by Amity Cross
“Who died and made you the bouncer?” she shot back, looking me over with a sneer.
“Get out,” I snapped, pushing her toward the door with as much force as I could muster. “Take the bloody hint.”
“Bitch,” she hissed, wobbling on her ginormous stripper heels.
“Yeah, I’m a big, bad bitch. At least I didn’t sell my sister out to a rapist.”
Monica’s expression fell, and I didn’t have to shove her this time. She turned and wrenched the front door open, and for the second time that day, it slammed in my face.
Good riddance to stinky, pathetic trash!
2
Dean
I sat in my car, staring up at the facade of the Fitness First gym in Brighton.
It hadn’t taken much digging to find out where Monica worked. After Coach kicked his daughter out, she took a job working as a nutritionist at the chain of gyms. She’d been Linc’s and mine at Beat while we were training to qualify for the AUFC, and despite her sour attitude, she’d been good at her job.
Thinking back over my first few years at Beat, I allowed myself to wallow in the memory while I worked up the courage to get out of the car. Back then, Lincoln and I had been two delinquent teenagers in need of some discipline when we first rocked up to Beat. It was the typical story of fighting at school, acting out, and not being able to focus on study or work. We’d both been as bad as each other, using our identical looks to screw with little assholes who bullied younger kids. We fancied ourselves as vigilantes, fighting for those who couldn’t fight for themselves…and just because we wanted to beat the shit out of the turds we couldn’t stand. We had the best intentions but with pathetic execution.
The tipping point was the day the school counselor recommended we go learn some discipline. We wanted to fight, so maybe it was a good idea if we learned how…the right way with rules, technique, and the ability to know when to tap. Chance had it, our parents dumped us at Beat one night after school.
The first day I saw Monica Miller was the afternoon of our first MMA class. She waltzed in wearing her tiny pleated tartan skirt up around her ass cheeks with an air of ‘up herself private school girl.’ She was the prettiest girl I’d ever seen, and at seventeen, we were already well practiced in fooling around with the opposite sex, so I’d naturally thought about what it looked like under those black knickers she was flashing. Then she called Coach ‘daddy’ and things became interesting. The Coach’s forbidden daughter.
It was obvious she had eyes for Ash Fuller, her dad’s star fighter. Linc and I had already been wowed by the guy, and he’d been even more messed up than we were. He was the whole package and then some. Ultimate bad guy, good-looking, and fucking great at everything he picked up, so it was only natural she wanted him over me. Problem was, he didn’t want her back, not that it stopped her from trying again and again.
Monica had used me over and over again as a cry for attention, and I let her walk all over me. I was a hopeless asshole starved for attention from the one girl who was the Holy Grail of vaginas. Any scrap was good enough for a horny teenager with an overflow of anger and testosterone. She let me kiss her a few times, and once, when we were nineteen, she let me finger her in the change rooms at Beat, but that was as far as it ever went.
Monica and I didn’t have much in common, but the one thing we did was the fact we both had unrequited crushes. If she’d given up, she would’ve turned to me. If I’d given up, maybe I would’ve been a lot happier and found someone who gave a crap about me rather than floating from woman to woman like I did now.
Now I was twenty-six, and I still couldn’t let go despite the things she’d done to me and to her half-sister, Ren.
It was like she’d stood still while I moved ahead…but somewhere, in all those years, I’d left my heart behind. It was in the past while the rest of me had grown up.
It wasn’t like I didn’t have options. I was a pro fighter now with the body to match. Linc and I were both middleweight fighters, which meant we could afford to bulk up a little. A perfect balance of weight and movement, both in the cage and out of it. Sex came easy for a guy like me. I didn’t have to go looking for it. It came looking for me.
But it was the more part that was illusive. The more that I’d always seen with Monica.
