Changing the Game: The Breaking Series #2
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Changing the Game
The Breaking Series #2
Ember Leigh
Changing The Game © 2018 by Ember Leigh
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a piece of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Published by Ember Leigh, 2018
EmberLeighAuthor@gmail.com
Cover art: Covers by Combs
Editing: Elisabeth R. Nelson
Contents
Changing The Game
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Author Note
NEXT IN THE BREAKING SERIES…
Stay connected with Ember Leigh!
Other Books By Ember Leigh
Breaking The Rules
A New York Minute
The Last Resort
Carlos & Casey
When In Rome
Turkish Delight
Changing The Game
Lex is no longer a halfcocked hellion.
But the darkness is still inside him. He’s always known Lila was the one for him, but when that darkness led him down back alleys to drugs, dosing, and illegal fights, she did the only sane thing: walked out. Five years later, fate brings Lila back into his life. Lex is ready to prove he’s not the same guy—he’s clean, sober, successful. The darkness is little more than a memory. He thinks.
Lila just wants to play it safe.
Years after her tumultuous ex, Lila should want vanilla, but her heart craves the intensity Lexington Olivo brings. There’s never been anyone who can light her up like he does. When Lex wants a second chance, she can’t say no. But she can’t say yes, either.
Secrets from their past could ruin everything.
Because if Lila lets Lex in, it’s not just her at risk. Lex can’t be trusted until she’s sure he’s a changed man. One who’s far away from the underground.
While he’s busy proving himself, Lex’s past comes pounding on his door. The gang he used to fight for wants him back. And this time, they won’t take no for an answer.
Chapter 1
“Is the celebrity ready?”
Lex cackled, snapping a towel against Travis’s bare back. The makeup artist brushed a final coat of glistening powder on Lex’s chest, something they’d told him would accentuate his pecs and abs. It was standard protocol to get screen-ready, one of the many steps to filming a video he hadn’t known about until a couple months prior. Luckily the stuff didn’t sweat or punch off—not that many of their opponents could land a fist on him or Travis.
The video series Regular People Fighting UFC Champs had ballooned overnight. This was their fifth filmed episode, and the last in the newly launched series he, Travis, and Amara had cooked up. Once this last session wrapped, only days remained before the premier episode went live.
And once it did? Lex was ready for anything that came his way. Including super stardom; rabid, half-naked fans; or at least a solid protein-drink promotional deal. Like every other person in LA hoping for their fifteen minutes of fame.
“Readier than ever.” Travis glanced at his phone one last time, then grabbed for a pair of gloves on the desktop.
Lex, distracted by the glisten of his own chest, pulled on his own pair. The powder stuff worked. And it looked pretty damn good on camera, too.
“Who’s on deck today?” He tugged up his shorts a bit, leading the way out of the staff room. They’d been using the bright, spacious MMA training camp in the back of Holt Body Fitness to film these sessions. Volunteers who wanted to take a crack at beating up a UFC champ were invited into the space, then given the necessary equipment and a brief training, before they filmed the hilarious results.
As he emerged from the staff hallway, Travis in tow, curious eyes found them, lured by the tan chests and bare skin. Blonde ponytails tugged at his attention as he strutted by. God, he had a soft spot for blondes. One of the many perks of working at the gym: beautiful women, all of the time.
Plenty of doe eyes following his trail, waiting for him to make a move. Holt’s gym attracted a certain caliber too: models, celebrities, and the upper crust of attractive regular people. There was never a shortage of eye candy in this place.
He headed down the gleaming white hallway toward the back of the gym. As they neared the MMA camp, murmurs grew into clear voices. The back gym sprawled before them, bright and open, the octagon at center stage, cameras lining the perimeter. Temporary stage lights dotted the sidelines, and the camera crew conferred in small clusters of people as they readied the shoot.
It took a lot of people to produce a fifteen-minute video. In the mix of strange faces, he couldn’t tell who the opponent of the day might be. Amara emerged from the sidelines, beaming at them, her dark eyes focused on Travis in a way which made Lex’s chest tighten.
He’d had somebody who looked at him like that, a long time ago. And damned if he didn’t miss it sometimes. It’d been five years since he last laid eyes on the only woman he’d ever loved. Travis and Amara brought up memories from that time more often than he liked to admit.
And if he was honest with himself, it was the one thing missing. Not just love…but her. His ex. The woman he still tried not to think about too much because he knew people like him didn’t get second chances. He’d already used up all his Get Out Of Jail Free cards by meeting Travis, getting clean, hitting the UFC circuit, and then coming to Travis’s gym. There weren’t any ace cards left in his deck.
