Mariah
Three Months Later
Though Mariah had worried that the three months of training at an isolated gym in the Colorado mountains would drag, the time had flown. She felt like only a couple days ago, she had woken up beside the same man who had occupied so much of her mental bandwidth over the last twelve weeks: Logan Harfield.
Before he left that day, he’d told her he would see her in Las Vegas. At the time, she had been given no reason to doubt his assurance. But now, as she strode onto the mat at the center of the jam-packed arena, she started to wonder.
The roar of the crowd should have brought a self-assured smile to her face, should have brought on the cool rush of adrenaline, should have elicited a positive reaction. Instead, as she scanned the rows of seats closest to the stage, a knot formed in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat.
They had spent a grand total of fewer than twenty-four hours together. Sure, she had felt a connection with him—a connection she had been sure he returned. And sure, he had assured her he wouldn’t miss her big fight.
But where was he?
She had half-expected him to visit her private dressing room before the match, but the only knock at the door had been Mike. Though Logan hadn’t specified a number, she’d been able to tell from his attire and his suave demeanor that he wasn’t short on money. If he was here, he would undoubtedly be seated in the front few rows.
Then again, this was Las Vegas, not San Bravado. Maybe he hadn’t been able to obtain such an exclusive seat. Maybe all the front-row seats had been taken by regular attendees.
At the sudden thought, Mariah glanced up to the series of glass panes that lined the upper bowl of the arena. The boxes above the concession stands were little oases of luxury in a sea of rowdy fans. Perhaps he had splurged for a more private viewing area.
Clenching her teeth, Mariah forced her attention back to the mat as the announcer called out her opponent’s name.
It didn’t matter if Logan was here. Tonight was Mariah’s night.
This was the night that would define the rest of her MMA career—the night that would make or break her dreams of becoming a championship fighter. Right now, she had a match to focus on. She would deal with her feelings about Logan once she was back in her dressing room.
As she pushed the thoughts about the tall, handsome man out of her head, she let the cheers of the crowd roll over her. She set her jaw, squared her shoulders, and stretched her arms.
Before her MMA career had even started, she had learned the value of maintaining her focus under pressure. Whether the source of the stress was an audience in the conference room at a call center or thousands of cheering fans in a Las Vegas stadium, Mariah kept her fixation on the task at hand.
Everything else was secondary, and right now, that included Logan Harfield.
By the time the bell sounded out to start the match, she was firmly grounded in the moment. She didn’t know what might happen between her and Logan, but she knew MMA. After three months of intense training, she was in the best physical shape of her life, and her focus was laser-sharp.
Mariah and her opponent—Eva Valdez, a tall brunette with sharp blue eyes—circled one another like a couple sharks who had caught the scent of blood. The roar of the crowd had faded to a din in Mariah’s ears, and the sound was a comfort. Almost like a song she would play after she returned home from a hard day at work.
Eva threw a couple jabs, but Mariah anticipated the angle of the blows and hopped aside for each one. As her opponent retracted her arm after the second punch, Mariah saw her opening. In a blur of motion, she slid forward to swing her clenched fist at Eva’s face.
A last-minute sidestep took her opponent’s head out of the trajectory of Mariah’s right hook, though she felt some satisfaction as her knuckles grazed the fighter’s cheek. The move put Mariah on the offensive, but before she could make use of her position, the other woman snapped her foot out in a defensive kick to keep Mariah at bay.
If the blow had landed anywhere else on Mariah’s leg, she was sure that all it would have done was shove her away. But at that precise moment, Mariah had shifted her stance in preparation for an attempt at a takedown. Rather than knock against her shin like the woman had intended, the kick smashed into the side of Mariah’s knee.
A blinding sizzle of pain erupted from the site of the blow, and beneath the veritable agony, Mariah felt a sickening pop.
Mariah took in a sharp breath as she dropped to the mat to grasp at her leg. Her opponent’s blue eyes had gone wide, and from beneath the rush of her pulse, Mariah hardly heard the referee shout to stop the match.
She didn’t know what was happening, but the searing pain hadn’t diminished once Mariah had dropped to sit.
A haunted look passed over the other fighter’s face as she knelt to bring herself eye level with Mariah.
“Oh my God,” Eva managed. “Are you all right?”
All Mariah could do was shake her head.
The brunette snapped her attention over to the ref as the older man approached. “She’s hurt,” she announced.
With a nod to Mariah and her companion, the ref beckoned a team of medical personnel forward.
As much as Mariah willed the agony to subside, as much as she hoped the injury was superficial, she knew in her gut that nothing would be the same after tonight.
Her thoughts were a whirlwind of disappointment and hurt as she desperately scanned the faces of the crowd one last time.
When she didn’t spot Logan, she wasn’t surprised, but her throat tightened just the same.
At the beginning of the day, she had been hopeful. She had been confident she would deliver the best performance in her career so far. Though she hadn’t expected the match to be an easy victory, she had been confident in her ability to persevere. And as an added bonus, she had been sure she would see Logan in the crowd.
