If You Fight (Corrupted Love Book 2)

by K. M. Scott

  The giant lunged at Ryder again, this time landing his fist squarely on his jaw. His head flew back and he stumbled away looking stunned by the shot. I held my breath while I watched the man chase after Ryder, not letting up his attack and hitting him twice more with punches to his face.

  Why wasn’t he hitting back? Was the guy too big or was Ryder too surprised to retaliate?

  I screamed for him to hit him hard, as bad as the raving fans around me. “Get him, Ryder!”

  But the guy kept coming, landing shots to his face and his chest, while Ryder continued to be on the defensive. Within the first few minutes, he’d already taken more blows than I suspected my father’s goons had given him, but he still remained on his feet.

  “Put him away!” screamed a drunken man in a denim jacket next to me, practically frothing at the mouth at the promise of a man being beaten for his entertainment.

  My stomach roiled at the sight of such unhinged desire to see someone suffer. With every punch and every scream, I felt sick. My head began to pound, and finally, I couldn’t hold back anymore and I jumped off the bench down to the ground, doubling over as I vomited onto that filthy floor.

  Behind me, the crowd screamed for Ryder and the man to beat the hell out of one another, but I couldn’t watch anymore. I threw up until there was nothing more in my stomach, and then I dry heaved until my sides hurt so badly I wanted to cry.

  I couldn’t stay there and watch the man I loved be attacked, so as soon as my body stopped trying to purge itself, I ran away. Ignoring the shards of glass and concrete, I hurried to that room I saw on my way in, praying I wouldn’t be able to hear the horrible sounds of the crowd telling me Ryder had been beaten.

  Two fighters stood talking in the middle of the room and turned to look at me when I entered. I didn’t belong there, but I didn’t care. I found the nearest seat, a metal folding chair that looked like it had seen better days, and tried to put all that ugliness going on just a few yards away out of my mind. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, thankfully blocking out the sounds of the crowd and the fight. Covering my face, I closed my eyes as tears began to flow down my cheeks.

  “Are you okay?”

  Looking up, I saw a young guy staring down at me with worry in his pale blue eyes. He seemed so fresh compared to the scene in the next room. Too fresh to be a fighter even though he clearly was dressed for exactly that.

  I nodded. “I’m fine. Thanks.”

  He motioned with his chin toward where the fight raged on. “Too much for you to handle?”

  The image of Ryder being pummeled by that monster ran through my brain, and I shuddered. “A little. I’ll be okay in a minute.”

  “Okay. Do you want a drink of water? I wouldn’t drink the tap water here, but you can have some of my bottled water,” he said as he held out the bottle to offer it to me.

  Parched from throwing up, I gladly accepted it, thankful for even a sip of liquid to pass my lips. “Thanks.”

  I took a swig of water and let it linger in my mouth for a moment before swallowing cautiously, my throat raw from vomiting. Handing the bottle back to him, I thanked him again and said, “What’s your name?”

  “Dylan. And yours?”

  “I’m Serena. I appreciate you being so nice to me. I guess I’m not really cut out for this kind of thing. Are you a fighter?”

  He stood up a little taller and puffed his chest out. “Yep. Tonight’s my third fight. I’m looking for my third straight win.”

  “How old are you?”

  Looking around, he answered, “Eighteen.”

  Nothing on him said he had reached anywhere close to eighteen, from his baby face to the peach fuzz sitting above his lip he probably called a mustache to that innocence in his eyes. No, he definitely wasn’t eighteen.

  Before I could challenge him on that fact, I heard someone just outside the room bark out, “We need water and ice! Get out of the way!”

  I turned around to see the greasy man who’d started the fight and another man carrying Ryder in. His body was covered in blood, and his head hung limp so his chin rested on his chest.

  My heart stopped as I stared at him in horror. Had he lost the fight? Was he unconscious?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ryder

  Floyd’s voice boomed his orders around me as I struggled to keep my eyes open. I knew I’d taken an ass kicking, but I wasn’t sure if I’d won or lost. I hadn’t showed the signal to give in, but that guy had fucked me up pretty good. Whatever happened, I lasted a hell of a lot longer than I’d thought I could after being out of the scene for over two years.

  “Ryder…Ryder, can you hear me, son? Answer me if you can hear me.”

  I opened my eyes and saw him crouched down in front of me with a worried look on his face. Nodding, I croaked out, “I hear you.”

  “You must have a guardian angel watching over you, son. There’s no way he should have given up after what he did to you. You must have gotten into his head, although I can’t for the life of me figure out how when he spent the whole time pounding the fuck out of you.”

  His words floated in and out of my head, but I understood the gist of them and smiled. “So I won?”

  “Fuck if I know how, but yeah, you won,” Floyd said shaking his head in disbelief.

  “I wasn’t going to give the signal. He was going to have to knock me unconscious, but I wasn’t going to give up, Floyd.”

  Closing my eyes, I cringed from how much my body hurt. Two years away from fighting had taken its toll, and that behemoth motherfucker Robert found to pound the piss out of me made it a hundred times worse. But even though I felt like a truck had driven over me, I hadn’t given up.

