TKO (A Bad Boy MMA Romance)

by Olivia Lancaster

  Our travel bus had stopped at a fill-up station when I checked my phone to see several missed calls from Alice. Confused, I had called her back immediately. In a parking lot near the California border, I crumpled to the pavement and burst into inconsolable tears. Alice hysterically explained to me that Dad had been involved in a terrible car accident. The driver of an eighteen-wheeler fell asleep at the wheel after two straight days of travel, careened into an intersection, and smashed my Dad’s old Lincoln town car into a concrete guard rail.

  He was dead within minutes of arriving at the hospital, leaving Alice alone and panicked in the waiting room, suddenly an orphan.

  So I had immediately cancelled my summer plans, putting my career on indefinite hold, and returned home to arrange the funeral and take over guardianship of my sister. Since then, it had been a back-and-forth struggle to become financially stable and keep Alice in line. For a while after Dad died, Alice just shut down, spending hours in bed just motionless and silent. Both of us got grief counselling. I couldn’t afford to lose Alice, too, so I did everything I could to draw her back out of her shell. I loved her so intensely and unconditionally, refusing to let her recoil from the world, until slowly but surely she returned to her former self. In fact, she even picked up a surprising new hobby: ice skating.

  Now the two of us were the best of friends, and even though it was a struggle, we had settled into a kind of routine that worked for us. I was content to split my time between Alice and my work at Fighting Chance, the latter of which gave me a chance to still be involved in sports, even if I couldn’t be the star athlete I wanted to be. I still kept myself in great shape, though. I mean, how could I possibly gain the trust and respect of a client if I didn’t walk the walk?

  Even though I was impossibly tired, I couldn’t let today be any different. So I held my head high and tried to perk myself up as I walked into the gym. My best friend and fellow physiotherapist, Trina Thompkins, came out of a side office and fell into step beside me. She gave me a welcoming smile and nudged my arm.

  “You look a little tired, Gemma. You okay?” she asked, perpetually concerned about me. She was my closest confidante, besides Alice, and she knew how hard I worked. I was new to Fighting Chance, the youngest and least experienced of the therapy team, and Trina was a seasoned professional, several years older than me. She was tall and leanly muscled, with gorgeous cinnamon-brown skin, thick black braids that fell to her mid-back, and friendly eyes.

  “Late night,” I replied, trying to wave her worries off with my hand. I had to prove myself tough and resilient enough to handle this job alongside my duties as Alice’s guardian. But I should have known by then not to worry about proving myself to Trina. She already knew what a hard worker I was. She was constantly trying to get me to take days off and relax a little.

  “Alice?” she commented, raising an eyebrow.

  I laughed weakly. “Yeah. As usual. Art history project.”

  “Due today?”

  “Naturally.”

  Trina shook her head sympathetically. She had two kids of her own, both young boys, so she understood just how much effort went into parenting. However, she was also lucky enough to have a doting, attentive husband who was an ex-fighter and a former Marine. He had struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder a year ago when he returned from Kuwait, but apart from that, he was a model husband and father. Dequan Thompkins was still somewhat of a legend around here, and every time he came in to work out or just to surprise Trina with a visit from him and their kids, at least one person came up to shake his hand. I loved the Thompkins and regarded them almost like extended family. Alice sometimes babysat the little boys, Jayden and Trey for pocket money when Trina and Dequan wanted a night out for themselves.

  I hadn’t even been here at Fighting Chance very long, but I was already treated like a valued member of the family. And my boss, Danny Gilchrist, was a fantastic supervisor, always looking out for his employees and clients alike. Ever since he found out that Alice and I were on our own, I think he kind of subconsciously adopted us as his surrogate daughters. I certainly wasn’t going to complain about that. It was nice to have an older guy around who genuinely cared about me and my sister, without some shady ulterior motive.

  Back when I first entered physiotherapy training a few months after my father’s death, I had the misfortune of getting involved briefly with an instructor at my technical school. While Danny saw me and my vulnerability and immediately wanted to shelter and protect me, the instructor at physiotherapy school saw me as an easy target. I was still somewhat in a state of shock from Dad’s passing a few months prior, and I was obviously pretty lost. I had no real idea of what to do with my life. I had no clue how I was going to support Alice and myself long term, as I was just working part-time at the front desk of a local gym at that point to make ends meet. That’s why I went into physiotherapy in the first place, someone at the gym where I worked tipped me off to a new course starting up, told me it might be a good way to kickstart a more reliable career. With nowhere to go and everything to lose, I signed up that same day.

  The very next day I showed up for the course with no idea what was going to happen. I had always been in the position of athlete, not trainer. I was always the patient, not the medical professional. And the main instructor, Dr. Warren, seemed to take a liking to me from the first second I walked in the door. He was a former bodybuilder himself, still impossibly strong and muscular. He could have broken me in half or tossed me like a javelin with ease, even though he was pushing fifty by then. I was only twenty-two, slender and sleek from years of professional running, and I must have looked like a fresh daisy waiting to be plucked.

