Until the Bell Rings: An MMA Fighter Romance

by Roxy Wilson

  Until the Bell Rings

  An MMA Fighter Romance

  By

  Roxy Wilson

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, businesses and incidents are from the author’s imagination or they are used fictitiously and are definitely fictionalized. Any trademarks or pictures herein are not authorized by the trademark owners and do not in any way mean the work is sponsored by or associated with the trademark owners. Any trademarks or pictures used are specifically in a descriptive capacity. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is coincidental.

  Editing: S.R. Strann

  Cover Art: Dynastys CoverMe

  © June, 2016. Roxy Wilson

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  Books by Roxy Wilson

  Newest Releases:

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  Boxed Sets:

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  Book Description

  Zahra:

  Riley Dern is exactly the kind of man I need to avoid.

  I’m a youth social worker -- helping my clients stay on the right path is what’s important.

  Not some bad-boy, hot-as-sin MMA fighter.

  I am not falling for him.

  I’m not.

  Riley:

  I fight so I can pay off my brother’s loan sharks.

  And yeah, some of those matches are the underground type.

  It never mattered before, but Zahra makes me want to clean up my act.

  She makes me want a lot of things.

  I've got one last fight to face.

  Am I the kind of man who’ll take a fall for his brother’s sake?

  And if I am, will Zahra forgive me?

  Until the Bell Rings is a full-length bad boy/MMA fighter romance with no cheating, no cliffhangers, and a happy ending. Recommended for readers 18+ due to mature content.

  Chapter One

  Zahra

  “No, Mr. Carson, you cannot poison your neighbor’s cats,” I sighed into the phone, rubbing my forehead. “That’s illegal. If you feel that his cats are becoming a problem, then you should talk with her. I’m happy to come help you mediate.” Only four hours into the work day, and already I was getting a headache. It wasn’t a record, but it was close.

  “She should keep her cats inside,” Mr. Carson complained—one of my newer clients, a man in his seventies that had been assigned to me after his children all but abandoned him. “They’re a menace to my birds.”

  Mr. Carson’s birds were not his—they were wild birds. I’d seen his back yard, dotted with birdbaths and birdfeeders and bird houses to attract them. It was a beautiful sight, really—but safeguarding all of nature was outside my scope of practice as a social worker. “I understand your frustration, Mr. Carson.” Saying a client’s name was supposed to put them at ease—sometimes it did—but Mr. Carson seemed to huff every time I said it. “How about I come by tomorrow at about noon and we speak with Mrs. Laney about her cats?” I knew Mrs. Laney; she was a widow, about Mr. Carson’s age. Maybe they’d hit it off and he’d have someone else to complain about things to.

  “What are you people even for, if not to help me resolve my problems?” Mr. Carson snapped.

  I barely stifled a groan—quietly, away from the phone’s receiver—and glanced up at Marci, one of the junior assistants as she winced and held up a file. I stared for a moment, and then rolled my eyes and tapped on my over-full desk—specifically, on a stack of other files that was getting to be almost a foot thick—and she mouthed “Sorry!” as she laid it on top.

  “I’ll help you resolve this problem, Mr. Carson,” I told the old man. “Just hold on another day for me and I promise I’ll come and see you tomorrow. Okay? We’ll work all of this out.”

  He grumbled something. I pretended not to hear before I wished him a pleasant rest of his day and hung up.

  Marci was still standing by the door. She was frowning at my stack of to-be-read files with concern. She had this to look forward to, once she was finished with her last year of school and licensed. “Are you sure you don’t want me to see if someone else can take some of those off your hands?” she asked. Sweet girl.

  “Trust me,” I told her, “no one can. We’re all swamped. Welcome to the public sector.”

  She nodded once, and then pointed at my phone. “There’s a young man named Malcolm on line three.”

  “Thanks,” I said as she left.

  I took a deep breath. The key to staying sane was to keep breathing. Malcolm, at least, wasn’t one of my cases anymore. He had been for years; now he was more like a nephew. All grown up and successfully not a convict—which was a measure of success in my line of work when it came to teens.

  “Hey there, young man,” I said when I answered the phone. “You had better not be calling me about trouble.”

  “Hi Aunt Zahra,” Malcolm’s almost-deep voice piped. “Naw, I ain’t in trouble.”

  “Don’t say ‘ain’t’,” I chided.

