Until the Bell Rings: An MMA Fighter Romance

by Roxy Wilson

  “I have to try,” I muttered, more to myself than him. “I can’t sit here helpless again while my best friend loses someone else she loves.”

  It was a dig at him and Mason knew it. “Then by all means,” he said flatly, expression tight. “Go see if the police will save the day.”

  I slipped off the counter, avoiding getting too close to him this time as I left the kitchen. “You can stay here if you like.”

  I didn’t check back for an answer, heading upstairs to shower and change quickly. I didn’t hear the front door open, so I assumed he’d still be there when I went back down.

  He was. I was surprised he hadn’t taken the first chance he had to bolt and disappear again.

  “Shower’s yours if you want it,” I told him lightly, grabbing my purse and jacket.

  He came to join me at the door, his arms folded, an immovable looking frown carved into his face. “This is a pointless idea, Taryn.”

  “You know that,” I tried to explain. “I don’t. I can’t just trust your word. I can’t.”

  Mason’s expression shifted in surprise, like that hadn’t even occurred to him. “Okay.”

  “Okay, then.”

  “I can’t stay here.” He’d sorted out his appearance in my absence, tidying his hair and fixing his clothes, covering himself in that dark leather jacket like an armor. I couldn’t see the man I’d just slept with at all anymore, nothing desperate or yielding or regretful about the person in front of me. No anger and no passion, no emotion whatsoever. It was, somehow, both easier and more difficult. “I have to make some calls, get in touch with some of my guys. I have to know why Ethan’s on that list.”

  “Does it matter?” I asked faintly.

  “If he’s like his father, of course it matters.”

  “If he is then the police will handle it. Not you, not your guys.”

  “Taryn,” Mason sighed. “Please. Just let me work, okay?”

  He held the front door open for me, an oddly chivalrous gesture, and I stepped through it with a reluctant nod.

  “I won’t mention you to the cops,” I said, a parting offering of peace, and he acknowledged it with a half-smile, before walking away without another word.

  He left the area on foot as I watched with a yearning under my ribs for some show of domesticity we hadn’t even earned yet—a kiss goodbye, a hug, something. All of them stupid things to want from him and I couldn’t fathom why I would even crave them.

  Outside, the day was bright—too bright for my stormy mood. Sure, the sex had been great, even better than before, but Mason was still such an anomaly. His apologies rang in my ears, resonating with certainty, and I wasn’t sure what to do with that.

  I considered his truths today, what he’d told me about Ethan. It implied he might be hanging around for a while.

  It meant I had to find some way of being near him, balance my hurt and my plain old lust.

  I wondered if I could somehow find my way onto the road to forgiving him, but there was no frame of reference in my whole life for a betrayal this huge.

  A therapist would have a field day with us.

  As I drove through my small town, parking up at the local police station, a lump formed in my chest. How would I begin to broach this with the cops? I knew I had to do something, but my resolve could only carry me into that place. The words were a whole other matter.

  I walked up to the wide blue doors, wringing my hands. I was doing the right thing, I knew that, and the police would fix this mess without Mason having to get involved at all. He could leave, go back to wherever it was he’d been for a decade, and I could get on with my life, pretend all of this was just a strange dream.

  That was what I wanted, wasn’t it?

  “Can I help you, miss?” the man behind the front desk asked, and I startled. I must’ve been stood there a full minute, blankly staring at a wall poster.

  If you suspect a crime, report it! We’re relying on you!

  “Yes,” I said shakily. “I’d like to report a murder that’s going to happen.”

  The man arched his eyebrows. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “O-kay,” he drawled slowly, turning to yell over his shoulder, “Sheila! You better get out here. Bring a pen or something.”

  “It’s my friend’s husband,” I explained, already sensing this wasn’t going well. “Ethan Foster.” The man’s eyebrows climbed higher and I nodded, taking a deep breath. “He’s going to be killed.”

  Chapter Four

  Mason

  Taryn wasn’t home.

