Rags 2 Pitches: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (12 page)

Kayla

“Kayla, a penny for your thoughts,” Hannah asked as she prepped me for the big fight. Hannah had the reddest hair that I had ever seen on a woman. I often wondered if that, and her emerald eyes, were natural. She could be deemed a rare beauty, but I knew what lurked underneath. Something evil. Something the underdogs were scared of.

Hannah and I were in the back room. It was a typical fight room; even after it had been cleaned and bleached, it still carried the stench of blood. The girls and guys who had been in the room before had been either been beaten to death or were dragged in here half alive from the fight. I hated coming into this room before a fight. It didn’t feel comfortable, it felt cheap. The room was dim; the lighting was always the same so that no one could see the real state of the fighters before the fight. There was never a mirror in the room. If there had been, it would probably stop the fighters from competing. That was one thing that I’d always avoided doing, even back home. I hated looking in the mirror and seeing what I had become.

There was one light hanging from the ceiling and a bench that used to be white placed in the middle of the room. Earlier, the doctor had checked me over to make sure that I was fit for the fight. There was nothing worse than people paying for a fight and a fighter not being able to last more than a round because they had either taken too many drugs or they had been fighting outside of the market.

The whole thing was dirty. There were no rules.

I had been given the all clear, so I was allowed a little time to talk to my coach. But this time, Hannah had refused to let Willy, my coach, come in the room. She wanted to talk to me, help me prep before the big fight. She wanted to make sure everything was in place and that nothing was going to go wrong.

This fight was the big one. The one that people were talking about all around New York. I had heard them talking about it in the casinos; that was where most of the people who attended the fights hung out. The guys and gals with the big bucks at the casinos. Also, that was where Hannah spent most of her time. She loved to gamble, which was another reason why she needed the money from the fight - to keep up her bad habits. One thing she ensured, which was not true of most gamblers, was that she never owed.

She only bet if she had money in her pocket.

If not, she didn’t go.

But it had become like a drug to her.

I had seen her happy when she won, but when she lost, it wasn’t a pretty sight. Not at all.

This fight would lead to a big payout, money that I had dreamed would come my way. For the last six months, I had been working practically day and night to get out of this world.

Two months ago, I had lost two teeth in the last sixteen finals.

Last month, I had nearly lost the use of my eye in the quarterfinals.

Last week, I’d been confined to my bed after the semifinals. I could hardly move. This shit wasn’t like the real MMA. The fights were getting tougher, and the pain was getting unbearable. Shit, the other girl in the semi nearly died. There were rules, but they were so loose, sometimes I wondered if the audience got more of a kick out of seeing one of us die. I wanted to win. No, I
needed
to win to finally be free.

Yet, it was taking me longer and longer to recover from a fight. The fighters felt as if they were made of steel. A punch to the head just made them look the other way. I needed more blows to knock them out. I had been training like a dog to make sure that I won this fight.

This was black market fighting; there were no drug tests, so most of the fighters took steroids or some kind of stimulant to get so far. There was no board or censorship; fighting was about winning, pure and simple. Every kick and punch felt like metal beating the shit out of me, but I kept on. I refused to take that shit.

I had seen a couple of girls that had taken drugs and they had lost their minds. Maybe I was old-fashioned and thought that playing it safe would lead to a win. Hannah said I was naive.

Yet, she knew the real reason why I didn’t take that shit.

“I just don’t know if I can go on like this,” I said as I started to get nervous. No, I was fucking scared. Not only of my opponent, but of Hannah too.

My final fight was with Natalie Nathan. She was taller than me, bigger than me, and a whole lot stronger.

The only thing I had in my favor was speed, but that didn't always allow me to win a fight. When I’d first started out, it was fucking tough. As the years rolled by, it became easier. All I had to do was see my dad’s face and I fought. Now, it was hard again. Maybe I was getting sentimental, or maybe the nightmares were finally going away.

Either way, hearing their voices and feeling their punches no longer made it easier to deal with the pain.

“You wanted this. I told you about the risk, about what could happen. You said you could do this.” Hannah started panicking. “Shit, do you know what is at stake if you back out now? It’s not just
your
life.”

