Battered Not Broken

by Rose, Ranae

  Ryan’s lips curved in a sly smile. “I hope you’ll cheer for me too, then. I don’t think I could lose if you were screaming my name from the audience.”

  His words produced an effect similar to being side-kicked in the gut by Melissa. Combined with his smile, there was no doubting he knew exactly how they sounded. “That’s not going to happen,” she said, careful to keep her tone cool despite the fact that her insides seemed to be burning up beneath his blue gaze.

  She started to step around him but paused to add something else for good measure before striding past. “I hope Cameron doesn’t pair you up with Sanchez again. He won’t take it easy on you next time – especially not in front of a paying audience.” The words did something to balance her internal equilibrium, slowing her palpitating heart just a little.

  The March air was even colder than her words. A gust of it threaded its way through her messy ponytail as she opened the gym’s front door and stepped out onto the sidewalk.

  “So what’d you think of the new guy?” Melissa asked, her tone light-hearted, as if she hadn’t been present for the exchange that had occurred only seconds ago.

  “Seriously?”

  Melissa donned a smile that was too knowing for Ally’s liking. “Seriously.”

  “He’s too cocky for his own good.” At first, she’d been impressed by his lack of gloating after the fight. Then he’d ruined it as she and Melissa had made their exit. Maybe acting like a smartass to the nearest woman was his way of gloating. “I bet Sanchez will wipe the floor with him on Friday.” She said it, but her heart wasn’t in it. It was still too easy to remember his chiseled body in the ring, so brutally efficient that it was downright graceful. Truth was, Sanchez would have his hands full if Cameron paired them together for the weekend’s fight.

  “Maybe you’ll get to watch him fight someone from outside the gym. Cameron doesn’t like to pair members together if he can help it – most of the guys participate because they want to test their skills against someone fresh.”

  “Maybe.” Melissa was right. The opportunity to test one’s self against a stranger was what attracted most of the guys to the fights. For some, it was an opportunity to measure and better themselves. For others, it was a testosterone-fueled battle of egos. Either way, the fights drew in crowds. If the events got any bigger, Cameron’s dream would outgrow his venue. They’d almost run out of seats the week before.

  “Too bad I have to work,” Melissa said. “I wouldn’t mind seeing him fight.”

  Ally arched a brow at her friend. “Because of his left hook, or because of his blue eyes?”

  The smug little smile that crept across Melissa’s face told Ally she’d walked into a trap. “So you did notice.”

  * * * * *

  “Hey, mamá.” Ally stepped through the front door of the modest little white one-story, three-bedroom house that had once been her father’s pride and joy, second only to his family. The smell of her mother’s enchiladas slipped over her like a warm blanket.

  “Hey, mija,” her mother, Maria, greeted her as she turned from the fridge to smile at Ally, a container of sour cream in hand. “And Melissa. I thought you might join us for dinner.”

  Melissa beamed. “You know I can’t resist your enchiladas, Mrs. R.”

  “Well, there’s plenty for all of us.” Maria slipped on a pair of oven mitts and pulled a baking dish from the oven, depositing it on the small kitchen table.

  What she’d said was true – the dish was more than full enough. She’d never stopped cooking for four.

  Ally pulled three plates and a handful of silverware from a nearby cupboard and drawer and quickly set the table.

  “How did things go at the gym?” Maria asked, placing glasses of water at three of the table’s four seats.

  “Not bad,” Ally said. “Mel and I got in some serious practice. Her kicks just keep getting better, and I swear her legs got even longer overnight. She nearly kicked my butt.”

  Melissa ignored the compliment as she took Maria’s cue and settled into one of the seats. “It was a pretty typical day at the gym.” She shot a teasing smile in Ally’s direction. “Oh – and a new member joined today.”

  “Another woman?” Wielding a serving fork, Maria began doling out enchiladas. She attended enough Harbor City MMA Events functions to know that Cameron was striving to attract more females to the gym.

  Melissa shook her head. “No, he’s all male.”

