Dirty Fighter: A Bad Boy MMA Romance Read online

  Stepping off the plane was the first time I’d been back in Georgia since I left. Since I’d flown to New York for the full week that I had been there. Since I’d last spoken to my mother.

  Stepping out into the dense summer air felt like stepping straight into a fever dream. The town hadn’t changed; the state hadn’t changed. I felt like I was haunting myself.

  This was the town where I saw the corpse of my father, and heard that fucking thump of the lamp striking his head that played through my dreams on an endless loop. This was the place where I was bullied and harassed. The place where I called the boy who saved my life creepy. The place where I could have died a dozen times over.

  I wanted to escape, I wanted to flee.

  I had to stick to my guns, though, I had to follow through with it and be the adult I finally was. My taxi took me straight to my parent’s home, the grass dying. I began to catch myself trying to remember if there was ever a time the grass wasn’t dead. The house was the off white color of a tombstone, looming over me like it knew all of my secrets. It did.

  The upkeep crews, our weekly maids, the lawn care, had still profited off the property for the last three years, leaving it a polished and disturbing replica of the exact night I left. It was the least I could do since my mom couldn’t be in the house. I had considered just selling the house, but as long as she was alive it had felt like stealing it—like taking more advantage of the situation than I already had.

  As I walked in, I half expected to see the smear of my blood on the ground from when I fell, but it was long gone. I set down my bag and stared at the home from the entryway, some part of me waiting for my father to come bursting out from his office.

  He didn’t, of course.

  I carried my bags up to my room, an echo of who I used to be. Nothing had changed, same clothing and outdated posters, same everything. I tore down the posters, creeped out by who I used to be, and then decided that was enough. Spooked from too much coming back to me too fast, I grabbed my purse and called a cab to take me to literally any restaurant.

  I ended up at a diner that my parents had turned their noses up at a thousand times. It was perfect, no memories of either of them, and no ghosts to haunt me. I walked in, wanting nothing more than to find a table and vanish into it, when a group of people leaving caught my eye.

  “Jamie?” I said, surprised. She looked up at me, her eyes widened for just a moment, so did the eyes of the other women, before they abruptly turned and left. Looking back at me only once they were outside, I saw them laugh between each other. Jamie, Laura, Sam, and Kim. They were my best friends; part of me still saw them as that.

  It struck me how quickly I had left town.

  How I didn’t keep contact.

  Feeling lousy, I slid into a booth and ordered breakfast for dinner. I didn’t think I’d run into my friend group from high school. We were all so close. I had been at Jamie’s house the day I had to leave. We were talking about our plans for the future. We had been such good friends. Jamie and I had known each other since elementary school—we had been inseparable. We had spent so many years together.

  I never thought they’d ignore me.

  Couldn’t they understand that I had to escape? My dad was dead, and my mom had killed him—or at least that’s how it looked—why would I be looked down on for that? I imagined that they were jealous, upset that I had made something out of myself and they were still just in our hometown, but that thought made me feel guilty.

  I hadn’t made very many friends in the last couple years.

  It’s difficult making friends when they already think they know everything about you from tabloids and television. Or worse when they confuse you with the characters you play. I dated a boy for a short stint who “accidentally” called me my character’s name on five different occasions. It was lonely too. Don’t get me wrong, the amount of cash I made off those movies would make most people sick to think about, but nobody I talked to seemed to actually like me. They wanted to know what I could do for them.

  Hell, I wasn’t even sure I liked me at this point.

  I had lost myself somewhere in the starlet cliché even though I didn’t fall into it. I didn’t turn to drugs, I didn’t go have crazy exploits, and I didn’t go from man to man. I was just lonely, and turning to booze more and more often than I would have cared to admit.

  16

  Adam

  When I finally decided to go talk to my manager about what I’d do after fighting it was raining. It was raining and awful, and although I would usually just jog the three miles, I decided that I should drive instead. I’d been a legitimate professional fighter for a year and I was exhausted and falling apart, I wasn’t sure what the next move should be.

  I felt my thoughts trying to drown me, so I turned on my stereo to block out their noise. The radio station was a rock one I usually kept on, and the hosts were talking about how a series of movies were cancelled. I caught the title of Brooklyn’s series mention and I turned it up.

  “Well, I don’t blame her Dave—if anything happened to my family I’d be desperate to get back home too,” one said.

  “It’s good that she’s focused on family, but she’s in a contract and it’s the final movie of the series. They’re saying she’s probably not coming back to it at all, she left the set one night and didn’t come back. It’s one thing if you need to leave to grieve, but you need to keep in mind she’s keeping a shit ton of people’s jobs up in the air,” the other argued.

  “It’s her mother, Dave.”

  “A lot of people have mothers Rob,” Dave laughed. “She’s stopping in the middle of the last installment of a three movie series. People have every right to be upset.”

  I stopped the car.

  Fuck.

