to me. “I see you’re
sticking with the less impressive Ellis, huh?”

“Chris, I’m sure we’d
have a lot of fun, but we’re just different people,” I tell him. “I like a good
cry-movie and you’re more into selling people bridges in Arizona.”

“You’re right,” Chris
says, giving me a hug. “It would never work out, would it?”

“You still staying with
us for a while?” Mason asks.

“Us?” Chris says and
turns to me with high eyebrows, wide eyes and a gaping mouth. “Oh my dear lord,
you’re pregnant!” he exclaims and he’s now—what is he doing? He’s putting his
ear against my belly button.

“You’re a weird guy,
Chris,” I tell him. “I thought Mason told you we’re living together now?”

“That’s right,” Chris
says, though he doesn’t move.

“Chris?” I ask.

“Yeah?” he answers, still
listening to my abdomen—for what, exactly, I haven’t the slightest.

“Could you maybe get off
of me now?” I ask.

“Sure thing,” he says,
getting to his feet. “Hey, would you two mind if we stop by the gas station for
a minute? I could use a cigarette like you wouldn’t even believe, bro.”

“Got any money on you?”
Mason asks.

“I had a couple bucks in
my wallet when they took me in,” Chris says. “I always carry enough for a pack
of freedom smokes. You never know when you’re going to need them except right
now, so could we…?”

“Fine,” Mason says,
patting his brother on the shoulder.

It’s only about half a
mile to the gas station, but the distance seems much further than that as Chris
recounts us with the various horrors of long-term jail life; not a single one
of which I feel comfortable repeating or even processing.

Suffice it to say, the
guy saw some things.

We pull into the parking
lot of the gas station and Chris jumps out of the car before we’re anywhere
close to being stopped.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m
having a nici-fit like you wouldn’t believe.”

Chris shuts the door and
runs in while Mason finds a spot to park.

“Should we go in there
with him?” I ask.

“Nah, let the man have a
minute and a half of freedom,” Mason says.

“How are you—” I start,
but Mason interrupts.

“Really, I’m fine,” he
says. “I’ve come a long way this past year.”

Time simultaneously
changes everything and nothing. So much can happen in a year, but once that
year has passed, you still feel like you. At least, that’s the goal, I think.

After Mason gave up
fighting, we started spending a lot more time together. It’s been nice not
having to compete with the gym and, you know, the violence involved in MMA, but
I actually find myself missing it sometimes. Those are the times Mason and I
head to the nearest abandoned building and hope for a show.

After a few months of me
sleeping at his place every night, I finally told Jana and her mom (who is
still
living there, by the way,) that it
was time for me to move out.

“So, where do you think
we should…” I start, but in the next moment, I’m frantically patting Mason’s
chest with one hand and pointing out the side window with the other. I try to
explain what I’m seeing, but the only word I can manage is, “Chris.”

Mason looks where I’m
pointing and he’s out of the car. I get out and stand in Mason’s path. “We’ll
find out soon,” I tell Mason. “Just let it go for now.”

What has me trying to
talk Mason down is the sight of Chris being led out of the gas station by a
plain-clothes policeman with a badge hanging from his belt.

“Chris, what the hell?”
Mason shouts.

“Stay back!” the officer
says, pulling out his pepper spray with the hand he’s not using to hold the
chain between Chris’s cuffs.

“What happened?” Mason
shouts again.

Chris turns his head and
there’s a big smile on his face. “Just counting change, bro!” Chris yells back.
“I’ll see you in a year or so!”

“Counting change?” I ask.
“What does that mean?”

“You give a cashier a
hundred and then keep feeding them small amounts of cash while they’re trying
to make change. If you do it right and you can end up with a lot more than you
walked in with,” Mason says with an inscrutable look on his face that slowly
dissolves into an awkward smile. “Did that really just happen?”

The man with the badge
gets Chris in the back of the undercover police car and then gets in himself,
turning on his lights before he’s even got the engine going.

“Whatever happened, I
think he pissed that cop right off,” I say as the car peels out in reverse and
then screams out of the parking lot with the siren now blaring. “You don’t
think he just—” I start.

“I think he did,” Mason
says. “No way was that a real cop.”

With that, we’re left
standing here in this parking lot, staring at the last spot either of us could
see the car speeding away.

“But why would he—” I
start again.

“I have no idea,” Mason
says. “You wanna get out of here and grab something to eat?”

