Uncaged Love #4: MMA New Adult Contemporary Romance (3 page)

I’ve got her doing some arm work when a couple other girls come in. I show them the drills and switch Annabelle to squats. The morning falls into a typical rhythm of moving the girls through the training, although I am watching Annabelle pretty close.

That’s why I notice her whole body going stiff when the accordion door opens a half hour later. I think it must be Colt, but when I turn to look, it’s Lani.

The two of them exchange similar “what the hell” looks.

Annabelle quickly pretends to be in pain from the workout and scrunches up her face as if that was all that was getting to her. I have no idea what this is about. I expect Lani to come up and talk to her, since clearly they’ve met. But Lani strides right past her. Maybe they dislike each other. That would make sense, given their reaction.

Now I have two things to ask Lani about. If she knows Annabelle, and also about that night after Parker’s match. But there’s too many girls to attend to for now. Annabelle is careful not to look behind her at Lani, even when Lani starts a steady rhythm on the speed bag that enthralls the other girls.

A couple of them walk over to her. “How do you do that so perfectly?” one asks.

Lani chats with them as she keeps her pattern on the bag. I take a smaller sand weight to a girl struggling with her tricep lifts and keep an eye on Annabelle. Everything about this makes my hackles rise.

My phone buzzes against my skin. It’s Colt on his lunch break, I’m sure. Knowing I have a message from him waiting on a free moment makes me feel better. If Lani doesn’t know Annabelle, I’ll ask him about his ex-girlfriend’s last name when I get a chance to talk to him. I need to tell him what is happening. We shouldn’t keep any secrets from each other.

If it
is
her, it’s so strange she would show up now.

Unless.

My body shudders with a chill.

Unless Brittany sent her.

Pieces start to fall together. She’s still trying to get rid of me. She tracked down Annie and sent her to Buster’s. But to do what? Spy on me? Pretend she’s weak, then pick a fight?

The girl with the sandbag looks like she’s about to cry. Her arms are shaking. I walk over and take the weight from her.

“Let’s punch a Bad Boy,” I say. The big body-shaped bags lie in a semicircle in one corner. The girls love beating the heck out of them. They will go at it until they collapse. It’s cathartic. I wouldn’t mind taking a turn on one right now myself.

I’m thinking of just getting everything out in the open with Annabelle and asking how she knows Brittany when I turn around and see that she is gone.

As the lunch hour passes, the main weight room fills up with office workers on their breaks and the girls thin out. I finally get a chance to catch Lani.

“Hey, did you have a good trip?” I ask. I want to seem like nothing is wrong.

But Lani is different. I can tell immediately. There’s no easy camaraderie like before. She drops the kettlebell she was lifting on the floor mat. “It was all right.”

I don’t know how to broach the subject of Annabelle, so I choose Parker. “I haven’t seen you since that fight you took me to.”

She shrugs. “Looks like you got reacquainted with Colt McClure.” She says his name like it’s a disease. She’s never done that before. Maybe she’s mad I ditched her. Of course.

“I’m sorry I took off. I didn’t know where you went. I turned around, and you were gone.”

“I was in Parker’s dressing room, like we planned.” She kicks at the kettlebell. “I sent him after you.”

So, she really is mad about that. “Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t more into your friend. He seemed very nice.”

“He
is
nice.” Lani juts out her hip. Her long braid trails over her shoulder.

“I had unfinished business with Colt.” I don’t know why I’m defending myself, but Lani is acting so different.

“I bet.”

I decide to back away from the conversation for now. I definitely won’t push about Annabelle until Lani starts acting normal again.

“I’m glad you’re back,” I say.

Lani picks up the kettlebell for another set. She doesn’t want to talk to me. Maybe it isn’t even worth trying.

I take a step back.

But then Lani speaks up. “You have another match, right?”

I feel some hope that she’s getting over her upset. Maybe she’ll be my assistant, like before. “This Friday.”

She looks down at the kettlebell as she works it up and down. “Here at Buster’s?”

“Yes, just like last time.” I hesitate. “Are you going to come?”

Lani switches arms. “Sure.”

She still sounds off. I don’t know what to do to fix things. “You going to be my assistant again?” I try to be casual about this.