Now, as a handful of paramedics hauled her stretcher to a waiting ambulance outside the bustling arena, her hopes had been thoroughly eviscerated.
This was what she got for daring to hope, she thought. This was why hope was such a dangerous thing. The crash after the high. The big comedown. The realization that all those feelings of contentment had been manufactured from a make-believe tale she’d concocted in her mind.
She should have known better.
But Mariah was a fighter, and nothing in her life had ever been handed to her, professional or otherwise. She was resilient, and despite the distance she felt had grown between her and her friends over the past couple years, she knew she still had people who cared about her. She had Hazel, her mom, and her brother.
Even if the worst came to pass, even if the unadulterated agony in her leg spelled the end of her career as an MMA fighter, she would keep fighting. One way or another, she would get through this—whatever the hell this was.
Chapter 8
Mariah
As Mariah drifted back to consciousness, she took in a deep breath. The air smelled sterile, like someone had reached out and scrubbed it with an industrial-strength cleaner. Though the space around her was still, she could hear the faint drone of the hospital staff at work.
She snapped open her eyes. Curtains had been drawn over the windows to block out all but a sliver of the morning sunlight. Was it morning?
Blinking to clear the film from her vision, Mariah glanced around the dim space. The room was unadorned but functional. To one side of her bed was a table, and to the other side was a cushioned chair. A television mounted in the top right-hand corner was dark, but right now, Mariah was grateful for the lack of illumination.
When she shifted in place to reach for her phone, a dull ache throbbed in her knee.
That’s why she was here.
Like a faucet in her mind had just been turned on, the memories flowed back as she glanced up to the IV stand beside the table.
After a kick to the side of her knee, Mariah had been hauled away fr
om her career-defining match on a stretcher. She had hoped against hope that the excruciating pain would subside, and that the doctors would advise her she had merely sprained her knee or pulled a muscle.
A quick journey to one of the hospital’s imaging rooms had revealed the source of Mariah’s agony—a torn anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL.
A torn ACL was among the most notorious injuries across all sports. Though some athletes overcame the potentially career-ending injury, there were plenty who didn’t. Only the knowledge that a full recovery was possible kept Mariah from sinking into a dark pit of despair.
She vaguely remembered waking after the surgery to be advised that the procedure had been as successful as they could hope. Now, only time and physical therapy would determine how well the injury healed.
Her smartphone buzzed in her hand, and Mariah blinked repeatedly as she looked down to the screen. The caller’s number was unfamiliar, but she recognized the San Bravado area code. It could be Mike, she thought, or a contact of his.
At the last second, she swiped the screen and raised the phone to her face.
“Hello?” she croaked.
“Mariah?” a familiar voice replied.
The icy hand of adrenaline clamped down on her throat as her breath hitched. Amid the torn ACL diagnosis and the implications for the rest of Mariah’s career, she had almost forgotten.
“Logan,” she finally managed. Whether the result of the adrenaline or her adjustment to the waking world, the tiredness had dissipated from her tone.
“Hey, yeah, it’s me. I’m sorry, did I wake you up?” At the cool, casual tone of his voice, her heart dropped down into her stomach.
“No,” she replied, tightening her grasp on the beige blanket. “No, you didn’t.”
“Okay, good. Well, I just wanted to give you a call to apologize for not making it to your match last night. It’s been a hell of a couple weeks at work, and I just couldn’t get away.”
So, that was his excuse. Work. Not very original, Mr. Harfield, she thought.
She should have known. Though she had let herself envision more for them than just a quick fling, he had only been after one thing. Then again, she couldn’t blame him, could she? After all, when he knocked on her door that night, her intent had been the same.
But somewhere over the twenty-four hours they had spent together, something had shifted. Part of her had been certain that the same shift had occurred for him, but apparently, that part of her had been wrong. Though he had come to mean more to her than a casual hookup, she now realized the same did not ring true for him. To him, she was likely just one of many. Another pretty woman to add to his list of conquests.
Despite the knot in her stomach and the tightness in her throat, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how much his casual dismissal stung.
If she was just another conquest for him, then he was just another conquest for her, too. Mariah had never bought into the ridiculous double-standard that insisted women remain chaste while men played the so-called field. She had never been much for soliciting casual flings, but she refrained from any sort of judgment. As long as no one got hurt, she would live and let live.
Though a flurry of thoughts whipped through her head, only a split second had passed since Logan vocalized his lame excuse. Mariah might have only been twenty-six, but she wasn’t naïve. She knew bullshit when she smelled it.
“That’s fine.” She kept her voice cool and calm, an ability honed by years of dealing with pissed-off customers in a call center.
“Really, I’m sorry.” His casual tone belied no hint of regret.
“It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.” She let a dismissive edge find its way to the words. “It’s no big deal. Honestly, I didn’t expect you to be there, anyway. You know how it is, right? You have a good time with someone and get wrapped up in the moment, don’t want it to end. It’s like when you get drunk with your friends and you all swear that you’re going to finally take that road trip you’ve been talking about for the last six years. You’re not actually going to do it. It’s just one of those things.”
“Well, still. It felt like something that warranted an apology.”
