Chapter Nineteen
4 days left, if it even matters.
He’d done it. After years of working his way back up from the bottom, Xander had done the very thing he’d been gunning for: getting invited back into the UFC and winning his first fight. Hell, he’d even won a bonus purse for best submission of the night, catching his opponent in a guillotine seconds after Xander managed to slip out of the guy’s triangle choke.
The president of the UFC, Dana White, spoke to him afterward, letting Xander know how impressed he was with the fight and that he’d be in touch soon to discuss multiple fight contracts. Xander’s manager already had product companies calling to offer sponsorship. It was everything he’d hoped for and more. He should be on top of the bloody world right now. Instead he simply felt empty.
Six months ago, he’d dreamed of this moment, this culmination of everything he’d worked his arse off for. The summit of his mountain, the cherry on top, his reason for being. But somewhere along the way, a jade-haired, pinup, baking beauty had replaced all of it. This victory—and he imagined any in the future—felt hollow without her by his side. They’d been a strong couple, a good team, a solid unit.
Passionate lovers who were passionately in love. Or so he’d thought, anyway.
Even when she left and blocked his number, he’d still held onto the hope that she’d eventually hear him out and they could start over. Or if she wouldn’t see him, that he could do something epic to prove his love, just like John Cusak in that movie where he held the boombox over his head outside his girl’s window.
Bloody brilliant, if you asked him.
But no one did, of course. The only people asking him anything were the ones in the sea of reporters in front of him. But they only wanted to know things that pertained to his career. He guessed things hadn’t changed much about the press junkets in the few years he’d been out of the professional circuit.
Wearing his T-shirt and baseball cap for TLP, now his largest sponsor, Xander sat at a kilometer-long table with the other fighters from the night: winners on one side and the corresponding losers in order on the other, with Dana mediating from the podium in the middle.
“Xander, how confident were you that you’d come out of this fight with a win?”
“Xander, do you see Frank Otto becoming your rival if he demands a rematch, and how would you feel about fighting him again?”
“Xander, were you at all worried when he slipped you into that triangle at the end?”
“Xander, what’s next for ‘the Hammer’?”
Normally he didn’t mind answering the reporters’ questions. He did his job in the cage and then needed to let them do theirs once he was out of it. It was part of the deal. He just couldn’t bring himself to enjoy the moment. All he wanted was to head back to his hotel room and crash before the drive back to Vegas the next day.
Glancing at the clock on the wall, he sighed with relief. Only a couple minutes until Dana called an end to the questions. No sooner had the thought crossed his mind than he heard the Prez do that very thing.
“Ladies and gentleman, we have time for one more question. You in the back with the green hair. Go ahead.”
Groans and curses from reporters who’d been snubbed waved throughout the room, but Xander barely noticed. As soon as he heard the words “green hair” he’d jerked his eyes up to see who Dana had called on. As everyone else in the room sat, he saw her, and his chest squeezed the air from his lungs.
“Mr. James,” she began, her melted chocolate eyes boring into him, “I couldn’t help but notice that despite your incredible win in your first fight back to the UFC, and winning the bonus for best submission of the night, you don’t appear very happy. Why is that?”
His opponent had landed forty-three punches and sixteen kicks in the two and a half rounds they battled in the octagon. But none of those blows had even come close to knocking him on his ass like the relief at seeing Sophie threatened to do in that moment. So many things were running through his mind faster than bolts of lightning, and he wasn’t sure which ones he should be trying to catch and hold onto. Why was she here, pretending to be a reporter, no less? “It’s not that I’m not happy with my fight or my win. I fought hard to get here, and I don’t intend to go anywhere for a long time. But…” He hesitated. Fucking hell, the woman made him lose the plot time and time again. He’d never been so unsure of himself.
“But?” she prompted.
All right, gorgeous. If this is the only way you’ll hear me out, then so be it.
“But, unfortunately, my win tonight is overshadowed by what I lost more than a week ago.”
“Sounds serious.”
“Yeah” he said. “Losing your wife is very serious indeed.”
The room erupted in a collection of gasps and hurried whispers. Those who caught on to what was happening started taking pictures of both him and Sophie. Reporters began murmuring to each other, trying to figure out who might have the inside scoop on the fighter’s failed love life. He barely registered any of it, too focused on the insecurity Xander saw in her eyes. She wasn’t sure of how he felt, and that was bloody unacceptable.
Resting his forearms on the table, Xander leaned into the microphone in front of him and nailed her with the truth. “But I don’t intend for her to stay lost. Not if I can help it.”
She nodded for a few seconds as she considered her next words, and in the stuffy room that was climbing in degrees by the minute, the fifty or so people waited, their pens and recorders at the ready.
