Broken: An Alpha Bad Boy MMA Romance

by Scarlet MMA, Simone

  As if reading her mind, Silas looked across at her and asked: “You’ll keep in touch, right? Skype? Email?”

  “You bet I will, hun,” Lyssa forced herself to smile. “Somebody’s got to look out for you.”

  She licked the tip of her pen, and pressed it against the paper of her notepad – poised to write.

  “Come on then,” she sniffed, trying desperately to hold her shit together. “Let’s get this interview done.”

  Chapter Sixty Seven

  Lyssa

  That evening, Celestina and Alberte pulled out all the stops. They cooked a delicious pork dish, opened a bottle of Gran Reserva older than she was, and toasted to the time Lyssa had spent with them in Spain.

  “We’re going to miss you, Lyssa,” Celestina blinked away tears, as they raised their glasses around the table. “You’ve been part of bringing this family back together again. It’s like you’re part of it now.”

  Sitting back in his seat, Alberte looked pointedly at Silas, and then back at Lyssa.

  “You know, you could be part of it,” he snorted. “If you two would pull your heads out of your culos.”

  “Ssssh,” Celestina hissed, nudging her husband in the ribs. “You’re embarrassing her.”

  And that was true enough. The look Alberte had given them – unequivocal confirmation that he knew exactly what had happened between the two of them – made her feel self-conscious and squirmy.

  But, worse than that, it had made Lyssa think about it: The possibility that maybe there was something real between her and Silas, and that maybe getting onto that plane tomorrow would be a mistake.

  She shook her head angrily. She had responsibilities back home – and she’d sworn off MMA fighters, after her humiliation at the hands of Travis and Nikolai.

  What had happened between her and Silas was destined to be nothing but a delicious memory.

  Raising her glass, Lyssa turned to the Batras family, and purred: “Thank you all. You’ve made me feel so welcome here.”

  She turned to Alberte.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay? With the Buenaventuras and all?”

  “They won’t dare mess with us,” Alberte grinned. “Not with my little brother back on his feet.” And the smile he gave was confident and reassuring.

  “Well, they’d better not,” Lyssa sipped her wine. “’Cos if they do, it won’t be the MMA super heavyweight they’ll have to worry about. It’ll be a little girl from Jersey.”

  The family laughed, and that let Lyssa blink away the wetness in her eyes, and pretend that they were tears of mirth.

  * * *

  Much later, as Celestina and Alberte put the boys to bed, Silas cornered Lyssa in the kitchen.

  His big hands gripped her shoulders, and he hauled her round; forcing her to look into his big, brown eyes.

  “You know, they’re right,” he murmured, referring clearly to his brother and Celestina. “You don’t have to go.” He squeezed her shoulders with his huge hands. “Maybe you could stay. I mean it.”

  Lyssa looked up at him, into his big, brown eyes.

  She wanted to say yes. She desperately wanted to say that she’d stay with this big, handsome, intoxicating man.

  But the truth? She was scared.

  This had never been on the cards. When she’d booked her tickets to come to Spain in the first place, she’d never thought that it might end in this.

  It was all too much. Too scary. Coming at her like one of the punches Silas had weathered in his long career in the MMA octagon.

  “N-no,” she blinked away tears. “I can’t.”

  But for all the life of her, she couldn’t think of a reason why she couldn’t stay. She was just too terrified to say ‘yes’, despite how much she wanted it.

  Silas opened his mouth to respond, and Lyssa knew he was going to try and talk her out of it. She didn’t know if she could stand that - it would be too much.

  So, instead, Lyssa reached over and slipped her slender fingers into his big, calloused hand.

  “Come upstairs,” she murmured, biting her bottom lip. “We’ve got all night until I need to catch my plane tomorrow – and I can catch up on sleep during the flight.”

  And reluctantly, Silas followed her.

  Part Three

  Jersey City, New Jersey

  Chapter Sixty Eight

  Lyssa

  Lyssa’s entire apartment rattled as the PATH train shuddered past.