Before he could add more to whatever nonsense he had concocted to try to placate the faint clip of irritability she had shown, she cut him off. “Like I said, don’t worry about it. We had some fun. No one got hurt. It’s fine. You’ve got your life, and I’ve got mine. But I’m not really into the whole ‘on-call hookup’ thing, so let’s just call this good, okay?”
As much as she wanted to hang up to end the conversation that had become equal parts painful and hostile, she waited for his response.
“Okay,” he finally replied. “Take care, Mariah.”
“You, too, Logan.”
Pulling the phone away from her face, she swiped the red button and dropped the phone to the bed.
She would be fine. She had an injury to recover from, and she didn’t need any distractions.
Chapter 9
Mariah
Four Years Later
Mariah barely suppressed a sigh as she strode over to the horseshoe-shaped bar on the main level of the club. Blue and purple lights glittered off the silver specks in the granite surface. The frosted-glass liquor shelves lent the entire area an ethereal appearance, at least from a distance. Once she got close enough to hear and smell the patrons, however, the spell was broken.
One such patron, a man who couldn’t have been much older than Mariah’s thirty years, had warranted her attention. The younger bartender had cut him off, and rather than slink off his barstool and stumble out the door, the drunk had hurled a handful of threats at the barkeep. According to the rundown Mariah had been given by her boss, Joe, the rambling had gone from demands for better customer service to threats of a fistfight. Though the remarks about a physical brawl had been made under the guise of sarcasm, neither Mariah nor Joe were keen on taking their chances.
Brushing off the front of her black, button-down shirt, Mariah swallowed her expression of disdain and stepped in to lean against the bar at the man’s side. His dark eyes shifted over to her movement, and she replied with a disarming smile—a look she’d been able to perfect after almost a year at work at the club.
“Hey,” she said brightly.
As he straightened in his seat, she didn’t miss the way his body wavered. She couldn’t help but wonder if he would even remember any of this tomorrow.
“Hey, pretty lady,” he replied. If he was sober, his grin might have been endearing, but right now, the expression only made him look drunker.
She fought against an eye roll. Instead, she twirled a piece of her long hair around an index finger in an effort to appear flirtatious. “I was wondering if you’d want to step outside, maybe get some fresh air?”
Sometimes, the drunkards recognized the tactic for what it was. But more often than not, they agreed with the same dumb smile and wobbly nod as her newest patron. In the event they tried to refuse—and try was as far as they ever got—Mariah dropped the cutesy façade and pointedly advised them she would put them in a choke hold if they didn’t follow her orders and get the hell out of the club.
Seventy-hour workweeks weren’t what she had envisioned for the start of her thirties, but she could admit that ejecting drunk assholes from a club yielded a measure of satisfaction. Unfortunately, the majority of her job consisted of checking IDs and turning away underage kids trying to sneak in with a fake license, or with their sibling’s license. In the year she’d worked at The Max, she had seen some real winners.
As she led the drunk through the mostly empty floor and to the familiar set of glass double doors, she stifled a yawn. With one last smile to the man, she pushed open the door and held it open as he hurried to catch up to her. Little did he know, he was hurrying toward his own ejection.
Once he stood on the concrete walkway just outside the rear exit, he arched an eyebrow to fix her with an expectant look.
In reply, Mariah grinned and waved as she let the door swing closed. “Call a cab, buddy. You’re done here.”
His slurred protest was cut off as the metal latch clicked into place. The exit doors were locked from the outside, and if the guy decided to try to sneak back in through the front entrance, he would be rebuffed all over again.
As she spotted Joe’s broad-shouldered, black-clad frame, Mariah offered him a thumbs-up. After retrieving her black jacket with white letters across the back that read “SECURITY,” she returned to her post at the main entrance. Thankfully, her drunk didn’t return to double down on his effort to return to the club.
If The Max wasn’t her place of employment, Mariah might have liked the club. With its colorful shelves of liquor, stainless-steel fixtures, and granite countertops, the space was sleek and modern. The lighting beneath the bar varied from night to night, as did the illumination that displayed the bottles of booze lined up behind the bartender. Sometimes the shelves were lit up with the entire rainbow, sometimes they were bathed in reds and oranges, and then other times—like tonight—the blue and purple glow made her feel like she was at a bar on a spaceship in one of the science fiction novels she loved to read. Then again, would that mean that she would have to kick the drunks out via an airlock? No, she could probably toss them out to the interior of the ship instead of the vacuum of space.
With one hand, Mariah stifled yet another yawn. Contemplating how she would handle an unruly patron on a spaceship was a typical line of thought for an evening as slow as tonight. If she didn’t have her bizarre imagination, she was sure she would have lost her mind a long time ago.
The flow of business at The Max had two modes—busy as a retail store on Black Friday, or dead. Mariah had waited almost a year to discover a middle ground, but she still hadn’t seen it.
“Oh well,” she muttered to herself. She hadn’t slept well the night before, and she was now in the tenth hour of her shift. As much as she prided herself on disciplined focus, she suspected the next few hours would be closer to an exercise in masochism.
The Single Daddy Situation Page 5
