Rough Around the Edges (3 page)

Neither happened, and after locking and bolting the door behind himself, he dropped his gym bag and started toward the fridge, resigned.

He scanned its interior, his gaze roving over a mustard bottle, a half-empty gallon of milk and a package of butter sticks. Reluctantly, he eyed the lower shelf on the inside of the door. As usual, a grey cardboard carton of eggs was his salvation.

Why didn’t he go shopping for real groceries? He wondered that every evening when he bothered to make something for himself instead of going out to pick up something for dinner. Truth was, he couldn’t cook worth a damn. Eggs were easy, and they were full of protein – something he’d need more than ever now that he was training again.

And competing. An unexpected smile crept across his face as he lifted the carton out of the fridge and closed the door.

Just thinking about Friday night felt good. Envisioning the ring he’d sparred in that day, he turned, pulled a frying pan from the drawer below the fridge and smeared the inside with the end of a cold stick of butter. For the first time since he’d come to Baltimore, he went through the routine motions wearing a grin. The reason was simple – he couldn’t think of the sparring ring, or the Knockout gym at all for that matter, without thinking of Ally.

Why, he couldn’t say. Maybe it was because she was beautiful and passionate about MMA – a knockout combination, as corny as that was. And then there was the intriguingly contradicting combination of the confidence she’d displayed at first and the way she’d blushed when she’d spoken to him for the second time before exiting the gym. His grin widened as the scent of heated butter rose from the frying pan.

He cracked all three eggs and used a fork to whisk them into a blur of clear fluid and sunshine yellow yolk. There was no denying it – for whatever reason, a woman had caught his eye and his attention for the first time in well over a year. The Afghanistan desert where he’d been deployed for eight months had been anything but a dating scene, and then when he’d come home his life had been such a clusterfuck that romance had been the last thing on his mind.

Something had changed that day at the gym, even if it was something as simple as being intrigued and turned-on by a woman – something that probably happened to most guys several times a day. He couldn’t explain it, but damn if it didn’t feel good just to know what he wanted as he turned off the stove burner and slid his simple meal onto a plate. Friday night was going to be the best night he’d had in a long time, and not just because he was going to win the middleweight prize purse.

Chapter 2

When Ryan thought about what he’d liked about New York, he didn’t think of the skyline, the endless entertainment options or the energy of millions of people all living out their lives in the country’s biggest metropolis. Weird as it might be, it was the scent combination of sweat and dampness that captured what he’d loved most about his years in the city.

That same scent was present inside Knockout as he wrapped his hands in the men’s locker room, preparing for his first turn in the ring. Outside the locker room, the place was packed full of spectators. Their body heat had raised the normally cool building’s temperature considerably. It was almost too hot, even though he was only wearing a pair of shorts, but he didn’t mind. It was a familiar environment – one he’d craved – even if he was in a different city now.

“Hey.” One of the lightweights from Knockout poked his head into the locker room. “Sanchez is kickin’ this guy’s ass. Last round. You’ll be up soon.”

Ryan nodded and finished wrapping his left hand. Showtime. A sense of impending satisfaction expanded  inside him at the thought of stepping into the ring. It had been a long time, but he was more than ready. In fact, if something somehow prevented him from going through with his match, it just might kill him.

Or at least, that was how it felt. He was ready to feel like his own self again, even if it was only for a single round.

Five minutes later, he was in the ring. It was impossible to resist scanning the crowd. He hadn’t stopped thinking about how Ally had said she’d be there.

She hadn’t lied. She sat in one of the many folding chairs, in the second row back. As soon as he laid eyes on her, she was all he could see. She was as stunning as he remembered – not that he’d forgotten what she looked like over the past couple days. Not even close. And standing there in the ring, he really did feel like his old self. So, almost without thinking, he did what New York Ryan would’ve done and winked in her direction.

She was staring back, which wasn’t a surprise seeing as how she’d come there as a spectator for the purpose of watching what went down in the ring.

After savoring her expression of surprise for the briefest of moments, he turned to face his opponent.

Another middleweight, he was built a lot like Ryan. He looked determined as he glared back, but it didn’t matter. Ryan wasn’t going to lose. Not in any case, and especially not with Ally watching.

The round began with a flurry of movement. His opponent was fast, but not fast enough to land all the hard punches he threw. Ryan dodged a second jab and landed one of his own, using the momentum and his body weight to send the other man sliding backwards. A couple more punches and he had him against the ropes – right where he wanted him.

Quickly, he pummeled him with blows to his ribs and jaw. With every punch, his sureness that he was where he was meant to be increased. All he could think about was the fight, and losing himself in the task at hand was sweet oblivion, even when the other man managed to back him off and landed a punch to his side, sending a wave of pain through his ribs.

Ryan absorbed the blow with as much good grace as he could muster, thinking past the shock and setting his jaw as he clamped down on his mouthpiece, refusing to acknowledge the hurt. The man got in another punch to Ryan’s ribs and nearly managed to kick him there, too, but Ryan dodged the last one and finally honed in on his opponent’s head with a hard left hook.

The man crumpled at his feet. Total knock out.