  The windows shook, the floorboards creaked, and with a crash one of the pictures on the wall finally fell and shattered on the ground.

  With a groan, Lyssa pulled the pillow over her head, and squeezed shut her eyes.

  Fuck.

  Fuck, she repeated, as she blinked the sleep out of her eyes. She was back again. Back in America, after those two delicious weeks in Spain.

  Back, and it was Monday.

  The sound of police sirens wailed outside of her apartment window. The neighbors were already shouting. Even worse, Lyssa knew her alarm would start going off in just a few minutes.

  Welcome fucking home, she thought to herself.

  With a groan, Lyssa threw back the covers and clambered out of her rickety bed. She might as well give herself a few minutes head-start on her alarm, she figured.

  Padding barefoot across the floorboards, she stepped into her tiny closet-like bathroom and turned the taps on above the bath.

  The pipes rattled. A moment later, a spurt of rusty brown water flooded the tub. She let it run until it was clear, and then cranked the lime-scaled knob until the showerhead started running.

  Fuck, Lyssa groaned to herself, as she stepped under the scalding water. This sucks.

  For the past few months, she hadn’t spent much time in her shitty studio apartment. She’d spent so many nights over at the luxurious brownstone Nikolai and Travis shared, in Brooklyn, that she’d joked her Jersey City crib was nothing more than a rent-controlled storage locker.

  But now she was back; and the cold, hard reality of trying to make it in New York City on a journalist’s salary was hitting her hard again.

  As she stepped out of the shower, Lyssa grabbed her phone from the dresser, and checked her Facebook.

  A bunch of friends had liked the pictures she’d posted from Spain. Her mom had sent her another friend request (she deleted that one.)

  And then she saw something that made her pulse race.

  A message from Silas.

  Novio! I hope you are back in America safe and sound. Let me know how you are. We all miss you already.

  Lyssa gulped dryly as she read the message.

  Had she made a horrible mistake, coming back here? And, more importantly, when Silas wrote ‘we all miss you’ did he mean that he missed her?

  Her alarm rang out shrilly from the other room. That snapped her out of her thoughts.

  Spain was in the past, Lyssa had to finally accept. It was time to return to the reality of life in America.

  And if that meant giving up on the fantasy of Silas, so be it.

  Chapter Sixty Nine

  Lyssa

  The offices of the Herald Tribune were in Elizabeth – not far from Lyssa’s Jersey City apartment. Far enough away, though, that she couldn’t maintain the fantasy of living in New York City any more when she visited them.

  At least from her Jersey City apartment, she could see the lights of the Empire State Building. Out here in Elizabeth? Nothing.

  But a job was a job – and that morning, clutching a Starbucks latte and hauling her backpack behind her, Lyssa stumbled into the offices ready to meet her editor.

  There was the usual rigmarole of signing in at the front desk, and then taking the rattling elevator to the top floor. Then, finally, she let herself into the office of Steve Spaulding, Editor in Chief, and got a curt nod from the rotund, balding man behind the mahogany desk.

  “Good to see you, Lyss. How was Spain?” Steve Spaulding leaned back in his creaking chair. “You run with the bull
s, or anything?”

  Lyssa had an x-rated flashback to her final night, lying beneath the thrusting form of ‘El Torro’, Silas.

  “Maybe the odd one,” she admitted with a blush, taking a seat opposite her editor. “Did you read the story I emailed you?”

  “Good stuff,” Steve nodded. He sipped his coffee. “It’ll be in this week’s edition. Now it’s time to talk about what’s next - you heard about the new guy?”

  “New guy?”

  During her two weeks in Spain, Lyssa had been blissfully free of any news from the MMA circuit. It was especially nice not to have seen the names ‘Travis Oates’ or ‘Nikolai Bukov’ pop up in her newsfeed for a while – as, even now, every mention of them gave her a painful reminder of her two former lovers.