  And yet—

  I knew where she left her spare key. It was the same place she used to leave her parents’ keys for me, back before me and my sister had officially moved in with Taryn’s family, before our elderly aunt had died, leaving us with no one to take us in.

  The key was right where I’d thought it’d be, in a peony pot under the front window.

  Some things never change, I thought to myself.

  I wondered if she’d left it there specifically for me, knowing it was arrogant to think such a thing until I saw the note on her kitchen counter.

  Mason,

  Hope you found the key instead of picking my lock or whatever it is you do these days. I’m at my brother’s, dropping off clothes for Daisy. You were right; the police laughed me out of the building yesterday. They won’t help us.

  There’s salad in the fridge if you’re hungry.

  Taryn.

  A smile tugged at my mouth. Somehow she’d known I’d be back today. She still knew me, despite all the things about me I’d thought inexorably altered. Despite all the crimes I carried on my shoulders, Taryn was still letting me into her home and trying to take care of me, just like she had all those years ago.

  I didn’t deserve it, but a man in my line of work took what he could, where he could.

  Maybe one day I would deserve it.

  No, it was a pipe dream and I knew it. There was no future in which I’d ever get to find out. I had to push those wayward ideas out of my head, because they were the road to madness.

  I hadn’t heard anything from Taryn since yesterday, since she went off to the police station, but I’d known full well they’d laugh her out of there. It’s why I’d come back—to talk to her properly.

  But it was difficult to think about talking as I stood by the kitchen island.

  I’d fucked her right here in this room yesterday; the sense-memories of it still making my skin feel hot. It had been incredible, better than when we were younger, and last night I’d fallen asleep thinking about her.

  If it had been purely physical, it would’ve been easy to put her out of my mind, but my thing with Taryn was anything but simple.

  I looked around her kitchen, getting a better read on things than the last frantic time I was here. I hadn’t noticed the childish drawings pinned with magnets to the fridge, nor the A-star report card propped against the toaster. I hadn’t seen the swimming certificate on top of the microwave, not the pink plastic cup with a curly straw on the counter.

  This was my child’s home. Taryn had brought her into this world, raised her to achieve A-star report cards and swim a hundred meters and put colorful rainbows to paper.

  And where had I been? Watching the light go out of men’s eyes as I stood coldly by, clutching a weapon.

  My hands ached, curled involuntarily into fists, and I gently flexed them.

  A morbid curiosity, an almost sadistic need to punish myself, kept me moving through the house, taking in the photographs and toys: a family picture at the beach on Taryn’s mantelpiece, my sister and Ethan in it too; a teddy bear on the sofa that looked washed and rewashed, ragged and well-loved; a CD filled with kiddy pop songs by the player, its surface scratched from use. All of these things were so far removed from my own life they felt almost alien.

  I climbed the stairs and found my daughter’s bedroom, a little decorated plaque stuck to the front of the door: Daisy’s room!
/>   I couldn’t stop myself from pushing it open. I’d done so much worse, committed crimes in blood and fire, but this, somehow, felt more wrong than any of it.

  This isn’t a place for you, my cruel conscience scolded.

  Daisy’s walls were painted pale pink, the ceiling powder blue and decorated with spongy clouds—Taryn’s doing, no doubt, never hesitant to get stuck in with the DIY.

  The whole room was neatly cluttered with toys and books, a doll house pushed to the corner with a plastic tray of dolls and furniture beside it. Her shelves were stacked with stories and little trinkets, more family photographs in pretty frames.

  I was in none of them. I was in none of this.

  Taryn, her parents, my sister, even Ethan fucking Foster had left their mark here in this room.

  What mark had I left in Daisy’s life? Abandonment, grief, a mother distraught. And now murder, hit jobs, my criminal underworld brought right to her doorstep.

  If it wasn’t for the matter of Ethan Foster, would I have left already? Or would I still be here, torturing myself, trying to make my child’s mother believe my regret?

