Fight Read online

  Fight

  Bareknuckle Boxing Brotherhood

  Book 1

  By Cara Nelson

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  Dedications

  I dedicate this book to you, my loyal readers. Wherever you are in this world. Thank you for all the lovely e-mails, reviews, and support. Without you, this wouldn't be possible.

  Table of Contents

  Fight

  Dedications

  Part I: BOSTON

  CHAPTER 1: AARON

  CHAPTER 2: ZOE

  CHAPTER 3: AARON

  CHAPTER 4: ZOE

  CHAPTER 5: AARON

  CHAPTER 6: AARON

  PART II: LAS VEGAS

  CHAPTER 6: AARON

  CHAPTER 8: ZOE

  CHAPTER 9: AARON

  CHAPTER 10: ZOE

  CHAPTER 11: AARON

  CHAPTER 12: AARON

  Part I: BOSTON

  CHAPTER 1: AARON

  Aaron was fine with one-night stands. He was all in for fun and satisfaction and no strings attached. He didn’t need a deep emotional connection to get off, but it would have been nice if the woman remembered his name. More to the point, it would be nice if she had the courtesy not to shout his brother’s name at a crucial moment.

  “Aaron,” he corrected through gritted teeth, thrusting as if to punctuate his statement, “my name is Aaron. Not Kyle. Kyle,” He paused, holding perfectly still, “is my brother. The one who lost his fight tonight,”

  The blonde, Baylee (see, he remembered her name perfectly), looked back over her shoulder, eyes glazed with passion, and nodded enthusiastically.

  “Aaron, yeah, Aaron. That’s hot,” She panted as he started to thrust again.

  Baylee was a ring bunny. She climbed between the ropes and strutted across, holding a sign before the bareknuckle matches, her sheer bodysuit scattered with red sequins. He’d had his eye on her for a week. Tonight he’d scored. Grudgingly, he gripped her hips and pushed, bringing her to a screaming climax just before he finished.

  It didn’t work. Nothing, not even a fling with a gorgeous ring bunny, could improve his mood. He felt even worse than before.

  Aaron Dolan had won his fight, and instead of thinking what a fantastic night it had been, he was disappointed, restless.

  Baylee wriggled back into her bodysuit and smoothed her hair.

  “Can I have a souvenir, stud?” she purred.

  “I don’t have anything,”

  “What about that?” Baylee indicated the blue rabbit’s foot keychain hanging out of his pocket as he fastened his jeans.

  “No, my dad gave me that,” He said. “I’m not giving it away,”

  “Okay. How about your watch?”

  “I don’t wear one.”

  “Right. Okay, so, that was great. See you around,” Baylee grabbed her purse, looked around to see if she’d left anything, and exited the locker room.

  Aaron stared at the place where she’d been standing. She had wanted a souvenir, something to prove that she’d nailed another boxer, another random thug. He shook his head and shucked off his jeans. After a fast shower, he toweled off and dressed, feeling a little better. He looked around the deserted locker room and located the long green scarf his mother had knitted him last Christmas and wound it around his neck. She said he looked even more Irish in it, and she’d smiled at the thought. He’d decided he was man enough to wear a scarf all winter.

  He went out the back way into the alley and inadvertently stepped into chaos. It was a rough neighborhood, but he didn’t usually walk out into a crime scene. The girl wasn’t doing too bad, considering she was outnumbered by three big guys in a back alley after eleven at night in a shit neighborhood in South Boston. Best Aaron could tell, she was about five-foot-nothing, a flurry of faded jeans and cropped red curls.

  “Put me down, you fucking moron, or I’ll make sure you can’t screw—” she hissed.

  Her boot thudded into her assailant’s crotch, followed by his telltale groan. Dropping her onto the pavement, he cracked her across the face with the back of his hand and she spat on the ground. Another guy wrenched her backpack off and hauled her to her feet.

  “Guess Nate’s out of commission. We can have some fun with her. Whaddaya say, Joey?” He had her arms pinned. She kicked his shins fruitlessly.

