Flow (The Beat and the Pulse #6)

F
low
(#6 The Beat and The Pulse) by Amity Cross

Copyright © 2016 by Amity Cross

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All song titles, song lyrics, products, networks and brand names mentioned in this book are the property of the sole copyright owners.

Cover Design © Amity Cross / Nicole R. Taylor

H
olding
the bouquet of flowers in my hands, I stared at the happy couple and grimaced.

The bride twirled around in her tiny white dress while the groom held her hand aloft. Watching my best mate, Ash Fuller, in the arms of his one and only had me thinking about all of the things I wanted. Stability, certainty, love…

“Hamish?”

I turned to find my girl, Josie, beside me. She was the stuff dreams were made of. Tall, blonde, flawless, smart, and fiery as hell, a career woman who was into the whole MMA circuit, and she was mine…when we were on and not fighting about something stupid. The make up sex was phenomenal.

“Here,” I said, handing her the bouquet of flowers the bride had been carrying moments before. Roses and some other little white one I didn’t know the name of. “Flowers ain’t my thing.”

Not fifteen minutes earlier, my best mate, Ash Fuller, had married his girl, Ren Miller, in a ceremony that lasted all of thirty seconds. Then I was bashed in the face by a flying bouquet of flowers. Rumor had it, the person who caught it would be the next to get hitched. The chicks went wild for that kind of shit.

Josie smiled, her red lips looking mighty fine, and placed the bouquet onto the table. “Hamish…”

Before she could finish whatever it was she wanted to say, I grabbed her hands and pulled her onto the dance floor. It wasn’t a dance floor as such, just Ash’s outdoor deck, but it was full of people. There were a load of familiar faces from the MMA and boxing community, and some others I didn’t know but assumed were family.

Wrapping my arms around Josie’s waist—the silk of her red dress soft and slippery under my touch—I tugged her body against mine. She was Ren’s best friend and had organized most of the wedding along with Ash’s sister, Violet. This was her kind of thing. Fancy dresses, flowers, tailored suits, and dancing.

She ran her palms over my shoulders, her gaze downcast, but I was too stubborn to acknowledge that she wasn’t actually here with me. Physically, yeah, but mentally, she’d left the building. I was that enamored with her that my mind glossed over it.

We swayed to the music, some slow song I didn’t know the name of, and I breathed in the scent of her perfume. She was always so perfect, so put together…so classy.

“Hamish…”

“Let’s just dance a little, Josie,” I murmured.

“Hamish, please…”

“Josie…” I glanced into her eyes, and I couldn’t deny it anymore. Something was wrong.

“There’s someone else,” she blurted.

I stared at her, the blonde stunner who had been my one shot at a normal relationship, and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Usually, I was doing the dumping, not the other way around.

We’d been seeing each other on and off for a year or two, which was hard considering she spent two-thirds of the year in Sydney with those pansy-ass fuckers, the Hayes Twins, while they fought in the big time. She was their ‘public relations’ manager…or whatever twat-waffling shit that meant. She was up there with them while I was down here in Melbourne fighting at The Underground.

I’d had a shot at the pro leagues, but it wasn’t my kind of thing. I liked to fight freestyle. Which meant dirty and without rules holding me back. The scummy-as-fuck Underground was illegal as all hell, but it gave me what I wanted…but because it wasn’t legitimate, it kept us apart, and Josie wanted me to go pro so we could be together. She wanted me to change, and I couldn’t. There was no way I could go to Sydney and try out for the AUFC. It was impossible.

“What?” I asked, my Irish accent sounding thicker than usual. I wasn’t sure I was hearing her right.

“I’m sorry, Hamish, I really am…”

That’s what they all said.

My arms slipped off her waist and fell limply to my sides, a scowl forming on my face. I always thought she was the one. I even remembered the first time I saw her, which was a miracle for a man who constantly got punched in the head. If I remembered that, and she got my cock hard with a single look, it was a match made in heaven, right?

Obviously not
.

Glancing around the garden, my gaze settled on Dean, one half of the Hayes Twins. He was staring at us, his eyes narrowed like he was mad I had my hands on his girl, and my blood began to boil.

“Just tell me you didn’t fuck him while we were together, Josie.”

Her features began to pale. “What?”

“I’m not a fool,” I hissed. “You said there’s another bastard, and Dean Hayes is staring at me like I’m the bad guy. Shit, Josie.”

She reached out for me, and I was beginning to realize everyone was staring. Like full on watching us like it was a fight in a cage someplace.

I shoved her hands away. “The decent thing to do would be to wait until we were somewhere private. Not standin’ in the midst of my best friend’s weddin’.”

Grinding my teeth, I glared at Dean, who was talking to his twin brother, Lincoln.
Pansy-ass fucker.

“Hamish, it’s complicated,” Josie said. “I’m not—”

“It’s not complicated,” I snapped. “It’s black and fuckin’ white.”

With an exasperated sigh, she grabbed my hand and pulled me across the deck and into the house where she closed us inside.

“I’m not with him,” she said. “I haven’t touched or fucked anyone else. You have my word on that.”

“But you want to with him?”

“We want different things, Hamish,” she reasoned. “I was trying to change you to be who I wanted. That’s not fair.”

There were many things I hadn’t told her about myself, so there was that, as well.

“Well,” I said, straightening my suit jacket. “I’m sure you’re doin’ me a real big favor.”

Turning on my heel, I strode across the room, aiming for the front door. Josie called after me, but I’d stopped caring about what she had to say. She didn’t want me. She wanted someone else.

