Rocky's Choice Read online

  Rocky’s Choice

  The Rebels Bod Boys Book 3

  Xander Hades

  Copyright 2018 by Xander Hades.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechan ical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review

  Author Contact

  Email: [email protected]

  Table of Content

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Ghost: Sneak Peek

  Also by Xander Hades

  Author’s Note

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  Damn. It was supposed to be a fun vacation until a life-or-death situation ruined it all.

  Rocky's amazingly strong, he's wild, he's all man.

  My man.

  But there's something about Rocky that deeply worries me.

  A secret that unravels during a cage fight nobody wants,

  where someone's death raises so many questions

  and puts Rocky's MMA fighting career in peril.

  Between what happens inside the bedroom and out there on the road,

  He must make a choice…

  before a conspiracy swallows the life of the only man I've ever loved.

  Chapter 1

  He splurged on a taxi. From the airport to his neighborhood was going to be $30 plus tip, but Rocky was feeling good.

  He was feeling a whole lot better than the driver who blanched when he got the address.

  “Alright,” the guy finally said, nodding slowly. “But only for a drop-off, I ain’t waiting around, not in that neighborhood. And I sure ain’t going down there after dark!”

  “All you gotta do is let me out,” Rocky assured him, hiding a smile. “I only have the one bag, I don’t need a lot of time when we get there.”

  “Alright,” the cabbie said and looked him over. Rocky was a relatively short man, but he was built along the lines of a fireplug. His chest was as nearly as wide as the rear door of the cab and he had angled his way inside. Rocky’s arms bulged under the t-shirt he wore with a yellow spandex superhero emblazoned on the front.

  “You look like you can take care of yourself there, buddy, but… I wouldn’t wear all that jewelry in that neighborhood. Just a suggestion.”

  Rocky looked down at himself as the taxi coasted out of the loading zone and headed for the freeway. Three gold rings and two gold necklaces. One set of steel dog tags. Of all the flash, the dog tags were the most valuable – to him, anyway.

  “It’s my neighborhood,” he said smiling. “You’ll be fine.”

  “Yeah, sure,” the cabby grumped. “You’ll be fine. That’s what they told me when they put a gun to my head and took all my cash – everything I made in two days – gone like that!” He snapped his fingers to show what he meant.

  “In my neighborhood?” Rocky was honestly surprised. He hadn’t been gone that long. Were things really getting that bad?

  “Nah, but they’re all the same, ain’t they? All these places where people are so poor they’re starving and scratching and killing each other for a buck.” He waved off all neighborhoods in general. “And no, I know it’s desperation and all that, but when you lose everything you earned in 48 hours of constant driving without a break…” The driver broke off and looked into the rearview mirror, his eyes a little wide with panic. “Hey, uh… don’t tell anyone I said that, ok? Taxis are regulated, we’re not really supposed to drive that many hours. It’s not exactly kosher.” He waggled his hand indicating it was a gray area.

  Rocky thought it might be a little more black and white, though. Suddenly he was a little bit worried he’d chosen this particular cab. He studied the driver’s eyes in the rearview, trying to see them. Did the rims seem a little red? Bloodshot? He shook his head. Ten lanes of traffic on the 405 and he gets the driver who’d been up since Thursday.

  The driver seemed not to notice his nervousness. “I really should pack it all in and do that damn Uber thing, no regulations there, and they do the same damn job I do.”

  “Why don’t you?” Rocky tried to care, but couldn’t quite manage it. This man was one of those who would always find a convenient excuse to not try, to not take the risk. He shook his head. Guys like that drove him nuts.

  “Eh,” the driver shrugged. “Would you believe it? I don’t have car.” He thought this was the funniest irony ever and laughed at his own joke. “Me, I drive all day and all night, I don’t have a car…” He looked at Rocky again in the rearview mirror. “You….” He waggled a finger at the reflection. “You… I know you… I have seen you somewhere before.” He grinned. “A big guy like you, I should remember, but I know I know you!”

  Rocky winced, wishing the man would put a little more focus on the road. They’d just narrowly missed hitting a mini-van trying to merge doing 10 mph. “I do MMA fighting.”

  “What’s that?”

  Rocky sighed and brought the level of communication down a notch. “Cage fighting.”

  “Cage… Oh, yeah! I got you now! I saw you on… a… a pay-per-view. You opened for the main fight. Say, you’re good, really good. I remember looking at you thinking, ‘shit, there’s a man who eats his spinach’. You know, like Popeye?”

  Rocky grinned and rubbed his temples. Yeah, just like Popeye. This was suddenly getting to be a long drive.

  “No wonder you live in that neighborhood, huh? Keep your exercise that way, don’t you?” He made a fist and punched an invisible enemy. “Wow, that’s cool. I had a celebrity in my cab once before, but he was just Kelsey Grammer’s hairstylist. But you… you’re a real person!”