I nodded my head, pretending that I had gotten myself together. I’d said I wanted the final fight. She had supported me for nearly two and a half years. This fight would mean that I could finally pay her back and then I would be free.

I knew that Hannah was powerful, but over the last few months, I’d found out just how powerful she really was.

“Don’t worry. It was just nerves talking. I’m okay. I know what tonight means. I won’t let you down.”

The stakes were high. She reassured me with a fake smile and a kiss on the forehead. It was a deadly smile. One that didn't say, “try and do your best”. It was one that said, “if you don’t win, and you let me down, if your opponent doesn’t kill you, I will”.

Chase

“I mean, out of all the ways to get your kicks. Seriously, guys, I just don’t get it. Why this?” I was pleading to Reg because I hoped that he would see sense and know exactly where I was coming from. The only thing constantly on Miles’ mind was Miles.

“Chase, you need to loosen up. I bought you the damn ticket. And it cost me a fortune. I got us top seats.”

Top seats; what the hell did that mean in some underground fight? He made out that we were going to some Heavyweight Championship, where the seats would be in the box, or even near the ring. I had no idea what he meant by that statement, but I would find out when we got there.

I did know deep down that Reg had a point. He had asked beforehand if I was up for it. Actually, no, he’d given me a lecture: “You need to get out. You’ve had your head stuck in books since the day you got here. Let me take you out. Somewhere you’ve never been before.” I didn’t want him to repeat that speech in front of Miles.

I’d agreed, but Reg knew how I felt about the fights. I didn’t think in a million years that he would book for us to go to the one place that I hated. Especially with the one person that I didn’t particularly like; Miles.

It felt like the worst trek ever.

“It’ll take us a couple of hours to get there, so we need to get going,” Reg stressed as I slowly headed for my coat.

Then I thought that maybe this trip would be one that we would both regret, and Reg would never ask me to a fight again.

“At this rate, I wasted my money on the tickets,” Reg huffed as he walked out the door.

“Come on, Chase, your best friend just turned twenty-one. Try and make some kind of effort,” Miles whispered before he followed Reg.

Shoot, what a selfish prick!

I had completely forgotten about Reg’s birthday. Sure, that was another reason why he was trying to get us to go out. He’d finally turned twenty-one. He was the youngest out of the three of us. We had been together since elementary school, and I hadn’t even remembered his birthday.

As I headed down to the car park, towards my car, I decided to change my mood. I had been out of order, thinking about myself. Dreaming of Kayla. That was the real reason I hated the fights. She used to train like crazy at school.

I had even seen her in a few events.

That was my first stop when I went looking for her, to see if she was competing in one of them.

A big fat zero.

Kayla had decided to get on with her life. I needed to get on with mine. It wasn't fair punishing my best friend for wanting to spend time with the two guys that he spent most of his time with in a place where he found enjoyment.

I put on my happy face, jumped in the car, and shouted, “Let’s get the party started!”

Miles had a bottle - he always seemed to at times like this - and he hollered out from the backseat, “Boys, get ready to rock and roll!”

Kayla

“I could help you. If you like…” Hannah had whispered when I’d first met her at the gym. Sheryl had told me the way to get into the blackmarket circuit. She had heard about Hannah, but didn’t know her personally, so she warned me to tread carefully.

I’d been naive and desperate.

I’d nodded like a child, eager to get candy from the candy shop for free, so I’d held her hand and told her to lead the way.

“I’ve worked with a few fighters. I could help you become part of a team.”

I’d felt as if I’d had hit jackpot. What could go wrong?

Nothing.

I’d thought that Hannah was my guardian angel coming to rescue me from the bad people of the streets. I didn’t realize she was one of the people that I should have feared. By the time I did learn, it was too late.

I was in too deep.

And she took advantage.

She fucking used me, and I needed to fight for her one last time to put an end to our relationship. I would no longer owe her, and she would no longer own me.

“I just got nervous,” I blurted out. I needed to go out there and fight, but not only fight.

I needed to win.