Knowing I couldn’t sit here all day, I got out and approached the entrance. Since when did Dean Hayes back down from a challenge? Never. I’d won all but one of my fights since being picked up on the AUFC roster and had never once declined a challenge from another guy. Since when did something as fickle as my heart stop me from going after what I wanted? Never.
The automatic doors swished open, and I stepped into the gym, my uncertainty bleeding away to nothing.
On first glance, it was a rough-around-the-edge middle-of-the-road kind of place. Gyms like this catered for the middle class. People who wanted to do their posh yogalaties and cycling to dance music before they got on the train to go to work at their white-collar jobs in the city. There wasn’t a fighter in sight, and with just a cursory glance at the people hammering the weight machines, I could tell they were doing it wrong.
Shit, I hated places like these. People who were too tight to pay for some professional instruction. It wasn’t the gym’s fault, but sometimes, people just had the stupid gene, and who could fight nature, right?
“Sir?”
I glanced to my left at the reception desk and found a woman trying to get my attention.
“Can I help you?” she asked, smiling sweetly.
She wore a little blue polo shirt, her hair done up into a tight ponytail, and bright white trainers on her feet. Pretty, but not what I was here for.
“I’m looking for Monica Miller,” I replied, leaning against the countertop.
“Are you a member here?” the woman asked, looking me over.
“You’d remember me if I was, sweetheart,” I drawled, making her blush. “It’s personal. Is she here?”
“Her office is over there.” She pointed to a little alcove of private rooms to the side of the main reception desk. “Her door’s open, so she should be free.”
Pushing off the counter, I strode over to the open door before my senses kicked in and I turned tail and went back to the hotel. We were flying back to Sydney in the morning after having only a few days off from training to attend Ash and Ren’s wedding. Then it was back to the grind. I couldn’t believe I was spending my one free day to go see Monica, but I had to know.
Was she sorry for what she’d done to Ren, and was there anything there between us? After all this time, was it time for me to finally let go?
Peering in the door, I found Monica leaning over a tiny little desk, writing notes in a folder of some sort. Motivational posters and food charts were plastered around the room, a bookcase crammed full sat along the wall opposite her desk, and a filing cabinet was squashed into the space by the door. It was a five by six foot box of chaos.
Stepping into the maelstrom, I closed the door behind me, and she glanced up, her eyes widening when she saw it was me.
“Dean?”
“Hey,” I said, leaning against the wall.
She shuffled some papers, anything to avoid looking at me. “What are you doing here?”
“I train at Fitness First,” I replied, rolling my eyes. “Why do you think I’m here?”
She sighed and gestured for me to sit. “Look, I don’t know what I was thinking turning up at Ren’s wedding yesterday… It was a mistake.”
Pulling up the chair opposite her, I shrugged. “Yeah, dick move.”
“Did she see?”
I gathered she meant Ren, so I shook my head. “No. Only me and Josie saw you.”
She nodded, and the air became thick between us, the little office shrinking even further. Now that I was here, I didn’t even know what to say. I hadn’t thought this far because it had always been easy to talk to Monica. I hadn’t cared that much in the past, using bravado instead to try to impress he
r. Now we were all grown up.
I still didn’t know how to be an adult. That, I could admit.
“I’m trying to make a go of things here,” Monica said after a moment. “I’ve got a lot of clients who come in on recommendations, I get a nice bonus at the end of every month, and I’m even starting my own website and taking private consultations. Things are really starting to look up for a change, you know? After punishing myself for so long…”
“That all sounds great,” I said.
“I know I’m not welcome back at Beat. Dad made that perfectly clear. Honestly, I don’t know if I can ever repair the damage I’ve done to my family. I know what I did was wrong, and not a day goes by that I don’t regret it.”
“Then why did you show up at the wedding like you did? You had to have known it’d cause a scene if they saw you.”
“There was a part of me that wanted to see… That wanted to see if it was real. Despite everything, I couldn’t let it go. The feelings I had for him.” She snorted, turning her gaze on her hands. “I should’ve let go a long time ago. Then none of this would’ve happened.”