  I wouldn’t let Robert have the satisfaction of seeing me surrender. Not in this fucking fight in this shithole of a place of his and not with Serena. If he wanted me out of her life, he’d have to kill me because I wasn’t fucking giving up.

  Something cold pressed against my right shoulder, and I opened my eyes to see Serena holding an ice pack to my arm. Was I dreaming? Had I blacked out from the pain?

  “Serena? Are you here?” I asked, reaching over to touch her hand to see if she was real or all in my mind.

  She kissed me on the cheek and whispered, “I’m here, Ryder. You won.”

  “Why are you here? I told you I didn’t want you to see me like this. This is no place for you.”

  “My father brought me to see you fight. I didn’t see much, though. I’m sorry. I thought I could handle it, but it was so awful. How did you stand him hitting you all those times?”

  Fucking Robert! What kind of father would bring her to this place? Son of a bitch! I didn’t want her around this. She didn’t deserve to be around these fucking animals who screamed for us to beat the fuck out of one another.

  “I’ll be okay. I can handle it.”

  “It looks a lot worse than it is,” Floyd said with a chuckle. “That blood isn’t his. He took a good beating tonight, but he busted up that guy’s nose pretty good.”

  I looked down and saw my chest covered in blood. Smiling, I looked up and said proudly, “He must have been a bleeder because I didn’t think I got him that good.”

  “He had you down on the ground, so I couldn’t see what was happening, but it wasn’t long after that he gave up. Did you say something to him?” Floyd asked as he wiped the blood off my skin.

  Shaking my head, I tried to remember doing anything after he took me down. All I remembered was hitting the ground hard with all his weight coming down on top of me and me punching him as hard as I could because I was pretty sure I was fighting for my life at that moment.

  “Ryder, where are you hurt?” Serena asked as she examined my shoulder. “Is it just your shoulder and where he hit you in the face?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her. Everything on me hurt. Every inch of my body ached with pain. But I didn’t want her to worry.

  “I’ll be fine. I just want to get back home and soak in a hot ba
th.”

  From the doorway, I heard Robert say, “Two years and you still have it, son.”

  I turned to look at him as Serena grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  “Some people are made for this. Looks like that junkyard dog is still inside you,” Robert said with a chuckle.

  I wanted to tell him to fuck off. He’d set up this fight so I’d get my head crushed in, and I hoped he lost a ton of money when I didn’t.

  Instead, I just nodded and turned toward Serena. “You should go home. I don’t want you around this. I’ll follow you in a few minutes.”

  She shook her head. “No. I’ll go home when you do. I want to stay and be here for you.”

  In her dark eyes, I saw a look of defiance. I knew Robert saw it too because he said nothing else before turning on his heels and walking away.

  I touched her cheek and smiled at how strong she could be when she had to. “You know he’s going to be furious you didn’t go home with him.”

  Serena leaned in and gently kissed me. “He can be as furious as he wants. I’m pretty damn pissed off that my father brought in that animal to fight you.”

  “I’ll be okay. I just wonder what he’s going to throw at us next.”

  Cradling my face, she stared into my eyes. “I don’t care what he does. Let’s get you home and into that bathtub.”

  Floyd tapped me on the leg, and I looked down to see him smiling. “Maybe I was wrong, son. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it won’t be the last, I’m guessing.”

  He was wrong. Whatever I had to do to be with Serena was worth it. No matter how bad the beating I had to endure, I’d take it if it meant being with her.

  Not many people in the world had shown me they were worth the effort, but she had. I’d sworn I’d protect her that night when I found her bleeding out in that bathtub, and I intended to live up to that promise. Whatever Robert or the world threw at us, I’d handle it to be with her.

  * * *

  I eased myself back against the pillows and let the air out of my lungs slowly, all the while conscious of every ache and pain in my body. I may have won, barely it seemed now as I replayed the fight in my mind hours later, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like I’d gotten the best of anyone.

  Robert’s handpicked opponent for me had been just what I anticipated. Big and out for blood.

  And I’d suffered from the very deficiencies I knew I’d had since the moment he announced I’d be fighting in three weeks. Two years away from fighting had nearly crippled me at the beginning of training, and twenty-one days hadn’t been enough to overcome that.

  So I wasn’t surprised when he came at me and I moved like my feet were encased in concrete. What I hadn’t expected was how easily my mind slipped into that place it had always gone to when I faced another fighter in the ring. All the noises of the crowd faded away when that moment finally came a few minutes in after he’d hit me hard with a few shots, and after that, I was in the zone.

  Unfortunately, the zone didn’t trump my lack of training for all those months, and I was slower than I’d been a couple of years ago. Too much whisky and good food and not enough time in the gym made for a very different fighter. I overcame my slowness, though, so by the time he got me down onto the ground, I was that unbeaten champion I used to be.

  I sighed, but it came out as a low groan that made me sound like I was some broken old man. Floyd had warned me when he first met me all those years ago that fighting would make me old before my time. A cocky sixteen-year-old, I thought he was full of shit, but now I wondered if he might have something there.

  “Are you okay? You made a noise,” Serena said.