The dingy room that we were in started to feel like a trap. I felt nauseated, which I rarely did. I usually came in this room and had a talk with Willy, my trainer, and everything felt fine. He could easily have passed for my grandpa. He was around the same age and treated me as if I was the granddaughter he’d never had. I never asked how he got mixed up with Hannah. Some things were better off left unasked. Especially when it came to her.

Hannah spoke slowly. “Remember everything you’ve learned. Remember, you’re here to win, nothing else.”

She was spitting out her words as if they were enough to encourage me, enough to make me fight harder.

But they were doing the complete opposite.

They were scaring me. Frightening the shit out of me. As my stomach knotted, I shouted out so loud that I even scared myself, “I need a minute.”

I needed a second to get myself together without her in the room, breathing down my neck. I hesitated as I moved from her grip. I wanted to do something I hadn't done in a long time: get down on my knees and pray.

“Sure, kid. I’ll give you a minute… You can do this.”

I needed her to have confidence in me. I wanted to run as I had done so many times before. She’d wanted me to train for at least two years before I got to the big fight. That was our arrangement when she took me in. That was the only reason she took me in, because she had lost so many fights, investing in girls who either ran or got killed in their last fight. I’d found out the hard way through my coach, Willy, what happened to the ones who ran.

Hannah tracked them down and gave them a piece of her mind.

Not a blow to the head.

Or a hit and run, like some of the other managers set up.

No, something far worse.

Torture.

Hannah had a reputation to keep. She wanted the girls to know that if they ever betrayed her, they would pay. Willy let me know it wasn’t only my life at stake, so I had to tread lightly.

“You could be ready for this fight, but if I was you, I would wait,” he had warned me. I didn’t listen. The stubborn part of me wanted to leave and get out of this world that I had become accustomed to. Nowadays, when I looked in the mirror, I saw a faint image of the girl that I used to be. I was only twenty-one years old, but the scars and the beatings made me look a lot older.

The first scars were from the hand of my own dad, and I collected more after I started black market fighting.

I knew that I could have another new identity.

A new face; if I got plastic surgery, I could remain anonymous forever.

Willy had a contact out in Mexico. It was all arranged.

Hannah would get her money, payback for the money that she had invested in me, and in exchange, I would get the one thing that I had craved for nearly three years: freedom.

I didn’t want a fancy life. I hadn’t realized until I lost it that that was what I’d had when Mom married Stephen. We had expensive things, all the things that money could buy, but it couldn’t undo the past, which had come back to haunt me that night on campus.

What was Dad doing there?

I would probably never find out.

Hannah slowly made her way to the door. She turned around, and her red hair shifted, revealing her green eyes. “Remember, kid. I’m rooting for you.” With those words, she shut the door and I knew what she really meant.

Win this, kid, or pay the price.

Chase

Lately, I’d just been so damn moody. I guess because it was near graduation, and I’d never thought that I’d be going through it alone. That was never meant to be the plan.

Shit, the idea of Kayla not even graduating burned a hole in my head.

What was she escaping from?

Or running away from?

Graduation, or just me?

I’d thought that Kayla and I would be graduating together. That was what we’d planned; us against the world.

I had spent a lot of time treating her as if she didn’t exist in public, but in private I would spend my nights jerking off just thinking about her tight body. She worked out a lot. Some thought it was to the extreme. I used to wonder where she came from. Until a year before her mom married my dad, she was a complete stranger.

Kayla always looked as if the whole world was against her. The only time she had a smile on her face was after she did a workout or after she had kicked the shit out of someone in karate practice. Some of the guys at school loved to watch her, wondering if the girl that loved to dress in black was a secret ninja.

Her strong arms and height didn’t deter from the fact that she was secretly every guy’s fantasy at school. Her dark hair and eyes matched her appearance.

The cheerleaders were scared of her, not only because of her physique, but because they had tried to be popular. Killing themselves to be the girl that every guy wanted, but Kayla had achieved that easily from day one.

Guys wanted to be with her.

Girls wanted a body just like hers.

Her breasts bounced as she walked in the room, and every part of her, including her butt, was just tight. I couldn’t help but want to pinch it every time. She always wore fitted clothes that showed off her body; that hot, tight body of hers. When prom hit, shit, I was so damn jealous that her date wasn’t me.

