Taking a breath, she pulled away. “Micah! I have to tell you something. I have to be brave.”
“You are brave. Alice, Alice, Alice… I am so sorry. I love you.” He screamed it over the sound of reporters swamping the couple and the crowd going mad over the sight of the winner out in the audience.
“What?” Alice knew what he had said, but she needed to hear it again. She needed confirmation.
He dropped her to her feet, her hand still holding the sweater to his face. He used his hand to gently grab the curve of her chin in his gloved hand. “Alice Cross, I love you. I love you. I love you!” He shouted it madly, not caring who could hear.
She dropped her sweater and leaned into his body. His chest was on fire against her cool face. Her tears mixed with the moisture on his abdomen. Alice pulled away from him once more and looked back up at him.
His face was full of joy, laughing with emotion. He knelt before her once again, bringing her face level with his. They kissed deeply, neither wanting this moment to end. Alice smiled in his arms and pulled back momentarily. He looked at her, confused.
“It’s about time,” she said, punching him lightly on the shoulder. He grimaced; she’d touched a tender spot. “Oh shit!” she exclaimed apologetically. “I’m sorry!”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Don’t be,” he said, losing himself in her embrace. “This is just perfect.”
Chapter 23: The Aftermath
The sounds echo in my head. It’s my flesh—my teeth—my bones—my entire body being shaken violently, being torn from the outside in. My face—my shoulder—my ribcage being broken in half.
I have never heard a sound like it before. It’s not really something you could easily recognize from other sounds. But I’ve been here so many times now. I’ve felt the same water from the same puddle on my face, felt the grit and grime from the road tangling my hair. And I have seen his face. He’s missing a front tooth, and he has the most hideous tattoo on his forearm. And it hits me.
I will never escape this nightmare.
And then, just like that, as one man relents and stands up to let me go, he appears: the red-and-gold figure in my black-and-white world. He is bloodstained and tattered, and he looks more tired and weary than ever. The hooded sweatshirt covering his eyes give nothing away, but I can feel them staring at me. The fiery embers of whatever colors them pierce through me and burn the open wounds that scatter across my skin.
His glance, the way he looks down upon me with pity, says to me that he wants to help—or that he at least wants to be there to see me in this state. However, the way he holds my head, lifting it up to the streetlight, ruffles my wet hair in his powerful grip. He’s strong, too strong. If I tried to run, to escape, there would be no ending for me. There would be nothing but his powerful hands on me.
He is a fighter, and I'm just part of this scene. My role is to lay here silently, hoping that the breath will return to my lungs, praying that the man who stole my father’s ring has not gotten too far, and desperately searching for someone to come find me before every light in my body dims out in this rain. His role is to stand over me.
He is my guard, yet he is my aggressor. He’s my angel, yet he’s the one who drags me down to the ground, to the muck and the grime. He is not the man who did this to me, but the way he sees me as helpless and pitiful makes me believe that there is nothing worse than to be the woman in the puddle. Ringless. Afraid. Broken.
…
Alice’s eyes flickered open. Her body was warm to the touch, and Micah’s old t-shirt that she was wearing was soaked through with sweat. She untucked an arm from under her quilt and felt her forehead. She was, thankfully, not feverish. It was just a dream, she reminded herself. They will go away.
Alice had been telling herself that for nearly a year now. Yet, whenever she was not sleeping in Micah’s bed with his imposing, powerful arms draped around her hips or shoulders, she still had these flashbacks and visions. Every night she was alone, she relived the day she was beaten and left for dead in the back alleyway of her work.
The images had changed over time. The assailant who did this to her was no longer as clear as the day it had happened. Little bits of him still lingered in his mind—such as his toothy grin and the space between his teeth that made her think he was missing one. There was also the tattoo on the forearm. It was never clear to her what it was, but she could make out the hint of a circular, wavy pattern, narrowly covered by the sleeve of his shirt.
She had longed to see more. In fact, when she first started having these visions in the hospital, she had hoped that they would lead her to identifying the person who had robbed her. At the very least, they could give the detectives a starting place.
Unfortunately, she had failed. Everything in her mind had gone blurry after a few kicks to the forehead. She could not even bring herself to be the good, diligent victim. Her lack of information had infuriated the detectives and had caused them to abandon her case as quickly as it crossed their table. Alice knew she should be upset about this, but she was powerless. Nothing she could say or do could lead them any further. There were no witnesses, at least none that came forward, and there were no security cameras to capture the scene of the crime.
Even what he had taken from her was worthless. Because she had just finished her shift as a waitress at the Tick Tock Diner, she had very little money on her. It was just a couple of dollars in tips, nothing to really make an assault like that worth it. Her cell phone was dated, almost three generations behind the newest one. Her valuables only consisted of one thing: the gold ring that had belonged to her father. And that is what he took.
He pinned her arm down and took from her the one thing in this world she had of her father. Her father had been dead for three, almost four years now—a car accident. The ring that she was given was found on his mangled, unrecognizable body. It was all that remained of her family. Her mother was long gone. No siblings. No grandparents. It was her ring and an aunt she barely knew.
