Pulse

  #2 The Beat and The Pulse

  Amity Cross

  Pulse (#2 The Beat and The Pulse) by Amity Cross

  Copyright © 2015 Amity Cross / Nicole R. Taylor

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All song titles, song lyrics, products and brand names mentioned in this book are the property of the sole copyright owners.

  Cover Design © Arijana Karčić, Cover It! Designs

  Contents

  Dedication

  Much Earlier – Ash

  In Between – Ren

  Chapter 1 – Ren

  Chapter 2 – Ren

  Chapter 3 – Ren

  Chapter 4 – Ren

  Chapter 5 – Ren

  Chapter 6 – Ash

  Chapter 7 – Ren

  Chapter 8 – Ash

  Chapter 9 – Ren

  Chapter 10 – Ash

  Chapter 11 – Ren

  Chapter 12 – Ren

  Chapter 13 – Ash

  Chapter 14 – Ren

  Chapter 15 – Ash

  Chapter 16 – Ren

  Chapter 17 – Ash

  Chapter 18 – Ren

  Chapter 19 – Ren

  Chapter 20 – Ash

  Chapter 21 – Ren

  Chapter 22 – Ren

  Chapter 23 – Ren

  Chapter 24 – Ash

  Chapter 25 – Ren

  Chapter 26 – Ren

  Chapter 27 – Ash

  Chapter 28 – Ren

  Chapter 29 – Ren

  Chapter 30 – Ash

  Chapter 31 – Ren

  Chapter 32 – Ash

  Chapter 33 – Ren

  Chapter 34 – Ash

  Chapter 35 – Ren

  Chapter 36 – Ren

  Chapter 37 – Ash

  Chapter 38 – Ren

  A note from the author

  About the Author

  I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

  – Galielo

  Much Earlier

  Ash

  There’s an unspoken hierarchy in prison.

  The fresh meat gets it the worst…until you earn the respect of the top dog.

  Three weeks in, they tried to take me down and pull me into line, but I fought back with my fists. Two weeks later, they tried to take me down with an iron bar and I steamrolled the lot of them. I steamrolled them with the same weapon they tried to get me with. I steamrolled them right into hospital. They never touched me after that.

  They lock you in with people who are just as bad as you. They lock you in and turn off the lights and then you’re fair game.

  It was my own fault I was in there. I committed the crime, but prison changes the best parts of you. I was a beast before, but that place made me a monster. It showed me what I was truly capable of.

  I never beat a man to death before. I never took it that far, but after four years in that place?

  I knew now that I was capable of anything.

  In Between

  Ren

  I thought I was in love.

  I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to feel like, but I was positive it wasn’t this.

  I stood in the middle of Altona Memorial Park, staring down at the place where they buried my mum, trying to understand where it’d all gone wrong.

  The wind picked up and I hugged my coat closer, trying to block the chill. Melbourne was notorious for windy days and sudden downpours and the sky was as black as my soul. Summer was gone, winter had all but passed, but it wasn’t the only thing that had left me feeling cold.

  I glanced around, but I was alone.

  “Hey Mum,” I murmured. Nothing but silence greeted me in return and I wondered if there really was such a thing as the afterlife and if there was...if she could hear me.

  “So, it’s almost been a year since I found Dad. Did you know he had another family?” I sighed, glancing away from the headstone. “I guess you did.”

  The day I’d turned up at Beat I’d been shoved into a storage closet like a fucked up Cinderella, I had a half sister who almost destroyed my life... Scratch that, she did destroy my life. I could tick off all the things that had gone wrong since I stepped into Beat, but I’d run out of fingers to count them on.

  “Josie, Seth, Dean, Lincoln… They’re all great. Really nice and supportive. Things are getting better with Dad. I’m like the son he’d never had. I’m his ticket to the big time he never got for himself.” I sucked in a deep breath, filling my lungs to the brim, then let it all out in one long whoosh. “So much has happened, Mum.” I stared at the headstone like it would talk back to me.

  “I’m one qualifying round off placing in a pro MMA league. Bet you didn’t think I’d get into that, huh?” I knelt down on my knees and began rearranging the flowers I’d bought. Some three-dollar carnations I’d plucked from a bucket of water at the grocer around the corner from the studio. People said carnations were cheap and tacky, total Grandma flowers, but Mum had liked them. They were a few dollars for a small bunch and all we could afford, so I assume she was always just trying to be nice, but old habits died hard.

  “I’m also competing in an illegal underground fighting racket, but that’s another story. I know. I’m in so much trouble.” Satisfied with my mediocre florist skills, I stood, wrapping my arms around my stomach. “There’s all these people saying all these incredible things to me. They’re giving me things and I’m winning all this money, but I can’t hear or see any of it. I’m not a nobody anymore, I’m a somebody, but I don’t know if it’s what I want.”

  I wish she was here. It was always us against the world. Me and her together. I thought it was going to be Ash and me…but he was gone. He left and he never came back.