  “Yeah,” Steve was oblivious to Lyssa’s inner monologue, and just kept talking: “Some big brute from Connecticut. Appeared out of nowhere when Hannibal Alexander came back onto the scene.”

  Hannibal ‘Baller’ Alexander was one of the MMA circuit’s most notorious bad-boys. He’d been suspended for three months after brawling with opponent James MacDonald in a hotel lobby – and apparently slunk back home to Hartford to wait it out.

  “Looks like when he came back, he bought a friend,” Steve explained. “Rashaan ‘Hungry’ Jackson. Ever heard of him?”

  Lyssa sipped her latte.

  “Can’t say I have.”

  “You and me both. Seems to have come outta nowhere. Big, black bastard. Must be 300lbs if he’s an ounce.”

  Lyssa winced when she heard Steve describe the newcomer as a ‘big, black bastard.’ It reminded her that the world of combat sports wasn’t always politically correct – and despite African Americans dominating certain tiers of competition, there was still a lot of racism to contend with.

  “The guy fancies himself as a super heavyweight,” Steve continued, oblivious to her concerns. “It looks like they’re trying to pair him off against Wlodek Winogrodzki – the guy who knocked your boy Batras into a wheelchair.”

  Lyssa felt a momentary thrill when she heard her editor describe Silas as ‘her boy.’ But if that were really true, she’d still be in Spain with him – instead of this stuffy office in Elizabeth.

  “Do some research on him,” Steve demanded, “and write him up. Magnus Bjorn still holds the belt in the super heavyweight division, but if there’s going to be a battle to see who gets to face off against him, I want to know about it.”

  Lyssa nodded.

  The super-heavyweight division of mixed martial arts wasn’t a big field. The men large enough to compete in it – a minimum of 265lbs or above – were few in number. So few, in fact, that people often dismissed the tier as little more than a gimmick.

  That hadn’t been helped by sumo wrestlers and professional wrestlers sometimes making a stab of it.

  But when you got real fighters into the mix – men like reigning champ Magnus Bjorn, who was a literal giant – it tended to be headline worthy.

  Lyssa snorted. It was ironic that Silas had considered his career over when Magnus Bjorn had beaten him. Now there were two new fighters in the division; and it looked like that title belt might still be up for grabs.

  “I’m on it, chief,” Lyssa nodded at Steve, as she grabbed her stuff. “You know what? I’ll feel good to be getting back to work again.”

  Chapter Seventy

  Lyssa

  As it turned out, Lyssa had been wrong. There was nothing ‘good’ about getting back to work again.

  Especially not about how she felt, the moment she stepped back into Brit Iron.

  Bright Iron was an old-school weight room and boxing gym that took its name from the Brighton Beach neighborhood of Brooklyn it was located in.

  The red brick walls and creaking floorboards dated back to the 19th century, and the walls were covered with framed pictures of all the boxers, wrestlers and MMA fighters who’d trained within the walls. The smell and sounds of the old gym brought back awkward memories as soon as Lyssa stepped through the door.

  She knew this place so well because she’d spent many days there with Nikolai and Travis, back when she’d been dating – correction, fucking – them both.

  Which is why she hated coming back. But at least today she was there for a different reason – and her two former lovers were blissfully nowhere in sight.

  There was a big MMA event happening there today, and Bright Iron had been closed as a result.

  Instead of rows of sweaty men, rows of rickety folding chairs had been lined up on the training floor instead.

  Likewise, the crowd of juiceheads and jocks had been replaced with reporters, journalists and bloggers – all of whom were taking their seats, and peering across the training floor towards a battered wooden podium and old microphone set up at the head of the room.

  Pulling her notepad from her bag, Lyssa crossed the room to join the crowd of reporters. Some of them recognized her, and she gave them polite nods back.

  Then a voice blissfully spared her from having to make conversation.

  “Okay, people!” From the head of the room, a towering black man in a pinstriped suit addressed the crowd of reporters. With his shaved head and white goatee, he looked both dignified and outlandish – part pimp, part professor.

