by Dani Wyatt
FIGHTING FOR HONOR
Book 5 in the
Worth the Fight Series
By
Dani Wyatt
Copyright © 2020
by Dani Wyatt
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof
may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever
without the express written permission of the publisher
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places,
events and incidents are either the products
of the author’s imagination
or used in a fictitious manner.
Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
www.daniwyatt.com
Cover Credit PopKitty
Editing Nicci Haydon
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For anyone who fights the good fight.
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1
Stone
“IF YOU SAY ONE MORE fucking word to my mother...” My jaw pops as I clench my teeth, a low growl tipping each word. “Just...fuck, man, don’t make me do this.”
Blood and rage rush in my ears as I ball my fists, eyes darting to my mother, who’s nervously watching the three drunk assholes from behind the bar. One of whom just called her a bitch.
Wrong. Fucking. Move.
It’s Friday night, the bar is packed, and it’s just me and my mom tonight. After my father worked until four AM last night closing up, he was so tired he fell on the steps going up to the front door of their house, an old Victorian two-story—their dream house—which he and my mom bought a few years ago to fix up after living above the bar for the last fifteen.
Unfortunately, funds have been limited and the fixing up part hasn’t made much progress. They used up all their savings buying the place and the bar’s income has been dwindling every year.
As for me, I’m still living right here, but not for long. Next week, I’m heading to Thousand Oaks, California. I got a job offer I couldn’t refuse, working as an account rep for a private security company that specializes in protecting the elite in the tech industry.
I got my degree in criminal justice, with a minor in information technology, from the local college while still working the bar with Mom and Dad, and combine that with my training in martial arts...let’s just say they’ve offered me more money than the bar makes in five years.
My goal is to get out there, work hard, build my resume, and eventually start my own gig. That is, after I help my parents retire, because this bar life is getting old—and so are they.
There’s nothing here in Plainsville for me except Mom and Dad, so starting over is no big deal.I’ve been a loner since I was a kid. Maybe it being the one that was bullied most of my childhood. Not sure. But making connections has never been my strong suit. Working in a bar hasn’t helped. Nearly every week it’s some dust up with family, husbands, wives...
Couples come in, they drink too much. This one’s looking at that one too much. Finding their significant other cheating on them...it’s constant and tiring. Gotta say, I’m a little jaded when it comes to the romance department.
When Dad fell last night, he twisted his ankle and got a knot on his head. Mom insisted on taking him to the ER, so they were there most of the morning. He got the all clear—more his pride injured than anything—but Mom threatened him with painful death, telling him he was staying home, feet up, the TV to himself, Advil on hand.
No negotiation.
So here we are. Just the two of us. And the place is heaving.
Fridays can be busy, but not normally this busy. Some bus, on its way back to Boston from some blog writers, social media news conference type deal, decided to stop in the great, nowhere town of Plainsville, Massachusetts, so the fifty or so passengers could whet their whistle.
The crowd forced most of the regulars out for the night. The locals like it quiet in here so they can tell the same stories to each other for the thousandth time as me and my mom smile through gritted teeth.
Normally we’d have Dino on hand. He’s the closest person to me, besides my parents, and works with us a few days and nights a week, mostly serving but also playing bouncer on the rare occasion it’s necessary, because everyone knows it’s better to have Dino dealing with your sorry ass than me.
But Dino booked tonight off weeks ago to go to some game, so it’s just me.
“She won’t serve me.” Asshole number one, with a missing earlobe on his right side, jabs a finger toward my mom standing under the old blinking Stroh’s sign, but I snap my fingers to bring his attention back to me.
“Hey, look at me, not at her. That’s exactly right. Nobody is going to serve you. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.” He sniffs and laughs, and heat courses through me as I feel the switch ready to flip. “Please, don’t make me fucking do this.”
That plea is genuine, but I don’t think they realize what is about to happen here. The three of them just look at each other with that arrogance and bravado that only comes from the bottle.
Assholes and fights happen when your family owns a bar. I’m used to it. But tonight? There’s another factor making this situation infinitely more difficult.
See, when the tour bus dropped off, I was in the back, stacking the cooler, totally unaware that we’d just been invaded by a horde of thirsty travelers. When I came out and scanned the room, my first thought was to help get Mom out of the weeds with me behind the bar and her taking orders at tables. Then my gaze hit the corner, two girls sitting at a table minding their own business, and everything around me disappeared.
I forgot to breathe. Pretty sure my heart forgot to beat, too.
When one of them flipped her chocolate brown hair as she turned her head, like she could sense me staring, and those crystal-blue eyes connected directly to mine, nearly dropping me to my knees. They were so bright, as though they were blue crystal lights aimed straight at my heart.
It felt like her hands slipped around the back of my neck in that moment, lips brushing my cheek as she whispered in my ear:
I’m finally here.
