Fierce (22 page)

Four months was a long time in the turbulent life of Rose Jacqueline. She’d made more friends, more enemies, more mistakes, and more smart moves in the past few weeks alone than most people her age had
ever
made. She’d also become something of a local celebrity after her gutsy fight in the Dolphin Casino in Reno, where she’d taken on five kidnappers single-handedly, and had given a good account of herself before being overwhelmed. The timely intervention of two other local girl fighters, Ashley and Lena Culver, and Mitre’s two MMA stars, Marlon Washington and Avery Wright, had probably saved Rose’s life. It had certainly skyrocketed the incident to instant legend status in Mitre. And because of it, men and women were signing up to the town’s two MMA gyms in droves, inspired by what the group had done that night in the big city.

At Wright Hook’s, the male-only gym where Rose worked as an assistant (she was the only woman there), things were especially crazy. It was packed with new members, and more than a few of them were chatting her up. She didn’t mind it personally—heck no, some of these guys were hot with a capital “H”—but she saw what it was doing to her new boyfriend, Avery, who coached there and was also the gym’s co-owner with his half-brother, Luca. Poor Avery was keeping a needlessly close eye on her, partly through jealousy and partly because he feared the repercussions from the Reno incident. (Rose had somehow got herself on the wrong side of some powerful, dangerous men there, hence the attempted kidnapping.)

So yeah, things were pretty chaotic right now. Avery had been really sweet last night; he’d asked her to move in with him on a permanent basis. It should have been one of the happiest nights of her life. But as soon as she’d set foot inside his house, she’d found a letter addressed to her. It was unsigned, but she knew instantly who’d written it: her thuggish stepdad, Mike, whom she’d found out was connected with those bad men from Reno. And he knew that she knew. To ensure her silence, he’d threatened to kill her and her stepsister, Cate, if Rose ever opened her mouth on the subject again, to anyone.

Not a smart move, not when Rose had a loaded shotgun and loved her stepsister more than anyone in the world. Fortunately—for Mike—his house had been empty last night. He’d taken Cate somewhere, which left Rose out of moves. She couldn’t protect her little sister; she couldn’t go after Mike; and to cap it off, Avery had made her promise not to try it again. Taking on a connected criminal was just too dangerous, he’d insisted, and he was probably right.

But in four months’ time, Cate would turn eighteen and Mike would have no legal hold over her. On that day, no matter what happened, Rose had sworn to free her stepsister from that abusive bastard forever. It was the reason she’d thrown herself so fiercely into her Mixed Martial Arts training, and why she’d had Avery push her so hard. On that day four months from now, she had to be able to stand in front of Mike Hague and tell him to his face that she was taking Cate with her. And when he went for Rose—which he would because he hated her almost as much as she hated him—she had to be able to defend herself, and take him down.

That
would be her final victory over him.
That
would be the moment he was out of their lives for good.

But four months was a long time to wait. A lot could happen. In fact, and she felt it strongly each time she approached the gym at the start of a shift,
anything
could happen. And on the balmy morning of the fourteenth of May, it did.

***

“So, you got stuck with me, huh?” Marlon Washington said to her as she entered the gym. She blinked at him, wringing her memory. Nope. Nothing came out. “When do you wanna start?” he asked.

“Um, start what, Marlon?”

“Your training. With me.” He shadow-boxed a little, then beamed one of his famous, cocky grins. “I know I’m not Avery, but I got some moves I can show you. I ain’t never coached a girl before, but I’ve seen him with you, and I think I can give it a go.”

“I’m sure you can,” she replied. “But what makes you think Avery’s not coaching me?”

He dropped his swagger and the grin. “Ah, okay. I thought they’d have told you by now. It’s, ah, all we’ve been talking about in here.”

“Talking about what?”

“You should, ah, hear it from them, I guess.” He nodded to Avery and Luca in the office, then flicked her a wink.

She strode across the gym without the usual spring in her step. The idea that Avery wasn’t going to be here to coach her anymore left her all knotty inside.
Why
wouldn’t he be here? Was he moving away? If so, why hadn’t he mentioned it to her? She was only
living with him,
for chrissakes!

Rose was about to sneak the door open, so as not to disturb Luca’s phone call, but seeing Avery lazing there in her chair, with his feet on her desk and his arms folded behind his head, suddenly ticked her off. She flung the door open and threw her gym bag at him. It thumped his stomach, and he sat up with a gruff
ugh
!

“You, get out here!” she said.

Rubbing his abs, he got up lethargically and followed her out of the gym, leaving Luca to finish his call. “You got my message, I see,” he said.

“Marlon says you won’t be here to coach me from now on. What the hell does that mean? Why am I the last to find out you’re leaving!” The urge to hit him somewhere soft and vulnerable almost got the best of her. Almost.

“So you didn’t get my message?”

“What message? What are you blathering about?”

“Where’s your cell?” he asked.

“At the house. I forgot to charge it last night, so I couldn’t bring it with me.”

“No wonder we couldn’t reach you,” he said.

She shifted her weight and glared at him, but inside she was churning. If he was leaving Mitre, he might be leaving her. “Start talking,” she said.