  My mind was racing and I was having trouble keeping up with it. Her mom was dead and she was going back home. I had to too. There was no second thought, no process to decide. I turned the car around, ran up the stairs to my apartment, and packed anything I could in an hour. I wasn’t sure what else I could do. I needed to get to her immediately. The storm had picked up and it was next to impossible to get a flight out of California for the next couple days. A huge storm had settled in and wasn’t letting go.

  I didn’t want to wait for a plane. I had to do something, anything. I shoved my bag in my car and started driving. It was going to be a long one, but that didn’t matter.

  Memories and thoughts of Brooklyn started to flood back to me. She was so beautiful, and so smart. She was quick to think, quick to act, and she’d saved my life in so many ways. She had protected me and hadn’t even bragged about it.

  I’d found out that I killed her father the month her second movie had been released.

  She’d been interviewed and asked about her family. Some reporter had dug up information about her mother and about the case and Brooklyn had been open to answering questions about it. The media had been in a frenzy; morbidly curious about this actress whose mother had killed her father.

  I listened to that interview until I memorized all of her answers to the questions. I wasn’t sure if it was her mother’s idea or hers. I mean, it seemed like her mother was more than happy to be tossed under that bus, which was bizarre to me since she had been left in a mental hospital as a result. Although, I guess after being in a place like that for so long, even if she had told the truth people wouldn’t have believed her.

  I’d killed two people, and got another one locked up in a mental hospital until the day she died as well.

  I’d stolen an entire family from Brooklyn.

  While driving, the endless fields and forests and deserts slipped past me. I tried to think about what Brooklyn would think of me. I had killed her father. He was a bastard and had abused her and her mother, but he was still her father. I, better than anyone, could understand those conflicting feelings. Loving your father, the bastard who beat you.

  I was the reason her mom had been locked away for three years. I could
n’t help but wonder if her mother would have been dead if she wasn’t locked up. Maybe they would have caught the cancer earlier; maybe it wouldn’t have gone undetected. She could have gotten treatment, and maybe she would still be alive.

  I still couldn’t see her hating me. She was protecting me now, just like she had when she gave me that money and sent me off on the bus. She had put her own name and self at risk by not implicating me. She’d protected me by not telling me that night what happened. If she knew I killed her father and her response was to protect me, I had to consider that maybe her reaction about my father might not be so horrible.

  Which was insane, I’d killed two men.

  Two fathers.

  The roads were endless. All of them looked the same, each one eager to swallow me whole in exhaustion. I stopped only to eat, sleep, or fill up on gas. The drive from California to Georgia was thirty-two hours total. I decided to split it into three days, driving for ten or eleven hours a day so I wouldn’t wear myself too thin. I became a pro at finding radio stations when I neared cities, but there were long streaks of land and road where there was nothing but my own mind to contend with.

  I was going back to the town where I killed my own father.

  In the three years I’d been gone, I had tried to pay attention to any news from Georgia that I could find, but I wasn’t able to find anything about my dad’s body being found. Nothing on a nice car being pulled out of a lake either. I wasn’t sure that it ever was. Which means I’d be going back to the town where my dad was floating in some random lake. I’d have to be there knowing it, knowing what I’d did.

  I relived it every time I fought. Every time I slept.

  When I finally pulled into town I couldn’t decide what to do. Part of me wanted to go straight to Brooklyn, but the rest of me knew that I’d need to clean up first. I found myself driving straight to my dad’s place. The yard was perfectly manicured, a couple cars I didn’t recognize sat in the driveway, and a kid’s playset was out back.

  Someone had kids in that house. The one where I killed my dad. Tears began to bite at my eyes. I hadn’t cried in years, but thinking about the situation I put that family in messed me up. That was a small room, my bedroom, and it was probably one of the kids’ rooms.

  A kid sleeping in the room where I murdered my father.

  I felt nauseous and disgusted with myself and the situation. What the hell had I done?

  Squeamish and unsure, I drove to one of the only hotels the small town had. The town itself had hardly changed; I noticed a new gas station, new traffic lights, but not much can change in three years anyways. Small towns didn’t usually like to change.

  I dropped my bags off in my room, and then decided to go for a run to clear my mind. Past the high school where I first saw Brooklyn, and past the restaurants and stores I’d been in dozens of times in my childhood. Past it all. A couple miles into my run, I decided I needed to go ahead. It was time.

  I got back to the hotel, showered and cleaned up, and drove over to Brooklyn’s neighborhood.

  17

  Brooklyn

  I’d only been home a couple days, but I was finding myself more and more comfortable in the house. I decided I’d put it on the market as-is. I knew I probably wouldn’t get much money for it, murder houses usually don’t, but I didn’t want it in my name. I didn’t want to own this hell.

  I hadn’t been able to convince myself to go into the office. I didn’t think I ever would. Still, I felt safer in that home than in the town where nobody understood me. I’d given up on looking for Adam, he really had stayed gone. It was disappointing, but I couldn’t blame him for it, this town wasn’t a safe place for him.

  It was late, almost eight at night. The sun was beginning to set and I decided I’d need to go pick up food, or order in again. I hadn’t bought groceries so those were my only two options. Back home in LA, my food was delivered to me, and I had people who put it away for me. I tried not to think about what a charmed life I lead while my mother rotted away in the mental hospital.

