Consumed: A MMA Sports Romance (6 page)

“Personal time’s
important,” he says. “If you’re interested in seeing where things can go with
us, I’m all for that. We seem to get each other pretty easily, and I don’t know
about you, but that’s pretty rare for me. At the same time, though, if what I
do is too much for you or you just aren’t that interested, I think we both need
to respect that and not drag this out. What do you think?”

What
do
I think?

“The man-whore thing,” I
say, “is that true?”

“It’s an exaggeration,”
he says, “but I have had a pretty active social life. I don’t think I’m a
man-whore though, and honestly, I’d prefer if we could drop the term.”

“Okay,” I answer and then
there’s protracted silence.

After a minute, the sound
of Mason’s voice startles me. “Ash?” he asks.

“Yeah?” I return.

“I don’t know if you’re
thinking things through or what,” he says, “but I do have some stuff to do
right now, so if we could—”

“You want to get together
this weekend?” I ask and immediately, I’m clenching my fists, mouthing the word
“crap” over and over again.

We
do
connect, that much is true, but can I really deal with the
fighting?

“Sure,” he says
nonchalantly. “What’d you have in mind?”

I guess we’re going to
find out.

Chapter
Five

That Sense of Belonging

Mason

I’m a little sore coming
up to the door of my modest abode.

Manny, my fight trainer,
and I have bit hitting it a little extra hard since I told him about the
tournament. He even filled in a few missing details.

According to Manny, the
prize money is all going to be donated by a former underground fighter turned
MMA pro as his way of giving back to the community that served as his launching
pad.

Manny doesn’t know who
the mysterious donor might be and, frankly, the whole thing sounds like the
kind of answer someone gives when they don’t know the real one, but it’s a nice
story, if nothing else.

I guess it really doesn’t
matter if Manny’s version of things is true or not. It’s just as possible that
someone stands to make money from taping the fights and posting them online.
Nobody seems to know directly who went to Madison and set the whole thing up,
but the tournament’s existence is real enough.

Today, I got the call.

I vaguely recognized the
voice on the other end of the phone, but only the way someone recognizes the
sound of traffic around their home. I can’t think of a name that would match
the voice or a face to go with it, but it didn’t matter.

“Hello, is this Mason
Ellis?” the man asked.

“Yeah, who’s this?” I
answered.

“Do you know why I’m
calling?” he asked.

It wasn’t until he asked
that question that I figured it out.

“Yeah,” I said.

“You’re first match is in
a week, featherweight. We’ll call again with directions to the location. Don’t
talk about this to anyone you haven’t seen at a fight,” the man said finally
and hung up the phone.

The whole thing seemed
really shady. It was pretty cool.

Now, though, I’m tired
and I’m sore and I just want to open my front door, walk to my couch, fall down
and not move for about a week.

It looks like someone
else beat me to it.

My brother, Chris, isn’t
so much lying on the couch as he is draped over it. From the smell of him, even
standing ten feet away, I’d say he’s more passed out than he is asleep.

I could really do without
this right now, but I’m not going to wake him to kick him out. This isn’t the
first time he’s shown up inside my home without announcement or invitation.

He does this whenever he
gets in trouble, and as sick of it as I am, I’m not going to make any kind of
headway with him while he’s still drunk. To that end, I set my things down
gently by the door, which I close, being sure to turn the knob before it can
latch and possibly wake Chris.

I slip off my shoes and
I’m holding my breath as I try to sneak past the couch toward my bedroom door
at the far end of the living room.

Behind me, there’s a
piercing noise in the form of my phone’s ringtone, and I’m shuffling as fast as
my socks will allow back toward my gym bag. I open it and find my phone,
quickly muting it.

Ash is calling.

Chris stirs a little, and
I’m holding my breath again as I return to my feet to get a better look at him.

He stirred, but he’s
still asleep, so I head toward the kitchen and out to the back porch before I
look down at my phone again and answer the call.

“Hey, Ash,” I say,
closing the back door behind me.

“Hey,” she says. “I had a
lot of fun last night. I was wondering if you want to maybe get together and do
something.”

“Starbright driving you
crazy again?” I ask. I’ve actually been hoping to meet Jana’s mom, mainly due
to Ash’s vivid and outlandish descriptions of the woman. Ash, on the other
hand, doesn’t think it’s such a great idea.

“Am I that transparent?”
she asks.