  So he did.

  Within the first week of the course, he asked me out to dinner several times until I finally gave in. I hadn’t been looking for a relationship, or even a fling. I was so numb and confused at that point in my life, the last thing I needed was a confusing, complicated entanglement with an older guy who also happened to be my teacher. The other students whispered and snickered, picking up on the obvious tension between Dr. Warren and me. The whole ordeal was incredibly uncomfortable, sometimes even humiliating. People accused me of making good marks purely because I was sleeping with the teacher.

  But we only slept together once. And I didn’t even want to do it. Up until my father’s passing, I had been dead-set on making running my life’s ambition. As a result, I had never even been on more than a few innocent dates as a teenager. So when Dr. Warren swooped in on me, nearly thirty years my senior, I was unsuspecting and totally defenseless prey. Once the rumours about the two of us got to be unbearable, I finally broke things off for good and went to the head of the technical school. Needless to say, Dr. Warren was relocated to a different school. He continued to badger me for weeks, but after a month or so of silence from me, he finally gave up and let me go. Despite all of this, I managed to complete the course in record time, and with flying colors. I was dedicated to making physiotherapy work out for me-- it was my only chance at carving out a successful, comfortable life for Alice.

  Now, I was terribly grateful for Danny Gilchrist’s authentic, innocuous tutelage, especially in comparison to the older male mentor I thought I’d found in Dr. Warren years before. Trina clucked her tongue at me, shaking her head.

  “Girl, you have got to get some sleep. I don’t mean to be rude, but you look like you haven’t slept in days. Why don’t you and Alice come stay with us this weekend? Dequan can teach her how to fish, and you know the boys would love to see the both of you,” she offered sweetly. They had a lovely little house near a pond on the outskirts of town in a quiet suburb. Alice loved it out there, away from the neon lights and constant hubbub of the city.

  “Hmm, maybe. Depends on whether she gets her homework done by Friday,” I replied, stifling a yawn. “And I’m fine, I swear. I just need a morning workout to get my blood flowing or something.”

  Just then, Danny peered around a corner and beckone
d to me, his salt-and-pepper moustache twitching as he smiled. “Good morning, ladies,” he greeted in his deep voice. “Trina, your first patient will be in around nine-thirty, and I think Mrs. Smythe is coming in this afternoon for her aquatic therapy.”

  “Got it. Thanks, Danny,” Trina said brightly. She gave me a wink and headed into her own private office to set up for the day. Then Danny looked at me and waved his hand to call me into his office. I hoped I wasn’t in trouble or something. I tended to jump to the worst conclusions without much provocation. It was something Alice gave me hell for all the time. “You gotta stop assuming the worst, Gem. You’re gonna give yourself a heart attack worrying about everything,” she told me more than once.

  I followed Danny into his office and he shut the door behind us before taking a seat in the cushy black swivel chair behind his desk. “I need to talk to you about an important assignment,” he told me, folding his hands on the wooden surface in front of him. I nodded and sat down across from him, my heart starting to race. What important assignment? I was both nervous and excited; I’d been waiting for months to finally be taken seriously as a therapist.

  “Okay, shoot!” I said, maybe a little too enthusiastically. Danny beamed at me.

  “Gemma, you’re our newest staff member and your workload is the lightest at the present moment, plus you’ve proven yourself to be an excellent physiotherapist. So I have selected you as the best choice for a new client we’re taking on. He trains here pretty regularly, and you may have heard of him. But I need you to refrain from making a big deal about his, ah, celebrity status. Okay?”

  I blinked a few times, struggling to take in this information. I was going to be working with a guy famous enough to merit the term “celebrity status”?

  “Who is it?” I asked, furrowing my brow.

  Danny sighed. “His name is Marc Montoya.”

  My eyes grew large and round with surprise. I’d never been as much into the fighting scene, since my specialty was running, but even I knew that name. Montoya was a well-established MMA fighter with countless wins under his belt. I’d never seen him around the gym before, but then again, I usually spent all my time in the medical offices except for when I did my early morning workout sessions.

  “Wow,” I breathed. “He--he’s coming here for therapy?”

  Danny nodded and replied, “Yes. He injured his left shoulder and hip during his last fight. He won, but he needs to reduce the damage to his body before taking on another tough match. As I’m sure you know, he keeps a pretty tight fighting schedule since he’s a big name right now. Since you don’t have any other major commitments in the field right now, I want you to be his therapist. Do you think you can handle it? If not, I can see if maybe Robert can--”

  “No,” I interrupted. “Uh, I mean yes. I can handle it. I’ll do it. Definitely.”

  Danny gave me a firm nod and a wink. “I know you’ll do great. I’ll just warn you, though, Montoya has a reputation of being kind of… difficult to work with at times.”

