by Aly Martinez
Fighting Shadows
Copyright © 2015 Aly Martinez
All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without written permission from the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with others please purchase a copy for each person. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.
Fighting Shadows is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and occurrences are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events, or locations is purely coincidental.
Cover photo by Cover photo by FuriousFotog
Cover Model: Brendon Charles
Cover Design by Ashley Baumann at Ashbee Designs
Edited by Mickey Reed at I’m a Book Shark
Formatting by Stacey Blake at Champagne Formats
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Other Books
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Epilogue
Fighting Solitude
About the Author
Other Books by Aly Martinez
The Wrecked and Ruined Series
Changing Course
Stolen Course
Broken Course
On the Ropes
Fighting Silence
Savor Me
“WHERE THE FUCK HAVE YOU been?” a man’s voice growled as soon as I entered the conference room.
My eyes flashed to his for only a single second before I recognized them. The door had barely clicked behind me, but I already wanted nothing more than to bolt. My heart raced, and my mouth dried.
I have to get out of here.
“Um . . .” I stalled, giving myself time to formulate a plan.
“Sit. Down,” he ordered, pushing out the chair next to him, but there was no way I was getting that close.
“I’m good,” I said, taking a step backwards toward the door.
“Don’t even think about it,” he snapped. “I swear to God, if you so much as open that door . . .” His words might have trailed off, but the threat had been clearly stated.
I swallowed hard and slowly walked to the chair farthest away from him, perching on the very edge—waiting for the right moment to escape.
He looked down at the name badge around my neck and quirked an eyebrow.
“Victoria?”
“You can call me Tori if it’s easier.” I tried to fake a smile, but it only seemed to infuriate him.
He took several calming breaths, which did nothing to dampen the blaze brewing in his angry eyes. “I’ve been looking for you, Ash.” He snarled my name.
“Oh, yeah? Well, mystery solved. Here I am.” I pushed back to my feet, but I was halted when his fist pounded against the table. My whole body flinched from the surprise.
When the room fell silent, I slowly looked back up to find him staring at me with a murderous glare. Even while he was sitting down, I could tell he was huge, and as he held my gaze, the tense muscles in his neck and shoulders strained against the cotton of his grey henley. He blinked at me for several seconds before finding his voice again.
“You live in a homeless shelter,” he stated definitively, as if the words told a story all of their own.
And maybe they did.
“I work at a homeless shelter,” I quickly corrected.
Only he corrected me just as fast. “In exchange for a permanent place to live . . . in. A. Homeless. Shelter.” He enunciated every single syllable.
I looked away, because it was the truth.
A truth I hated.
But the God’s honest truth nonetheless.
Tears welled in my eyes, and I battled to keep them at bay.
My life was hard, but his being there made it infinitely harder. If I could just escape that room, I could disappear again. It wasn’t ideal, but neither was his showing up.
“I want you to leave,” I lied with all the false courage I could muster.
“I can’t do that. You stole something of mine.”
“Look, I don’t have your book anymore.”
A knowing smirk lifted one side of his mouth. “Liar,” he whispered, reaching into the chair beside him, revealing the tattered book, and unceremoniously dropping it on the table.
My eyes widened, and without a conscious thought, I dove across the table after it.
That was mine. Not even he could have it.
Just as quickly as the book had appeared, he snatched it away and grabbed my wrist.
I slid off the table and tried to pull my arm from his grasp. It was a worthless attempt though, because even if he had suddenly released me, his blue eyes held me frozen in place.
“Three fucking years,” he seethed.
“I had to,” I squeaked out as the tears streamed down my cheeks.
“Three. Fucking. Years, Ash. You took something that belonged to me.” He let go of my arm and pushed to his feet.
My mouth fell open and a loud gasp escaped as he took two impossible steps forward.
Pinning me against the wall with his hard body, he lifted a hand to my throat and glided it up until his thumb stroked over my bottom lip. Using my chin, he turned my head and dragged his nose up my neck, stopping at my ear.
After sucking in a deep breath, he released it on a gravelly demand. “And I want her back.”
My breath hitched.
I’d waited three years to hear those words.
If only I could trust them.
“Flint, please.”
I REMEMBERED IT ALL.
I heard the gun.
I felt the bullet.
I saw her fall.
In less than a second, my life as I knew it was over.
But, unquestionably, I would do it all over again.
For her.
“Flint!” Eliza cried from underneath me.
It wasn’t the way I had dreamed of at least a million times over the years. Her voice hadn’t broken in ecstasy. She hadn’t called my name as I’d been claiming her as my own, nor was it followed by confessions of love and declarations of forever. Instead, there was a sharp ringing in my ears and a tsunami of tears welling in her deep-blue eyes.
