Page 47 of If You Fight

Chapter Fifteen

Ryder

Serena had no idea what her father had just done. I’d been out of the game for over two years. Working as his muscle had often required me to get physical with guys, but nothing like fighting on the circuit. He knew that. He knew even though I worked out daily, it wasn’t anywhere near enough for me to be ready to face any guy in a fight in just three weeks.

And still the fucker did it.

I sat down on the couch and tried to pretend everything would be okay. I’d told her so little about my time fighting that maybe she’d believe that I could get in shape to fight whatever behemoth Robert found for me in less than a month.

She leaned her head on my shoulder and whispered, “I’m sorry, Ryder. I don’t know why he’s doing this. I thought maybe he might have found out about me looking for my mother, but he didn’t seem to. I don’t know why he suddenly wants to punish us again now.”

Closing my eyes, I let myself enjoy the feel of her next to me. “Because that’s who he is. Who knows? Maybe he’s still punishing me for what I did to Oliver. Maybe this is because I went behind his back with you. I don’t know. All I know is that this is who he is.”

“We. What we did.”

I turned to look at her and saw those dark eyes so gentle and sweet staring up at me. “You know what? I can’t wait to meet your mother because I have to know how someone so good could come from someone so evil. It must have been because of her.”

Serena beamed at my mention of her mother. “I can’t wait either. I just know when I get to talk to her, she’s going to say she’s wanted to know me and Janelle all these years. I have to believe my father’s been telling the truth when he says I’m like her. He thinks it’s a bad thing, but I don’t.”

I kissed her on the forehead. “You’re gentle and kind and nothing like him. He doesn’t understand someone like you. All he knows is how to be vicious. It’s all he is.”

Her smile faded as a look of concern crossed her face. “So about this fight? You’ll be able to handle it, right? You work out every day and you still look as good as you did when you came to the house back then.”

Forcing myself to appear like none of it worried me, I nodded. “I’ll be fine. I’m not too rusty, and I’m a couple years older now. I’m like wine. I get better with age.”

She studied my expression for a moment and then innocently asked, “Is that really how it works?”

“Sure. I definitely wouldn’t have wanted to go up against someone my age when I was eighteen. I would have gotten my ass handed to me.”

I’d never lied like that to her. When I first came to the estate, I’d avoided telling Serena what I did for her father, but never in all the time I’d known her had I lied so completely about anything until that moment. I just couldn’t be the reason she spent the next three weeks worried sick about this.

But I knew better than to think the past two years had given me any advantage in a fight. I may have been in good shape, but I wasn’t in fighting shape, and that would mean the difference between holding my own in the ring and getting beaten worse than Robert’s guys had done to me.

“So what do you have to do to be ready for this fight?” Serena asked, her eyes full of curiosity. “Is it like when you first came here?”

I smiled at her mention of that time. She’d followed me around for days back then, spying on me around corners as I worked out, her dark eyes wide as she watched me do what I had to so I didn’t get my ass handed to me in the next fight. The memory of her so curious about me seemed so innocent for all we’d gone through since then.

Pulling her close, I kissed the top of her head and held her to me. I didn’t want to face her when I lied again. “Yeah, pretty much. Training is basically the same no matter what, so it’ll be fine.”

The uncertainty in my voice came through loud and clear to me, but I didn’t know if Serena heard it. I waited for her to say something, my brain scrambling to come up with a lie she wouldn’t be able to see through.

Serena looked up at me and smiled. “Is there anything I can do to help? If you want, I can stand next to you while you work out and say encouraging things. You know, sort of like a cheerleader.”

I shook my head and laughed at how cute she could be. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t think anyone has ever offered to do that for me.”

“Well, I saw it in the Rocky movies when that old guy helps Rocky train, but I don’t really want to yell nasty things at you, so I figured maybe I could be more of a cheerleader than like the old man.”

“To be honest, I think you’d be more of a distraction than anything if you were standing next to me while I train,” I said before dipping my head to kiss her on the lips. “But thank you.”

“I could get a cheerleader uniform. You know the kind. A little skirt that barely covers my ass,” she joked. “And an even tinier t-shirt that says Team Ryder. What do you think?”

The image of Serena dressed in that settled into my mind, and I smiled. “I think the other guy is going to have an easy time caving my head in if you do that because I’m not going to be getting any training done if you’re anywhere nearby in an outfit like you described.”

She slowly dragged the tip of her tongue across her bottom lip as she looked up at me. “Well, we wouldn’t want that to happen, so I guess no cheerleader outfit.”

“There will be time for that after the fight,” I said, winking at her.

Looking down, she traced her fingernail over my chest and quietly said, “It’s going to be okay, right?”

---