Breaking Beast (Pounding Hearts 4)

“What’s going on, Christy? How did you get off work so early?”

“Oh, well, once I put my two weeks in, they were kind of aggravated. So, close to my lunch time, they said I could leave whenever I wanted.”

She’s still not looking at me.

“Huh… Considering how much you cared about them… That sucks,” I say as I put the car in drive.

Pulling up to the exit of the gas station, I look around. “Why am I picking you up over here though?”

“Oh, well there were some annoying guys hanging around,” she says as she looks everywhere but at me or her old place of employment.

There is something going on right now. Staring across the main road, I see there’s a bunch of flashy douche mobiles sitting in the parking lot. Most of them are beaters that have home installed mods. There are a couple that might be in decent shape, but absolutely nothing in the lot has anything on my red bitch.

My knuckles tighten at the thought of someone harassing my girl. “Were they fucking with you?”

“What? No… definitely not,” she says a little too quickly. “I just… I didn’t want to give them the opportunity is all.”

I growl as I consider going over to see for myself. I don’t know where this almost overpowering sense of protection I have for her is coming from but it’s like something has unleashed a wild animal inside of me who is roaring to get out.

Turning onto the road, I drive past the restaurant, looking at it from my window. I see a couple of guys running out to their cars but that’s about it.

Fuckers are lucky I didn’t pick her up there.

Out of the corner of my eye, I watch as the miles separating us from the restaurant seem to take all the pressure off her shoulders. Eventually she reaches over, lacing her fingers through mine on top of the shifter and giving my hand a squeeze.

“Thank you for coming to the rescue, as always,” she says, and while I know she wanted it to come out as a joke it seems just a bit terse to me.

“I’ll always be there for you, Legs,” I say with a grin.

“Legs?” she asks, confused, as she looks down at her jean covered legs.

“Yeah, that’s your new nickname.”

“What? Why?”

“Because those fuckers are straight out of a wet dream. At least, for me they are.”

Rolling her eyes, she shakes her head at me. “That is so… dirty.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t change how fucking insanely hot you are.”

* * *

I once got really bored and looked up the meaning of controlled chaos. What was described was things seeming to be chaotic to an outsider but actually functioning to unseen rules.

Well, the last week before a major fight is controlled chaos.

There are so many things happening at once that if you aren’t used to it, it may seem like the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. Press conferences, double the hours in the dojo, weigh-ins, interviews, drug tests, and then you get to the actual fight.

It’s all crazy shit, and one of the reasons I’m in love with the sport.

Christy is finally getting to see the business from the inside. It’s one thing to train in the dojo, to push the weights at the gym, to go round after round on the mats with another fighter. It’s a completely different beast to see all the lights and glitter that goes along with it.

There are cameras all over the gym, filming me for the last week before the fight. They want to get my side of the fight. They want to hear what I have to say about Rocko.

That’s how they build up the tension for the fight. They want me to trash talk, to say how I’m going to beat him to a pulp.

That shit ain’t for me.

I do my usual talk up. I talk about how hard I’ve been training, how hard I know Rocko has been working, and how I think it’s going to be a battle for the ages. But I’m careful with all my words. I don’t give them any options for a sound bite that can be turned against me. You have to be careful with that shit.

The hype before my title fight has the gym moving at an upbeat tempo. That’s probably a blessing considering how tense things were after the incident with Mark. Good thing Chase held a gym-wide talk the next day. He gave a quick overview of the rules of the gym before letting us all know exactly how fast anyone who pulled what Mark did would earn them a one-way ticket to being a pariah in the MMA world.

Chase has a shit ton of clout in the business because of his reputation and his credentials as a former champ. Hell, the company I fight for probably has Mark’s name on a blacklist.