  “What should I do, Mum?” Tears prickled at my eyes, but even here where nobody could see me, I refused to let them fall. “They’re all counting on me and being amazing and supportive...but I feel empty.”

  Fighting was never my dream. I never had one of those, so I wasn’t sure if this was how it felt to have one come true.

  “How did you do it?” I asked the air, hoping and praying for a reply. “How did you get over your broken heart? Because right now, I can’t see a way forward.”

  Nobody was answering and I was all alone out in the cold cemetery, a sharp breeze cutting through my jacket and chilling my skin.

  How could I hold on, when everybody else always let go?

  Chapter 1

  Ren

  Guard. Duck. Feign. Punch. Guard.

  I ducked as Dean took a swing, holding my stomach taught, using my entire body to support my weight. Feigning right, I swung left, my gloved fist connecting with his forearm.

  “You’re getting faster,” Dean said with a laugh as I put my guard back up.

  “That’s the point,” I replied.

  “You’re already quick, Speedy. Don’t go getting too big for your boots.”

  “Don’t listen to him Ren,” Lincoln called out. “He’s full of it.”

  “Full of what?” I asked with a grin.

  “Shit, obviously.”

  “Fuckers,” Dean exclaimed.

  I took another swing while he was distracted and clipped him on the jaw. He stumbled back a step and shook his head as we started laughing at him.

  “Fuck, Ren,” he cried out. “
Watch it, hey?”

  “Cry baby,” I replied. “It was soft-”

  “Soft like you,” Lincoln finished.

  “Gimme a break,” he moaned.

  “You’re too easy Dean,” I said. “You cry like a baby every time.”

  A lot of things had changed in six months.

  If you wanted to get technical about it, a lot had changed in the previous six months too. Ash had left and taken my broken heart with him. Hammer could be alive or he could be dead. Six months of silence had left me empty and hollow, ready to crumble at the slightest provocation, but I had one thing left that was mine and had always been mine from the beginning. Fighting.

  Dad had seen my inability to cope after Ash had left and without so much as a word, he brought me into his sessions with the Twins and everything had snowballed from there. We didn’t talk like father and daughter should, I was just another fighter and that was the thing that had finally brought us together.

  He’d asked me if I wanted to start fighting in some competitions and my only answer had been a shrug. Then I found myself at my first professional bout with rules and regulations and it was a challenge I was determined to step up to. If I didn’t fight, then my dark soul would consume me. Soon one fight turned into twenty and here I was, somehow winning and accumulating points that had allowed me to almost qualify for the big time.

  Like I said, a lot had changed in six months.

  I was training full time with the Twins now, which meant that Monica oversaw my meals and wasn’t that a fucking party. Monica, the bitch who paraded around Beat like a princess, reminding me about how she’d almost broken my life. She had broken my life, but it could’ve been so much worse.

  She’d utterly destroyed Ash’s, but I was beyond trying to formulate any kind of sympathy towards him. It had been his choice to overstep the line. I’d begged him not to, not to leave…and he ignored me.

  Ash Fuller was a blip on my radar. Liar.

  “Two weeks until your next bout Ren,” Dean said. “You better watch yourself until then.”

  “Or what?” I retorted. “You’ll swat at me like a twenty pound weakling?”

  “Empty threats,” Lincoln said with a wink. “He wouldn’t do anything to you even if he could. The wanker hasn’t got a bad bone in his body.”

  “You’re making my balls shrink,” Dean said with a groan.

  “Lunch,” Dad called out from the opposite side of the studio, clapping his hands to get our attention.

  The Twins slapped each other on the shoulder, excited at the mention of food. Men.

  I shook my head, my mood simmering at a healthy level of okay. There were good days and bad ones and sometimes there were mediocre ones, which were a mixture of all of the above. Today was panning out to be one of the okay ones. Time is what I needed. In the grand scheme of the universe, a lot could happen in six months, but six months was still a blip compared to the rest of my life.

  “Ren?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at the sound of Monica’s voice. I suddenly wanted to asphyxiate on my own vomit.

  “I’m sorry. About everything.” She fidgeted nervously, the once mean girl of Beat looking all demure like a snake in the grass.

  It was like a daily ritual with her. If she could get me alone, she tried to apologize again and again. So I tried not to be alone with her, which was more about her safety than mine.

  “And thank you for…” She hesitated when all I did was glare back at her.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, wringing my hands into the towel so I wouldn’t wring her neck.

  “You haven’t told Dad yet.”

  I narrowed my eyes. I hadn’t told because she hadn’t fucked up yet.

  “Thanks,” she said sheepishly.

  I just wanted to smack the bitch into the next millennia. The last thing I ever wanted was her thanks. “Listen to me,” I snapped. “I will never forgive you for what you did to me and especially for what you did to Ash. I’m just waiting for the day you fuck up so I can tell the world about what you did.”

  “Then why don’t you?” she asked, her eyes widening with fear.

