Fight for Me Read online

  “I’m sorry about Alec.” I turned back to my car and willed myself to drive away, but I couldn’t. All I pictured was Alexis alone and hurting. I glanced over my shoulder at the pathway running along the side of the large home and leading to the private beach behind it. I slammed the door of the car and decided I’d just get a quick glimpse of her, then leave.

  The breeze was cold as I walked down the path, making the winter temperature seem lower than it actually was. The ocean roared as the strong winds blasted the water onto the shore.

  As I peered at the beach from the side of the house, I saw her. The sharp angles of her face were highlighted by the moonlight, but she was too far for me to see her expression.

  The wind whipped her long dark hair around as she sat on the sand, gazing into the turbulent water. Her legs were tucked in, and her chin rested on her knees. I felt like I was invading a private moment, but I also felt the urge to go unravel her from the protective ball she’d curled into and make it okay for her.

  She rose, and I took a step back into the shadows of the darkened path. If she turned around, I knew she’d see me watching her, and I wasn’t ready to face her again. I took the path back to my car with a hurried jog. As I reached the top of the hill-like path, I glanced over the railing to see how close she’d gotten, but she disappeared. I scanned the beach but didn’t see her anywhere.

  She couldn’t have gotten back to the house that quickly.

  When I looked back to the spot she’d been sitting, I saw her in the distance. She was trudging into the frigid water.

  What the fuck is she doing? The temperature of the water must be below freezing.

  I leapt over the railing and landed hard on the cold sand. The drop was steep, and my shoulder took the brunt of the fall. I knew immediately I’d dislocated it. The pain was intense, and I clung to my shoulder as I rotated my arm until it snapped back in place. The pain was excruciating but I managed to pull myself together as raced toward the sea despite the ache in my joint.

  “Hey!” I screamed, but she didn’t glance back.

  The water seeped into my shoes first, but then a huge wave crashed against me. It felt like someone threw a sheet of ice against my body. The waves kept pushing me back, and she had a good head start. I dove in and began swimming against the current, all the while cursing the weakness in my arm. Propelling my weight against the tide was the only chance I had of catching up to her.

  “Alexis!” I hollered at her when I came up for air. She looked back, then began to move faster.

  Fuck! We’re both going to die in this water.

  I couldn’t feel my hands or toes, but I kept moving. A wave pushed her back. I dived over it and finally made it far enough to grab hold of her arm. Then another wave crashed into us hard enough to pull us both under. I lost my grip on her arm, and when I resurfaced, I didn’t see her anywhere.

  Panic gripped me. I dove under but couldn’t see anything in the ocean’s pitch-black glacial depths. I came up for air but got slammed by another wave. I felt the cold seize my body. I needed to get the fuck out, but I wouldn’t leave her. I just couldn’t fucking leave her.

  I looked toward the house. It was way too far. If I screamed for help, no one would hear me. I turned back around and saw something. The moonlight reflected off her white sweater a few feet away. It felt like it took forever to reach it, but when I did, I saw her floating just below the surface. I pulled her lifeless body toward the shore, but it took much too long. Her weight felt like a ton to pull with my seizing muscles and numb hands. When we hit the sand, it got even colder—if that were possible.

  “Help!” My throat burned as I screamed the word. As I laid her down on the sand, I realized the charm from her necklace was caught in my hair. I grabbed it at both ends and ripped it off her neck, leaving the rest of it tangled in my hair. I began to pump at her chest, silently thanking Uncle Drew for making me take those CPR classes. Her face was extremely pale, lips bluish purple, and her hair clung to her face like a black blanket.

  “You’re not fucking dying on me.” I tilted her head back, placed my icy lips against hers, and blew air into her lungs. I began to pump her chest again, and I saw a woman racing our way.

  “No! No! Alexis, baby, please!” Vanessa dove onto her knees on the hard sand and began pulling Alexis’s wet hair off her face. Alexis sputtered, then coughed. I pulled her head to the side as she coughed saltwater out of her lungs. Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked at me for a few short seconds before she began hacking again.

