TRIGGER
A FIGHT NIGHT Romance
By Simone Scarlet
Copyright © 2016 Simone Scarlet
The right of Simone Scarlet to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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More FIGHT NIGHT Fiction
Bulldog & Other Stories
Bruiser
Baller
Broken
Compendium
Bruiser / Baller / Broken: Three Complete Novels
Chapter One
Travis
I’ve always hated hospitals.
I’ve tried to avoid them my whole life – which sure ain’t easy when you’re a mixed martial arts fighter.
I hate ‘em because I know, just as soon as I’m back under those bright, florescent lights, it’ll take me right back to feeling like I did when I was a kid.
Eight years old. Nostrils filled with the stench of bleach and chlorine. Standing by my momma’s bedside. Saying goodbye to her for the last time.
Yep. I hate hospitals.
That’s why I sure wasn’t happy to be standing in one that Friday afternoon. Brazosport Medical Center, down on the coast in Freeport, Texas.
Making it even more uncomfortable? The fact that I still had the smell of the airport on me – and a pair of socks I hadn’t changed in a day and a half.
“Mr. Oates?” Ignoring the way I looked and smelled, a pretty nurse with the clipboard asked me my name, and then led me into the bowels of the hospital when I confirmed it.
“Your father’s just down here,” she promised, in her drawling Gulf Coast accent. “We’ve got some forms for you to fill in, if you don’t mind.”
The reason I was going to be signing the forms became apparent the moment we rounded the corner, and the nurse led me into a cramped little cubicle at the end of the hallway.
Laying in a gurney, his hands bandaged, was my old man.
It’s clear Walter J. Oates wouldn’t be signing anything through an inch and a half of bandage and gauze.
I hadn’t seen my dad in eight months or more, but the old bastard still looked the same. Rangy and greying, with a square jaw and slate grey eyes.
His mouth was a frown – just as it always was – and as he looked up as he saw me, the thin line of his lips tightened even further.
He didn’t say a word – just narrowed his eyes.
“Hey, Pop,” I offered, accepting the clipboard the nurse handed to me, and scribbling my signature where she asked me to. “How you doin’?”
He held up his bandaged hands wordlessly – as if to reply: How the hell do you think I’m doing, dumbass?
I didn’t respond. I just handed the clipboard back to the nurse, and a moment later, she was gone – her little ass gyrating as she clip-clopped down the corridor in her high heels.
That left me and dad alone – and he didn’t waste a moment.
“I told you on the damn phone,” Walter Oates growled, letting his bandaged hands flop into his lap, “I don’t need your help. You should’ve stayed in New York, where you belong.”
I rolled my eyes. Stubborn old bastard never changed.
“The hospital called me last night and told me it was pretty bad, Pop,” I flopped down into the chair by his gurney. “What else did you expect me to do? Stay up in Brooklyn and scratch my ass?”
“I expected you to stay where you were useful, son,” Walt growled. “Don’t you have a fight to train for, or somethin’?”
I felt my cheeks turn pink as he said that.
The truth be told, I didn’t have anything on the horizon, fight wise. That’s why I didn’t think twice about dropping everything and catching the first flight from New York to Galveston.
That was half of the problem.
“It’s fine, Dad,” I promised, leaning towards him. “Now how about you tell me what the hell happened.” I looked at his bandaged hands – a mess of gauze and wooden splints. “How’d you wind up breakin’ both your damn hands?”
Now it was my dad’s turn to look flushed.
“It was an accident, that’s all,” he grunted – and I could tell he was lying. He wasn’t my old man for nothing. “The hood of my truck fell on ‘em.”
I didn’t believe that for a second, but I wasn’t about to call him on it.
“Well, I had to come, didn’t I?” I replied instead, leaning back in my chair. “I mean, who else is gonna look after you?”
Dad growled at me, and narrowed his eyes.
“I’m a grown-ass man, Travis. I don’t need nobody lookin’ after me.”
“Tell me that again the first time you need to take a piss,” I fired back. “Look at you, Pop. You’re in bad shape.”
My old man flopped back in the bed, and I could see he reluctantly agreed with me.
The nurse had given me the basics as she’d led me down the corridor – broken knuckles, fractured metacarpels. He wouldn’t be playing X-Box any time soon, with injuries like that.
Dad snorted, and I was about to ask him what happened again – not that I expected the old bastard to answer. But then I saw him looking past me – over my shoulder – and I knew something was up.
His eyes widened. His lips curled. He was smiling the way I wished he’d have been smiling at me, the moment I turned up at his bedside after a five-hour flight from New York.
Turning my head, I looked down the corridor, to whatever my father was smiling at.
And that’s when I saw her.
Roxy.
Roxy Rockatansky – that sassy little minx I’d dated all through high school. Stomping down the corridor in her knee-high biker boots, with a bunch of flowers in one hand and a bag of grapes in the other.