  Aaron caught Joey, the biggest of the three, by the back of his shirt and threw him back against the wall. Nate, the one holding his injured balls, lurched toward him halfheartedly. Aaron punched him in the mouth hard enough he felt the give of the man’s front teeth beneath his fist. Nate covered his bloody mouth with his hands and howled.

  “Let her go,” Aaron said levelly, advancing on the man who was holding her.

  The girl wrenched free. Instead of running, she slammed the heel of her hand into the guy’s nose as hard as she could. A gush of blood. The crack of bone. Finally, a gurgle of protest.

  Aaron went toward him, cracking his knuckles for emphasis, and the three guys took off down the alley. She picked up her backpack off the pavement, not even rubbing her jaw where Nate had hit her.

  “Thanks,” She said brightly. “Not bad. One punch was all it took for you to get three guys running scared.”

  “You okay?” Aaron asked gruffly.

  “Yeah, thanks,” she said, looking at him long and hard.

  She was about his age, early twenties, and little. Her sleeves hung down over her hands, he noticed. He didn’t ask her name, didn’t even want to know. He wanted to get away from her, so he didn’t say another word. He felt self-conscious, restless under her scrutiny.

  “Couldn’t’ve done that without you,” she called. He nodded almost sheepishly, stuffed his hands in his pockets, put his head down against the icy wind, and headed home.

  Something about the way that girl had looked at him got under his skin. He couldn’t figure out what bothered him about it, but it wouldn’t let him go. He puzzled over it as he went to sleep on his lumpy narrow mattress. He still thought about it when he did his push-ups in the morning.

  CHAPTER 2: ZOE

  Her blood still pounded from the fight earlier, adrenalin rushing through her veins. Glancing at her boots, she noticed absently that someone had dripped blood on them. It wasn’t the most promising start to a job interview. Her hands trembled and she took a deep breath, wiping sweat off her face. It took her three tries to grip the doorknob and make her way inside. It was a locker room—an unconventional reception area for potential employees, she thought grudgingly. It opened into a low, empty room with a fighting ring roped off. Rows of battered folding chairs gave way into a noisy bar, all rough wood and neon signs with country music crackling from the speakers. It was clearly a boys’ club. She was the only woman in the joint who wasn’t waiting tables. She stomped to the bar and heaved her backpack onto it.

  “I’m here for an interview,” she said flatly, brushing alley dirt and blood off her pants.

  “I’ll get Neil. He’s pissed that you’re late,” The busty bartender remarked.

  “Sorry, I wasted some time getting mugged and roughed up in your alley.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “No. I got manhandled and hit in the face. I could do with an ice pack for my jaw and a screwdriver for my nerves,” Zoe said.

  The woman got her a towel with ice and poured a screwdriver. Zoe took a long drink and drooped onto a stool.

  “Is this place any better than it looks?”

  “Not really,” The bartender said. “I’m Amy.”

  “Hi, Amy. Thanks for the drink. I’m stupid and desperate, and I have a degree in literature.”

  “What
can you do with a degree in literature?”

  “You can either teach, which I don’t want to do, or go to grad school, which I can’t afford. So in my case, you answer weirdo job ads and get your ass kicked in a back alley down in Southie on a Wednesday night,”

  “Like I said, I’ll get Neil. He’s not too bad,” Amy offered.

  “Thank you,” Zoe said. “So, rough neighborhood.”

  “You could say that, I guess. I’m from Mattapan, so it’s all the same to me.” Amy shrugged and went in the back room.

  Zoe looked around at the raucous crowd. In a corner, men were shouting and cussing over video poker. The big-screen TV showed a fight in Vegas. Apparently they were a bloodthirsty lot—all twenties and thirties, some black, some white, all loud and in varying shades of drunkenness. She sipped her screwdriver, deciding it was too strong, her nerves jangling still from the mugging.

  If she’d expected Neil to be a creep in a sharkskin suit with a gold tooth, she was to be disappointed. He was grandpa-old, with a fringe of gray hair and a black tracksuit. Zoe stood and extended her hand, putting on her professional face.