  “I am.” Rocky stifled a laugh. “At least last I looked.”

  “Well… it’s an honor, I mean that. I do remember seeing you in that fight, though. Who won? I can’t remember.”

  “I did.” Rocky had been winning a lot of them lately. Fact was, he couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t. He focused on the view out the window. Los Angeles at its finest, a thousand thousand lights and traffic as far as the eye could see.

  “Of course, you did, a big guy like you, wow, a cage fighter from the television in my cab, that’s one for the books alright, sure… What did you say your name was?”

  “Rocky.”

  “Like the movie!” The driver laughed.

  “I was named after that character,” Rocky confessed, not sure why he did. It’s not something he told people usually. Even Val didn’t know that. But then he and Val hadn’t spent a whole lot of time talking exactly.

  “See? They knew! They knew! A parent knows these things. They look at the little baby and say, he’s a rocket scientist, he’s a doctor, he’s a fighter. I don’t know why mine didn’t name me ‘Cabby’, but, eh, maybe they didn’t know. They were immigrants, barely spoke English,” he waved off his entire family. “What did they know? Nothing, that’s what they knew…”

  Rocky re
alized that his part of the conversation was over. He went back to looking out of the window and thought of his girl. There was always a girl, wasn’t there? At the crux of a new life, at the start of something great. Val was all that.

  She’d got the nickname from Rocky’s friend Hoodoo. Sometimes it still amazed him that Hoodoo and Michael turned out to be among his best friends, even though they rarely saw each other anymore. Rocky was the kid from the ghetto who’d learned to fight, Hoodoo was a seven-foot-tall giant, nearly as built as Rocky himself and a Cajun biker relocated to the desert. Michael, well, hell, when they found out who he was, they began calling hit “Hitman.” They knew he was connected, but then he turned out to be running the entire mafia west of the Mississippi…

  He shook his head. Yeah, life was strange.

  “No? Eh, me neither,” the cabby said. Rocky looked up, but whatever question he’d just answered, the cabby seemed to agree with him. “Who needs it? It’s not worth the aggravation, back in my day, now... we’re talking a good… oh God, 30 years? Wow. Anyway….”

  Rocky shook his head and went back to his thoughts, finding that preferable to the mindless babble coming from the front seat. Val. She was shorter than he was. At five-feet-eleven, he always felt small around the six-feet-two Michael. And everyone that came into contact with him was secretly sure that Hoodoo was going to accidentally going to step on them someday. But Val was a slender five…what? Two? Four? Small enough to fit snug in his arms, with her head on his shoulder. Perfect. Not that she was some soft decorative thing like what most of the guys on the circuit dated. His girl was a terror in a fight. She flew through the air, landing a blow and vanishing before her opponent had a chance to fall. Like magic.

  He smiled at the memory. It had been a hell of a fight. How could he not have fallen in love when he’d seen the way she’d flattened a guy twice her size?

  A motorcycle passed him, a single rider leaning in low, slipping between the stopped lanes of traffic. Funny how he’d never noticed bikes the way he did now. He’d liked the feel of riding behind her on the bike. OK, yeah, he’d taken some flak for that. It was the “submissive” position. Some people called it the “bitch” seat, but the only ones to tease him were her family – the Gilas. No one else teased Rocky – or Val.

  The truth was, he liked being behind her. There were lots of interesting ways to grab and hang on as she drove, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it. He’s almost caused her drop the bike the day after they’d made love when he’d managed to brush his fingertips against her breast as she drove, but the look of shock on her face made it all worth it.

  “Ok, this is the address. Hey, this is that place… that place. I heard about this… this is you? Really? Wow. That’s a good thing,” the driver said with appropriate awe as he pulled into the lot in front of an old motel.

  The building had started out white and taken on that gray cast that came from good old Los Angeles smog. Differing shades of white along the side showed where gang sign had been painted out. A mural was planned for that wall, it was only lacking the funding, though he had hopes that soon he’d be in public eye enough to inspire more donations. The sign over the double glass doors said THE CAGE in two-foot-high letters. It was an organization that helped get gang members off the street, and it was Rocky’s passion.

  He dropped two twenties in the driver’s hand.

  “Take care now,” Rocky said and stepped out. The driver was out of there before Rocky’s foot was even solidly on the sidewalk. The squeal of his tires was drowned out by a shout that rose from two dozen throats.

  “ROCKY!” The kids were on him in seconds. A dozen arms wrapped around him. The smaller children danced around his feet, making it nearly impossible to reach the front door. He found himself trying to hug them all at once, and gave up, and instead waded forward, one child wrapped around each leg, and three hanging off each arm, like little monkeys.

  It was better than any workout, by far.

  “Hey, guys!” He held up one arm and addressed the young people converging on him from the steps of the building. “I need your help. There’s someone coming for a visit in a couple of days, can you get a room for her?”