Something inside Ryan clawed to the surface, a hard-edged sort of elation. For the first time, he could really hear the noise of the crowd. And they were roaring, some of them even rising from their seats. He raised a fist and let the noise wash over him. It didn’t matter what city he was in; the feeling of victory was exquisite. In that moment, he was a success, and that was all that mattered. He’d faced the threat of defeat in the form of another hard-bodied human being and had won. It felt good not to fail.

Eventually he scanned the crowd, zeroing in on the spot where Ally sat. Only she wasn’t sitting anymore – she’d risen, and she beamed, radiating the same energy the crowd was exuding in shouts and raucous applause. The sight of her glowing with the same sense of victory that was filling him from the inside out, threatening to make him burst, was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen. In that moment, they were connected and he could feel the pull of her from where she stood in a row of banged-up metal chairs.

Before he could so much as wink in her direction again, she broke eye contact with him and sank back down into her seat, saying something to the dark-haired woman beside her, who’d whispered something into her ear.

It didn’t matter that Ally was ignoring him now. It mattered that he’d seen the look in her eyes when he’d won. It had been a look of admiration, and that fact made him feel like he was flying instead of walking as he climbed out of the ring and crossed the floor, heading for a little bit of rest before his next match.

After resting and re-wrapping his hands in the locker room during two heavyweight matches, he emerged to face his second opponent. The man – who looked to be a little younger than Ryan’s twenty-five years – was more cautious than his previous opponent had been. Careful deliberation was reflected in his ice-grey eyes, and he only struck out when he meant it.

And his blows were hard – whenever Ryan was too slow to get out of the way, he was punished. His entire body shook when he sustained a blow to the ribs, and he could practically feel the curved bones curving the tiniest bit more as they absorbed the impact.

It was still a hell of a lot better than being hit in the head, even if it did nearly knock the breath out of his lungs. When the opportunity presented itself, the drive to strike his opponent in his exposed face was a thousand times stronger than the pain – it always was.

His gloved fist landed solidly against the other man’s jaw, hard enough to give his opponent pause. Ryan took advantage of his momentary shock, launching into a barrage of punches. High-low, he hit him in the ribs and face, fitting in as many blows as he could without sacrificing power on the altar of quantity.

And then the world started to crash down around him, right there in the middle of the ring. A silver blur streaked across the field of his vision like a comet, showing him light that wasn’t really there. He couldn’t hear the dull roar of the crowd in the background anymore – he couldn’t hear anything. His ears were ringing, just like they had almost a year ago when—

Bam!
Before Ryan could shake off the past, his entire body slammed down against something – the floor of the ring – and every molecule of air in his lungs escaped in a rush of agony. For half a second, he was too stunned to move. The harsh overhead fixtures that lit the ring with a fluorescent glow combined with the silver hallucinations to blind him.

Luckily, he didn’t need to see to fight on the ground. His body was so tangled with his opponent’s that he moved by feel, his fighting instincts called to action by the crushing weight of another man on top of him.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he launched into action just as his airway was blocked by external force.

The other man was going for victory by choke-out. Fortunately, his hold sucked – his arm wasn’t as tight around Ryan’s neck as it should’ve been, which left a gap. Where there was a gap, there was a way to escape.

Ryan gripped his opponent by one bicep and pulled, his own arm muscles straining with the effort.

It wasn’t easy, but it worked. Within moments, he was free. He shifted against the ring’s floor, ignoring the burn of the mat against his bare back as he positioned himself for an armbar. Pulling the arm he gripped between his legs, he executed the move with a hard crank.

That was all it took. The other man’s body bowed backwards for several long moments as he fought to defy the pain, refusing to give in.

It didn’t matter how long he resisted for – Ryan had the victory. There was only so much strain a human joint could take without breaking.

When the other man tapped out, the crowd roared.

Ryan relented and rose, a little more slowly than he would’ve liked, and looked out at the riled-up spectators.

He could hardly see most of them. The silver lights spoiling his normally 20/20 vision blurred out faces in the crowd that had been clear to him before, turning the world into a roaring mess of sound and light. He simply stood and existed inside the noise, aching limbs supported by victory, until his vision cleared enough for him to realize that he’d been staring at Ally all along.

He’d been smiling too, despite the fact that his mouthguard was still in place. He hadn’t meant to, but he didn’t resist, either, when his grin stretched wider as he drank in Ally’s image.

As he lingered in the middle of the ring ignoring everyone else in the world, she stood up and hurried out of the seating area.

He watched her for a couple moments, expecting her to make her way to the bathroom. Instead, she exited through the gym’s front doors.

When he finally looked around the ring again, it was clear that his opponent had already vacated the fighting area. Ryan did the same, making way for the next match. Once he was back on the floor, the cold concrete pressed against the soles of his feet and began to cool his head along with his body. Still, he couldn’t get Ally out of his mind as he headed for the locker room.

Inside, he stripped and shoved his sweaty garments into his locker. His cock was half hard, but there was no one else in the locker room – at the moment, anyway. That was bound to change, and so he hurried to stand beneath a showerhead protruding from one tiled wall and turned the cold water on full-blast as he tried to stop picturing Ally.

Getting her out of his head proved to be impossible, but the frigid shower quelled what had been a growing erection. He raked his hands through his short brown hair, allowing the water to replace the damp heat of sweat against his skull. A two-minute shower was all he could endure before he stepped out from beneath the icy spray.