Dirty Fighter: A Bad Boy MMA Romance (11 page)

I
had stayed the night
. It felt so good to wake up next to her, to have her sleep in my arms. I would do anything to be able to do that every single day for the rest of my life.

When she finally woke up, she curled up against me. She was warm and perfect. I kissed her, our morning breath mingling, and she smiled.

“I’m going to take a shower, wanna join me?” she asked softly, she was even beautiful just waking up. Her hair was just barely tangled, loosely covering her pillow as she kissed me again.

“Yeah,” I said, unable to say anything else. I couldn’t believe I was here. I couldn’t believe after all that time, after everything we’d been through, that this is where we finally were.

After the shower we laid together on the bed, holding each other and staring at the ceiling.

I couldn’t believe this was the woman I saw putting firecrackers in another girl’s locker. I couldn’t believe this was the woman I saw on the movie screen. She was in my arms, she kissed me, we slept together, and it all seemed so impossible.

I knew that I had to be honest with her, even if it hurt. Even if she was going to leave me. If I were to keep any secret from her I would never forgive myself, it would always taint some part of our relationship. It would haunt me.

It just sucked that the secret was so big.

I should have told her before we slept together, I should have told her the moment I saw her again, gotten it out of the way, but I was finally happy. I just had this one thing holding me back.

She seemed to notice that I was lost in thought and rolled onto her side, her beautiful green eyes staring into my soul.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked softly, her breath was minty from toothpaste now. I looked at her, and then sat up slowly, deciding it was time.

“I need to tell you something, but I don’t expect anything from it okay? If you want to stop talking to me, that’s fine, I completely understand,” I began, my mind doing circles. She sat up beside me, her eyes showing concern.

“What is it?” she asked, her hand on my arm. I sighed, I couldn’t hold it back any more.

“I killed my father,” I said softly. I could feel her tense up next to me. “The night before I came to your house, before we had to run, I killed him. It was an accident,” I started, needing to explain. “He was hitting me, and he just wasn’t stopping, so I pushed him away and he hit a table, and,” she cut me off. Pulling me to her she kissed me gently, holding me tight.

I was stunned.

How on Earth could she be so understanding? How could she hear that and want to ever touch me again?

“I know,” she said, her voice gentle. My heart stopped in my chest. “I’ve known for a long time, I heard from my mom’s messages that a ‘Mister Peterson’ went missing, she said it was the same night dad died,” Brooklyn explained, still holding me. She’d known the entire time I had been back and had still kissed me, still held me. I wanted to cry, how was she so perfect?

“And you don’t care?” I asked, turning to face her straight on. She shook her head and smiled sadly, looking down at the sheets on the bed as she fiddled with them with her thin fingers.

“I mean, I had heard about how your father was, everyone knew. It’s hard to miss gossip in this tiny hell of a town,” she said, shrugging. “It didn’t help that you’d come into school with a black eye, or that one time your wrist was broken and you said you fell off your bike,” she explained. “I guess I understood you, I just wanted to keep my distance. People who go through things like we have tend to recognize each other,” she said softly.

So she did know who I was before that night.

When she had asked about my name, I always thought it meant that I wasn’t even on her radar. But she recognized me. She knew who I was.

She held me tight, kissing my jaw gently.

“I don’t blame you, if you’re worried,” she added. I kissed her back and could feel tears actually threatening to leave my eyes. It felt like redemption. “Nobody would, I mean a lot of people still think that he just skipped town and vanished,” she explained. “They waited a couple years. The house was foreclosed on from what my aunt said. The city sold it as soon as they could,” she said.

“They thought you were dead too, by the way,” this caught me off guard. “You went missing too. If you haven’t noticed a lot of people are noticing you’re back, that you’re alive. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tried to talk to you about it,” she said, running one of her hands up and down my back.

“You’re so understanding,” I said softly, humbled by her.