For a second there, I couldn’t breathe. It was like somebody had punched me in the solar plexus.
Fuck.
When I’d flown hell-for-leather down from New York, it had been to see my dad. He was in hospital, and I was just coming to look after his stubborn ass. I hadn’t intended to see anybody else I knew from this sorry-ass, nowhere town.
And I certainly hadn’t intended to see her.
But there she was, large as life – and twice as beautiful. Those big blue eyes, full lips and a tumbledown pile of curly black hair pouring down her shoulders.
Shit. I wasn’t prepared for this.
But apparently dad was.
“Now that’s why I didn’t need you to drag your sorry ass down here from Brooklyn, son,” Walt growled, struggling to sit up in his gurney. “I’ve already got somebody to look after me – and she’s a damn sight easier on the eyes than you are.”
And wasn’t that the damn truth?
Chapter Two
Roxy
Son of a bitch.
Those were the first words that came to mind, as I r
ounded the corner of Brazosport Medical Center and found a face staring back at me that I hadn’t expected.
Walt I’d been expecting, lying in that gurney, just as the nurse told me he would be.
But sitting next to him? Tall, and tanned, and still so goddamned good-looking, even after all these years?
That no good, long-lost, son of a bitch son of his. Travis.
I practically reeled to a halt the moment I saw him – and if I’d had even a moment to think about it, I’d have thrown the grapes and the flowers I’d bought right at him.
But instead I just stood there, and stared into a face I hadn’t seen since back when my dad had still been alive.
“Roxy!” It was Walt, raising a bandaged hand. “Come over here, girl. Look what the cat dragged in?”
With his other bandaged hand, Walt slapped his son’s shoulder, and I could see the Travis had been as stunned by my sudden appearance as I’d been at his.
Reluctantly, I put one boot in front of the other, and approached them both.
“Roxy, honey,” Walt’s normally stern mouth curled into a smile. “Hey, thanks for comin’ down, sugar. I was up shit’s creek for sure, especially before this deadbeat’s sorry ass showed up.”
He elbowed Travis in the ribs, but his son didn’t seem to share Walt’s mirth.
“You didn’t expect to see her now, did you?” Walt thumped Travis in the ribs again, and his son’s eyes narrowed even further. “First person I called when I had my…” he cleared his throat. “…my accident.”
I shook the surprise off, and stepped up to the bedside – offering Walt the flowers and grapes I’d bought.
“Well, hello there, Walt,” I forced myself to smile. “The nurses warned me about you on the way over. They said you’ve been flirtin’ up a storm with all of them.”
Walt snorted, grinning.
“Well, they’re pretty lil’ things, ain’t they?” He looked up at me expectantly. “Any word on when I’m getting’ my ass out of this prison?”
“They’re just filling in the discharge papers now,” I promised.
And that’s when I turned to Travis.
Normally Travis Oates towered over me – I’m 5’ 5” in my heels, and he’s got to be a good foot taller than that.
But right then, sat next to his dad, I was looking down on him.
In every sense of the term.
“Hello, Travis,” I purred, turning on my most sarcastic southern charm. “Long time no see.”
It was funny to see this big, bad MMA fighter looking back up at me, like a cornered animal.
“Hey, Roxy,” he replied coolly. “How’ve you been?”
How have I been?
Did he really want an answer to that?
What could I tell him? About how my dad had died four years ago, cursing Travis’ name until the end? Or how the run down martial arts school I’d inherited off him was two rent checks away from bankruptcy? Or perhaps how in all the time since Travis had walked out on me, I hadn’t had a date, or a kiss, or a one-night stand that I hadn’t compared unfavorably to that tall, rangy, handsome son of a bitch?
I wanted to tell him all of that. And then I wanted to slap him in the face, and tell him what a bastard he was.
But instead I just replied, “I’m fine.”
And then I turned to Travis’ dad – the man I was actually there to see, after all – and asked him, “You ready to get out of here, Pop?”
And he grinned at me, in the way Travis had once used to.
“’Bout damn time, sugar.”
Chapter Three
Travis
The ride home was the most awkward twenty minutes of my life.
All three of us were crammed up in the bench seat of Roxy’s old Ford F-150 – dad’s bandaged hands resting on the dashboard. He was sat between us – not that it mattered.
Roxy’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, as she stared out at the road in front, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to look at her. There might as well have been the Mojave Desert between us, rather than just a foot and a half of torn and faded vinyl.
“So how long are you plannin’ to be down here,” Dad asked me, to break the awkward silence. He turned to me, and grumbled, “I’d get along just fine without you. I just broke my hands. I didn’t get the damn things cut off.”
“I dunno,” I grumbled back. “I hadn’t thought about it. A week or two? Long enough for you to get those bandages off?”