“I’d love to see you,” I
tell her, “but I don’t think tonight’s the best night for it. I just came home
and found my brother passed out on the couch. I think he’s going through a bit
of a thing right now, and I just need to make sure he’s not in any kind of
serious trouble, you know?”

“I didn’t even know you
had a brother,” Ash says.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “He’s
the older one, I’m the wiser one.”

“What a terrifying proposition,”
she says. “You sure you don’t want me to come over? Maybe I can help.”

“That’s sweet of you,” I
tell her, but hesitate as I hear the back door opening behind me. I turn to
find Chris stumbling out with an already-lit cigarette in his mouth. “But it
looks like he’s awake and I’m going to have to let you go.”

“Okay,” she says. “Let me
know how it goes.”

“Yeah,” I tell her. “Have
a good night.”

I hang up the phone.

“Hey, Chris,” I say,
taking a step toward my brother. “How are you feeling?”

He responds by pulling
his lighter out of his pocket and trying to light his still-lit cigarette and
tripping over a lawn chair. I can’t say he catches himself, exactly, but he
does a fair job of minimizing the damage of the fall on his way down.

I walk over to him and
crouch down beside him.

“You should get back
inside,” I tell him. “Sleep it off. We’ll talk in the morning.”

He grunts and gets back
to his feet, only to sit on the lawn chair he just fell over.

“Can you hear me?” I ask
him.

“Suuure thing, brotha
man,” he slurs.

Things weren’t that easy
for Chris and me growing up, and we’ve both chosen to deal with it in our own
ways. For Chris, it’s coming up with new and ridiculous ways to separate
average people from their money.

I get that we’re both on
the wrong side of things, legally, but the only people who get hurt because of
what I do get hurt because they chose to put themselves in a match. It’s
anyone’s guess how long it takes some of the people Chris swindles to figure
out what’s happened to them.

I don’t know, maybe I
shouldn’t be so judgmental. Still, that would be a lot easier if he didn’t keep
showing up like this.

“What happened this
time?” I ask him. “Nobody followed you here, did they?”

“It was jus’ a biiig
mis–misunderstanding,” he says.

Of course it was.

It’s been a while since
I’ve seen my brother. I’d even begun to entertain hopes that he’d cleaned up
his act, but there he sits, swaying a little in an invisible breeze.

“How long are you here?”
I ask.

The question seems to
confound Chris in some deep, possibly existential way, and he just stares up at
me without answering.

“Whatever,” I tell him.
“Let’s get you to bed. We can talk about everything in the morning.”

“Nooo,” Chris says, far
too loudly for the time of night. “I wanna stay up and hang out with my little
bro—”

There’s no easy way to
tell if he was going to say “brother” or leave it at “bro,” as Chris is now
leaning over the side of his lawn chair, vomiting.

“That’s just
spectacular,” I tell him. “Really, it’s great of you to drop in and make
yourself at home.” I sigh. “How many times are we going to do this, huh?” I
ask.

Chris looks up at me and
opens his mouth, taking a quick breath in as if he’s about to say something,
but quickly returns his head over the side of the lawn chair to make sure there
isn’t anything left to throw up.

I make my way over to the
faucet just outside the back door and I grab the end of the hose attached to it
before turning the faucet on.

“You’re probably going to
want to move if you don’t want to get soaked and have to sleep outside,” I tell
him.

He doesn’t react at
first, but after I give him a quick spray with the hose, he moves quickly
enough, though he only makes it to the lawn chair I’ve just abandoned to clean
up after him. If ever there was a clearer living metaphor for my relationship
to my brother than this single moment, I’ve never seen it.

After I get the concrete
cleaned, I set the hose back down and turn off the faucet.

“Feeling any better?” I
ask him.

“I feeel great,” he tells
me. “Hey bro?” he says.

“What?” I respond.

“Got anything to drink?
I’m havvinng a rough night,” he says.

It’s a testament to my
incredible self-control that I’ve never beaten the crap out of my brother.

*
                   
*
                   
*

Morning comes and I’m sitting
in the kitchen with my coffee, just waiting to see which version of my brother
greets me today.

I like to think Chris is
a decent guy if you look past all the cons and swindles, the pyramid schemes
and the fake lottery tickets. There’s also that fake ID scam he ran a few years
back, but his computer guy had trouble with simple math and often ended up
making people younger on their ID than they were in real life.