“There you guys are.” Amara hugged Travis, then knocked Lex’s shoulder. “We’re all ready.”
“What do you mean ‘we’?” Lex lifted a brow. “Am I fighting a group?”
“We’re fighting someone Amara knows today,” Travis said. “Someone’s boyfriend?”
“His name is Mason,” Amara clarified. “He’s a police officer, and one of the liaisons at a hospital linked up with the shelter. Really nice guy, so don’t kill him, please.”
“Sweet, a cop.” Lex stretched his arms over his head, a sly grin overtaking his face. “If I let him get a punch on me, maybe he’ll cut me a break on my speeding tickets.”
Travis smirked. “Like anyone gets speeding tickets in LA.”
“Fine. He can shoot me once, but I never have to pay a parking ticket again.”
“Weird de
al, but I like it,” Travis said, pushing him toward the ring. “Cameras are ready for you, bro. They already briefed him on the set-up, so we’re good to film a few takes.”
Lex sauntered over toward the area in front of the octagon where the meet-and-greets took place. The first step was to film the fighter and the civilian meeting for the first time, get some lighthearted conversation going, talk about expectations and background experience with fighting.
Lex excelled at rattling them; he loved letting his cocky side come out, playing with the smirk on his face that had earned him the nickname Cheshire in his darker fighting days. Though he’d stopped using that nickname years ago when he got out of the fighting underworld, he felt the dark energy pulsing inside him from time to time. Days when he felt the tight claws of nostalgia, desperate to feel the lick of drugs in his veins, the careening rush of unhinged fights in forgotten warehouses.
Mason stood near the octagon while the director conferred with him. He was neatly trimmed and rigid in khakis with a light blue button up—exactly what he’d expect for a cop. A type of J. Crew handsome you could see on billboards.
Lex turned to Amara. “Where did you say you met this dude?”
“Through a friend of mine. Her name is Lila—she’s on a committee with me at the hospital.”
The name Lila sent a lightning bolt through him, sizzling from head to toe. She can’t be the same Lila. He swallowed hard, scanning the gym to get a glimpse of each and every face. There had to be a million Lilas in LA. The chance of this being his Lila was basically nil. His heart rate picked up.
But what if it was?
“Oh yeah?” A head of blonde hair tugged at his attention from the other side of the octagon. The woman faced away from him, talking to someone else. His stomach pitched toward his feet. “You’ve never mentioned a Lila before.”
It’s got to be her. He stared at the short, choppy blonde hair, the long black shawl, the fluid flick of her wrist as she gestured in conversation. From behind, she could have been anyone. But the way she stood with one hand planted on her hip, the other supporting her chin like her entire skeleton might collapse without these additional supports…
She didn’t need to turn around for him to know. He’d ribbed her about holding up her own damn chin for years. He smiled then furrowed his brow.
She’d been his first and only love. His first and only heartbreak.
“She’s a sweetheart,” Amara said, her eyes lighting up. “I’ll introduce you after.”
Across the way, Lila turned, her heart-shaped face snagging him the same way it had all those years ago, the first time they saw each other in the school library as seventeen-year-olds. She’d tutored struggling students, and he had struggled worst of all. Until her.
His heart wrenched in his chest. It had been five years since he’d seen her last. Five years since she broke up with him and fled, prompting the darkest hours of his life, pushing him even deeper into the yawning abyss of Cheshire. She’d changed her number, her email address, even fell off the social media map. He’d looked for her daily for a full year.
And then…he’d let her go. Because if she didn’t want him to find her, then he should only concern himself with women who wanted to be found.
Didn’t mean he’d ever stopped thinking about her. Or imagining her face instead of the annoying or boring or just-not-doing-it-for-him ladies who had cycled in and out of his life since she’d left.
He stilled, unable to rip his eyes off her as her gaze swung toward him. When their eyes met, electricity streaked through him. Surprise shone in those ice-blue eyes, and he didn’t know whether he wanted to jump ship or scoop her up in his arms and never let her out of his sight again. If any doubt remained, the look on her face erased it.
It was the type of look that reduced five years to a blink, all the past hurts to distant murmur, a story told once and then largely forgotten.
He looked at Mason and clenched his jaw, Travis’s words ringing in his ears.
So he’d be fighting her boyfriend? It didn’t seem right to feel jealous after so much time. It didn’t even seem possible.
But that had always been him and Lila. Just a little bit too fucking intense.