“How could I not be? I went through everything you did,” she murmured. I couldn’t take it; it was too nice, too kind. I turned to her and we kissed softly, I wanted to worship her with my mouth, with my heart, I loved her. God I loved her. I had since high school, and I didn’t see any end in sight. She was the best thing that had ever happened to me, the best person I had ever known.

I didn’t feel alone.

I didn’t feel like I needed to fight anymore.

I just wanted to hold her in my arms and never let go, never let anyone else see what she had done for me, what she made me feel. I never wanted to leave that bed.

I
hung
up the phone and started walking back upstairs. The house hadn’t become any less creepy with time, it didn’t lose its emptiness. When I left, my dad had only been dead for an hour tops. Until that point it was heavily filled with noise, from him or her yelling, from someone running water or having the TV on, it never changed.

Now, though, even with Adam getting dressed upstairs, putting back on the suit he had worn to my mother’s funeral since he had nothing else, the house was quiet. The stairs were cold under my feet, hardwood that deserved more than it had seen in its life. I passed by the step that I was standing on when my father slapped me, and chills ran through my body.

My room was even more haunting, a version of me that died that night, now with a handsome man buttoning the top of his shirt in the middle of it. I walked over to Adam, feeling pensive and nervous, and kissed him softly. He slid his hands to my back and we stood there for a few moments, not needing to interrupt the silence, not needing to say anything.

I was just so comfortable with him. There was nobody I trusted more.

I kissed him again, then walked to my closet to put actual clothes on, not just the shorts and tank top I’d been lounging around in.

“I’m going to meet up with some friends at the diner on Walnut, is that okay?” I asked absently, not sure if he was expecting to spend the full day with me.

“Just want to tell you, that you won’t ever need permission to do anything. Not even to me,” he said.

I smiled. That made me feel more at ease than I already was.

“But yeah, I should get in a run today anyways,” he said, smiling. He didn’t put the suit jacket on, just the shirt and pants, but he looked so good in it. He noticed me staring at him and my face got hot, I smiled and slid on my shirt. “Are you nervous about them?” he asked, sitting on the bed as he waited.

“Yeah,” I didn’t want to lie. I slid off my shorts. “I don’t know what to expect, I pretty much ignored them for three years, I didn’t even say I was leaving,” I explained. I grabbed a skirt and slid it up and over my hips, turning around in the mirror to take a look at myself. “I honestly don’t blame them, I wouldn’t be thrilled if a ‘friend’ of mine did that to me,” I sighed, sliding on a pair of sandals. Walking over to Adam, I kissed him again.

“I feel like it’s high school again and I am trying to get people to like me,” I joked, smiling.

“Like you ever had trouble getting anyone to like you,” he teased me, laughing. I smiled back at him and kissed him, rolling my eyes.

“I’ll give you a ride,” he said, grabbing his keys and sliding his wallet into his pocket.

The diner was the same one I had been to the night I arrived. I hadn’t gone into it once in the 18 years I lived in the damn town, but now within a week I was going to have been there twice.

I got there early, nobody else had arrived, so I asked for the corner table, a round one where a booth wrapped around it, and started with a cup of coffee. I wasn’t sure who I was anymore. I had money, some level of fame, and I was someone that teen me would have killed to be. But, I was still not happy, not when I was around anyone beside Adam. He understood me.

As I started my second cup of coffee, the waitress mentioning how much she loved my last film, the bell on the door chimed to say someone had come in.

I looked over at the people who I used to surround myself with.

Jamie, who I thought was my best friend, was almost indistinguishable from who she was in high school. She looked exactly the same, almost dressed exactly the same, and it was a little daunting to see how little she had changed.

Laura and Sam, twins, looked very different. They’d always had long brown hair, but Laura had chopped hers off and it was now blue. Sam’s was short and blonde. They looked like they had taken two very different roads of life.

Kim was very, very pregnant, which surprised me because she never dated anyone the whole time I knew her.

I stood up, awkwardly, to greet them, almost expecting a hug. I got a couple “hi”s and a smile, but that was it. I sat back down, occupying my hands with my coffee.