“Well, don’t you have a fight to prepare for, or something?” Dad asked, cocking his head to one side. “You don’t have to stay here for my sake, son.” He snorted. “Shit, you never bothered before.”
Roxy interrupted us.
“Yeah, Travis,” she snapped, staring out of the windshield, as she guided the truck through the streets of Freeport. “Don’t you have a fight to prepare for? I mean, what’s next, after losin’ that last one?”
Ouch. She might as well have punched me.
Six weeks had passed since the last time I’d been in the octagon – squaring off against heavyweight Ben ‘Bruiser’ Broderick. And the burly son of a bitch had me tappin’ out thirty seconds into the first round. It was the most humiliating moment of my fighting career.
And, given the way the phone had stopped ringing immediately afterward, possibly my last.
“I’ve got a couple of weeks to spare for my old man,” I replied coldly, giving Roxy the side-eye. “Figured it was time I came back home for a spell, anyway.”
“Yeah,” Roxy snorted. “Since everything went so great last time you were here.”
“Now, now, kids,” Dad raised his bandaged hands. “Play nice. You two used to get along real well.”
“Yeah,” Roxy growled. “But that was a long time ago.”
And before I could respond to that, she’d swung the wheel of the old Ford to the left, and the truck rumbled over a cattle grate and through the gates of the Handy Villas Trailer Park.
We were home.
Chapter Four
Roxy
I could have found my way back to Walt’s old doublewide with my eyes closed.
In fact there were some nights, back when Travis and I had been dating, that I practically had.
But that afternoon, the sun was bright and the road was clear as I eased my dad’s old truck to a halt outside the long, low mobile home overlooking the gulf flats.
I cut the engine. The truck backfired loudly.
Turning in my seat, I looked across at Walt and his son, and growled, “You’re home. You want me to open the door for you, and take your bags?”
Walt grinned at that one, but Travis didn’t share his humor. The rangy young man hefted open the creaking door of my truck, and a moment later I heard his cowboy boots hit the asphalt.
“C’mon, dad,” he ordered, hoisting the door open wide. “Scooch on over here and I’ll help you down.”
“I don’t need your damn help, son,” Walt snapped, sliding over the torn and faded vinyl bench, and dropping down onto the asphalt. “I broke my hands – I’m not an invalid.”
But the way he winced as he slammed shut the truck door with one of his bandaged hands made me doubt that.
I shoved open the driver’s door, and slipped down onto the road myself. It was getting late, and the cicadas had started their chorus in the wide, open swampland on the opposite side of Walt’s trailer.
As Travis helped his dad around the front of the truck, I dug into the back pocket of my tight jeans, and pulled out a stick of Big Red. A moment later I was chewing – watching Travis help his dad down the path towards his trailer.
There was something kind of sweet about it – this towering, 6’ 4” MMA fighter, helping his old man down the path gently, but firmly. If I hadn’t been so goddamn mad at him, I might have even found it touching.
But the truth was, I couldn’t look at Travis without feeling something hot and angry bubbling up inside my belly.
Funny. If you’d asked me
four years ago if I could have ever felt that way about Travis Oates, I’d have told you to fuck off.
This was my Travis we were talking about. My high school boyfriend. My first love. My first something else, if you catch my drift (and right in the bed of my dad’s old truck, if you can believe it.)
I could never be mad at him. Could I?
Well, clearly I could – because that had been before.
Before he and Dad had argued.
Before Travis had kicked me aside and walked out of my life like I was nothing.
I snarled, and spat my half-chewed gum into the grass.
That was before.
Travis opened the door for his father, and helped him inside. I stood there, and watched. I’m not sure why I didn’t just get back into the truck and drive off – but somehow, something inside me told me not to.
I almost regretted listening to that voice when the trailer door opened again, and Travis ducked back out through the doorway.
He was alone this time – striding down the pathway with that racehorse gait of his.
“Thank you.”
The words sounded uncertain, but sincere as he said them.
Travis stepped up to me – towering above me, as he always had. He looked down, and smiled that crooked smile that use to give me butterflies in my stomach.
“Thanks,” he repeated. “For comin’ to pick up Pops. For lookin’ out for him while I was gone.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“Well, somebody had to,” I growled back.
I wrapped my arms around my chest, and shivered despite the heat.
“So you really back home for two weeks now?” I asked. “Or is this just gonna wind up being another flyin’ visit? Just long enough so you don’t feel guilty about leavin’ your dad again?”
Travis physically recoiled as I said that.
“It ain’t like that,” he promised. “I just…” He blinked. “I just…”
But the words never came.
He just stood there, trying to find a justification for why he’d been gone so long. But we both knew he couldn’t.
Trigger: An Alpha Bad Boy MMA Romance Page 1