  “Ryder.” David was next to me. I didn’t know how long he’d been there because I hadn’t even seen him come out of the house. “What happened?”

  “She walked into the fucking ocean, that’s what happened. She just… she just… She wanted to die, didn’t she?” I dragged a cold hand over my face as I battled with how close I’d almost come to losing Alexis.

  An ambulance siren rang in the distance, and Alexis's mother huddled her in her arms, rocking back and forth and whispering into her hair. David pulled me aside as the paramedics came down onto the beach with a stretcher.

  “You know how close she and Alec were. She’s been so disconnected since she found out, but we never thought…” He ran his hand over the back of his neck like he used to when he was worried I had a concussion after a fight. “Let me get you inside and warm you up.”

  “I’m fine.” Actually, I was so fucking cold I couldn’t even feel my balls, but I didn’t want David acting like a doting father.

  “Ryder…”

  “I have a sweatshirt in my car.” I watched as they carried Alexis off the beach. “Will she be okay?”

  David put a hand on my shoulder and pulled me to face him. “You saved her life. What you did tonight… I can’t explain to you how much it means to Vanessa and me. Thank you, son.”

  I nodded before leaving him on the beach. I made it to the car, but just barely. My stubborn pride wouldn’t let me admit my shoulder hurt like a bitch from that fall. I struggled to pull the sweatshirt over my aching arm. Halfway home, I pulled over and called my friend Ty to pick me up. Even with the heat at full blast, my body was convulsing from the cold and my arm felt like it wasn’t attached to my body. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes, knowing I’d totally fucked up my chance at the championship fight that was less than a week away.

  I arrived at David’s house, thinking the championship was the biggest thing that ever happened to me, but that night, on that beach, a dark-haired angel pulled me into her sea of grief, and I would have died before I let her drown in it.

  Chapter Three

  Alexis

  I’d been in the hospital for two days, and the constant check-ins were wearing on me. Each time I tried to get some sleep, the door would open. When the door opened for the tenth time that day, I kept my eyes closed and pretended to sleep. Maybe the nurse would take the hint and fuck off. Let me wallow in my sorrow for once. I didn’t want to talk about my feelings. I didn’t want to eat. I didn’t want anything but Alec.

  A shadow fell over me, silently watching. A strange sensation crept under my skin. I opened my eyes, and Ryder was standing over me. His dark hair had loose waves and reached his shoulders. His eyes were startling blue. I remembered looking into those eyes when I woke up spitting saltwater. He was dressed in all black and his right arm was in a sling. Not good.

  “Did I cause that?” I asked, nodding toward the sling.

  “It got dislocated when I jumped over the railing, and they think I aggravated the injury when I pulled you out.”

  “Sorry.”

  He shrugged like a dislocated shoulder wasn’t a big deal for a fighter.

  “Will you be able to fight?” David had told me about the championship. I knew that fight meant everything to Ryder.

  “Doesn’t look like it, but there’s always next year.”

  “Great. I’m fucking up everyone’s life.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. I didn’t run into that i
ce-cold water so you could find something else to regret in life.” He pulled something out of his pocket, opened my palm against the bed, and placed my chain into it.

  “That’s yours. It got stuck in my hair when I pulled you out. I had it fixed.”

  Alec gave me that necklace. I thought I’d lost it in the sea. “Thank you,” I said, not just for the necklace, but for what he did. As much as I’d wanted everything to end in that ocean, I knew how much he risked pulling me out.

  “What the fuck were you thinking, Lexi?” He gave me a look of disappointment.

  “I wasn’t.” It was the only answer I had. I hadn’t been thinking. I’d been so consumed with the pain it had clouded my judgment.

  He nodded and stepped back. “Just do me one favor.”

  “Anything.” He’d risked the one thing that meant the world to him to save me. I’d do whatever he asked.