  Malcolm chuckled. “Okay. I’m not in trouble. I know you’re probably busy and all but Dad got my tickets to go to the fight at Digg’s tonight. Mom’s not feelin’ too good, so… I thought maybe you could come with us instead.”

  My pile of unread files watched me expectantly.

  Malcolm wasn’t a client anymore; not really. Now that he was eighteen, he was an adult and it was up to him to seek public assistance if he needed it; and he hadn’t. But in the six years I’d worked with him, I’d gotten close to him, and his mother, and his step-father—and his biological father, who was a constant bad influence trying to derail Malcolm’s promi
sing future. Now that he was out of high school—graduated, which was a success for kids from Malcolm’s neighborhood—I was keenly aware of his need for good influences, more than ever.

  Maybe it was selfish, too; but how many more Mr. Carsons were in that stack of files? How much of a difference would I make there? At least with Malcolm, I knew I was accomplishing something; working on a long term project. I wasn’t a fan of sports in general, much less the violent ones—I wasn’t a fan of anything, really; in my line of work you didn’t have time to be a fan of things—but I was a fan of Malcolm and that was enough. How bad could it be?

  “Yeah,” I said. “Alright. What time?”

  “It starts at eight,” Malcolm said. “You’re gonna love it, Aunt Zahra. It’s mad fun.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you then, kid. Hey! Tell your momma I hope she feels better.”

  “I will. See you later!” He hung up. Malcolm knew the drill—get to the point, Aunt Zahra is swamped.

  Marci grimaced as she slipped into my office and snuck another file onto my stack. I sighed, pulled the file from the bottom of the mountain, and opened it up.

  Deep breaths, girl. Deep breaths.

  *****

  Digg’s was a small stadium where boxers, wrestlers, and fighters of various descriptions had met for decades to engage in their baser male urges before an adoring audience. On the off seasons, I supposed—did professional fighting have an off season?—Digg’s hosted a few shows, too. Small time bands, artists, and Jay-Z wannabes, mostly. Most of their events drew a small crowd, though. Madison Square Garden, Digg’s was not—by a long shot. Once, though, Prince had played here. I’d been young, and fantasized that he would see me all the way back in the nosebleed section, call me out like the ebony goddess he knew I was, and steal me away from this sorry-ass ghetto.

  Probably every girl in the place had the same fantasy.

  Come to think of it, that was the last time I was at Digg’s. That was almost ten years ago, just before I started college. Right before…

  I had to stop just outside the place, and steady myself. I’d been so busy, I almost forgot. Dad had been killed almost ten years ago to the day. It was on my calendar, but I hadn’t looked ahead. That big hole in the center of my chest yawned, dulled over the last decade but still painful.

  Once I’d recovered, I made my way to the entrance. Malcolm and Walter—his step-father—were nowhere to be seen. I texted Malcolm that I was here and that he needed to get his skinny butt to the entrance.

  I got back what looked like a seat assignment, but this place was a maze. There was a man nearby: black pants, white shirt; tall, muscled, short, sienna colored hair and forest green eyes, looked like he had the alertness of someone that worked here. Even if he didn’t, he might know where the seats were.

  “Pardon me, sir,” I said, “I haven’t been here in a long time; I’m trying to figure out where seat F3J is. Do you have any idea?”

  He smiled down at me, and his eyes crawled over me once but didn’t linger too long, which took him out of the ‘creep’ category and put him into the ‘typical male’ category that he probably couldn’t help being in anyway. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I did have on my good dress and these curves can’t be entirely contained.

  “F3J,” he repeated, smirking about something. “F3J…well, I might be able to help you hunt it down. Are you…here with someone?”

  “I am,” I said. “Young guy, skinny, mixed.”

  “Anything serious?” The man asked, casually—too casually.

  I laughed. “Um…no, he’s my nephew.”

  “Oh!” The man wiped imaginary sweat off his forehead. “I see. That’s good.”

  “Is it, now?” I asked.

  “Well, see,” he said, “I figured there was no way I was lucky enough to meet a gorgeous single lady in a place like this. I mean, what are the chances a woman like you is unattached?”

  I pursed my lips, and gave him the look I gave the kids that try to bullshit me at work. “Oh, you’re a little slick. What, just because I’m here without a man, I must be unattached?”

  He shrugged. “Are you?”