I narrowed my eyes, her words echoing what I felt for her. The whole thing was eerie.
“It’s over,” she said with a shrug. “All I can do now is try to move forward. At least, that’s what my therapist says.”
“You going to therapy?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. The powerful, don’t-give-a-crap Monica Miller on a shrink’s couch? I couldn’t picture it.
“Yeah,” she replied, glancing at me. “Things got really messed up.”
I was beginning to lose my nerve, so I did a typical dick Dean move. Leaning forward, I grasped her face in my hands and pulled her in. Her lips hit mine, and for a split second, nothing happened…then everything did at once.
Her head tilted to the side, and she kissed me back, and for one blissful moment, I felt it. The lust that had driven me all these years. Her lips parted, and I swept my tongue into her mouth, fully intending to devour her. I didn’t give a crap that she was at work and her next client could come through that door at any moment.
Then she seemed to realize what we were doing and froze. Her fingers wrapped around my wrists and tugged my hands away, breaking through the haze. She didn’t have to say anything. I got it. This was lust, nothing more.
Empty. Lust was empty…
“Dean…” she murmured, but I didn’t want to hear what she had to say.
“I guess I had to see if it was…” I began, beginning to feel like a dick.
“Maybe, maybe not,” she replied, her eyes not meeting mine. “But it’s not right.”
Deep down, I knew she was right. Standing, I ran my hand over my face, rubbing my lips before opening the door and walking out. Just like that.
Ignoring the stares from the woman at the reception desk, I strode outside into the sunshine and got into the car. Curling my hands around the steering wheel, I cursed and shoved down the urge to smash my fists into something. Out here, the air was clear and I could breathe again.
Despite all the warnings Monica’s own life had given me, I still couldn’t let go. Not entirely. It was a bad habit that wouldn’t quit. I’d wanted her for ten years, and it didn’t just go away. It was a dumb addiction, and I couldn’t seem to find the cure.
I guess what they said about me was true. Lincoln was the cool, calm, and collected one, and I was the hotheaded imbecile. Our brains had been split down the middle in the womb, and I’d gotten the dumb half.
Just my luck.
3
Josie
“I can’t believe you’re not going on a honeymoon!”
I stood in the middle of Ren’s fancy apartment with my hands on my hips and couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My best friend was the hardest working woman out there and totally deserved a three-week sexathon with her new hunky husband.
“We went to Thailand like…” She paused, twirling her finger around the end of her chestnut-colored ponytail.
“A year ago,” I finished for her.
“Has it really been that long?”
I sighed and sank down onto the leather couch. What I wouldn’t do for a three-week long sexathon right now.
The apartment was plush. I mean, it had everything and then some with its state-of-the-art kitchen, fancy furnishings, and location. It sat smack-bang over the top of Pulse Fitness, the multimillion-dollar fighter gym she co-owned with her husband. Glancing out the windows and across the outdoor patio at the Melbourne skyline, I desperately wanted to ask if I could move into the guest bedroom.
It was a palace that Ash Fuller had built for his one and only, and God, it made me want to puke with jealousy.
“Anyway,” Ren declared, sitting beside me. “I want to know what you were thinking yesterday.”
I grimaced and was suddenly glad I’d worn my flats today. Ren had her fighter face on, so I had to be ready to run and run fast.
“It just…came out,” I said, readying myself for the dash to the door.
“Couldn’t it have come out after the wedding? All I wanted was one day without drama.”
Little did she know, breaking up with Hamish was nothing compared to the atomic bomb I saved her from. Not that I was going to tell her.
“This whole place is full of drama,” she went on. “Just one day, Josie! Just. One. Day.”
“I’m sorry, okay?” I exclaimed. “It just came out like projectile vomit. Blargh!” I made hand gestures to go along with the vomiting part, waving them back and forth wildly.