  “Can you promise me when it gets too hard that you’ll fight it? Don’t let the pain swallow you, fight back. Don’t do it for your mom or because I asked you to. Do it because you’re worth the fight.”

  “You sound like David.” I laughed. He didn’t.

  “David taught me to fight for me.” He turned and walked out of the room. I missed him. He was so closed off and distant. Nothing like the Ryder I’d known years before.

  In the past two days, I’d clung to memories of Ryder like a lifeline. But after that visit, I knew he wasn’t as anxious as I was to catch up.

  I was thirteen when I first set eyes Ryder Hayes, and I knew, even then, I had to have him. My schoolgirl crush was intense and apparently had not simmered down over the years.

  After my dad died, David held us together. This caused a huge rift between him and his family. Ryder had been there the first two years.

  At the time, we thought David was just an old friend of Mom’s. Looking back, it was strange we hadn’t met him before Dad died. Alec, Ryder, and I never suspected Mom and David were more than friends. They had actually been engaged way before my parents met. When we walked in on them being a little more than friendly, Ryder hadn’t taken it well. Especially since David was still married to his mom.

  Our family imploded. Alec and I were so angry with Mom we barely spoke to her for months. There was an even bigger blowout the day David left his wife and moved into our house. Turns out the reason they never got married was because Mom’s parents forbade it. They were high society snobs and had it already lined up who was good enough for their daughter, and David wasn’t it.

  Mom was twenty and in her third year of her college when David decided it would be better for her if they broke up. She later confided in me that she’d been devastated. She tried everything she could to get him to see she didn’t care if her parents stopped paying for school, but he wouldn’t budge. A year later, he married Ryder’s mom, and a year after that, they had a baby. So when her parents expected her to marry Dad, she stopped fighting for David and moved on.

  I was angry at David for a while. I hated that Mom had replaced Dad a couple of years after his fatal heart attack. David divorced his wife and married Mom shortly after. This only fueled Ryder’s hate for his father and resentment toward me and Alec. We tried to reach out to him countless times, but he shut us out.

  A year after they got married, I pushed my bitterness aside and got to know him. My parents always seemed happy, and I was sure they were, but what I came to realize later was Mom was much different with David. They weren’t two people living in the same house with their kids. They were two people who lived as one. Anyone who watched them couldn’t help but see the love they shared. Alec, of course, was more forgiving than I was. He had long since become friends with David. They were constantly chatting, playing video games, and going to the gym together.

  I knew David missed Ryder; it showed when he was with Alec. I wasn’t sure what any of us were going to do without him.

  Three years later…

  Chapter Four

  Alexis

  “Mom! Calm down,” I shouted as my mom scurried around the room, straightening pillows and wiping away any traces of dust. I’d never seen my mom so anxious about someone visiting.

  “You should go get changed, Alexis.” She glanced at my gray shorts and small black top like I hadn't changed in days.

  “Mom, the man hasn't been here to see David in three years. Why are you treating his visit like the second coming?”

  Loving us had cost David everything. After Alec died, David was withdrawn and quiet. He had come to love him as a son in the seven years they had together. Alec had helped fill that hole left by Ryder. With Alec gone, I could almost see the emptiness in David’s eyes.

  In time, I resented that Ryder had cut us out of his life and had taken so long to at least give David a chance. And David had tried countless times. Maybe I was a little biased. I’d hoped for years Ryder would show his face again, but he hadn’t. I missed him the first time he disappeared from our life. The night he pulled me from the ocean was the first time I’d seen him in five years.

  After that night, he texted me every couple weeks. He’d ask how I was doing, and then I wouldn’t hear from him again for a while. He’d never replied when I sent him texts about how he was. I felt like he’d built a great big wall between us that only cracked open when he wanted to check on me. I wanted him to respond to my questions. I became obsessed with the thought of Ryder, but he wouldn’t allow me to get to know who he’d become since we’d been friends.

  He had saved my life in more ways than one. I looked forward to his texts, no matter how concise they were, like it was Christmas. Maybe I thought we’d build a bond because of what we shared. A year after that night, he’d sent me a message.