“How is everyone?” I asked, wanting to start up the conversation. They all murmured something along the lines of “good” or “fine”, not really talking until after we all ordered our food. The waitress asked how we’d be splitting the check. I said I’d be paying for all of it. The looks the four of them gave me let me know that wasn’t the best thing for me to have done.

“What is it?” I asked, put off.

“You’ve been gone three years, and you didn’t even treat us that well before you left. And now, you act like buying us brunch will make up for that?” Kim said, raising her eyebrows at me. I was flabbergasted.

“What—I just offered to get it because we haven’t seen each other in ages, I didn’t mean anything by it,” I said, confused. “What do you mean I didn’t treat you well? I mean, I am truly, completely sorry for how I left things,” I added. “Nobody deserves to be treated like an afterthought, especially not by a friend, but I don’t understand what I did before that,” I said.

They exchanged looks between each other, like I was crazy.

“You were awful to us,” Laura said and Sam nodded. “You treated us like your little minions, to do your bidding and make you look good. You weren’t even nice to us. I didn’t think once that you saw us as your friends,” she said. I was completely shocked. I knew we were all rude to other people, that we bullied other people, but I thought that was us as a group, I thought we were all the same.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, shaking my head.

“We hardly got to date because you’d always steal our boyfriends,” Sam said, continuing on her sister’s line of thought. “We were never even considered for being asked to homecoming or prom until you disappeared and got famous,” she said.

I felt ganged up on, overwhelmed. I couldn’t imagine, even thinking back, that this was how they really felt.

“And now here you come, miss hella-fuckin-famous,” Jamie said, the first words she had said to me. “Acting like because you have money, or because you’re well known, that we’re suddenly going to forgive you? That we’ll treat you how you had us treat you back then? Hell no, fuck that,” she said. I thought back to our last day together, watching movies and speculating about crushes and our future. I had no idea. I could feel tears welling at my eyes, and I tried to hide it by sipping my coffee, but they poured out anyways.

“I’m so sorry,” I sobbed out. “I’m so sorry, I had no idea, I didn’t realize I was that awful,” I said, my heart breaking that they viewed me that way. “I promise I didn’t realize at the time, I thought—I thought, I don’t know what I thought, but I honestly wouldn’t have treated you like that if I knew,” I said, distraught. Our food came and the waitress tried to console me, but I turned her away and wiped my tears off with napkins, removing large portions of my makeup.

I tried to calm myself, sucking in my breath and leveling it out.

“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I don’t need you to forgive me, I don’t expect you to, but I hate that I was that way, I hate that I treated you guys like that,” I said, setting the napkin aside. I looked over my food, suddenly losing my appetite. I noticed that nobody else was touching their food, and I looked up. They were all looking at me, stunned.

“You’re sorry?” Jamie asked, her eyebrows up in either confusion or surprise.

“Yes,” I said, nodding. They exchanged looks again.

“You’ve never apologized for anything to us,” Kim said, reaching to get salt for her egg sandwich.

“I was rotten,” I admitted.

“Thank you for apologizing,” Sam said softly, almost smiling. “You’ve changed a lot,” she added.

“I have?” I asked, confused. The waitress was keeping an eye on us from behind the counter.

“Yeah,” Jamie agreed. “I’ve never seen you cry before, and we were around each other constantly,” she explained.

“I guess I have changed,” I agreed, relaxing a little. I wiped my face one more time. The chatter after that was more comfortable, less forced. In the back of my mind I was circling the idea that I changed somehow, trying to figure out what caused it.

It wasn’t that my father died, or that my mother died. Those things were nothing that could ever make me a better person, all my thoughts circled back to Adam.

He changed me.

My random man who had saved my life, who had shown me you can rebuild yourself from nothing, who I loved.

Loving Adam was what changed me.

I
had grabbed
some food at a fast food taco joint, even though I knew it would mess with my stomach, because I needed something comforting. Something that was full of carbs and too much salt. I needed a change.