Now, it was her and Micah against the world. She had never thought that she would end up with a man like him. He was a fighter, a real one at that, with a career in breaking men until they dripped blood and gave in. He made his money the way that the man who robbed her in the alley did. He took their pride, and he stole their titles. And by all accounts, he was doing quite well at it.
In Alice’s heart, she knew she should feel conflicted. Here was a man who embodied everything that she had grown to hate from the rest of the human race, but Micah was a force that drove her to be better and stronger. She did not cower under him; instead, she flourished.
When he said that he loved her three days ago after winning the second round of the quarterfinal match of the MMA Breakthrough Invitational, she could feel the heart that she had sealed finally break open bit by bit. Every piece of good and happiness that she had managed to tuck away after losing her family and the heirloom was being restored with each passing moment of their relationship.
As she looked about her bedroom, she could see evidence of Micah’s touch on her life. Her clothing was packed away, stored neatly in boxes. He had given her the courage to begin the process of moving out from under the shell of her former friend and coworker, Caroline. Caroline had betrayed her by selling her out to paparazzi and exposing her secret relationship. The old Alice may have found this excusable or even forgivable. She would have hated to start the confrontation. But now, she felt empowered to make it on her own, to find herself out in the world without having to rely on her flighty and flakey friend to hold her hand.
There was also the painting—another aftermath of dating Micah. Alice had always loved to paint. She had even traveled to Europe briefly to study under the great masters and in the shadows of the best artists. But when her father passed, she was left with only black-and-white images to paint. Her sorrow dripped from the canvas with messy and muddled lines. After her incident in the alley, she was left with nothing to paint.
Then, Micah came along. In
stantly, her vision brightened and the colors returned. She began painting again, almost furiously. She painted landscapes of the scene outside her tiny apartment window and profiles of people she had once knew years ago. But her grandest piece was a complete unknown to her. She had let the colors and the shapes guide her until she figured it out, like a puzzle without a guide. Alice had painted Micah, her fighter, in vivid red, gold, and black.
That’s when she knew she loved him.
Having the confirmation that he loved her back hadn’t made it much easier for the two of them. Both of them had lived in a near state of disbelief, each unsure of how to proceed. For Alice, she had never been in love in her entire life. For Micah, he had loved but never this fiercely or closely. Neither of the two wanted to make a misstep or move too quickly. So instead, each waited on the other to decide where they were going and how they were to continue.
Today, Alice returned to her version of normalcy. After being the champion fighter’s girlfriend, she still had to return home, change into her unattractive waitress uniform, and attend to the needs of the regulars at Tick Tock Diner. Alice was not sure if she would be okay with jumping back and forth between her double life, but as she jumped into the shower, ate her breakfast, and tip-toed around the apartment, she took a moment to appreciate each of these small moments where she could just be herself again.
Her only issue was sneaking out before Caroline and her boyfriend, Jace, would wake up. An hour before her shift began, Alice snuck down the stairs. As she closed the door quietly behind her, she could hear the couple in the other room begin to make sounds. An alarm clock went off, and one of them—she wasn’t sure which—uttered a loud moan. It was perfect timing for Alice to make her escape.
Alice walked quickly down the steps, out the door of her apartment building, and out into the sunshine. The warm air outside hit her like a shock to her system, as she slowed down to accommodate for the temperature. It was about a mile walk to the Tick Tock Diner, and she wasn’t about to break a sweat in her uniform before she even started.
Looking at her watch, she had plenty of time to make it in before her shift started. So, instead of rushing out, she pulled out her phone and looked through her contacts. She had been meaning to call her family for months, but she knew that they would only reprimand her for waiting so long to dial them. Plus, after her father’s death and the mugging, her only living relatives had begun to distance themselves from her.
Still, she took a deep breath and pushed the contact for her aunt, Lisa. The phone rang once, twice, three times. Alice held out hope that it may just go to voicemail. She could leave a, “Hey! I tried contacting you, but you’re not around” type message and be on her way. She could avoid the awkwardness that came with contacting someone you knew should have been reached out to long before.
But it wasn’t in the cards. The sound of her aunt’s husky, thick tones cut off the final ring. “Alice? What’s wrong?”
Alice detested that her aunt instantly jumped to asking what was wrong before even being cordial enough to greet her. She couldn’t even bother to sound enthused by her call. Alice instantly felt two sizes smaller, as she struggled to come up with an excuse for calling. “Hey, Aunt Lisa!” Fake excitement lined her words. She knew it wasn’t too convincing. “I just wanted to call to say hello. It’s been way too lo—”
“Long? Yes. It has, hasn’t it? The last time I heard from you, the detectives had given up on the case. That was, what? Maybe three months ago?”
Alice sighed audibly into the phone, uncaring if Lisa could hear. “No, it was six months ago. Nothing has changed since then, at least that I know of. I haven’t heard from the detectives in months.”