My heart was already pounding, but the earth-shattering pain on her face spiked my pulse even higher. I knew I had been hit, but that wasn’t what scared me.
“Are you hurt?” I rushed out.
“I’m fine,” she choked around a sob. As much as I hated to see her cry, the weight of my world disappeared with only two words.
“Are you sure?” I studied her, but she was focused on something else completely.
Peering over my shoulder, she lifted her hand off my back.
Blood dripped from her fingertips to the floor.
“Oh God!” she exploded, scrambling from under me.
“I’m okay,” I tried to reassure her, but as I attempted to push up off the floor, I knew my words were in vain. I was nowhere near fine. “I’m . . .” I started, but the thought was stolen from my tongue. Pain overtook me, causing me to collapse face first to the ground where Eliza had just been lying.
I desperately tried to keep myself from passing out, but it was a battle I was quickly losing.
“Flint. Stay with me. Just hang on, please,” she said calmly, kneeling beside me. But as soon as she sat up, her true emotions were revealed. “Help him!” she cried. “Please, God, someone help him!”
My mind was drifting, rendering me unable focus, but even amongst the chaos of Eliza pleading for help and security rushing into the room, I somehow homed in on the announcer’s voice on the television blaring in the background.
“I really expected more from Till Page in the ring tonight,” he said.
It was then that I was reminded of a pain far worse than any bullet could inflict.
Till.
Her husband.
The father of her unborn child.
My brother.
He deserved her, but damn it, so did I.
My eyes never left hers as her screams drifted into silence.
I awoke to a searing pain in my back, and panic immediately flooded my thoughts.
“Eliza!” I screamed as loudly as I could, but it came out as nothing more than a gurgle.
“I’m right here.” She appeared at my side. “Oh God, Flint. Don’t do that again. You have to stay awake.” She began smoothing my hair down.
“Eliza,” I repeated when further coherent thoughts failed me. I was terrified—I knew that much. But my mind fought to catch up and answer the why. “Are . . . are you hurt?”
“No. I’m fine,” she assured me, leaning down and kissing my temple—a gesture I would have killed to be able to return.
Instead, I blindly reached out to the side, searching for her hand. “Stay with me.”
Firmly grasping my palm, she vowed, “I won’t leave you, Flint. I swear.”
If only she’d meant those words in the way I would have liked. However, right then, as I lay facedown, bleeding on the carpet of an upscale Vegas hotel floor with a bullet in my back, I would take it.
It wasn’t enough.
But it would have to be.
She isn’t mine.
She never was.
As she whispered soothing words into my ear, I went willingly into the darkness.
I slowly roused back to consciousness. I couldn’t quite figure out where I was or why my throat felt like I had swallowed a truckload full of burning embers. Even through my grogginess, I could feel an ache in my back. It wasn’t until I spoke that I realized how fucked I truly was.
“Ewliz.” What the hell? “Elyz.”
“Oh thank God!” Eliza cried, suddenly appearing at my side.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I tried to pry my eyes open, needing nothing more than a glimpse of her dark blues. They held no superpowers, but I still believed they could heal me with a single glance. Hell, just knowing she was there with me worked miracles.
I tried to fight, but I couldn’t seem to convince my eyelids that light wasn’t the source of all evil.
“Shh. It’s okay. Just relax,” she whispered, reading my struggle. “Are you hurting? Do you need more pain medicine?”
“Nup. Juz you,” I said drunkenly.
“What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he talk?” Quarry whimpered from somewhere nearby.
I’d never forget how he sounded in that moment. His voice shook like that of the frightened child he never got to be. He might have only been thirteen, but he hadn’t been a boy in a long time. Just like Till and me, he’d been forced to grow up too soon. Hearing the inflection of fear in his voice cleared my groggy mind.
“Em good, Q,” I slurred on a laugh, even though nothing was remotely humorous about the situation.
I was lying facedown on a hospital bed, drugged out of my fucking mind, and pining over my brother’s pregnant wife. The same woman who was the closest thing to a real mother I’d ever known. The levels of fucked-up could not even be described.
On second thought, maybe laughing really was the right response.
My brother, Till, was quite possibly the best man I had ever met. He was only six years older than I was, but as far as I was concerned, he had always been a father to me. Lord knows that the man’s DNA I carried was not. My mother was a work of art, but my father was in a category all of his own. Clay Page was the reason I was lying in that bed and recovering from a bullet in the back, the reason Till had almost lost his wife and unborn daughter, and the reason Quarry had almost been kidnapped.
All I had left in life were my brothers, and in turn, I had Eliza.