Under all that, I like to
think his heart is in the right place. I like to think it, but that doesn’t
mean I’m naïve enough to believe it.

“Hey bro,” Chris says,
coming into the kitchen. “I think I remember throwing up on your back porch
last night. Did I?”

“Yeah,” I tell him.

“Sorry,” he says. “I
guess I got a little carried away.”

I’m waiting for the sales
pitch.

He’s taking his time,
though, slowly walking past me toward the coffee maker. “Where do you keep your
mugs?” he asks.

“Top cabinet to the left
of the stove,” I tell him. “How long are you planning to stay here this time?”

“Straight to business,
huh?” he says, reaching into the cupboard and pulling down a mug.

Chris is what I’d look
like if I stopped going to the gym and started going to the bar, plus a few
years. My shoulders are broader, and I’m a few inches taller at 5’9”, but we’ve
both got the same dirty blond hair and the same perma-smirk on our mouths from
years of listening to parents make promises we knew they’d never keep.

Every time he shows up, I
keep telling myself that I’ve got to keep going along with it, that I should kick
him out or call the cops or something. I can never bring myself to do it.

When we were younger,
though, he really looked out for me.

Coming from the
particularly dysfunctional background that I do, I was an easy target for some
of the larger kids in class. For years, though, Chris always had my back. I
still got the crap kicked out of me on a pretty regular basis, but Chris took a
lot of punches so I wouldn’t have to.

After he dropped out and
moved out, though, I had to learn how to take care of myself, hence…

“We can’t keep doing
this,” I tell him. “You’re my brother, but I think I’ve been more than
patient—”

“I know, I know,” he
says, waving me off as he walks back over to the coffee maker and fills his
mug. “We’ll talk. Just let me get some coffee in me, otherwise I can’t be held
accountable for whatever unintelligible nonsense comes out of my mouth.”

He replaces the carafe on
the hotplate and takes a big whiff of his coffee.

“All right,” he says
before taking a sip, “let’s discuss the terms of my provisional residency.”

I have a feeling he’s
going to be here for a while.

Chapter
Six

Driving the Train

Ash

Mason’s been hiding
something.

Ever since that night I
called and he said his brother was passed out on his couch, Mason tenses up
whenever I so much as bring up the notion of going over to his place. Maybe
it’s something to do with his brother or maybe his brother’s not even there.
Either way, he’s been going to increasing lengths to keep us from ending up
there.

Present moment, Mason and
I are taking what he pitched as “a long walk through the city.” It sounded
great until we got out here and I remembered how old, ugly and run down so much
of this town is.

“So,” I start when we
reach a gap in the conversation, “tell me more about your family. How many
siblings do you have?”

It’s best to be tactful
in situations like this.

“Just Chris,” he says. “You?”

A car drives by, rattling
loudly as the muffler dangles, barely held in place at the back.

“Why are you trying to
keep me away from your house?” I blurt.

There goes the tactful
approach.

“I told you,” he says.
“My brother’s been staying there and things aren’t exactly stable with him.”

“What do you mean?” I
ask.

“Chris is one of the more
complicated parts of my life,” I tell her. “I’ve found it best to keep people
away from him as much as possible. He has a way of separating the kindhearted
from their money.”

It’s starting to look
like Mason’s not as single as he’s making himself out to be.

“I don’t like being the
jealous type,” I start, but I don’t know how to finish the thought without flat
out accusing him of something.

“You’re the only woman
I’m interested in,” he says.

“But am I the only woman
that you’re seeing?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says.
“I’m really not the two-timing type.”

“I guess I’d just feel
better if you weren’t so adamant about keeping me away from your home,” I tell
him.

“Well,” he says, “if
it’ll help, we can go there now.”

That was easier than I’d
expected—maybe a little too easy.

“Why are you okay going
there now when you weren’t before?” I ask.

“You know,” he says, “I’m
really starting to get the feeling you don’t trust me.”

“It’s not that,” I tell
him. “It’s just that I’m not sure I believe you.”

He laughs.

“All right,” he says. “I
just want to warn you that Chris can be a little hard to deal with when he’s
been drinking and he was working on a bottle when I left. Just remember that
he’s my brother, okay?” he asks. “He’s not me.”

With that, we change
directions and head for his place. We don’t talk much on the way. When we get
to his house, though, I start to believe what he’s been telling me.