  Nodding, I forced myself to smile. “Yeah. I’m fine. Come here.”

  She sat down on the bed next to me and gingerly touched my shoulder. “Did he get you bad in this one?”

  I looked down at where her fingers touched my skin. “No. Your father must have forgotten about my bum shoulder. Good for me, huh?”

  Her hand slid down my arm, and she gently traced the outline of one of my skull tattoos. “You know, a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t have believed he would ever do something like that. It sounds naïve, but I didn’t think he was that kind of person. I mean, I knew he wasn’t an angel, but things like this? Things like setting you up to get beaten? I wouldn’t have thought he was capable of that.”

  The sadness in her eyes told me she still had a hard time accepting who Robert Erickson was. “It’s okay. I told you. I’m tough. I can handle it.”

  She frowned and shook her head. “It’s not okay. None of this is okay. I promise you when I finally find out where my mother is, we’ll leave here and you’ll never have to do anything like this again.”

  Her voice trailed off, and she looked away. “I don’t ever want to see you fight like that again.”

  Even though lifting my arm felt like someone was pushing on it with all their weight, I turned her head toward me and forced away the pain to say, “I’m sorry you saw that. I never wanted you to see me in that place.”

  Serena’s face twisted into an expression of sadness. “It was so brutal, Ryder. And all those people screaming for you and that animal to hurt each other like it meant the world to them. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  I lowered my arm to my side and nodded at her description of the crowd. “I used to wonder who was worse—me for fighting or them for wanting to see us crush one another.”

  Her brown eyes grew wide with concern. “Don’t ever think there’s something wrong with you or anyone who does that. I didn’t mean it that way. But to hear those people yelling for you to hurt another human being made me sick to my stomach.”

  Thinking back on all those nights I spent in The Pit, I couldn’t understand how used to that life I became back then, but it was all I knew. I dreamed of better, but that’s all it was. Dreams.

  “That’s not a world you belong in, Serena.”

  She shook her head and squeezed my hand. “Not just me. You don’t belong there either. I can’t believe you lived in that place at one time. All that broken glass and concrete all over the floor. I hate even thinking of you spending night after night in that place.”

  “Don’t think of it then. It’s all in the past. Now I’m here with you and we’re going to figure out somehow to get us away from all this.”

  Serena leaned over me and softly kissed my lips. “Here where you belong.”

  Where I belonged.

  I knew Robert would disagree with that claim. His attempt to show Serena that I was exactly what he called me that first night he brought me here—a stray—had failed. He thought she’d see me fight and be disgusted like her sister would be.

  That she’d think of me as some lowlife who wasn’t worthy of her love or her bed and he’d succeed in chasing me away. But that hadn’t happened because he didn’t understand her.

  I never worried if she saw me fight that she’d turn away from me. That wasn’t who she was. Serena cared too much, loved too much to just turn her back on us. I knew that.

  What I didn’t know was if I could be that fighter I’d been so long ago. Now that I knew I could be, I didn’t fear what Robert threatened me with next. Let him throw fighter after fighter at me. I’d take them all on, and the more I fought, the more I’d win.

  See, he didn’t understand me either.

  I slowly opened my eyes as every ache and pain came rushing back into my consciousness. Turning to look at Serena, I found an empty spot where she was when I drifted off last night. The light coming through the bedroom window told me it was daytime, so why wasn’t she next to me in bed?

  The events of the night before rambled around my brain as I struggled to wake up. Each hit I’d taken in the fight replayed in my mind, and the corresponding hurt for each one registered as I gradually came alive again.

  Fuck, I needed something to take the edge off the pain or I’d be no good until sometime around lunch.

  I swi
veled my head left and right to look for a bottle, but I found nothing. Not even a glass on the nightstand.

  “Serena?”

  “I’m in the kitchen. Give me a minute.”

  Something in her voice made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, so I eased myself out of bed one leg at a time and slowly made my way out to her. But she wasn’t in the kitchen or in the living room.

  “I thought you said you were in the kitchen,” I said, confused why she would have lied.

  “I meant the bathroom,” she said in that same strange tone.

  So she was lying about something and likely more than what room she was in. I walked as quickly as I could get my aching legs to go into the bathroom and found her standing in a pair of panties and one of my t-shirts with her back turned and looking at something. She covered it with her hand so I couldn’t see.

  “Serena, what’s wrong? Why are you acting so weird?” I asked as I tried to peer over her shoulder to see what she was hiding.

  She turned to face me but put her hands behind her back. “Nothing’s wrong. I just got up early and had to go to the bathroom.”

  Her expression was riddled with guilt, but why? What had she done? “So why did you tell me you were in the kitchen?”

  “I just got my rooms mixed up,” she said, avoiding making eye contact with me. “It’s no big deal, Ryder.”

  Before I could ask what she was hiding behind her back, she continued, “How do you feel? Are you sore? I can get you something to make you feel better. Why don’t you go back to bed and I’ll bring it in?”

  As she spoke, I looked in the mirror and saw what she was hiding from me. I took a step toward her and reached around to grab a white plastic pregnancy test.

  Holding it up between us, I leveled my gaze on her. “Why didn’t you want me to see this?”