“Have you even bothered to call them? Your case is only important if you make it known that it's important. You let yourself get walked on one too many times, Allie. You cannot just let some man beat you within inches of your life and steal the one valuable thing belonging to your father and just let him walk freely because you’re too lazy to stand up for yourself.” Lisa rushed through her monologue, yet she still managed to emphasize the implication that Alice had been lazy.
Alice disagreed wholeheartedly. While she had not been proactive or at the station every day demanding revenge, she had cooperated. She had helped the police and detectives draw out sketches of what she vaguely remembered. She had attend the fundraiser in her honor to help cover her hospital bills. She pleaded for someone to come forward with information. Besides that, there wasn’t much more she could do but just hope and pray that a lead would come through or that someone would confess.
Revenge was far from her mind; it was too cold, too calculated. She wanted a fair shot at the man who did this to her. She wanted to look him in the eye and make him know that she was not the woman he beat in that alley.
But for now, Alice had to defend herself against her own aunt. She understood Lisa was wounded, too. That ring was a family heirloom. It had their family crest on it. It was a family that was shattered and torn by loss and grief. And the fact that Alice had lost their one physical link had made the relationship between the two of them unbearable. She continued to listen to her aunt as she fought back the salty mix of anger, fear, and sadness.
Lisa lowered her voice, “I hear you have been dating this fighter, this MMA guy. It’s all over the news. Is he…”—she approached her words carefully—“…is he hurting you, Alice?”
Alice was shocked. She had no idea that her aunt would ever become involved in her love life, let alone from afar. “What?! No, Aunt Lisa. He's not hurting me. How did you even know I was dating him? Do you even know what MMA is?”
It was a fair question. In all of Aunt Lisa’s expertise, professional fighting was certainly not in her wheelhouse.
“Alice, don’t be naive. It’s all over the news.” Lisa’s voice was sarcastic and taunting.
“Wait, what news?” Alice knew that there were reporters who had taken her picture, especially at the end of the last match. She also knew that there were gossip columnists who loved to report on human interest pieces like this, but Micah was still a relative unknown. No way could Lisa have found this out so easily.
Before she could get an answer, Lisa shut the door on the conversation altogether. “Listen Allie, I have to run. Your uncle just got in for lunch. Please call if something happens with the case.”
With a click. It was over. Alice calmly placed her phone back into her short’s pockets and wiped the sweat from underneath her eyes and cheek. She wasn’t going to let her aunt’s lack of interest in Alice’s life outside the stolen ring and her love interests bother her. Instead, Alice was going to forge ahead as she always did—without her blood family.
Chapter 24: Black, White, and Read All Over
The Tick Tock Diner seemed to be buzzing with energy, especially considering it was only lunch. Normally, a mid-day shift like this would be spent folding napkins, assisting the dishwasher in cleaning silverware, or chatting with regulars. But today, nearly every table was full with faces Alice did not recognize.
Pete, her boss’s son, seemed to have anticipated it. As soon as she walked in, he greeted her by tossing her an extra apron from the stash and asking her to begin work early despite having arrived a half hour before she was scheduled. She reluctantly agreed, as she followed him back towards the kitchen.
“Busy day, huh? Is there something going on? A fair or a conference?” Alice had seen the occasional event come through that drove in visitors, but Steubenville was relatively quiet in the summer. Most traveled out of town instead of in.
“Yeah, I don’t really know. I have been working since the breakfast shift, and the tables have been full since then. I asked around, but no one has a real reason for being here. Just wanted a bite to eat, I guess.” Pete seemed frazzled by the influx of customers. While he spoke to Alice, he was grabbing hot, finished plates left and right and tossing them quickly at the servers as they approached the window. He reminded her of an octopu
s dancing in the sea with how he was using his arms to manage two areas.
As she walked to the locker area, he stopped his plate spinning routine and followed her back. The two were alone in the cramped corner—something that Alice had feared would happen. She positioned herself in a spot where she could slip out through the hallway and back to the kitchen if need be. Using her handheld mirror while she placed her strawberry blonde hair up in a high ponytail, she could also spy who was in the kitchen in case she needed immediate help.
The relationship between Pete and Alice had always been a bit rocky. Ever since she started waitressing, she had suspected that Pete had developed a crush on her. It was all innocent until the night she met Micah. Caroline’s boyfriend had invited the two girls and Pete to an MMA match where she eventually ran into Micah. Not really knowing where their relationship was going (or even if it was one), she continued to tag along with Pete, Jace, and Caroline. And while she was honest about her intentions, she knew that she had played a part in leading on Pete.
Then, one evening, a staggering Pete attempted to force himself on her. She fought back, just enough to get him to leave her alone for the evening. But Alice was left bruised—both emotionally and physically. She attempted to push it out of her mind, to forget it ever happened. But the reality lingered as Pete took his anger out on her work. Nearly a month later, Alice still could feel the weight of his hands around her arm and the smell of his breath upon her cheek.
Don’t You Dare: A Bad Boy MMA Fighter Romance Page 17