There’s a man sprawled
over the porch swing in front of Mason’s house. The man’s wearing nothing but
his boxers.

“Great,” Mason mutters.
“Could you help me get him inside?”

“That’s him?” I ask, over
the drunken man’s loud snoring.

“That’s Chris,” Mason
says. He smacks Chris a few times moderately on the cheek, waking him, at least
partially, from his slumber.

“Heey, buddy,” Chris
mumbles. “I’m just catsching some winks. I’ll be outta your way in a minute.”

“Come on,” Mason says,
grabbing one of his brothers arms and pulling the latter upright. “Let’s get
you inside before my neighbors start complaining.”

“I’m goood,” Chris says
and tries to lie back down, but Mason’s still got his arm. Chris pivots, what
appears to be unintentionally, out of the porch swing and Mason has to grab him
so he doesn’t fall to the ground.

“Come on, Chris,” Mason
grunts, trying to lift his brother to a standing position. “You’re kind of
making me look bad.”

“Naw,” Chris says. His
eyes open a little wider when he spots me standing there. “Well heyya there,”
he slurs. “Can I buy you a drink, pretty lady?”

“Does he always drink
like this?” I ask.

“He’s more of a binge-drinker,”
Mason explains. “I think it’s a stress thing.”

Chris is now trying to
stand up and straighten the tie that he’s not wearing, apparently in an attempt
to look more presentable for my benefit. I walk over and grab Chris’s free arm,
helping Mason get him into the unlocked house.

“You’ve got to stop doing
this,” Mason says. “I’ve got neighbors, you know. Not only that, I’d like to be
able to have people over without having to make excuses for you.”

Chris’s head tilts toward
his Mason, and the former belches loudly in response to the scolding.

“We’ve also got to start
getting you to brush your teeth after you’ve been drinking,” Mason says,
crinkling his nose.

We get Chris to the couch
and sit him down while Mason cleans empty potato chip bags and half-eaten candy
bars out of the way. Finally, we get Chris lied down and covered with a
blanket.

Mason motions for me to
come with him.

I follow.

We get to a bedroom and
Mason shows me inside, closing the door once we’re both inside.

“I’m sorry about that,”
he says, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s not really what I wanted you to
think of when you think of my place.”

“Yeah,” I answer, looking
around the room. “I think I can appreciate that now. I’m sorry I didn’t believe
you.”

The room is modest, its
only major furnishings being a queen-sized bed against one wall and an old,
worn-down desk in the corner. It’s nothing elaborate, but at least it’s clean,
comfortable.

“This is your room?” I
ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’d
give you the full tour, but I’d rather not disturb Chris. He has a tendency of
waking up when you least want him to, and I’d rather we not have to deal with
him right now.”

“Yeah,” I answer again,
sitting on Mason’s bed.

Right now, I’m a mess of
conflicting emotions. On the one hand, Mason has been telling the truth about
his brother. On the other hand, this kind of dysfunction is almost always a
sign there’s a lot more going on under the surface.

“So, the two of you went
different directions, huh?” I ask. “Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know,” Mason
answers. “I guess we just have different ways of processing things. Sometimes I
wonder: if I didn’t take so much grief back in school, would I still be
fighting or would I have ended up like… You know,” he says, “like Chris.”

“You don’t seem to like your
brother very much,” I observe.

“I don’t,” Mason says.
“He’s my brother, so I’m forced to love him, but no. I wouldn’t say I like him
very much. Everything with him is about taking the easy way, but the easy way
always ends up more complicated and sooner or later, it always blows up in his
face. I just wish I knew how to get him to see what he’s doing to himself and
to the people around him.”

“Yeah,” I say a third
time since I’ve been in the room.

I just don’t know what to
think. The more time I spend with Mason, the more I find that Jana was right
about him; he is sweet, gentle.

At the same time, this is
not an easy situation. Mason and I already had a bit of trouble getting off the
ground and since Chris arrived, things have only gotten more difficult.

“Do you think we’re too—”
I start, but I’m interrupted as Mason leans in and kisses me on the lips. It
happens so fast, I’m not even sure
that
it really happened, except now Mason’s red in the face and turning away from
me. “What was that for?” I ask.

“I’ve wanted to do that
for a while now,” he says. “I guess it just felt like the right moment.”