I swear it was like there was a ghost standing right next to me. I could hear her. Feel her warmth. Fuck, I even felt like I could smell her perfume. Soft, sweet...like cherries and vanilla.
My dick was hard in an instant. But before I could make my way over and let her know in no uncertain terms we would be getting to know each other a lot better, these assholes started shit with my mom.
That’s a hard line for me.
“Make you do what?” The tallest one pipes up from behind his buddy, interrupting my thoughts of this beautiful creature, and I grit my teeth, narrowing my eyes. Somehow, it feels like she belongs to me already, and I’ve not even spoken a word to her.
Yet.
These three fuckers have been here for hours, long before the bus pulled into town. We get that occasionally, guys from Boston or Lowell out on a road trip. Generally, they’re no trouble, but these three think they’re tough. They probably are too, from the look of their crooked noses and general attitude. They’re posers in my book. One of them wearing a TapOut ball cap, the other a VENDETTA t-shirt, and all three laughing too loud at shit I’m s
ure isn’t even funny. They could be fighters for all I know, the Ground and Pound Federation is the big show when it comes to MMA, but I don’t even follow it.
“Teach you manners,” I grunt.
I can feel the throbbing vein in my forehead, the pounding in my skull, as I try to hold back the monster that is about to come forth and rain down a fury on them that will leave them bloody and me bordering on homicidal.
No one disrespects my mother.
“Teach me manners?” Tall dude with the TapOut cap on laughs, making eye contact with his buddies, and they all turn to glare at me, thinking they’re intimidating as shit.
But I know things they don’t know.
“Last chance. I don’t want to do this.” Every muscle in my body is wound to the point of pain. I hate fucking fighting assholes in the bar.
But I will.
Half-ear steps forward. He’s big; not as tall as his buddy but heavier, tatted up and looking like a steroid mess. I overheard him earlier, before the bus got here, bragging about some cage fight where he dislocated his opponent’s elbow after he’d tapped.
Dick move.
From the odd angle of his nose and two deep silvery scars—one on his forehead, the other across one cheek—he does more than fight in the cage, because those kinds of cuts happen from bottles and knives, not fists.
“You don’t want to do this?” He mocks in a sing-song voice. “Aww, baby boy.” He sniffs and snaps his tongue against his teeth, taking a step forward, his chest bowed out like he’s in the Ground and Pound ring about to start a show. “Then have the bitch get us another fucking drink.”
He grabs the back of a stool at the bar and tosses it to the floor between us, and distantly I hear my mother screaming at him to get the fuck out, but it’s already too late. I take one more look at the corner where my girl is sitting, thanking every fucking god I can think of that her back is to me. I don’t want her to see this, but I know as soon as it starts, she’s going to see a side to me I wish no one did.
Especially not her.
The asshole slaps his hand on the bar, points a finger at my mother and opens his mouth to speak, but I don’t give him chance.
My switch flips.
My last thought before my fist connects to his face is, I’m sorry.
I wish I didn’t have to do this. Not in front of you.
2
Maggie
OH MY GOD, WHAT JUST happened?
Out here in the middle of nowhere, they’re here...
“Are you okay?” Dark eyes catch mine and my first instinct is to cower as the hands of the stranger that just inflicted a beat-down unlike any I’ve ever seen press down on my shoulders, sending waves of fear—and something else—down into my toes.
I nod, the ringing in my ears drowning out the chaos around me. Everyone is either gasping, staring in disbelief, or half-falling over upturned tables and chairs, feet slipping as they make their way toward the exit on a floor that’s now covered in spilled beer and cocktails.
And blood.
“You sure?” He waits until I nod, then visibly breathes a sigh of relief. “Good.”
Why he’s singled me out I’m not sure, but when the fight was over—and it was clearly over, with him the last man standing and them unable to retaliate—he looked directly at me and stomped in my direction until we were standing face to face.
When the fight started, all eyes were on the chaos, but for me, it was something else. I recognized the three guys taking him on. Guys my brother used to hang out with, guys from the underground fight scene.
And the same three guys that have been making less than friendly collection visits to my aunt’s flower shop in Boston.
“Be careful, there’s broken glass everywhere. Just stay here, we’ll get it cleaned up. I’ll be back.”
I nod again as he takes a long look at me, up and down, as though he is assessing that I’m truly okay before the woman behind the bar calls his name, waving him over as two police officers come through the front door.
Stone.
She says.
Stone. Stone. Stone.
I keep repeating it over and over inside my head and it sounds better every time.
“Can you believe this shit?” Catrina, my friend at the current affairs blog where I work, brushes her hands down the front of her t-shirt, gape-mouthed and wide-eyed.