“Yeah,” I tell him and we
get back in the car.

The more settled this
life becomes, the less frequently I have any idea what to expect. Mason and I
have our problems, but when it really matters, we’re there for each other.

We drive back into town,
and Mason’s telling me about his physics class again. I don’t know what it is
about the subject he finds so fascinating, but the way he’s been prattling on
about it lately, I’m starting to miss the days when he wouldn’t shut up about
MMA.

As we get back into town,
I notice a strangely familiar car parked at the cross street of the first
intersection. Mason’s going on about quarks or something, and I can’t help
noticing that the man behind the driver’s seat of that car is Chris, though
he’s now wearing a red baseball cap while his “cop” buddy sits in the
passenger’s seat, drinking from a brown beer bottle.

It’s not the simple life.
Even with the wildcard that is Mason’s brother maybe out of the way for a
little while longer, there’s still a lot to contend with. What’s helped us get
this far is that we’ve learned how to let things go when there’s nothing we can
do to change them.

I can see Chris following
us a few cars back, but I don’t know if Mason’s spotted him yet. It’s obviously
a joke, otherwise I’d feel a little better about not telling him that Chris is
100% not in any trouble (yet—I mean, let’s be realistic here.)

The joke finally makes
sense as we’re almost to Mason’s house and I hear the police siren starting up
behind me.

“What the hell?” Mason
asks.

“You really need to pay
more attention to who’s behind you,” I tell him.

“Oh jeez,” Mason says,
reaching into his wallet and trying too hard to act casual. He rolls down his
window, saying, “Is there a problem—oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. Wasn’t one
of the charges that sent you to jail—which you just got out of by the way—pretending
to be a cop?”

“I didn’t hit the siren,
my buddy did,” Chris says. “By the way, we’re going to have an extra guest for
a little while. I kind of owe Manny back there a favor.”

“Leave it to you to make
friends with cops while you’re in jail,” Mason mutters.

“Yeah,” Chris chuckles.
“‘Cops.’”

This time, there’s no way
I can get between the two of them, so I just sit back and watch Mason get into
his first fight in a year.

The
End

Click here to continue to my next book.

Slammed
Box Set

The
Complete Slammed Romance Series

BAD
BOY FRAT

By
Claire Adams

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2015 Claire Adams

SLAMMED #1

CHAPTER
ONE

“Evie, I swear to God, you never have any
fun.” I rolled my eyes at Jess as she watched me getting dressed from the door
of my room. “You could at least pretend like you’re looking forward to this
party instead of dragging your feet and picking out the ugliest thing in your
closet.”

I looked down at the jumper and tee shirt
I had picked out and made a face in the mirror, turning to look at Jess.
“What’s wrong with this?” Jess looked me over from head to toe.

“Nothing, if you want everyone to think
you’re a nun.”

I sighed. Glancing at my reflection, I
could kind of see her point.

“Well, it’s not even like I wanted to go
to the party in the first place,” I said, hearing the whining note in my own
voice and not caring. “The only reason I
am
going is because you want to go and you’re smart enough not to go by yourself.”

Jess shook her head, sighing in
exasperation.

“You’ve been here almost half a semester
and you haven’t been to a single party! Come on, Evelyn, even bookworms like
you deserve some fun every now and then.”

I cringed, giving Jess an unhappy look for
the ‘bookworm’ remark. It wasn’t that I loved studying more than I liked
socializing; I was paying my own way through college, cobbling together
academic scholarships, and applying for all the grant money I could get my
hands on. All of that money would disappear in a heartbeat if I didn’t pay
attention to my grades. On top of that, working out my own way through college
made it important to me to not have to repeat any classes; those extra courses would
come straight out of my own savings.

Jess smiled playfully at me, coming into
the room and opening up my closet door. “Evie, you know you are capable of
being drop dead gorgeous. I can’t be seen with some frumpy librarian!” I shook
my head as Jess pulled out the skimpiest skirt I owned—it barely covered my
ass—and a low-cut top to go with it.

When I had been a senior in high school,
my spot at the college a sure thing, I had sort of dipped my toe into going to
parties; I’d gone to a few, when I didn’t have to work at the movie theater and
my friends and I had a good enough time, but it always seemed like everyone
just got bombed out of their minds and passed out or threw up. I had seen
enough people staggering into the dining hall on weekend mornings since I’d
started at college to know that campus parties weren’t that different.