My heart is pounding so
hard, I’m actually a little worried. That doesn’t stop me from kissing Mason
back, though.

His lips are smooth,
welcoming. When I pull away, Mason’s smiling. “What was
that
for?” he asks.

“The first one was so
quick I barely even processed it,” I tell him. “I figured if you’re going to
kiss me, we may as well let it last long enough to do something.”

There’s still that
tension in my muscles, but the reasons it’s there have stopped coming to mind.
It’s been so long and I’ve been so closed off I’d forgotten that relationships
are about this kind of intimacy. The awkward first kiss, the eager follow-up,
that moment where the only real decision is whether to stop or keep going.

I decide, at least for
now, to keep going.

With the initial shock
and timidity now a footnote, Mason and I just sink into each other. His arms
around me, my arms around him—this isn’t what I was expecting, and I can hardly
say I’m prepared for it even now. More than anything, though, I’m taken away,
both in spirit and sensation, into a world I haven’t known for what feels like
so long.

His hands come together
at the small of my back and a couple of his fingers curl under the bottom of my
shirt.

“Tell me if I’m moving
too fast,” he whispers, his lips to my ear for a brief, goose-bump-inspiring
moment and now he’s kissing my cheek, my mouth.

“Okay,” I answer back,
too overcome with the rush of endorphins to remember why I was so nervous in
the first place.

He starts lifting my
shirt, and even though I’m expecting it, I still gasp a little at the actual
feeling.

“You okay?” he asks
calmly.

“Yeah,” I tell him, and I
lift my arms, allowing him to pull my shirt the rest of the way off.

We’ve spent time with
each other since I decided to give him a shot, but we’ve never been together
like this. It’s always been flirting and subtle glances.

Now, as I pull Mason’s
shirt over his head and drop it to the floor, I think it’s safe to say we’ve
taken things to the next level.

At first, I’m not sure
how far I’m willing to take this, but the more I feel his touch, the more I’m
pulled in by the sensuality of the moment, the more I’m ready to go as far as
he’ll take me.

This isn’t an
intellectual process. Maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see because I’m
feeling what I’m feeling, but the longer we kiss and hold one another, the more
this just feels right.

Mason hesitates, so I
take over for a minute, reaching behind my back and unclasping my bra. I let it
dangle from my shoulders, loose but still mostly in place as I wait for Mason’s
reaction.

Before I know it, he’s on
top of me, my bra is off and the heat of his mouth brings my skin to life as he
slides his lips over my collar bone down to the space between my breasts.

“Mmm,” I hum, savoring
the attention of his lips as his fingers close in over the fabric at the top of
my pants.

Mason stops a moment and
looks up at me, as if he’s waiting for permission.

My heart is in my throat,
and I’m having a hard time swallowing it back down as the mixture of excitement
and tenderness emanates from his eyes.

I nod and Mason unbuttons
and unzips my pants. He pulls them down eagerly, slipping them all the way down
and off my legs.

Mason takes this
opportunity to kiss my knees, my thighs. Every patch of skin those lips greet
seems almost to ignite in a new flood of pleasure.

He comes up to my red,
cotton panties, and he teases my sensitive skin just outside where I’m covered.
I’m arching my back, half of me hoping he takes his time while the other half
just wants him to tear off my underwear and put himself inside, the back and
forth only adding to my desire.

“You sure you don’t want
to—” he starts, looking up at me again.

“We’ll figure it out
later,” I tell him. “Just don’t stop what you’re doing.”

There’s no easy way to
tell whether this feeling is so mesmerizing because it’s been a while for me or
because he’s just that accomplished at foreplay, and right now, I’m all about
finding out.

With the index finger of
his right hand, he brushes the fabric a little to one side, exposing my
meticulously-trimmed center. He doesn’t waste any time.

His tongue sends jolts of
liquid electricity through every part of me, and I’m already trying to catch my
breath.

This is all happening so
fast.

I’m grabbing my breasts,
rocking my hips. My body goes on its own, growing ever more receptive to Mason’s
magnetic touch.

His mouth settles over my
clit and he gently tongues, sucks and teases me while the world moves beneath
me.

Mason’s lips brush over
my lower lips, and he slides a finger inside before returning his mouth to my
sensitive bud.

“Do you have a condom?” I
ask through a thick wall of breath.

“Yeah,” he whispers and
he gets up, walks over to his dresser and opens the top drawer.