Fighting for Love (Second Chances #4)(49)
WHEN SHELBY SAW THE PHOTOSHOPPED pictures of me and all of those women, I didn’t exactly know how she felt until I saw the ones with her and Kyle. If I had to see her in pictures it probably would’ve been easier to see her with twenty different men than it was seeing her with that f*cker.
“You know, I thought you were going to be the one to screw up with Shelby,” Garrett confessed. “I even warned her about you, but she was the one who ended up—”
“Garrett, shut up,” Carter cut in. “That’s the last thing the boy needs to think about right now. He needs to let her go.”
Shelby.
So much was going through my mind that I didn’t even realize she was gone until Carter said the words ‘to let her go.’ I didn’t want to let her go. It wasn’t her fault and she needed to know that.
Jumping to my feet, I marched to the door and looked down the hall. “Where did she go?”
“Uh … she’s gone,” Garrett pointed out awkwardly, “she walked out of here a couple of minutes ago.”
“Where to? Did she leave?”
Carter put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed when I started to take off down the hall. “No, I don’t think so, son. She didn’t go out the exit, so I’m assuming she went to the arena. Would you like to tell us what’s going on?”
“Kyle’s what’s going on,” I spat. “I know you think Shelby cheated on me with him, but that’s not what happened. Somehow he got to her weeks ago and pretended to be someone else so he could use her to mess with me.”
Mouths gaping open, they were stunned into silence until Garrett came around first and replied, “Wow, I didn’t think the guy had the brains to pull something like that off. Surely, he wasn’t the mastermind behind all of that.”
That was true, but who? I was going to have to have a long talk with Gabriella as soon as the fight was over.
“All right, you two, it’s time to go. There’ll be plenty of time to figure out who did what after the fight,” Carter exclaimed.
As usual, once we got to the arena door where I’d enter through the crowd, I had just made it in time to hear the announcer call out my name. The cue for me to get ready came when my song blared over the speakers; “Bad Company” by Five Finger Death Punch. Once the song hit the forty-five second mark where the beat ratchets up it was time for me to make my appearance.
Carter slapped me on the back and smiled. “Knock ’em dead, son.”
The curtain pulled back, and like I always did, I jumped in place a couple of times and punched the air in a series of jabs just to hear the crowd cheer. Once that was over, I kept my pace down the aisle, keeping my gaze on the target in the ring. The ladies screamed at my sides, grazing their hands and nails across my skin as I walked past, but I kept going. I used to love it, to know that I was the one the people cheered for and wanted, but at the moment my mind was a jumbled mess of seeing Kyle and Shelby together.
I wished it was him in the ring. I wanted to make him suffer, to make him bleed, but in the end all of that was just physical pain. Physical pain you could heal from, emotional pain was a torment that could stick with you for the rest of your life. That son of a bitch didn’t even have a heart to know what that felt like.
When I got into the ring, I did my rounds and waved to the crowd thinking I would see Shelby sitting beside my sister, but her seat was empty. Where was she?
Gabriella knew what I was thinking when I looked at her and shrugged in response, mouthing the words ‘I don’t know’ at me. What the hell, I thought. If she wasn’t there then that meant she left.
“Matt, wake up,” Carter yelled. As soon as he said that my head snapped to the side as Jeremy landed a punch to the right side of my face. The pain brought me back to the fight. Immediately, I recovered and got into fighting stance.
The bell had rung and I completely missed it.
With a smirk on his face, Jeremy—thinking he could best me—tried to swing in for another hit, but I blocked him and countered with a kick to his shin. I hated cocky bastards, especially ones that outright loved to gloat. Usually with newbie fighters, I’d extend the fight if they were genuinely good people, just to give them time to be noticed by others, but guys like the one I was fighting could kiss my ass. I didn’t want to waste my time on cocksuckers like that, especially when I really needed to find Shelby. Jeremy tried to get in a jab to my ribs, but I turned on my heel at the last minute and landed a strong, left handed punch to the left side of his face, knocking him flat out on the mat.
Once it was clear he wasn’t getting up, the crowd cheered and the announcer yelled, “Ladies and gentlemen, your victor for the last Heavyweight fight of the evening is MAATTTTT ‘The Destroyer’ REEYYNOLLLLDDDSSSSS!”
He lifted my hand in victory and I smiled at the audience. As soon as he let me go, I jumped out over the side of the ring and straight down to Gabriella. “Where is she? Have you seen her at all?” I asked quickly.
Shaking her head, she narrowed her gaze at me. “No, I haven’t seen her since I left your house. I was going to go to the back and look for her, but I kept thinking she’d eventually make it in here. Did something happen between you two … again?”
“Kind of,” I muttered, taking her elbow and ushering her away from her seat. “And before you start getting in your little angry sister mode it’s not what you’re thinking. It wasn’t Shelby’s fault this time. It happens to be someone else’s.”