  Lyssa knew who he was. Delwood Grey – one of the most famous fight promoters in the MMA circuit.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Delwood addressed the crowd. Then, noticing that Lyssa was the only woman there, he corrected himself: “Lady and gentlemen. Please take your seats. Rashaan will be out in a moment.”

  Lyssa took a seat at the front of the room, crossing her legs as she self-consciously felt the stares of the other reporters on her.

  They all knew her reputation, and she knew they’d be whispering snide comments about her behind her back. That was especially inevitable here at Bright Iron – a gym she’d spent so much time at that her name was scrawled on the men’s room wall.

  But she ignored them, and tried to focus on the front of the room, as Delwood Grey started clapping his hands, and two men emerged from the locker rooms and headed to the podium.

  One of the men she recognized instantly – Jack Ranger. He was one of the top three MMA league executives – in charge of marketing and promotion for the fight league.

  Normally you’d only see him on TV, at one of the televised fights in Las Vegas.

  Behind him followed a brute of a man, in a tight-fitting hoody that barely stretched over his immense shoulders.

  With a mohawk afro and a black, bushy beard, this new arrival looked fearsome – bear-like and terrifying. His arms were thicker than Lyssa’s thighs, and his dark brown skin was covered in tattoos and scars.

  “Lady and gentlemen,” Delwood announced, as the terrifying black man approached the podium, “I’d like to introduce you all to the new MMA super-heavyweight contender – Rashaan “Hungry” Jackson.”

  The crowd of reporters started clapping, as the big, burly man loomed in front of them.

  Lyssa reluctantly joined them.

  She wasn’t reluctant because she had an issue with this hulking, black stranger. She just found it difficult to clap because he was so scary-looking.

  He made even her dangerous, darling Silas look like a pussycat, by comparison.

  And that meant his arrival on the fight circuit would really mix things up.

  Chapter Seventy One

  Lyssa

  Jack Ranger approached the mic.

  “So as you know, things recently changed in the super heavy-weight division. The number two contender, Silas Batras, retired from the sport after his injury in the fight against Wlodek “The Bear” Winogrodzki.”

  Ranger turned to look at the front seats laid out before him – and pointed at Lyssa, as she sat there.

  “Ms. Meadows, over there, wrote a great piece about Silas in this week’s Herald-Tribune. And we’re very happy to hear he’s on his feet and recovering.”

  There was anot
her tepid round of applause. Lyssa’s cheeks burned slightly, knowing that the room’s attention was temporarily on her.

  But almost as soon as she’d acknowledged that attention, Jack started talking again.

  “We were preparing a match-up between current champion Magnus Bjorn and Wlodek – but then somebody new came into the picture. Out of Hartford, Connecticut, I’d like to introduce super-heavyweight contender Rashaan Jackson.”

  The applause was stronger now, as Jack stepped aside and let the looming black man step up to the mic.

  “G-good morning,” he stammered into the microphone – clearly nervous about speaking in front of this crowd of strangers. “My name is Rashaan Jackson, and I’m excited to be joining the MMA League.”

  “Rashaan comes to us from a long career in mixed martial arts,” Jack took the mic again. “He’s been sponsored in the league by Hannibal Alexander, who you all know ended his suspension recently.”

  ‘Baller’ was the contested top-ranked heavyweight in the league; and apparently had picked up Rashaan while sitting out his temporary suspension back home in Hartford.

  “We’re excited to announce that Rashaan will be squaring off against Wlodek Winogrodzki eight weeks from now, in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight will decide once and for all who gets to challenge Magnus Bjorn for the super-heavyweight championship.”

  This time, the applause was intense. The news that this intimidating new fighter would be facing another dangerous up-and-comer made for one hell of a story; and Lyssa already knew she had a great opportunity to score some column inches by writing about it.

  As the applause died out, Delwood Grey took the microphone.

  “If y’all have any questions, you come to me, you hear?” His New Orleans accent was thick, as he spoke. “I’m representing Mr. Jackson, and I’ll deal with all media inquiries.”