“I don’t think I can make it.” Lani finishes the set and turns around to shove the weight back on the shelf.

“Okay, sure.” She doesn’t seem to notice that she just contradicted herself.

I’m not sure what else to do, but then I get an idea. “You want to spar a little in the cage?” We used to always have fun doing that. Maybe it would calm things down between us.

She bends over to pick up her towel. “I’m done for the day, I think.”

I’m not good at this girlfriend thing. I’ve been on the run, switching jobs and hanging out with a boy who dresses in drag. I don’t know what to say to clear the air. But I want to try.

“Lani?”

She whips around. “What is it now?”

Somehow I’ve made things worse. “I’m really sorry I upset you.”

Lani clenches her fist around the towel. She seems to be trying to gain some sort of control. Then she fakes a smile. “It’s fine. I’m just having a bad day. I was gone for a funeral.”

That explains everything. “I’m so sorry. Of course.”

She waves her hand like it’s nothing. “I’ll be fine.”

“Let me know if you need anything.”

Lani nods. “I will.” And she leaves the room.

I start picking up the scattered kettlebells and sandbags. I’m not sure what to think. And I don’t know if I’m going to get a chance to ask her my questions.

I wish I had more answers. But the nagging sense that something important is going on won’t leave.

Chapter Five
 

Winter has taken a vacation when I go outside at the end of the day. It’s cool, but the sun is shining bright. Even though this part of LA is seedy and rundown, it doesn’t look too bad when the weather is this pretty.

I know it’s time to ask Colt about Annie. It’s a little after six, so he should be on his dinner break from training. I tug my phone out of my pocket and call him. I’d rather do this in person, but it can’t wait until Friday. Besides, that’s my match with Diva Delaney, and I will need to focus.

“Do you have your mouth full?” I ask when he picks up.

“Not with what I want in it,” he says huskily.

“Killjoy keeping you strong and fit for me?”

“Man, everybody is a mess. All they can talk about is you and your hat. And the footage is blowing up all over ESPN. Everyone thinks this is going to make MMA go mainstream.” He laughs. “They seem to forget I still have a whole lineup of matches coming up,” he says. “And here they thought
I
was distracted.”

“Is the date for the actual title fight set?” I have no idea how these things work.

“No. Every fight from now on is televised, so there’s contracts and schedules to deal with.”

“Wow.” I think about the cameras aiming at me and feel another sense of panic. “Do you think I could get recognized?”

“You mean as Kettle Belle? I think that cat is out of the bag.”

“No. Not that.”

He’s quiet a moment. “You mean as Joanna.”

My old name sends a chill through me. I haven’t heard anyone else say it out loud in so long. “Yeah, that.”

“Let me get some affairs in order with the separation from my father’s corporation, and I’ll hire a lawyer for this,” Colt says. “He’ll discreetly look into what happened to your stepbrother and see if any charges were filed.”

“You mean if there’s a warrant out for my arrest.”

“You think that’s likely?”

I come up to a group of people waiting at a crosswalk and hustle through. “I don’t know. He had to have gone to the hospital.”

I can still hear his bones crunching beneath my punches, and picture him bleeding on the fallen shower curtain.

“But is he the type who would never admit that it was his stepsister? One of those macho men who would claim it was an intruder?”

I make the last turn to my apartment complex. It hasn’t occurred to me that he might not blame me. The situation seemed so obvious. He gets beaten. I disappear. Obviously I did it. Obvious to me, anyway.

But Colt is right. “You think they might think an intruder attacked him and then kidnapped me?”

“How old were you then?”

“Seventeen.”

“You were a minor. Did you ever check the Amber Alerts or missing-kid networks?”

I haven’t. I start to feel hope that maybe I’m okay, that some terrible fate isn’t waiting to catch up to me.

“Jo?”

I realize I never answered. “I never did.”

“I’ll do that myself,” he says. “As soon as I’m sure I can hire someone my father’s estate can’t trace, I’ll look into clearing your name if we need to.”

I’ve made it to my apartment now. “Thank you, Colt.”

“It’s time we got this taken care of,” he says. “Hey, can you ask Buster to send your fight schedule to my team? I want to make sure they don’t book anything on top of one of your matches.”