  I didn’t even know. Just days ago, everything was certain to me. I killed, got paid, traveled often. I spent comfortably and lived my life on my terms.

  Back in this small town, the smells and sights and characters screaming home with every breath, I felt more than ever the distance of my current New York apartment, with its skyline of city lights and concrete buildings.

  Everything was different there, including me.

  My knees felt shaky and I sat on Daisy’s flower-patterned sheets, my head in my hands.

  It’d been years since I cried. When my mother died, I wept torrents. When I found out what William Foster had done, I cried tears of rage and injustice. When I left my home in the skin of a man too young to truly grasp the coldness of this world, I shed just a few tears and told myself no more.

  There, in my daughter’s room, I shook with emotion. My eyes stung, my cheeks going damp, all the wrongs I’d both taken in and dealt out caving in on me like a ton of rubble. The bedrock beneath me felt broken, no sense of certainty left to hold me upright.

  “Mason?”

  I jerked my head up to see Taryn stood in the doorway; fuck, I hadn’t even heard her come in. So much for an expert hitman. She’d gotten the drop on me in the most humiliating way possible.

  “Jesus,” Taryn breathed, kneeling by the bed. “What the hell happened?”

  I wiped my face on my arm, frustrated at being caught like this as the tears just wouldn’t stop flowing. It was like once I’d started to cry, once those floodgates had opened, nothing could stem the tide.

  Ten years of bottling this shit up had crippled me.

  Taryn took my hand between both of hers. “It’s okay, Mason.”

  “No, it’s not,” I choked.

  Her eyes welled up, too, and then she was pulling me close, our foreheads pressed together as her breath hitched.

  “No,” she agreed. “It’s not, is it?”

  I shook my head, trying to pull away from her. She wouldn’t allow it, moving back with me, climbing into my lap and holding my face in her hands. She was in full caretaker mode and I didn’t know whether to push her away or allow myself to have it.

  Could I allow myself? Could I have this just once and never again? I felt it might break me.

  “Look at me,” she pleaded, and I shut my eyes, her expression too intent and more understanding than I could accept. I thought about standing, leaving, but I was rooted, too weak to do what I should’ve done. “Just—just look at me.”

  I felt her mouth against my cheek, dragging soft kisses towards my lips. For ten years I’d buried my grief at leaving her and now the need was insatiable, rearing up like a wild thing. Taryn, offering herself to me again like this, like nothing I’d anticipated coming back here. I wasn’t nearly a good enough man to put a stop to it. I was too selfish, too impulsive, too filled with poison.

  I’d drag her right down with me, but I gripped her hips and licked inside her mouth anyway, pulling her against me.

  “Not here,” she gasped, and I quickly took her meaning, standing with her still in my lap and carrying her into the hall.

  She kissed my throat as I kicked open her bedroom door, mouth sucking hot marks against my skin.

  I stopped at the foot of her bed, propping a knee against the mattress and swooping down to lay her on the sheets. My face still felt damp with tears, my stomach twisting in knots of want and fear—fear, for a man such as myself. I’d crippled mobster empires and drug gangs, at the tender age of seventeen murdered the man whose corrupt whims ruled this town, but in the face of Taryn, all I could do was tremble.

  She was my judge and my jury, my past and my present all rolled into one.

  “Come here.” Taryn reached for me, her soft hands tugging at the back of my t-shirt until I ducked, letting her pull it over my head. “Do you remember,” she started wetly, her eyes still rimmed in red as I knelt between her spread legs, “when we broke into the ranch that night and took a tractor ride out to the edge of the property?”

  I did.

  I coughed a laugh, shocked that I could in that moment. “Yeah.”

  “We made love under the stars by the stream.”

  “Made love,” I scoffed, and Taryn laughed too.

  “Okay, we groped and fucked like a couple of ridiculous horny teenagers.”

  “You brought stolen beer from your parents’ diner.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she marveled, like she hadn’t remembered that part. “And you lasted about three minutes.”