  I looked her up and down before saying, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

  “I don’t know how many times I can say it Ren,” she exclaimed.

  “You’ll never be able to say it enough. Never.” Shoving past her, I went into the showers and sank down onto the bench.

  Dropping my head into my hands, I breathed deeply, letting my rage simmer into a slow boil. It seemed like an eternity ago that I’d sat here with Ash, trying to calm him down after his epic meltdown in the studio. I’d heard nothing from him and I doubted I ever would, but that didn’t stop me from missing him every single day. Missing him and wondering if he’d gone through with it…killing Hammer.

  There was a difference between beating a man within an inch of becoming a vegetable and stepping over the line into murder. I never asked him… I swallowed the lump in the back of my throat and pushed to my feet.

  Living with a terminally ill mother after Dad left us was bad. It was fucking terrible, but I wasn’t old enough to fully understand. My age had shielded the full extent of my heartache, but not this time. I understood all too well and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Ash had abandoned me. He’d left with hardly an explanation and had never come back.

  I lay in my bed upstairs night after night, replaying the scene over and over, trying to understand. He went to prison protecting someone else from him. Someone else. He said he didn’t love me. He was…there’d been someone else. Then what was I? Discardable?

  “Ren?”

  I glanced up in surprise as Josie appeared around the corner. Didn’t she have work? When she saw me sitting there like an idiot, she glanced back over her shoulder and came to sit with me.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, looking totally out of place in the change room in her fancy suit and heels.

  “Just had a fight with Monica.” I shrugged. “It’s been coming for a few days now.”

  “Do I need to crack her skull?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve got her under my thumb; she just needs to back off.”

  “You know you can talk to me Ren.”

  “I know.”

  I’d never told anyone the truth about that night; you know the one where I turned up on Josie’s doorstep in a hysterical mess. I hadn’t told and she hadn’t asked. She’d been a true friend all this time and had never asked questions. She knew I’d tell her when I was ready, but I wasn’t sure I would ever be truly okay with it. If the truth came out, I’d be implicated in a possible crime and so would she. I couldn’t let that happen, so I zipped my lips closed and threw away the key.

  “I quit my soul sucking corporate job today,” she declared.

  “What?” I asked, glad for a change of pace.

  “Your dad asked me to come on full time to do PR for the Twins and Beat.”

  “Shit, so you’re not just mine anymore?” I asked with a small smile.

  Josie had come on as my PR manager a month ago and since then I’d been busy with photo shoots and interviews for a whole slew of magazines and websites. They said I was the next big thing to hit the pro MMA circuit and I wasn’t sure how to handle that. I just had an affinity with fighting; it wasn’t like I was some kind of prodigy or anything. Training and keeping busy kept my mind off of things. The more I thought about other stuff, the sooner I’d forget my heartache. That was the idea, anyway.

  “I’m spreading the love Ren,” she declared. “Besides, I get to hang around hot male fighters all day. I couldn’t get out of that shithole of an office any faster.” She gave me a suggestive wink.

  I managed to crack a smile and she threw her arms around me. It sure was going to be a lot easier to cope with Josie around.

  “It’s going to be great,” she said. “Just you wait.”

  “I hope so,” I murmured.

  I really did because I wasn’t sure what else
I had to look forward to.

  I might’ve been a handful of points away from qualifying for the pro league, but one thing I hadn’t given up was The Underground.

  I was afraid to go back for weeks after all that shit went down with Ash and Hammer. Not until the Championship was over and a new one had begun. I’d walked into the converted warehouse to a cool greeting. Not because they hated me, they were frosty because they were afraid of me.

  Fighters I’d once spoken to with easy banter avoided me; people who’d spoken to me so they could get closer to Ash gave me the cold shoulder. Even the bookies looked at me differently. That was until I started winning and I fucking won a lot.

  I didn’t need the money, what with me fighting alongside the Twins; Beat was more than fine financially. Even without Ash’s money, the studio was fine. My bank balance started inflating and earning interest and if I wanted to, I could invest or buy my own place…but I didn’t want any of it.

  I guess Ash and I had something in common. We didn’t care about the money. Fighting was more than fame and glory. It was a way to sate the beast within. I never understood his, but mine? Ash awoke my beast and left me with the carnage of dealing with it and as fucked up as it sounded; I needed The Underground to cope.

  I wasn’t alone in not knowing what the fuck was going on where Ash and Hammer had gotten to. When it came time to fight the Championship bout, neither man had shown, so it was up to Hamish, aka The Goblin and a mean son of a bitch named The Crowbar.

  Hamish had won and was now the new golden boy of The Underground.

  Now that the new season had started, I went three nights a week and fought as many bouts as they would put me down for. If there was an over, I was the first to volunteer.

  Call it bloodlust, call it punishment, but the only time I felt alive was when I was in that cage, pounding my fists into my opponent.

  Isolation and The Underground went hand in hand and I was a partner to them both.

  I fought so I could feel something other than heartache.