I shake my head, my heart nearly slamming through my chest, but it’s not just the brutality and violence I just witnessed. It’s something else. Something that resonates whenever I look at the man that just nearly beat three monster-sized guys to death right here in front of everyone.
Something that is resonating down between my legs.
Catrina reaches down and pulls a chair back from our table—one of the few that is not toppled over—then takes a seat on a long sigh. “Didn’t think our little journalist-blogger legal conference would turn into a death match. That guy destroyed three guys at once. Look at that one in the black t-shirt.” She nods toward the three guys still on the floor of the bar. “His face looks like raw hamburger.”
“Uh huh.” My heart is racing. Memories of the fights my brother used to have come flooding back, filling me with that same anxiety and dread.
“Hey, are you actually okay?” Catrina gives me a wary look.
“I sort of know those three. They’re bad news.”
“Really?” Catrina’s eyes are wide as she looks up at me from where she sits. I’m no trendsetter. Not the girl that would usually be seen with guys like them. I’m sort of a cross between nerd style and wallflower, the type that doesn’t get a second glance from their kind.
I nod. “Yeah, from my brother, Sam. You know he used to be a fighter before—”
“Before he went to jail, yeah, you told me.” Realization focuses her eyes on them, then back to me. “Those are the guys you said you think set him up?”
I meet her look and sigh. The fight I just witnessed was unlike anything I’ve seen, either in the ring or even in movies and TV. My back may have been to the melee when it started, but there was no way to miss what was going on. It was brutal in a way I can’t quite comprehend. And that underground fight scene can get pretty brutal. I saw my brother fight a handful of times and I hated every single one. I knew he was hurting, taking it out in the ring, but what I didn’t know until it was too late is just how dirty that life can be, especially the underground stuff.
Well, he got dirty and ended up serving three to five.
And those guys? They’re a big part of that dirt.
“Jesus.” Wilson, another of our co-workers and the general definition of what’s wrong with most guys my age, sidesteps our way, taking a long draw on his Miller Lite. “That was epic.”
Who says epic?
He sidles up next to me, getting way too close as usual. He’s one of those that doesn’t understand the idea of personal space. Especially with me.
I step back, holding my arm out. “Three feet. Remember?”
He rolls his eyes. “Whatever. The more you try to pretend you don’t want me, the more I know you do.”
Bob Seger singing Roll Me Away is still streaming through the speakers as the chatter in the small bar calms, but most of our group are gathering their jackets and belongings as they head toward the front door.
As little as twenty minutes ago all I wanted to do was be home in my little five hundred square foot studio apartment, a few doors down from my Aunt Liza’s flower shop. It might not be much, but it’s mine, and I have everything I need right there. My bird, Unicorn; my bed; my collection of Disney DVDs; and two bushels of free cucumbers I picked up from a local farmer last weekend, just waiting to be pickled.
Now, even with the blood and the stink of spilled beer, my feet don’t want to move.
My thoughts are even dirtier than the floor of the bar though. Wondering if the guy who just showed me probably the most terrifying real-life fight I’ve ever experienced shows that much energy and passion
when he kisses.
Or when he fucks.
The heat courses over my face with that thought. I’ve never been one to really daydream or fantasize about sex before. I don’t remember ever really looking at a guy and wondering what his cock might look like.
Catrina huffs and stands. “Well, whatever, looks like the show is over. Time to roll on out of this Plainsville.”
This little town where our bus stopped for a break consists of two blocks of closed storefronts, a few antique shops, and a couple bars. It’s that kind of small town where everyone knows everyone and not much new happens, similar to where I grew up back in Rhode Island with my mom.
She was a waitress at the local diner until she re-married and moved to Maine to start a hemp farm. I didn’t blame her, she’s spent her life waiting tables, trying to keep the bills paid and raising two kids on her own. They invited us to come with them, but I had classes and Sam, my brother, needed to stay close to Boston.
He was trekking back and forth to Boston at the time, starting his fighting career while I finished school. My mom’s sister, Liza, lived there as well, so when I finished my degree and landed a job in the city, he decided it was time to move on out there full time right along with me. Together, we rented a little apartment from a friend of Liza’s a few doors down from her shop, and things seemed good.
At first, anyway.
So, yeah, I know small towns and small town gossip. I imagine this little fight will be the talk of this two-bar town for decades. I guess that’s deserved.
Violence scares me, like deep down in this visceral way. I hated it before, and that hatred has only grown stronger since my brother got dragged into the mire. He was born fighting, from what my mother always said, and growing up he was always ready to take on anyone and everyone.
Not having a father around was hard. Harder on him it seemed. No explanation, just disappeared one day when he was ten and I was four, never to be seen again. Sam felt like he had to be the man for all of us, and I think he always resented my dad for that. He had this anger inside him that needed an outlet.