“I think that if I was her,” she said carefully, “I’d feel terrible about not giving you a chance to explain things. I’d regret thinking the worst of you simply because I’d been let down by people who claimed to love me in the past. Because in reality, no one ever came close to loving me the way you did.”
Tears glistened over her eyes, then spilled over her porcelain fine cheeks. Xander pushed to his feet, ready to end this and haul her back to his room, but she gave him a slight shake of her head, freezing him in place behind the table. Grinding his back teeth together in frustration, he did as she asked. This was her way of atoning to him, and she wouldn’t feel the guilt lift unless he let her get out everything she needed to say.
“If I was her, I’d miss hearing you complain about finding my wet towels on the floor, or my vast—but totally justifiable—shoe collection spilling over from the bedroom walk-in to the hall linen closet.”
Some soft chuckles. A dozen camera flashes.
Then her voice turned serious to match the sadness in her eyes. The knife twisted deeper.
“I’d find it impossible to sleep without your arms holding me and your scent surrounding me.” Sophie’s tears were no longer drops, but steady streams. Her lips were red and swollen from crying, her cheeks ruddy, and he now noticed the dark circles under her eyes. She was fucking killing him. “I’d be s-so incredibly sorry for everything, but nothing more than taking the joy out of the thing you love most in this world. Of all the things, I think that’s the most unforgiveable.”
Fuck this. Xander turned his hat backward, braced a palm on the table, and launched himself over it to land on the other side. “You’re wrong.” Xander hopped off the small stage and started walking toward her, the people parting for him like the Red Sea. “Fighting is my passion. It’s in my blood, and there’s nothing I’d rather do than one day be a UFC champion. But it doesn’t even come close to registering as what I love most in this world. If something happened and I could no longer fight, it would be hard to deal with, but I’d get over it and move on.”
At last he reached her. The room was in a frenzy around them, but his attention was on this woman—his woman—and the rest was nothing more than white noise. “But I won’t ever get over you, Sophie James. You stole my heart, mind, and soul. If I no longer have you, then I no longer have any of those, either. I’d only be a shell of the man I once was until the Lord sees fit to take me.”
Lifting his hands, he dried her cheeks, only to have her eyes leak again and undo his attempt at calming her. “All I’ll ever need is you.”
“Then…will you marry me?”
He quirked up one side of his mouth. “I know there’s not much of it in the memory banks, but I’m fairly certain we did that already.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “There’s no law that limits you as to how many ceremonies you can have.” A sweet smile spread over her face. “It’d be nice to remember at least one of them.”
“Then, yes,” he said, pulling her into his arms. “I would love to marry you. Again.”
As the crowd around them cheered and clapped and snapped so many pictures it looked like they stood under a strobe light, Xander kissed his wife slowly and thoroughly, not giving a rat’s arse what anyone else thought.
When they finally came up for air, they were no longer the center of attention. Everyone either left to get their stories in or chatted with each other about whatever tickled their fancy.
Glancing at his T-shirt that sported the ridiculous pineapple wearing sunglasses logo, she asked, “Why is Jax your sponsor? I thought you never wanted to ask him.”
He shrugged. “When my other sponsor backed out, it was either ask Jax or accept the favor from your uncle in exchange for filing for divorce. There was never any question which I’d choose, then or now. Those papers were never mine, Soph. Caldwell tried bribing me weeks ago, but I refused. The day you found Tami in my office, I’d planned on asking you that night if you still wanted to dissolve the marriage after the trust was transferred. I was hoping you’d say no, but I was prepared to win you back either way.”
Sophie tried to contain the rage that boiled at the thought of her uncle’s constant scheming and made a mental note to officially kick his ass out of her life. “And Grams’s care? Stephanie told me what you did.”
He swore under his breath. He’d thought there’d be some kind of privacy clause or something. “I didn’t mean for you to find out about that. It didn’t matter to me whether we got back together or not. I’ve saved money from my amateur fights and now that I’m pro again, I’ll make even more. I wasn’t about to let Marjorie get kicked out of there because of your fool uncle.”
Tears welled in her eyes, but she blinked them back. “I’m so sorry I bailed on you. I promise not to do it ever again. I love you so much.”
His heart swelled one hundred times its normal size at hearing those words coming from her lips. “Not as much as I love you, gorgeous.” Then he bent his head for another lingering kiss.
When they came up for air, she beamed up at him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and asked, “So, what’s it feel like to be back in the UFC and get a huge victory right out of the gate?”
Xander swept her up and cherished the feeling of her cradled against him. This was where she belonged, in his arms. “My victory in the cage felt bloody fantastic, that’s for sure. But winning your heart, Sophie James…that’s the sweetest victory of them all.”