  Sensing her friend’s intentions much like a seismometer measuring the telltale waves that signal impending earthquakes, Ally sent Melissa a warning look.

  It wasn’t lost on her mother. “Did this boy give you any trouble?” She paused and frowned, her brows knit together.

  Ally was quick to shake her head, crushing her mother’s train of thought before she could begin to freak out. It was her mother’s greatest fear that being involved in MMA – definitely a male-dominated sport – would somehow lead to Ally or Melissa being accosted by some overconfident musclehead. “No, mamá. You know Cameron doesn’t allow things like that in his gym. Melissa’s just being a brat. She thinks the new guy is really hot.”

  “Your words, not mine,” Melissa countered.

  Ally took a long drink from her water glass and leveled an exasperated look at Melissa over the rim.

  “Oh, really?” Maria asked, still frowning faintly.

  After a few moments, she was finally forced to concede the truth. Sort of. “He’s pretty good-looking.” Not that it mattered.

  “And is he any good?” Maria had yet to take a single bite of her dinner. Instead, she sat poised with her knife and fork hovering in the air over her steaming plate of enchiladas. “At fighting, I mean.”

  “He beat Sanchez in a sparring match,” Melissa volunteered.

  Maria knew Sanchez – Ally had introduced her to him before, and she’d seen him compete at several of the events Cameron organized. “Hmm,” Maria said, as if unprepared to totally believe the praise. “Is he planning to compete in Cameron’s events?”

  Ally gave in and nodded. “Yeah. You’ll see him for yourself on Friday. If you’re planning on attending the match, that is.”

  “I’m planning on it.” Maria’s frown faded, slowly giving way to a sly smile. “This is the first time you two have come home from the gym and mentioned anything about a member being good-looking, and I’ve seen the men who train there. There are several of them who look like they could be on TV, if they didn’t have black eyes and busted lips all the time.”

  A muted thrill of embarrassment rippled through Ally’s consciousness. On one hand, she was glad Melissa had waited until dinner to begin her teasing rather than making a big deal out of Ryan Moore at the gym. On the other hand, she wanted to kick her own ass for being so obvious. If Melissa had noticed Ally’s reluctant attraction to the newcomer, it must have been obvious that she’d been staring at him back at Knockout.

  “It’s just looks, mom.” Repressing a sigh, Ally did her best to infuse her words with as much dryness as possible. “He’s not anything special – he seems like a smartass, and his back is covered in tattoos.” Her mother wasn’t fond of tattoos, and Ally wasn’t afraid to use Ryan Moore’s body art as ammunition. Not when Melissa was playing dirty.

  Maria’s smile disappeared as she sliced into an enchilada. “That’s too bad.”

  Even Melissa had the grace not to say anything – she’d known the Rivera family for years and knew exactly why Maria disliked ink.

  With a grim sort of satisfaction, Ally took a huge bite and washed it down with half a glass of water. No way was she going to spend the evening talking about the guy who’d told her he was looking forward to hearing her scream his name. Even if his blue eyes did send an unwelcome little shiver down her spine every time she thought of them meeting hers.

  Chapter 2

  The gym was too hot and smelled like sweat, but nobody seemed to mind. The place was packed, the Friday night crowd bigger than ever. Normally the larg
e brick building, which had formerly been a warehouse, maintained a permanent chill throughout most of the year. Even in the summer, it was pleasantly cooler than the outdoors. But the body heat generated by about two hundred spectators had sent the temperature skyrocketing.

  Cameron had found a substitute ring girl after all. A brunette Ally didn’t recognize paced around the ring in a skimpy bikini, wobbling on too-high heels as she held a large card overhead.

  Sanchez and Moore hadn’t been paired together. Instead, Sanchez launched into his last round with an unfamiliar man of similar height and build. They went hard at each other, fists and elbows flying, with the occasional kick hitting the other’s ribs with a heavy smack. Sanchez held his own, but Ally couldn’t help but wonder how Moore would’ve handled the same blows. Would he have been hit by the stranger’s last hook, or would he have dodged it like he had Sanchez’, his movements fluid?