I want to laugh as I unlock my door. “I think I should be working around you. You are way more important.”

“Not to me.”

I pause on the doorstep. “I can’t wait to have you at one of my fights,” I say.

“I can’t wait to have you
after
one of your fights,” he says.

A flush of heat spreads through my body. “That will be something.”

“Talk to you before bed?” he asks.

“That’ll be nice.”

“Until then.” Colt’s voice is all low, a rumble that goes straight through me, like an earthquake.

I hang up the phone and press it to my chest. I don’t think life could get any better than this. All my mistakes are about to be rectified. I won’t have to lie about who I am, where I come from. Colt is making all of this possible.

I’m about to stick the phone in my pocket to go in my apartment when a fist knocks it from my hand.

Chapter Six
 

I act on pure instinct, shoving my elbow into whoever is next to me without waiting to turn to see who it is.

But the blow is expertly deflected, and a hard kick to my back knocks me into my front door. I spin around, ready to face whoever is attacking me from behind.

It’s Annabelle.

“You should pay more attention when you’re walking,” she snarls.

Panic floods me, not that she’s here, but that she may have listened to my conversation. She could have information that could sink me. But I don’t have time to replay everything I said, because Annabelle throws a jab toward my ribs.

I block it and step away from the door so I have more room to maneuver. I have no idea how good a fighter she is, or why she’s here.

I bounce lightly, staying loose to prepare for whatever she might do next.

But Annabelle leans against the brick wall, all casual. I stay in my stance, my brain making calculations about her height, the distance between us, all the little bits of information I will need to take her down, if I need to.

She glances at my raised fists and laughs. “Lani was right. You hold your hands too high.”

I refuse to lower them. “So, you two do know each other.”

“We do now,” she says.

“You’re Annie, right? Colt’s ex-girlfriend?”

“You catch on quick.”

I just watch her. I’m not giving anything away — that I thought Lani was my friend, that I had no idea she knew Colt’s ex-girlfriend. I need to sort all of this out, but right now I have to focus. “Did Brittany send you?”

Annie smiles. “That girl was a wily one.”

A non-answer. “What do you want?” I ask.

Annie pushes away from the wall. “Just doing a favor for a friend.”

But which one? Lani or Brittany?

I assume the favor was to pick a fight. I tense up, ready for her to strike again, but she laughs. “So, did Daddy offer you money to leave too?” Annie asks. She runs her fingers across one of the spindly bushes by my door. “He offered me a lot of money. Fifty thousand smackers.”

This gets me. I was only worth ten. I’m a little shaken by this but keep my face straight.

“I guess you took it?” I ask.

“Colt and I were already on the outs. He’s hard to live with.” She shrugs. “Made sense to cash out.”

This doesn’t match up to his account. He was wrecked when this girl left him. I make sure I haven’t locked my knees, that I’m ready for whatever’s coming. But I’m not certain anymore that she’s here to fight me, even though she attacked first. With the surprise she had on me, she should have been able to do a lot more damage, if she’s fighter trained.

“Not willing to say if good old Pops tried to buy you out too?” She plucks a leaf from the bush. “Lani said you were pretty wrecked over your breakup, but you didn’t seem to have any extra cash.”

So, the two of them have been talking all along.

I keep my breathing soft and even. I’m not giving her any information about me or Colt. My lack of girlfriend skills may have saved me, since I didn’t tell Lani much either.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I feel crushed that we weren’t friends after all. I suck at that more than I ever could have guessed.

“What are you doing here? Why do you care about this now?” I ask.

Annie tosses the leaf into the dirt. “What I didn’t count on after I left Colt,” she says, “is that I’d be shunned by the entire fighter community.” She jerks at another branch, sending leaves cascading to the ground. “That son of a bitch couldn’t keep it together. Everybody blamed me.”

A car pulls up in the parking lot close by, and a neighbor gets out. I lower my arms so it doesn’t look so obvious that I’m ready for a fight. In this neighborhood, people call the cops for a lot less.

Annie watches the lady with a load of grocery bags walk down a path to another building. I take the moment to reach down for my phone and stick it back in my pocket.