  “Here without a man?” I asked.

  “No; unattached.”

  I made him wait a second. “Maybe I am.”

  “Here’s the thing,” he said, leaning in a little bit. He smelled like sweat and hard work; the clean sweat of an man after a shower and a workout. “I figured, any man who was with you wouldn’t stay behind if you left the house looking like that. I know I wouldn’t.”

  “What, so he’d own me?” I asked. I wanted to be righteously angry, but it was hard. Those eyes…

  “No,” the man said. “He’d just never miss a chance to see you walking. I think you’d probably own him.”

  “Oh, okay. Okay.” I nodded slowly, smiling now. “You’re slick and smooth at the same time. Listen, can you help me find my seat, or not?”

  “Is that an interview question?”

  “I’m not taking applications.”

  “Give me your phone number, and I’ll take you straight there.” He winked at me.

  I almost did. It was fun, and it had been a long, long time since I’d been flirted with by anybody that wasn’t an inappropriately forward client. That happened plenty. This, though, was a bona fide stranger who didn’t know me from Eve, and seemed like he just thought I was looking cute.

  But, let’s be honest here. I ate take out every night for dinner. I ate most of my lunches at the office. I had heard about days off, and I vaguely remembered having them…or maybe I just dreamed about that once. That stack of case files on my desk? It hung around the back of my head like it had astral projected itself to follow me around the world outside my office.

  It was a nice thought, but no sir; the next date I had time to go on would be the one day off I would get between the day my office burned down, and the day they relocated me to another one and printed out all my files again—thank God for the Cloud.

  “It is not that easy,” I said with my own wink. “But that’s a good try. You got real skills. I applaud your smoothness.” I stepped away from him, and pointed at his outfit. “Next time wear some real clothes. I got no time for scrubs.”

  He feigned a wound to the chest, but he was still smiling. “Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll keep that in mind, then. I’ll at least give you a hint, though.” He pointed toward the ring. “F stands for ‘floor’—your seat’s near the ring. Enjoy the fight!”

  Yeah, I felt a little bad being so hard on him, but you’ve got to shut all that down hard if you’re gonna shut it down at all. A man like that; yeah, okay, probably he’d be good for a short term thing. I could admit that. All that muscle and sweat…

  I left him there, and made my way to the ring. He hadn’t been wrong. I saw Malcolm waving to me, and then Walter, and I picked through the row to get to them.

  “Aunt Zahra!” Malcolm threw his arms around me. “You got all dressed up!”

  “If I’m gonna go out,” I told him, “I’m going out right. Hey, Walter; good to see you.” I hugged Malcolm’s step-father as well.

  Malcolm was wiry, with those long arms and legs his biological father always thought would make for a good basketball player. Malcolm, though, was not a fan of the court. He liked fights for the same reason he liked chess, and science, and debate—one-on-one sports that were about personal excellence, with no one to rely on but yourself; and no one to let you down. There was a complex there, but I was just glad he was putting it to some positive use. He was bi-racial, his father a black-as-midnight hood-rat that made my skin crawl; his mother a blond mess of a white girl who’d been swept up by promises and sweet words and probably a stack of lies. Tyson Kroft was good at all that, for about five minutes at a time. Long enough to make it count.

  Walter was better for both of them—a strong, honorable influence on Malcolm, proof Malcolm could be black without being Tyson; but Tyson was still in the picture. Like c
hewed up gum, he stuck to the bottom of Malcolm’s shoes and wouldn’t go away. Especially now.

  I sat down on the other side of Malcolm. “So, who’s this fight between?” I wouldn’t know them from anybody else, but it seemed like the right question.

  Malcolm laughed, and pointed. Above the ring, there was a massive banner that I’d somehow missed. Riley Dern and Mitch Michaels, heavyweight kick-boxing. Riley Dern looked vaguely familiar; maybe I’d seen him on a flier or something.

  “It’s gonna be epic, Aunt Zahra,” Malcolm said. “These guys are both in line for the championship. I’m here to see Riley Dern. He’s like a white Bruce Lee.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Well this is my first kickboxing match. You have to tell me what the rules are.”

  Malcolm laughed again. “It’s not soccer or football,” he said. “The rules are like…don’t kill each other, and fight until you can’t.”

  “Don’t kill each other,” I repeated. “Yeah, okay. That seems practical.”