  She pushed the image of Moore bobbing and weaving, his perfect body sailing through the moves like he’d been doing them his entire life, from her mind. She’d get to see him fight after this round. For now, she should be cheering Sanchez on.

  She did, and couldn’t help but feel victorious when he ended the match by tapping out his opponent. Another win for the team, or at least, that was how it felt. Most of the Harbor City MMA Events competitors were strangers to Ally, and she always rooted for the fighters that trained at Knockout, even if she only knew their names.

  Five minutes later, Moore was in the ring, looking just as she remembered him in black shorts, gloves and nothing else, save for his mouthpiece. His inked back drew her eye, and not for the first time, she found herself wondering what the words among the Celtic knots said. He bounced, shoulders rounded and perfectly-flat stomach pulled in. The words blurred, becoming that much more impossible to read. Still, she didn’t look away.

  He turned abruptly and his blue eyes found hers with uncanny speed, locking her in eye contact with him before she could look away.

  Her mouth went instantly dry and her stomach flip-flopped. Sitting there in a hard metal folding chair beside her mother, yards from the ring, she experienced a wave of nerves that would have been more appropriate inside the ring, like if she’d been the one facing the muscled man who’d just stepped over the ropes to glare at Moore.

  Moore gave Ally an unmistakable wink and turned to face his opponent, looking totally unfazed.

  When the fight began, his obvious self-confidence translated to hard blows and graceful dodges. He backed his opponent against the ropes and pummeled him with quick punches, eliciting the most enthusiastic cheer of the night from the crowd. None of the other fights had started off with such a bang. He maintained the lead throughout the entire round, taking just two punches from his opponent. Those landed on his ribs and didn’t seem to bother him at all.

  He moved as if he hadn’t felt them and drove his victory home with a well-placed left hook.

  Total knockout.

  The other man crumpled to the floor of the ring and Moore raised a fist in victory.

  The crowd roared with applause and approval, the sound echoing through the high-ceilinged gym and bouncing off the walls, amplified. Moore looked past the cheering spectators and straight at the one person who hadn’t made a sound throughout the entire fight – Ally.

  “Is that him – the one you and Melissa were talking about?” Maria’s breath warmed Ally’s ear and she nearly jumped out of her seat.

  Moore’s grin widened as Ally sank back down, settling into her chair once again.

  “Yeah,” she said shortly, pressing her lips into a tight line and refusing to let another word escape.

  “He’s very good,” Maria said. She didn’t say a word about his tattoos.

  Ally didn’t reply.

  Moore was allowed to rest before his second match.

  The audience watched the next fight more quietly than they had the last. As two heavyweights tumbled to the mat, the crowd talked more about Moore’s next match than the current fight. Speculation reigned and bets were placed. By the time it was Moore’s turn again, even Ally had already forgotten who’d won the two fights since his first match.

  The match started out less spectacularly than the first – clearly, his opponent had seen the first match and was wary – but was still intense. He and the other man labored to protect themselves from the other while delivering hard strikes. Neither pulled their punches when they did manage to make contact – Moore with his adversary’s jaw and the other man with Moore’s ribs. They both seemed to absorb the shock of the blows within nanoseconds.

  Moore gained the upper hand and began raining blows on his opponent, each strike resulting in the smack of gloved knuckles against hard flesh. High-low, he hit the other man in the ribs and face.

  And then he stopped. The punch he’d been halfway through throwing slowed, and he barely clipped his rival’s sweat-slicked jaw. It was like watching a movie in slow motion. His feet went flat as he swayed faintly to the left.

  The other man took full advantage of the bizarre pause and lunged at him, sweeping him to the mat with brutal efficiency.

  Moore’s entire body shook with the impact, but he was moving again in a moment, his limbs tangling with his opponent’s as the man tried to choke him out.

  He escaped the less-than-perfect hold and gripped the man by one sizeable bicep. A few moments later, he had him locked in an armbar. The man’s arm was stretched completely, his forearm trapped between Moore’s knees. His chances of escape were slim and the crowd knew it. An encouraging roar rose from the seats and several people shouted for him to finish it.