He set his hands on his hips, fingers already twitching with the desire to get a punch in.
* * *
Lila’s breath shriveled in her throat in the middle of her sentence. She stilled, eyes soldering to the half-naked, ripped, broad-shouldered man across the room.
Only one man on the face of the planet could snag her gaze like that.
Lexington Olivo.
Live and in the flesh. The trademark dragon curling over his left shoulder confirmed it. And he was so much sexier than the cameos he made in her fantasies, still, so many years after their break up.
She’d come as a favor to Mason and because she wanted to check out the gym. She had not prepared for this shove down Memory Lane.
Heat crept up her neck, and she looked at the Holt Body employee apologetically. “Sorry, um, I lost my train of thought. What was I saying?”
The girl—was her name Melanie?—waved it off. “Don’t worry. It’s easy to get distracted here. One of the perks of working at the gym, really.” She had a sly smile, one that told Lila she’d followed her gaze towards Lex. “But you were talking about your job.”
“Right.” Lila blinked a few times, trying to remove the image of Lex from behind her eyelids. Hopeless. That glimpse of him would nestle and multiply inside her brain, like a single-celled organism on the loose. Goodbye, thoughts that weren’t Lex’s abs. “I envy your job perks. Mine are way less…aesthetic. I’m an ER nurse right now, but within a few months I’ll be the Director of Nursing at St. Vincent’s.”
Lila forced a confident smile, the words tumbling out more like a routine than a blood-pumping passion. But it was true. She’d been an ER nurse for almost four years. At 27 years old, it was time to bump it up a notch. When the position had opened up, she’d applied before the ink had even dried on the flier. Strong leadership qualities, a firm vision, experience in a fast-paced environment. She had all that in spades.
Never mind that she didn’t know if she’d snag the job. She just had to talk like she already had it. Put in the overtime hours. Work herself to the bone. Prove, beyond all measure of doubt, that she was the most qualified for the job.
“That seems like a lot of work,” Melanie said. “Do you see broken bones and people’s, like, insides spilling out?”
She laughed, her gaze drifting back toward Lex against her will. “Sometimes.” The rest of her thoughts dried up when she noticed him and Mason. Chatting. A sinuous anxiety sparked to life inside of her. She couldn’t have envisioned this situation, not even in her weirdest nightmares.
Running into Lex again hadn’t been on the day’s agenda at all. She’d just wanted to see some sexy guys stealing punches with her friend Amara, but Mason had insisted he “fight the jocks,” as he called it. He claimed it would be a means of promotion for the task force once the episode aired, an interesting and modern means of spreading the word about the police work he did combatting gang violence. But really Lila suspected he was eager to prove himself capable somehow.
Because he’d been picking up on Lila’s waning interest. Adding up the missed calls and broken plans.
If she’d known Lex would be his opponent, she could have at least warned him…maybe told him that going up against her MMA-master ex-boyfriend wasn’t a way to spend a casual Friday afternoon. The man who had broken and bloodied too many faces to count. The man who could probably put Mason into a coma with just one perfectly placed punch.
Amara beamed at her as she walked over. “Isn’t this gym cool? I’ve been so excited to show you.”
“The best.” She swallowed hard, looking around the industrial-chic room. Her mind spun like a Tilt-a-Whirl, unable to focus on any one thing for long enough to make sense of it. “This is where you hooked up with Travis again, right?”
Lila’s heart wrenched in strange way. Maybe that’s how you could hook up with Lex again.
The thought shook her, made her eyes squeeze shut. Thoughts like that weren’t allowed in her head space. Not after all these years apart, not after all the amazing progress she’d achieved on her own. Lex was the past.
Even though just a glimpse of him could send her to her knees. His mere presence begged her to gloss over their history, to reimagine it as not that bad.
Lex’s cool saunter made it easy to see him as someone entirely different. Like he wasn’t still the same cocky asshole who’d badgered her into a beachside date seven years ago. Or the smart-mouthed jerk who’d start fights on casual nights out at the bar just to see who would hit him first.
Mason and Lex shook hands, and the cameras fanned out to capture them as they made their way into the ring. Lex had always been solidly built, but next to Mason he oozed confidence, a sturdiness that drew her in like a tractor beam.
Lex grinned as he sized up Mason, satisfaction shining on his face. She shivered. Mason couldn’t know he was her ex. Even though she had no intention of ever making it official with Mason, the fact that he was secretly showing down with her studly ex-boyfriend seemed like an unnecessary kick in the gut.