  “The first time,” I corrected. I felt the crushing weight of all that sorrow and regret ease off, just enough so I could breathe again. Just that small statement, reminding me who I was—not the stone-cold hitman who killed for cash and cared about nothing but a good time, but the young man who’d fumbled for a girl in the dark, stupid with lust and anxious to make her happy.

  I’d forgotten that was me. I’d forgotten all about that boy who’d killed for the mother he’d loved so fiercely and run away to protect the women he’d adored.

  He was me, and Taryn still saw him through my eyes. I didn’t think such a thing was possible.

  She looked up at me, now, reaching out to splay her hands on my bare chest. “The second time was pretty memorable, though.”

  I smirked. “It was.”

  We’d had so many last times. The night before I set out to kill Foster, I’d laid her in our bed and said my silent goodbyes. Yesterday in the kitchen, I’d thought I was lucky to get one last taste of her.

  I knew this could just as easily be the last time.

  I’d learned, in my long years of running, fighting, killing, to live in the moment, but I looked down at Taryn, at her small hands spread possessively on my body, and saw the past and the present blurring together at the seams.

  “Remember our first date?” Taryn went on, her voice a vital distraction from my churning emotions.

  “Milkshakes at the diner and that crappy movie…”

  She gave my chest a light slap. “The Lake House was not a crappy movie.”

  “If I recall,” I drawled, “I wanted to see The Hills Have Eyes.”

  “Yeah, that would’ve been a great first date movie,” Taryn said dryly.

  “I kissed you in the back row,” I remembered out loud, my voice almost faint.

  She stroked upwards, fingers curling underneath my chin. I took her wrists in my hands, leaning over her and pinning her to the mattress.

  “We were good together,” she said, and then bit her lip like she regretted it. “God, Mason. I wish I didn’t feel—”

  I hushed her gently. “Hey, it’s okay.”

  I couldn’t handle hearing her struggle with her feelings, painfully aware that I’d caused her yet another heartache. She’d been so angry at the wedding, and again yesterday. She’d almost hated how bad she’d wanted me in the kitchen.

&
nbsp; But, more than that, I couldn’t handle knowing, deep down, I was pleased, because it meant that on some level I still affected her deeply.

  Indifference was the antithesis of love but hate, passion, grief, torment—those things gave life to feeling.

  I was cruel, a selfish bastard, but I couldn’t help it.

  My mouth found her jaw in a silent apology, sucking soft kisses down her throat and over her fluttering pulse. She tried to arch against me, but I was in no mood to rush, holding her down with my hands over her delicate wrists.

  “Let me,” I said, nuzzling between her breasts through her tank top. I let go of her, shifting lower, and she stayed still as I pressed kisses against her stomach through the cotton of her shirt, dampening the material. “Good girl.”

  She sighed a laugh. “We’ll see.”

  For that, I pushed up her shirt and grazed my teeth against her bare stomach, feeling her skin break out in goosebumps. Her legs, bent at the knees, squeezed against my sides, her mid-length skirt riding all the way up her thighs.

  She always was so responsive, and I’d known her body better than my own once. Getting reacquainted with it was becoming an addiction, better than any liquor or drugs I’d tried, any bad guy I’d ended, any fat roll of bills I’d pocketed.

  I pushed her skirt all the way up, ducking my head to bite at the elastic of her panties, pulling back and letting go with a sharp snap.

  “You’re a damn tease,” Taryn huffed.

  She was already so wet, her underwear dark where it’d dampened, and I opened my mouth over the cotton, stroking my tongue roughly against it to the sound of her gasps.

  “I swear to god, Mason!”

  I pressed my amusement into the soft inside of her thigh and she scratched her hands into my hair impatiently in reaction. I could’ve gone all day winding her up to frustration, but I took pity on her, hooking my fingers into her underwear and pulling it down.

  The first stroke of my tongue over her made her hips buck upwards. I pressed one forearm across the width of her stomach to hold her down and flicked my tongue again and again, lightly teasing her some more just to make her whine.