The F King: A Bad Boy Romance(61)

“Here’s the extra towels,” I said to Gordon.

My team leader looked at me with frustration. Thankfully it was clearly directed at the middleweight fighter who was bouncing around, every bit as excited as the crowd on the other side of the thick concrete above us, as he watched the replay on the screen instead of staying still to get the stitches put into his head.

“Oooooohhhhh!” he yelled. “Anaconda choke! Sick! Grady didn’t see that coming, day-um!”

“Stop moving around so much!”

“Sorry, man, did you see that, though?” asked the young fighter.

“Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Skylar.”

I gave a weak smile and looked at the screen, where Austin “The Killer” Aquila was getting to his feet in the middle of the cage. There wasn’t a mark on him, but his opponent was still on the ground.

Aquila was a crowd favorite, who had made some truly talented fighters look like circus clowns over the past couple of years. He would have had a title shot by now, if not for those few surprise losses along the way.

With those looks, he’s my favorite too. He could-

I cut off my own thought before I could let myself go down that path, fighting off a blush. As much as I tried to tell myself that the way my dad used to terrorize me about boys and dating as I was growing up was wrong, I couldn’t shake my past. No matter how good I tried to be, nothing was ever good enough for him.

If he was to be believed, I was going to bring about the apocalypse with my whorish ways, even though I’d been too scared to even let a boy kiss me. I wore a purity ring in an effort to appease him. I even meant it when I promised to abstain until marriage, but the second I wore a skirt shorter than halfway down my calves or went outside without a sweater in the middle of summer, well, the whiskey came out, and sooner or later so did the belt. And the maniacal screaming.

One time a boy had practically signed my death warrant by coming to our door and having the gall to ask for permission to take me out on a date. Even now, miles away, I still felt that self-loathing that had been beaten into me every time somebody showed an interest in me, or every time I even fleetingly entertained the thought of any kind of intimacy.

“You look whacked. Go ahead and take fifteen,” said Gordon, nodding at the door.

I blinked and shook my head, tearing my eyes away from Austin and bringing myself back to reality. This wasn’t something I wanted Gordon to notice.

“No! I’m fine, there’s so much to do, I…”

Gordon pulled the needle through the fighter’s scalp, then held up his hand and shook his head to cut me off. “Go ahead, there’ll still be plenty to do in fifteen minutes, you’ve been great tonight.”

I could almost taste the ice-cold water from the watercooler and the fruit I’d packed for myself.

“Well…”

“Go.”

“OK, I guess. I’ll be back to help soon, though.”





Skylar





Crunch!

I was about ten minutes into my break, and the apple was going down good, when Gordon’s head popped in the door. He looked desperate.

“Hey, sorry about this, but can you take care of something for me?”

I swallowed the mouthful of apple and bolted to my feet. “Yes! What can I do?”

“Team one is down a lot of people with the flu that’s going around, they need somebody to help out. Henry said Aquila needs a massage.”

When the name came out of his mouth, it was like somebody with a tiny defibrillator zapped me on my spine, and I startled before my heart started thundering in response.

“A… a mas… me?”

“Yeah, sorry about this, there’s just nobody else I can spare. He’s not injured or anything, just needs to work out some kinks before the post-event press conference. Can you head over now? Tell them I sent you.”

“I… well… of c-course, I’ll do my best,” I said.

“Thanks for that.” Gordon was gone before he had even finished the sentence.

I felt like I was sitting inside my own head watching a movie play out as I dropped the remains of my apple in the trash and headed towards the Tier-1 fighters’ area. Uncle Malcolm wasn’t here to show me what to do. All I had was less than a year of study and a general appreciation of massages to rely on. It would have to do.

The Tier-1 wing had a guard at the door who looked mean enough to actually fight for NHBFC, but he let me through when he saw my uniform and heard that Gordon had sent me at Henry’s request. The hallway behind said door was just as chaotic as the ones I’d just left, but for a completely different reason.

With a smaller group of fighters to look after, and an already smaller staff diminished by illness, it was the MMA groupies making the most noise over here. Clusters of some of the most stunning girls currently in the city hovered around their favorite fighters’ doors, giggling and talking loudly. It wasn’t official of course, but the guard knew only to let in the best of the best.