  “Her?” one the older girls asked, her brows waggling suggestively, causing her friends to start giggling.

  “Yes, her. And yes… she’ll probably be staying with me.” He waved down the catcalls and jibes. “Just remember, I seen her fight and I wouldn’t want to take her on, so be careful.”

  “’Bout time,” Diego said with all the wisdom of his eleven years, clapping him hard on the back. “Dude, about time.”

  Chapter 2

  Val kicked back and leaned into the seat. She had the room when she was alone on the bike, but it felt empty without having Rocky’s comforting bulk to lean on, even if he did push her bike’s capacity a bit. She smiled in remembrance of that teasing. The bike was powerful enough to handle him and her both without breaking a sweat, but damn if the man didn’t LOOK like he’d been carved of scrap iron and leftover steel.

  In a way, she’d hoped to have him on her back seat all the way from South Dakota, but a ride of that length would be murder for an inexperienced rider and she knew it. Besides, he had a round-trip ticket back to L.A., courtesy of the Sturgis Rally, and had another cage match to prepare for when he got there.

  I hate that he had to go so soon.

  Much as she hated to admit it, she had been a little resentful of this particular match. While she had no problem with his fighting, and was behind him in his career 100%, this particular fight wasn’t even sanctioned, so it meant nothing whatsoever to his ranking in the MMA. To her way of thinking it meant he could take his time getting home, they could have maybe explored a little more of the Black Hills, gone up to Lead or Deadwood, seen Mount Rushmore and done all the tourist stuff. But even without ranking he’d argued that the fight would still give him exposure. And being that it paid well certainly didn’t hurt anything. So in the end, Rocky had his way, and Val was left to find her own way to L.A. that she might join him there.

  She still wasn’t quite sure what the hell she was doing.

  It’s not like I’m making this huge commitment. I’m going out for a visit. Until Labor Day. That’s it.

  She bit her lip. OK, yeah, maybe longer.

  It was the first time she’d admitted the possibility of staying. The very thought of it was terrifying…wonderful…

  I don’t know him. I don’t know him at all yet. We…hit it off. This is an experiment. I don’t have to commit to anything…permanent.

  So feeling still a bit uncertain about the whole deal, she mounted her motorcycle, finally ready to leave Sturgis behind. Rocky had flown back yesterday. Today she would ride alone out of the city, the seat behind her conspicuously empty. But the Gilas would ride at her side.

  The Gilas. Leaving them behind would be…painful. For the past two years they had been her family, her only family since her parents had died in a car wreck last Christmas. Her brother was…well, God knows where, and she’d been on her own since she’d thought she was smarter than the people who had given her life, and she’d taken off back at the age of seventeen. She’d regretted that now, more than she could say since she’d lost them. She’d seen her mom last, after Thanksgiving, trying to do the Black Friday thing with her that her mother had loved so much. But the whole expedition had turned into one long argument about her piercings (both eyebrows and nose ring offended, ears were OK), the tattoos (though the one of the flying bird on her shoulder was considered almost pretty, or would have been if it hadn’t been on her skin), and the way she ran around with all those wild men.

  But those “wild men” were the glue that had held her together, especially since that drunk driver had destroyed her only chance to ever win her mother’s approval. Just like they rode with her now, holding her together as she prepared for this next big step that would take her out of their reach.

  It’s only L.A. – not that
many hours away from Phoenix. It’s not like you’re no longer a Gila if you change your zip code. Family doesn’t work like that.

  Then they were on the road and the time to think was mercifully lost in their banter and play as they set out on a trip of 1,200 miles through the Rocky Mountains. This right here was the whole reason to ride a motorcycle. The wind on her skin, and teasing at the hair that escaped from under her helmet. Miles and miles of open road through some of the most breathtaking scenery she’d ever seen. Who had time for worries when there was the whole world waiting at your feet?

  So from South Dakota to Arizona, the Gilas rode with her. Mad-dog had even given up his place as Hoodoo’s wingman for a while, letting Val take the honor. She rode this position with chin lifted, trying not to do something absolutely girly and useless like cry. It was going to be tough to leave them when the time came. She loved them all even if this particular little family would likely be classified as pretty dysfunctional by most. Sure, some of the “cousins” were a little crazy, but what family didn’t boast their share of loonies?

  Days passed. Nights were spent sleeping in the open, with much joking and laughter at the campfire. If they perhaps lingered a little bit along the way, if the laughter was a little too forced and too loud that last night, no one talked about it. One of her Gila brothers caught her alone at some point or another, keeping her busy while the others sabotaged her gear, hiding folded twenties, “just in case she needed it” – knowing full well that she’d never ask for help, and was not about to accept the charity. When she protested loudly they called it her emergency fund and refused point blank to take it back. Since she couldn’t prove who had done it, she’d kept the money grudgingly but vowed to never use it, unless there was a true emergency.