Hamish McBride, king of the seedy Underground with all his dirty money, wasn’t good enough for a classy bird like her.

Slamming the front door closed, I found my car where I’d left it parked on the street. It wasn’t anything fancy, but I’d bought it brand new from the dealer, and I’d never bought something straight off the assembly line like that in my entire life. I’d thought it was a major accomplishment, but now it seemed like small potatoes in the wake of losing the woman I wanted to marry someday.

Pressing the button on the fob, the indicators flashed, and I slipped behind the wheel. The sun was beginning to set, and the sky was lit up with orange, tinting the approaching storm clouds a deep shade of angry as hell.

I’d met Josie at The Underground. It wasn’t long after Ren had made her first appearance in the cage as Reign of Terror, and she’d brought her best friend along one night. It was love at first sight or the lusty equivalent.

Josie had been this blonde shining beacon in the midst of a sea of swill and fakery, and I’d instantly wanted her. She’d burned so brightly I couldn’t see anything else. At the time, I’d thought it was love, but now I could see it was nothing more than lust. Nothing about us screamed long-term.

On the dance floor, I saw the way she’d looked at Dean, the oblivious asshole, and the light had gone out. I was left in darkness…with an entire wedding party and its guests staring at her while she flipped the switch.

Of all the stupid shit I had to deal with in my life, Josie and her tact were the worst.

The only thing I could think of doing was go to a bar someplace, pick up some random chick, and bang her. That was a bloody stupid thing to do when I’d just been dumped at my best friend’s wedding.

I thought on it for a moment but couldn’t come up with an alternative.

So I went out and did something stupid.

L
eaning against the bar
, I breathed in the familiar scent of stale booze and sweat and sighed.

Glancing at my phone, it was blank. No notifications, just wallpaper of a spacey nebular. Unlocking the screen, there wasn’t even one of those little red dots on the Facebook app.
Lori Walker, the height of popularity
.

Working the bar on a Sunday night blowed, but it was easy money.

It was the slowest night of the week at The Underground, the less than aboveboard cage-fighting league that operated out of a rundown warehouse in Abbotsford in Melbourne, but I got paid cash in hand, which was good for avoiding paying the tax man like a regular person. Totally illegal but so was everything around me. To be fair on the government, I kept my head down and didn’t milk them for unemployment benefits. Like that made this whole charade any less dicey. In a world where money got you ahead, I’d take whatever I could get as long as the lines didn’t blur too much.

Stu, the bar manager, gave me the eye, and I rolled mine in return. I’d worked in this place for three years, and in the one and a half he’d been here, he’d been trying to crack onto me. Too bad for him his weedy frame, scrappy beard, beady little eyes, and creepy attitude didn’t do anything but make me want to vomit.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I complained, shaking my phone at him. “Have you seen how slow it is?”

I shuddered as he sidled up next to me, and he asked, “Chatting with your boyfriend on Facebook again? Or are you swiping right on Tinder?”

“You know neither one of those things are true,” I snapped, sliding my phone back into my pocket.

“You know, we can always change that, doll.”

Pretending to throw up, I pushed off the bar and put some distance between us. “
I ain’t your doll
.”

He looked like he was going to jizz in his pants. “You know I love it when you play hard to get.”

Rolling my eyes, I ignored him and turned to serve the customer who’d slid onto one of the stools at the opposite end of the bar.

Instantly, I recognized the guy as Goblin, one of the heavy hitters in the cage. He’d won something like three Championships, which was big money—we were talking millions—and in the three years I’d been tending this piece of shit bar, I’d never seen him within twenty meters of the booze once. If I won a million bucks beating some guy to a pulp with my bare hands, I definitely wouldn’t be coming back for more. I’d be cashing that check and hightailing it to a better life.

But Goblin had come back for more…and more after that. Why he thought that was a good thing to do, I’d never know.

I watched him for a second, taking in his rugged exterior. I didn’t know much about the guy, but I knew his hair had a tinge of red to it, his arms were full of tattoos I couldn’t quite make out in the murky light, and he was Irish. I’d heard him talking to someone once, and I’d swooned just at the sound of his voice. Ugh, I was thinking about his sexy voice now? I could tell a lot of stories about how hard fighters could hit from firsthand experience. Dating fighters in this place was bad for business. Personal
and
professional.

I’d done a fighter once, and it didn’t end up being a good thing, so I’d sworn off them for good. A great many of them were handsome as hell with their ripped bodies and overflowing testosterone—damn, it made them good in bed—but I didn’t want a quick fuck out back. A woman’s orgasm lasted about twenty to thirty seconds on average,
if the guy was good
, and that was it. Then what? The walk of shame. Where would that leave me in ten years? Swiping right on Tinder.
Puke
.

Truthfully, when I first rocked up to work at the bar here, I’d had a harmless little crush on Goblin, but then again, so did every other woman who walked through those doors. Fighters, punters, staff, other dudes’ girlfriends. He had that happy-go-lucky Irish charm about him that sent the opposite sex into a frenzy.

Looking at him now, he seemed tired. His shoulders sagged, and his chin dipped low as he leaned against the bar, and I wondered if he was okay. He’d never come to the bar. I didn’t think he even drank alcohol…

Seriously? I was concerned about a dude I didn’t even know?

Maybe I shouldn’t be so closed off. He was just a guy, after all. A guy at the bar where I worked who needed to be served, but I felt drawn to him and his sad puppy-dog eyes, so I did something stupid.

I talked to him
.