  Won the championship. Thought you’d like to know.

  It was the first time since Alec died that I really smiled and was genuinely happy. Ryder knew I blamed myself over his having to withdraw, so that message meant a lot for the guilt I carried around. A week later, he sent me another text.

  Why do you wear that moon around your neck?

  It was the first time he’d asked me anything personal, so I got excited.

  Alec gave it to me. Said I brightened up his dark nights.

  I waited for him to send me another text, but he didn’t. After that, his texts dwindled down until they stopped. I’d sent him a few messages, but he didn’t respond.

  He was on his way over to our house, and I wasn’t going to get dressed up and pretend I wasn’t annoyed he had shut me out for years.

  “This means everything to David. Please, Alexis, let's do everything we can to heal this family.”

  She sighed when she saw my blank expression. The bell rang, and I put my laptop on the couch, swung my legs out from under me, and decided to wait this out in my room. I knew he wasn’t here to see me, but my heart hammered with anticipation just knowing he was on the other side of the door.

  I quickly sailed through the living room, foyer, and up the stairs. My room looked the same since high school. Every year I promised myself I'd move back to campus, but by year's end, I was still here. At twenty-three, I'd become stuck in limbo, and I wasn’t sure how to get myself out of it.

  I jumped onto my twin bed and tried to listen for his voice downstairs. That didn’t last long. I started pacing the room. My anxiety began to grow until I couldn’t take it any longer.

  I needed to see Ryder.

  The last time I saw him I was strapped to a hospital bed, under psych evaluation. Two days later, he showed up at Alec’s funeral. He stayed in the back and disappeared after I scattered the dust over my brother’s coffin. I hadn’t laid eyes on him since. Well, sometimes I dreamt of him calling out to me at sea, and his words stayed with me every day.

  I couldn’t just lie in my bed when Ryder was this close. I needed to see him more desperately than I’d like to admit. I ran down the stairs, pushed open the kitchen door, and my breath was stolen from me instantly. I couldn’t figure out if the man in front of me
was real or if I just conjured him up in my imagination.

  He is breathtaking.

  He looked better than he had three years ago. His black hair was shorter—tapered but a little longer at the top, and styled in a messy fashion. He looked larger. Maybe six-two. I knew he couldn’t have grown much taller, but his muscle mass made him appear bigger everywhere.

  Firm, lick-able lips. I remembered those lips well. I’d fantasized about them as a teen.

  Perfectly tanned skin. He was dark and edgy with the kind of eyes you could get lost in.

  He stared at me with his intensely blue eyes, and my heart raced. He narrowed them, cocked his head, and then his scowl turned into a wickedly tempting smile.

  My God, where’s the boy who walked out of the hospital room, and where did this man come from?

  My body ignited with lust. He was too much to take in all at once. I devoured him with my eyes while standing wide-mouthed and wordless. Broad shoulders and arms stretched his black T-shirt until it contoured to his muscular frame. Handsome—no, alluring face. It drew you in, and before you realized it, you were gawking. There was a small cut over his left eyebrow that looked stitched up, but otherwise he was flawless.

  “What happened to your face?”

  He laughed, rubbing his hand over his jaw. “You don’t like my face?”

  “No. I mean, yes…” Shut up, Lexi. My face heated up as I stumbled over my words. Of course I liked his face, but that’s not what I was trying to say. I shouldn’t have even been worried about the cut on his face.

  “Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.” I finally managed to get a grip on my fascination with this change in him.

  He just stood there, staring at me longer than I was comfortable with. Who was I kidding? I wouldn't be comfortable being anywhere near him whether he was looking my way or not.

  “How are you, Alexis?”

  “I’m good. You?”

  He shrugged. Shrugging was not an answer to my question. I wanted him to say, “I’m good, but I missed you,” or, “I wanted to check on you, but I was busy.” Something more than a nonchalant shrug.