  “I’m Zoe Daniels. I’m here about the documentary work…”

  “Good to meet you, Zoe. I’m Neil, owner of Swagger.” He released her hand to gesture expansively at his domain. “The hottest bareknuckle club in Boston.”

  “Bareknuckle as in John L. Sullivan?”

  “Another Southie boy, sure enough. Yes, girlie, this is one of the last bastions of the Irish Stand Down, prize fighting without gloves. Brute strength and swift reflexes.”

  Zoe nearly snorted—all he needed was a cigar to chew. “Are you having a documentary made, then? That you need a script for? I did some film adaptation work for my lit degree…”

  “I need someone to hold the camera and turn it on. We have live bouts three nights a week here: Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday. I need a cameraman to film the action and edit it. We’re going to sell the best fights in a compilation as a DVD and, my son tells me, digitally as well. Bring the beauty of a fair fight to the masses outside Boston.”

  “Sounds…exciting. Are you just looking for a videographer, then? My background is more in writing literary criticism and, well, I have a blog and I’ve done some video posts for that, but…I’m not really familiar with any equipment more specialized than the webcam on my tablet,” she admitted.

  “You’ll do fine. You’re small, maneuverable: easy for you to make your way through a rowdy crowd. You can start on Friday morning—get a feel for the place, meet the fighters, do a couple of sound bites with them.” Neil rubbed his hands together with seeming satisfaction and looked her up and down.

  She got the creepy feeling that maybe he liked redheads and didn’t care about her lack of credentials. She’d be fine, she told herself. She needed rent money, and she could film fights to get it. She smiled winningly.

  “Really? That’s fantastic. I’ll be here Friday. If you can text me the model of camera I’m going to be using, I’ll read the manual online…thank you so much!”

  Zoe shook his hand. He arranged a few last details, then waved to dismiss her. She bolted and took off out the front entrance for a swift walk home along a well-lighted route.

  Back at her apartment, she woke Shea, her roommate, to tell her the good news. “Hey, babe, guess what! You don’t have to cover my rent this month. I got a job filming big white guys beat the shit out of each other!” she squealed.

  Shea rubbed her eyes and pushed the hair out of her face blearily, blinking at the overhead light Zoe had flipped on in their studio flat.

  “I don’t mind covering your rent once in a while. I can make you do all the cleaning that way,” Shea muttered.

  “Oh, don’t give me that. You clean it again yourself anyway,” Zoe teased fondly.

  “That’s because I’m obsessive. That’s not your fault. I like to clean.”

  “It’s my fault I got fired and had to make you cover rent.”

  “It was not your fault that you got fired,” Shea insisted loyally.

  “It kind of was,” Zoe admitted. “I broke that guy’s iPhone.”

  “He upskirted you. He was a bastard. He’s lucky you didn’t break him.”

  “There’s a pretty strict policy about not breaking the personal property of customers, though. I can pretty much kiss that waitressing career goodbye after that one. But now, I’m onto bigger, better things—watching huge guys beat the tar out of each other.”

  “So why are you filming white guy fights?”

  “Apparently there’s a market for that. I don’t care. It’s legal and it’s rent money, and the guy I’m working for is about seventy-three. At least I can definitely outrun him if I need to.”

  “Does it seem like you’ll need to?”

  “Maybe. But I’m staying away from the alley entrance. I got mugged!”

  “You what? Are you okay?” Shea threw the covers off and raced over to her friend.

  “I’m fine. Some bruises and one strap on my backpack got ripped. There was…a guy. He came outside at the right time and beat a mugger’s face in to save me.”

  “Was it one of the fighters?”

  “I don’t know. Probably. We weren’t exactly introduced. I was on the ground, but in my defense, it had been three against one.”

  “I thought you had four brothers. You said you did fine at those odds,” Shea teased.

  “Yeah, well, none of my brothers actually intended to beat me to a pulp and leave me for dead in a dumpster. These people meant business.” She shuddered.

  “So this guy who saved you, what’d he look like?”

  “Big.”