  Moore tapped the other man out a few seconds later.

  The crowd’s applause was thunderous, a sonic boom of joy and bloodlust that was sure to leave Ally’s ears ringing.

  When Moore rose, his sharp blue eyes picked Ally out of the crowd for the second time. He didn’t wink, but his half-grin was a little boyish and definitely triumphant – a combination that made the gym seem even hotter than the packed seats accounted for. Unwelcome butterflies erupted into flight in the pit of her stomach – she’d thought his smugness the day before had been bad, but this was worse. Mainly because she was pretty sure her face was the color of a red chile pepper, and her mother was bound to notice.

  “Wow, I’m burning up in here,” Ally said, rising from her seat and finally breaking eye contact with Moore. “I’m going to step outside for some fresh air.”

  “I’ll save your seat,” Maria promised.

  The March night air was cold bordering on frosty – perfect. She stood outside the gym door and leaned against the brick wall, taking a deep breath that cleansed her lungs of the hot, sweat-scented air she’d been breathing in for the past hour.

  She’d been outside for maybe five minutes, focusing on clearing the stale air from her lungs and thoughts of Moore’s blue eyes from her mind when the front door swung open beside her.

  She sidled to the left without looking, making way for whoever had come outside – probably a smoker wanting to have a cigarette between matches.

  “Hey.”

  One syllable and she knew the voice didn’t belong to a smoker.

  She turned, inexplicably overheated again, as if she were back inside the gym instead of outside, where it was maybe forty-five degrees.

  Moore had pulled on a sweatshirt. The hood cast a shadow across his face but couldn’t hide his vivid eyes or the small smile he was directing at Ally – an echo of the one he’d flashed her from the ring.

  “Hey.” She usually didn’t have trouble voicing her thoughts while meeting someone’s eyes, but it was a struggle when he smiled like that. The way her breath caught in her lungs made it feel like she was running up hill. Gathering her resolve, she stared right into the blue-rimmed pools of his irises. It wasn’t like he was Prince Charming – he just looked like it when he flashed that deceptive smile. “That was some serious ass-kicking. Cameron’s never going to let you skip a Friday now –
you know that, right?”

  His smile stretched into a grin. “That’s all right with me.”

  She arched a brow, trying to appear cool on the outside while her insides simmered. “Really? No work or family obligations to keep you from showing up here every week?” The prize money paid out by Harbor City MMA Events was far from enough to live off of, so most of the guys missed Fridays here and there, usually due to their jobs. And she’d heard more than one of them grumble about having to stay home with the kids while their girlfriends or wives worked Friday night shifts.

  “I’m a roofer – we quit when it gets dark. And family? No. I’m free to spend my nights however I choose.” Was there the barest hint of a suggestive note in his voice, or was she imagining it?

  Either way, she pretended not to notice. “Oh.” The lame reply was all she could come up with as she stood there imagining what it would be like to see him dominating the ring every Friday night, his muscles glistening with sweat beneath the intricate knots of ink that spanned from his shoulders to his hips.

  “About how I spend my nights…”

  She definitely hadn’t imagined the suggestive edge to his voice. It became overt as he leaned on the wall, bracing himself against the brick. “Want to get something to eat after the fights are over?”

  His question hit her like a pulled punch to the gut – light but startling – though it hadn’t exactly come out of left field. “I can’t. I came here tonight with my mother.”

  He was silent, but his breath froze in front of his lips, forming a cloud of vapor that might have been a silent sigh. “Another time, then. Like I said, all my nights are free.”

  “I don’t date strangers.” Her lips felt strangely stiff as she spoke. “Sorry.”

  Another silent moment and puff of frozen breath. “All right. But I won’t be a stranger forever. You’ll be seeing a lot of me, even if it is just at the gym.”

  He might not know how to take no for an answer, but he knew how to make her shiver. A frisson zipped down her spine as his promise rang in her ears. “I’m going to head inside. It’s cold out here.”