  Leaving my room, I headed to the stairs, my hand on the baluster. It was beyond uncomfortable to think that all of it had started on those stairs. If my father hadn’t slapped me, if Adam hadn’t seen, etc. There were a billion different outcomes that could have spiraled out of a couple events like spider webs. I looked out the window, wanting to catch a glimpse of the setting sun, and something else caught my eye.

  Someone else.

  I could feel my pulse quickening, my eyes filled with tears, and I rushed down the stairs without any pause. He froze up when he noticed that I saw him, but I didn’t care. I yanked the door open and was soon out on the dying grass, my feet bare. I rushed into his arms, holding him tight and sobbing so hard. He paused for a moment before he hugged me back, his arms felt so warm.

  Adam was there again. Like he had been in high school, like he told me he did. He was looking after me again, even after I cut contact. Even after I lied to him and forced him to leave town. My best friends, the people I relied on for years, weren’t even there for me anymore, but he was. He was back and I was sobbing. He held me gently, embracing me and just letting me cry. He was so wonderful. My Adam.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled, laughing at myself slightly, embarrassed by my own behavior.

  “Shh, you’re okay,” he said back. His voice was deeper than I remembered, his arms were thicker. He’d been in great shape back on that night when we fled together, but now he was even more fit— more muscular. He was properly a man. I wiped my tears; glad I wasn’t wearing makeup to smudge, and pulled away from him a little.

  “Adam, I’m so glad you’re here,” I said softly, still wiping my face. He looked surprised, I wasn’t sure why.

  “Of course I’m here, the second I heard—” he started, and then drifted off.

  “You’ll come to the funeral, right?” I asked softly. He’d matured so nicely, I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. This man saved my life.

  “Yes, definitely,” he replied. He said it like a sure thing, like anything else in the world would be ridiculous, like he knew how much I needed him.

  I couldn’t help myself. I slid my hands to the back of his neck and kissed him. I needed to. He was warm, his lips were soft and his stubble was just scratchy enough. He kissed me back, softly at first, and then deeper as he slid his hands to my back. We stood there for a couple minutes, kissing. Finally. I had thought about kissing this man for three years. I had to catch myself to keep from crying again as we kissed.

  I loved him so much that I couldn’t imagine ever accepting that I’d have to live without him.

  I went three years and those three years had felt like an eternal hell.

  Now he was in my arms, he was holding me tight and we were kissing under the tree that he was standing under when he made sure I was safe. He was still keeping me safe.

  “You should come in,” I said softly, pulling away from the kiss.

  “Alright,” he said, his voice was a little rough and God it turned me the fuck on. I took his hand and led him to the door slowly. This would be the first time he’d been back in the house since that night. I wasn’t sure what to say or what to do that would make it easier for him, so I held his hand.

  The grass crinkled under his shoes and my feet as we walked, it was a night like this when it happened. Fireflies had been in the air then also.

  “It looks the same,” he said, sounding taken aback. I nodded.

  “It is, it hasn’t been occupied,” I explained, closing the door behind us. “I never got to actually thank you for saving my life,” I said softly as we both stared at the stairs.

  “You don’t have to—” he began, but I cut him off.

  “I want to thank you,” I said, smiling just barely. I lifted his hand and kissed it. He leaned down and kissed me again. His lips were perfect against mine as they danced, he slid his tongue against my lips and I parted them and rubbed it with my tongue. He had me up against the door th
en, the kiss deep and perfect, and I thought I would lose my mind, the kiss felt so damn good.

  I leaned into the kiss, loving that he had me pinned, and ran my fingers through his hair. He’d let it grow out a bit, it was long enough to get my fingers in and tug a little.

  His mouth left mine and was trailing kisses from my lips to my neck. I felt like I was dying. He kissed and nipped at my neck and I felt a moan escape my neck. I was too invested to be embarrassed.

  “Adam,” I moaned softly, one of his hands had wandered lower down my back. “The couch,” I said softly. The living room was just a few steps away. We broke the contact just long enough to get to the oversized couch. I was thankful there had been housekeepers in the home in the last couple days. If the house had been covered in dust this would have been a lot less sexy.

  He sat down and I let myself sink onto his lap, straddling his thighs as we kissed. I pulled my mouth from his just long enough to pull his shirt off.

  Holy shit he was ripped.

  He was beautiful, sculpted like a god, and my hands were on his abs immediately, I kissed him again greedily. He started to unbutton my top and I smiled, leaning back and letting him get a view. I thanked my lucky stars that I’d worn one of my sexiest bras, black with cream lace on the cups. His left hand cupped my breast, squeezing gently and sliding his thumb over my nipple. I gasped.

  He was so hot. I kissed him again, hard, our faces crashing together, I slid further up his lap and felt something that let me know he was as into this as I was. His right hand was on my hip firmly, I ground down against his crotch and the kiss faltered as he moaned into it. Both of his hands moved to my hips, he kissed me and we ground against each other for a couple minutes.