But I couldn’t fucking show it.

Everyone would have thought that I was some kind of freak lusting after my stepsister.

She went to the trouble of transferring from the community college to Stanford after my dad agreed to support her. We never really spoke, even at home. Our parents got married fast. Real fast. They fucking eloped and told us about it after. It was crazy - her mom was desperate to do it before Kayla graduated. I didn’t see the rush, but Dad was smitten. Anyway, before I knew it, Kayla moved in and then it was time to go to college. I was happy, thinking that the wet dreams of her would go away once I went.

When Kayla left, I tried looking for her after her mom filed a police report. Mary, her own mother, was kind of hesitant about going to the police. She even went and said something like, “Kayla was always running away as a kid. She’s just up to her old tricks again.”

In the end, due to heavy persuasion on my part, she filed a missing person’s report, but nothing came of it in the first few days. Mary sighed. “See, Stephen, I told you. Kayla did this as a kid. You’ve got work to do back home. Let’s just go back. If anything comes up, the police will call us and then we’ll let you know, Chase.”

That wasn’t good enough for me. I was used to getting my own way, so I pressured Dad and they hired a private detective, Mr. Johnson, and, within a few days, he’d found out more than the police did; he had evidence.

We went to his office to hear the news; I was so excited about finally having a lead on the whole mystery. I thought that he was going to tell us where she had gone and why. His office was nothing like what I’d expected. It was downtown, and it looked more like a finance office than a private detective’s office.

Or maybe I had been watching too many reruns of Columbo. I’d expected the guy to have a raincoat in California. I had no idea why, but my vision was completely ruined when I saw him. He reminded me of Luther from the TV show; clean-cut in a business suit, and a smooth operator. Anyway, as we sat down in his office, Mr. Johnson told us the bad news.

“Well, I found her. It wasn’t hard.”

He flicked through pieces of paper, avoiding our eyes, so I blurted out, “And? What did she say? Did you talk to her? Is she coming home?”

He didn’t need to look through pieces of paper to give us an answer. It was a simple question.

“Slow down, son. I’m sure Mr. Johnson wants to give us an account of Kayla. The main thing is, she is safe.”

He nodded. I looked around his room and took a few deep breaths because I was losing patience. He had a few awards on his wall from when he was serving with the police. I wondered for a split second why he’d left, but he had finished reading whatever he had to address us once again.

I rocked while facing him, feeling as if my head was just spinning out of control.

“So.” He adjusted his glasses. “She’s living in Chicago. Downtown. Do you want the address?” This time he was talking directly to Mary.

She shrugged. “It depends. Does she want me to have it?”

What kind of question was that?

Your daughter goes missing and you’re asking permission to have her address?

I didn’t wait for Mr. Johnson to reply. Instead, I shouted, “I’ll have it. Seeing as I’m the only one interested in her whereabouts!”

I stretched out my hand, ready for him to give us the report on his investigation.

Instead, Dad spoke up. “If she wanted us to have it then she would have contacted us, right?”

Mr. Johnson nodded. “See, that is the problem with most runaways. They just don’t want to be found. Mrs. Logan has hired me before with the same problem with Kayla.”

I frowned at his announcement. Dad didn’t even think anything was wrong with it. I could have sworn that Kayla said they lived in Kentucky before they came to Dallas. Besides, it was kind of weird, because they both had strong Ohioan accents.

“Anyway, she’s living with a guy. His name is…” Mr. Johnson started to look for it again. “Sorry, I got my papers mixed up because of all the missing persons’ reports that were produced the last time she went missing.”

He was annoying me. I hadn’t known that Kayla had a history of going missing and, as he trailed on to his findings about Kayla working in a coffee shop and being with some guy, I wondered if it was true or all lies.

Maybe the voice inside my head was telling me that she had moved on, but none of it made any sense. Mr. Johnson said that she was living with some guy in Chicago.

Why Chicago of all places?

I didn’t understand. She never mentioned knowing anyone there, and then she just up and left one night without a trace to go hook up with some guy that she just met or had maybe known from before? Her phone was smashed and found by the ATM where she took out money before she left. The police were treating it as a kidnapping, until campus photos showed her smashing up her own damn phone.