  “Big? That’s all? I mean, Big Bird is big. The entire NBA is big. How big are we talking?”

  “Linebacker big. He had on a green scarf.”

  “Just a green scarf?” Shea teased.

  “No, not just a scarf. I would have noticed that, I promise you. He had on, I guess, regular clothes. I didn’t notice them. Just how huge he was, and the scarf, because it seemed discordant,” Zoe said.

  “Discordant. Only you, when mugged and rescued by a white knight, would describe his scarf as being discordant.” Shea rolled her eyes.

  “It’s the lit degree. I can’t help myself,” Zoe said.

  “So was Jolly Green Discordant Scarf Giant hot or what?”

  “Oh, yeah, wicked hot. Most powerful shoulders I’ve ever seen, and I had that thing for Brando in Streetcar, so you know. But there’s more. I mean, he saved my life, as well as having the balls to wear a long scarf in a tough neighborhood…”

  “Babe, if he’s a bare knuckle fighter, I don’t think a lack of balls is going to be a problem,” Shea pointed out.

  “He’s probably one of the seedy creeps who hangs out there, blowing his wife’s paycheck on video poker while he drinks malt liquor and slaps the waitresses on the ass. Not my type at all. If he is one of them, then I can’t possibly date him or anything. It would be unethical.”

  “Did you just join the girl scouts in my absence, chica? Since when is it forbidden to date people who work in the same place as you? If I didn’t date the hospital staff, I’d never meet anyone. It’s practicality in this economy, Zoe. We have to find ways to hook up, even if it’s with people at work.”

  “These are guys who beat people up for a living. Bad risk, domestic violence-wise. Plus, not to go all stereotypical, but it’s unlikely that we’d have much in common. I have a degree in comparative literature. He has, what, nine teeth left? What would we talk about?”

  “Why would you talk? He’s a boxer. Like Stallone in Rocky? Russell Crowe in that one with Renee Zellweger? Seriously, babe, hot boxer movies are iconic for a reason. We have to Netflix this weekend if you’re not underneath a fighter,” Shea said.

  “I have no intention of picking up guys at work. I’ll keep my clothes on and cash my paycheck. Right now I have credit card debt. I did buy those stupid boots, though. I love them, so I’d hate to h
ave to put them on eBay, but if I don’t take this job, they’ll have to go.”

  “Do not sell those boots. You look hot in them. Wear them to work and nail that boxer.”

  “I’m not nailing a boxer. Shut up and go to sleep. I’m just excited to be employed again. Goodnight, Shea,” said Zoe. She stumped off to the shower.

  CHAPTER 3: AARON

  Those eyes. Why couldn’t he get her off his mind?

  Down at the gym, lifting weights the size of cannonballs, it finally occurred to him. That girl, the one who was being mugged, had thought he was just like everyone else, just some guy coming out of a building who helped her. She hadn’t realized he was coming out of the locker room of a fight club, that he beat guys up three nights a week while sweaty crowds sloshed beer and placed bets.

  Four years out of school and he was barely scraping by on prize money, with no other prospects but more broken bones and bloody noses. It looked from here like a long gray path to nowhere, an early death from booze or a blow too close to the temple. Either way, not much was bright up ahead. Aaron was used to the monotony, used to knowing with bone-deep certainty that this was all he’d ever be. He was resigned to that most days, but he wished he hadn’t walked in on that mugging. Wished he hadn’t seen her eyes soften hopefully, that hint of a smile.

  When Kyle came into the gym, an hour later than Aaron, they set up their usual contest. Kyle set the timer on his phone for five minutes and they jumped rope as hard as they could to see who got the most jumps in that length of time…Kyle won again. When they planked, though, Aaron won every time. Aaron worked the heavy bag over while Kyle did some sprints on the treadmill. They sparred in the ring and then took turns wearing the mitts for punching intervals.

  “Heard you saved some girl last night,” Kyle said, feinting to the side and circling the ring.

  “How’d word get around? I was on my way out,”

  “You can’t keep secrets around that joint. You ought to know by now. How was Baylee?”