  I frowned slightly, my former elation simmering back down to the usual worry.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, a little suspiciously.

  “He’s a good guy overall. But, you know, he comes from a sort of bleak background and he had to work his ass off to rise through the ranks and overcome that, and I think he’s still got that chip on his shoulder. You’ll see what I mean. I have no doubt that you’ll be able to take him on, though,” Danny finished, trying to assuage the concern evident on my face.

  “Well, if you think I can handle it, then I’ll prove to you I can!” I replied, determined to live up to Danny’s expectations of me. I just hoped I could live up to my own expectations for myself, which had always been much higher than anyone else’s.

  This was definitely going to be interesting, I thought to myself as I left the office, suddenly feeling quite a bit less tired than I had earlier.

  Little did I know just how much of an understatement that was going to turn out to be.

  CHAPTER 3 - MARC

  Even as I tried to reach out my arm to hit the alarm as it blared, my muscles sent out a bolt of pain in protest to the slightest movement. So for a few moments at least, I just let the damn phone alarm ring while I stared up at the ceiling angrily.

  Finally, I willed myself to contort my body awkwardly to reach the fucking thing and shut it off before rolling over and putting my feet on the ground, taking a moment to get my bearings.

  This was bad. I couldn’t remember a time I’d ever felt like this before, and even in the comfort of my own apartment, I didn’t like it.

  It had been two days since the injury, and while I had spent yesterday resting up in bed, icing the injuries to try and get the swelling to drop, today I had to go meet my new physiotherapist.

  The new apartment, though, was one of the few things that could dull the blow of this whole experience. The emcee at my big fight hadn’t been exaggerating when he said I came from a patch of dirt in New Mexico. To say that I had humble beginnings was to put it lightly. My grandmother’s little farmstead barely supported us, and I had a stiff mattress with an itchy blanket in a cupboard of a room to look forward to every night after a dinner of meat and potatoes. It was a hard life, but it was part of what made me into the man I became, so I never looked down on it, and I damn well didn’t let anyone look down on me for it—not that anyone had the guts to do so.

  Still, growing up like that gave you a certain set of expectations out of the world. And when I started getting bigger and bigger in the world of Mixed Martial Arts, my world changed so fast I hardly knew how to handle it. In all honesty, I still didn’t.

  My Las Vegas apartment couldn’t be more different from what I was used to. It was like living in a palace. Located in an upscale part of town, by the glitzy standards Vegas had, it couldn’t have been in a more central location. The sleek black tile floors contrasted sharply with the full-panel windows that gave me a full view of the bright, colourful lights in the streets below from my penthouse. I made sure the place had excellent lighting; dim lights might have been more fashionable for a place like this, the interior designers told me, but personally, I preferred a full view of my living space.

  When I first moved in, the place was a very modern-looking, upscale place, but really, I would have preferred something more rustic. I kept the living room and kitchen as they were, since most of the Vegas crowd I’d entertain for would prefer that kind of look, but I already had the interior designers do a number on my own room.

  The floors were hardwood, and the smell of hand carpentry filled the air as I stood up from my ranch-style bed and made my way across the cabin-like interior. The room was pretty minimalistic, but that was by design. A lot of money went into this place, and even more went into the wardrobe.

  I headed into the shower, and as the water started running, the sensation made me want to just fall asleep against the cool glass.

  My muscles might have been seriously injured, but my body still looked intact. Hot water ran down every rippling muscle of my tanned body, from bulging biceps and forearms to the rock-hard pack of abs I’d worked so hard to hone. My body was a fighting machine. It always had been. A measly injury wasn’t going to keep me down.

  Then why did you wince when you got out of bed?

  I looked at myself in the little mirror I hung in the shower, steam half-obscuring my reflection while the hot water warmed my muscles to the bone.

  Weakness in general was disgusting to me, but worse yet was my own weakness. The idea that I couldn’t rely on the body I’d put so much work into, holding me back… I would never admit it to anyone, but it was a bigger fear than any opponent could hope to strike into me. For the first time, I didn’t like what I saw looking back at me in my reflection.

  Injury. Frailty. Brokenness.

  But I wasn’t going to let that kind of broody shit get in the way of my training regimen. After a quick wash, I dried myself off and got dressed.

&
nbsp; Designer clothes were one of the biggest novelties for me. Hell, everything about spending big in a city like Vegas was a novelty for me, but I was a guy who was used to hand-me-down clothes and special trips to the thrift store every now and then. Who knew a good pair of new jeans came that expensive?

  For my part, though, most of my getup during the day comprised of my workout clothes. Today, I was sporting the usual gray tank top, black shorts, and black trainers. After a quick breakfast of a protein shake, a peanut butter and banana sandwich and some Greek yogurt, I started packing a change of clothes into my gym bag, but as I did, a jolt of pain in my shoulder told me I had to be more careful.

  Fuck.