This was so out of character. Her mom was quick to close the case.

“Thank you, Mr. Johnson. It looks like Kayla’s up to her old tricks again.” They both got up to walk out of the door. I just sat there, stunned by the revelation.

She’d never mentioned going to Chicago.

Then again, she never said anything about running away before, or even the fact that she had a history of it. It was almost as if the girl that I was pining for, had fallen in love with, was completely unknown to me. I knew nothing about her, and I started to wonder if she had just used me.

Mary tried to comfort me, or maybe she just wanted me out of Mr. Johnson’s office. I stood up, not happy with the answers. Maybe because I wanted to hear the words from Kayla herself. I needed her to tell me that she didn’t want anything to do with me.

Mary sighed as she offered her hand and walked back to me. “Chase, I know this must hurt. But Kayla obviously doesn’t want to be found.”

I shook my head. “None of this makes sense. You need to take the address.”

Mary and Dad refused, and waited outside the investigator’s office. It wasn’t exactly where or when I wanted to tell them, but I ended up confessing how Kayla and I felt about each other.

They were taken aback, and Dad whispered, “You guys hardly even speak to each other! When did all this happen?”

I told him, “The first week that you dropped us at campus. I couldn’t keep my true feelings to myself any more.”

Dad and I were kind of close, so I could tell that he was a bit disappointed that I had never said anything before.

“But you had a girlfriend; what was her name? Stacey or Kelly or whatever her name was?” Mary asked, and I knew who she was referring to. I would not say they were necessarily my girlfriends. Just girls I fucked once in a while. But I wasn’t exactly going to disclose my whole love life to her here, or at all.

Dad cleared his throat. He knew that I’d had a thing with both Stacey and Kelly, so he quickly changed the subject.

“Let’s talk about this back at the hotel. We can get a clear idea of what is going on.”

He avoided looking at me until we got in the car.

“The thing is, you’re step-siblings. I just don’t understand what you were thinking?”

I didn’t answer. He was right. We were, but sometimes you can’t help the way you feel about someone. It wasn’t like we were brought up together or anything. We didn’t even meet until she and her mom moved to Dallas.

I started to wonder how much Dad really knew about Mary and Kayla. I knew that a few times she had stayed over with me, Kayla had had nightmares. Fucking bad ones. She told me that they were of the past and that she needed to get rid of them her way.

Now, I wondered if they were about her times on the street. Seeing as she had a habit of running away. Maybe the previous times she had been living on the streets?

Or with this guy in Chicago?

Maybe he had a hold over her.

Everything was clear before and now it all felt cloudy.

I hated Kayla for leaving.

I hated her for not telling me the reason why.

We arrived at their room in the hotel, and Mary didn’t hesitate booking the next flight back to Dallas.

Dad took me to one corner and asked, “So, how long has this thing been going on with you and Kayla?”

I didn’t understand his question because I had answered the same thing before. The answer hadn’t changed since we left the office.

“I told you. Since September.”

He nodded. “Good, so just over two months. Right. So, if she doesn’t want to be found then just leave it.” He looked to the left to see if Mary was coming out of the bedroom.

“After all, she’s your step sister. She’s not exactly the best person to be starting a thing with.”

He had no idea what he was saying. What I had with Kayla wasn’t exactly a thing. It was more than that.

She was the first girl that I had connected with and saw myself spending real time with. Not just fucking, but hanging out as a friend, then loving like a partner.

I shook my head as Dad’s words hit home. This thing was only one-sided. Kayla had a new man. Some guy in Chicago. Kayla never mentioned going to the city before, let alone visiting it. Then again, people travel, so maybe she met the guy in Dallas or Ohio, where she’d said that they had lived before.

She was always so shady about talking about her past.

Mary told him the good news about the flight. Dad’s face told me to drop the subject, so that was exactly what I did. I dropped it and decided that I would go out there and play the field like I used to before I hooked up with Kayla.

That was when I found out that I was just kidding myself.

Kayla didn’t want me.

But my dick certainly needed her!

I couldn’t get it up with another girl, no matter how hard I tried.