If I could have been half the man Till was, I would’ve been better than ninety-nine percent of the male population walking the planet. God, I wanted to be as selfless as he was. But I wasn’t even close. Instead, over the years, I’d become increasingly jealous of his life and the way Eliza loved him. Sure, they had their fair share of problems, but they always weathered the storm together, never wavering in their devotion to each other. Only a year earlier, my older brother had suddenly lost his hearing—something that would have easily sent a lesser woman running for the hills. But not Eliza. She gave him unconditional love, and it stung so fucking much to watch her give it to him.
The older I became, the more I found myself consumed by guilt and anger. Guilt because no two people had ever deserved each other more. And anger because, despite knowing that, I wanted to shove my brother out of the picture completely. I wanted to own Eliza Reynolds Page in every possible way, but especially in the way where she never left me and loved me forever.
I wanted the comfort and security only she could offer me.
“Eliza?” I called as I went back to battle against my eyelids and was finally victorious. I was greeted by the sight of Till holding her tight, his arms folded around her swollen stomach.
“Hey, bud,” he cooed, visible relief washing over his face.
But I didn’t have eyes for him. Eliza stood in his arms with tears flowing in a steady stream down her cheeks.
My lips twitched in the most unlikely of smiles.
She always cries.
“You ’kay?” I mumbled.
“I am. Thanks to you.” She took a step forward, joining our hands.
I laughed, using our linked knuckles to rub her belly. “How’s ma baby?”
“What’d he say?” Till asked.
Eliza removed her hands from mine long enough to translate for him through sign language.
I attempted to roll over so I could have the use of my hands to communicate with him, but I was stilled by the sudden shouts.
“No!” they yelled as I tried to push up on the bed.
“You can’t move . . . I, um, I mean you shouldn’t move.” Eliza squatted down in front of me.
I lifted a hand to wipe her tears away. Her eyes were red and puffy, but as she brushed my short hair off my forehead, she’d never looked more beautiful. Her fingertips trailed over my skin, soothing my aches from the outside in.
“Let’s get you some more pain medicine.” She grabbed a red button off the corner of my bed and pressed it repeatedly.
I wasn’t in any real pain, but within seconds, my entire body relaxed even further.
She remained squatting in front of me, and her tears began to dry while she whispered soothing words I couldn’t quite make out among the myriad of beeping monitors. It didn’t matter what she was saying though.
She was there.
With me.
For me.
My vision was blurry, but time stood still as I stared into her eyes and slurred the words I had absolutely no business saying.
I had been harboring them for years. But
no matter how I tried, no amount of time made them right.
“I love you, Eliza. Soooooo. Fuuucking. Mush.”
Even drugged out of my mind, I knew that my admission was going to do more harm than good, but that didn’t slow the words—or the pain.
Maybe, if I just told her how I felt, I could let it go. Move on to a day when I wasn’t teased by the unattainable. It was a grand idea, but fruition was a different story.
She replied, “I love you too,” but I knew she didn’t understand.
In that second though, I needed her to understand. It wasn’t a choice.
For her.
Or me.
“No. I loooove you.” I exaggerated the word but not the truth.
“Shh,” she whispered, resting her hand on my cheek. “I love you too, Flint. We all do. Just go to sleep.”
We all do.
They wouldn’t after I was done. I was sober enough to realize that.
“No. Lizen to me. I . . . love you. Like Till loves you. Like . . . I-want-to-have-sex-with-you love you. Really. Gud. Sex.” I laughed.
“Oh fuck,” Quarry groaned.
“And marry you, and . . .” I stopped to lick my dry lips before spewing the ultimate slap to my brother’s deaf ears. “That should be my baby, not his.”
“Oh fuck,” Quarry repeated.
“Uhh . . . um . . .” Eliza stuttered, looking up at Till, who was standing only a few feet away.
“What? What’d he say?” Till asked, stepping forward.
“I said I’m in love with your wife!” I yelled for some unexplainable reason.
Well, maybe only unexplainable to them; I understood my frustrations completely.
Till needed the chance to hate me. He had given me everything in life and provided for me even when he’d had to sacrifice himself. I owed him the truth about the way I felt about his wife. Regardless that it proved what a dirt bag I truly was.
I lifted my one free hand in the air and began to sign out the letters, but Quarry stepped between Eliza and me and forced my hand against the bed.
“Yep. That’s enough. Go to sleep, asshole.”
“He needs ta know. Tell him fur me.”
Quarry lifted his hands and signed to Till without words. He said he loves us all, and then he got all weepy and called Eliza mommy. I’m just trying to keep him from embarrassing himself. That’s all.