“I don’t know what you’re in such a strop for,” he replied. “It’s the freaking motherlode of good news.”

“In what fucked-up parallel universe is you leaving me good news?”

Avery pulled a half-puzzled, half-annoyed face. “I’m not
leaving
you. I just won’t be able to coach you as much.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’ve got my own training to do. And it’s going to be no-holds-barred.” He held her by the shoulders. “Rose, I’m fighting Seth Grillo. A one-off exhibition bout in Vegas!”

She gaped at him. “But he’s not even in your division. He’s, like, the heavyweight champ.”

“Uh-huh. I’m moving up a class. Four months from now, it’s on. Luca’s negotiating the purse. He reckons it could be the biggest in MMA history. I’m undefeated, he’s undefeated, but only one of us can win. Wouldn’t you tune in to see that?”

“Um, yeah, if I didn’t care if you got beaten to a pulp or not. That guy’s a monster.”

“He’s actually a nice guy. Runs his own charity for—”

“Not in the ring he doesn’t! And don’t try to downplay how dangerous it is. If anything happened to you…” Rose didn’t dare take that sentence any further, for superstitious reasons. She’d always felt that picturing something bad happening was a sure-fire way to make it happen. It was far safer to blank it out and do everything in her power to make sure it
didn’t
happen. But this was different. It was what he did, what he’d made his name doing—fighting the toughest guys in his sport. Protesting on the grounds that it was dangerous was rather like grounding a pilot because planes flew high.

He cupped her face and left a sweet kiss on her forehead. “That’s for caring. You know it’s only an exhibition.”

“No such thing,” she replied. “I know what you guys are like. Once that bell rings, it’s a freaking dogfight—you’d rather lose a limb than back down. I’ve seen that crazy look in your eye when you stare down an opponent.”

He shrugged. “What can I say? I’ll give it everything I’ve got. And if I can beat him in an exhibition, it’ll put me in contention for the titles in that division. There’s no better leg-up into the heavyweight ranks than beating the guy that hasn’t been beaten.”

“And if you don’t win?”

“Then I’ve just lost an exhibition fight as an underdog. I’ll still have my title, and I’ll have the respect for taking on Goliath. It’s a win-win for me. Plus I get a chunk of that massive purse, which could change everything around here. For Luca and the gym. And for us. Think of what we could do with that kind of bank, Rose.”

She tried to, but it was all contingent upon him not getting his brains beaten out by Grillo, whose fighting style had famously been likened to a brick wall that followed you around the ring and only ever fell to bury you under it.

“Just promise me one thing,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Take a wrecking ball to that sumbitch.”

He smiled and lightly punched his palm. “Done.”

Rose lifted his arm and slung it over her shoulders. She snuggled up to him. “What will it mean for us, for the next four months?”

“We kick it up a notch, training-wise,” he replied. “Luca will be my coach, and Marlon will be yours. I won’t be working at the gym while I’m in training; I’ll have to focus all my energy on getting fight-ready
and
bulking up, so it’ll be a tough ride.”

“Can we still run together?”

“Sure. At first. But Luca might want me to kick that up a notch or two as well. We’ll have to see.”

Not the most romantic start to this new phase of their relationship. “So I guess we’ll be sharing an address, but not much else?” she pointed out. “Not trying to make you feel bad or anything. Just saying.”

“The timing sucks,” he replied. “And I feel bad about that. So yeah, I won’t be seeing as much of you as I’d like, but I tell you what, I’m gonna try and fix it with Luca so that your time off coincides with my downtime whenever possible. That way we can at least chill out together. And to be honest, I’d probably go nuts if I couldn’t spend time with you.”

“Keep talking, Slick.”

He laughed. “I mean it. It feels like everything’s changed since you came on the scene, me included.”

“In a good way, I hope.”

“In the best way.” He gave her a borderline too-tight squeeze. “I feel fucking amazing.”

“Me too.”

“Yeah?” Avery crouched and lifted her onto his shoulders. It gave her a fleeting pang of vertigo on the way up, but she trusted his grip. He had to bend his knees to lower her under the door frame. Dozens of uncertain gazes greeted them inside; in a world of routines and repetitions, anything wistful and out of the ordinary threw fighters for a loop.

It was good to be thrown for a loop now and then
, she thought, as he deposited her on the edge of the ring. It kept a fighter on his or her toes.

“So we’re good—about the fight?” he asked her.

Not that she could say otherwise while he was feeling this good about himself. “Of course we are,” she lied. “Go get ’em.”

Watching him walk away, so carefree and full of confidence, left her pondering how much
she’d
changed since first arriving here at Wright Hook’s, disguised as a man. She’d been single-minded and completely self-absorbed back then, driven only by the desire to prove herself. Now? She found herself compromising more and more, and on some strange level she was glad to do it. For him. The middle ground was not somewhere she was used to being, but it had its perks. For one, it got her closer to Avery.

And perhaps because of that compromise—for the first time in her life—she felt like she was in a real, grown-up relationship.

With a guy who KO’d people for a living.

***