“God, I want to throttle you!”
“You and me both.”
“He didn’t look to happy…”
I frowned, remembering the hurt that had flashed across Hamish’s face the moment I blurted the words ‘there’s someone else.’ The second they left my lips, I knew I’d stuffed up, but it was like an avalanche. There was no stopping it after that.
“I’d apologize…” I began.
“I’d leave him alone,” Ren shot back. “Knowing Hamish, he’d have gone straight to The Underground.”
The Underground was an illegal cage fighting racket that operated a stone’s throw away from Pulse Fitness in Abbotsford, a suburb in Melbourne, Australia. Nothing about the place was sunshine and rainbows, but it was where I’d first met Hamish ‘Goblin’ McBride. He was Ash’s best mate, so it was only a matter of time before our orbits crossed, and the moment I’d laid eyes on his ripped, tattooed body and my gaze met his stunning emerald eyes, I was a goner. Then the guy had opened his mouth, and his Irish accent was just the icing on the beefcake. Lots of icing with all the trimmings.
We fought constantly, broke up, and then got back together with a whole night and morning of marathon sex. Guaranteed orgasm for both parties. It’d happened so many times I’d lost count. The making up part had overshadowed the breaking up part, so by the time it came around again, we’d forgotten how shitty it was.
When things had started to get serious, I’d seen the reality of our attraction, but I didn’t want to acknowledge it. It was lust, plain and simple, and lust always faded in the cold light of day.
Hamish and I didn’t work long-term.
“Ugh, I feel like a big, fat, steaming turd,” I declared.
“He’ll be okay,” Ren said. “But I’m still angry with you. Angry as a bee in a jar that’s been all shook up.”
My phone dinged in my bag, and automatically, my hand reached into the depths of the chaos that was my purse and fished around for it. I had a certain tone for reminders, alerts, messages, and emails, so I knew the tone that just dinged. It was a Google Alert, which meant one of the Twins had been mentioned online someplace.
Since it was my job to look after their image and promotion, I was hardwired to check, no matter if it was my day off or not.
Pulling it out while Ren seethed on the couch next to me, I opened up the notice and almost choked on my own spit.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me!” I exclaimed, scr
olling through the news article.
“What’s going on?” Ren asked, leaning over, our argument forgotten.
“Fucking Dean Hayes is what’s wrong.” I handed her my phone and silently screamed into the void.
The cliff notes version was AUFC star Dean Hayes spotted at a Fitness First gym in Brighton, an inner southern suburb of Melbourne. The tip-off also supplied visuals—Dean walking into the gym, Dean talking to the receptionist, and Dean disappearing into an office. Some creep with a mobile phone and too much time on their hands had snapped the images and sent them to an AUFC online blog. One of the big ones with a million followers.
“Fitness First?” Ren asked slowly, her gaze lifting to mine. She knew what it meant already, but I still tried to weave around it like a stunt driver weaved around a set of witch’s hats.
“There are two things wrong with that,” I declared. “One. It’s off-brand, and the sponsors are going to crack it big time. Dean Hayes, AUFC superstar, at a Fitness First? I can’t even!”
“And the second?”
My shoulders sank, and the ugly ball of jealousy I’d felt the day before at the sight of Monica Miller rose to the surface again. That bitch just needed to go away and rot someplace else.
“You know what the second is,” I replied. “I don’t think it needs to be said out loud.”
Ren was oddly quiet, and I didn’t blame her. She fiddled with her wedding and engagement rings, turning them around and around on her finger.
“Do you ever think about her?” I asked carefully.
Ren shrugged, staring at my phone. “Sometimes, I guess.”
“Well, look at it this way,” I said. “You’ve got everything you ever wanted. An amazing man and your place.”
“My place?” she asked, glancing at me warily.
“Yeah, the place you belong. Your zone. Your calling. Your meaning.”
She stared at me in a daze, then nodded. “You’re right.”