I changed into shorts and a tee shirt, went for a jog to restart my brain and give myself a fresh slate, and by the time I made it back to the hotel, I was ready to start figuring out the situation.

The hotel room was small, a complete bathroom, a queen sized bed, a dresser with a TV on it that hadn’t been replaced in probably ten years. I flopped down on the bed and stared at the popcorn-textured ceiling, listening to my own breathing over the sound of the air conditioning.

Brooklyn’s face came to my mind, her bright eyes, her small perky nose and soft luscious lips. How she looked when she smiled, and when she cried. I hated seeing her cry, but I had made her cry more than a couple times since I came into town.

She had so much potential, a wonderful actress nominated for several awards. She was clever, quick witted, physically fit and beautiful. She could do so much and I began to realize that I couldn’t stand up much against that.

I had money, sure, but she already had plenty of that.

All I really was, was the man who killed both her and my father. The man who lived in the same state as her and avoided coming into contact with her for three years. All I was ever good for was fighting, for bashing someone until their lights went out, and now I wasn’t too good at that either.

She deserved someone who was her equal, someone who could stand beside her and not dirty who she was, not corrupt her image. I felt like I was this disgusting creature who muddled her with every touch, every kiss.

I was an awful thing, someone who killed and never changed my ways. I didn’t stop doing what killed our fathers, I kept on and started making money off of it. That’s not a mark of a good person. That’s not a mark of guilt or grief. It didn’t matter if they were bad people, or if they were abusive, it wasn’t up to me who lived or who died.

If I were honest with myself, I could have hit them softer, I could have held back.

I didn’t.

I basically chose to kill them by deciding not to control myself.

What if I ever got mad at Brooklyn?

Did me living with her, kissing her, holding her, put her at risk? What if at some point I get angry and don’t hold back. What if I become our fathers and I hurt her, this woman I love?

She didn’t deserve that.

She needed stability, someone to depend on and trust. Not someone who spent a year on the streets being homeless because I was a coward. Not someone who drove his own father’s body into a lake and still hasn’t told anyone where it was. Not someone who ran away from all of his problems.

In the long term it would hurt her to be with me.

I got up, filling a paper cup with water, and stared at my own face in the mirror.

I was looking more and more like my father every day. If there were any features I got from my mom, they weren’t visible in my face. There was no trace of her.

So I’d become him then. Someday I’d drink, or I’d be so furious, and I’d lay hands on Brooklyn and knock that beautiful smile off her face and ruin her forever. She’d never be able to trust anyone again, and it would be because of me.

I couldn’t stand the thought of being the person responsible for that.

So, what options did that leave me then?

I could just leave without her knowing. I could drive anywhere, Canada, Mexico, it didn’t matter. I could drive there and be gone in the night. She spent three years without me. She could live with going longer than that. I could start a life doing something small like working at a gas station, anything low key, and anything to keep her from having to ever hear my name again.

I could keep her safe; keep her happy, by breaking my own heart.

I could conceive of it making her initially sad, sure, she’d be confused as to why I ran away, but that would be replaced with anger so quickly. If she was mad at me it would make it so much easier, and she could just move on with her damn life.

My uncle definitely knew, he absolutely did. The way he looked at me during the funeral was enough of a hint. He would tell anyone who would listen soon. It would be out what I did. Police would put two and two together and realize that I also killed Brooklyn’s dad. They’d have no doubt in the matter and I’d be arrested, Brooklyn might be in trouble also if she was found in a relationship with me.

If I left, if I fled, it would keep the implication off of her though.

She’d never have to worry about paparazzi finding out that she was dating a murderer. She’d never have to look over her shoulder for us. She could make her movies, and make her life, in peace.

All I wanted for Brooklyn was her happiness.

I threw the paper cup out and sat down on the bed, staring at the hideous repetitive wallpaper. She would be happy. It didn’t matter how I felt, it never would, I could move on, I always could just watch her movies if I missed her.

My heart felt set, but I still knew that I wanted to see her one more time. I selfishly wanted to say goodbye, I wanted to tell her I loved her.