Luke (A Cocky Cage Fighter Novel Book 8) Read online

  LUKE

  A Cocky Cage Fighter Novel

  By Lane Hart

  COPYRIGHT

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue were created from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual people or events is coincidental.

  The author acknowledges the copyrighted and trademarked status of various products within this work of fiction.

  © 2017 Editor's Choice Publishing

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator” at the address below.

  Editor’s Choice Publishing

  P.O. Box 10024

  Greensboro, NC 27404

  Edited by Angela Snyder

  Cover by Vocaldesign

  Cover photo from www.123rf.com

  WARNING: THIS BOOK IS INTENDED FOR MATURE AUDIENCES 18+ ONLY. THE STORY CONTAINS ADULT LANGUAGE AND EXPLICIT SEX SCENES.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Prologue

  Luke Campbell

  November 28, 2012

  When my stomach growls so loudly I can hear it over the sounds of blowing shit up on Borderlands, I pause the game to check the time. My phone says it’s almost ten o’clock and we haven’t had Eli’s birthday dinner yet.

  Tossing the PlayStation controller down on my mattress, I get up and jog down the stairs to investigate.

  My mom’s sitting at the head of our dining table in her sky-blue flannel pajamas, her blonde hair pulled up in a messy bun. There’s an untouched, mouthwatering three-layer chocolate cake in front of her with festive numbers one and eight candles on top.

  “Hey, Mom. Where’s Eli?” I ask, opening the fridge to look for something to scavenge since we’re obviously not having dinner with him. I could go for a roast beef sandwich or, like, ten. For the past year, my metabolism has been in hyper drive, and I can’t seem to eat fast enough to keep up.

  “Your brother wanted to take Megan out for his birthday instead of having dinner with us, so I didn’t feel like cooking,” Mom says sadly. “But I thought he would be home by now so we could at least do his cake before bedtime.”

  “Do you want me to call him?” I ask, more than happy to interrupt my brother and his girlfriend since there’s only one thing they can be doing right now. I might be inexperienced, but even I’ve heard about the legendary birthday blowjob.

  “I’ve tried calling him. It keeps going to voicemail,” Mom tells me, her voice full of annoyance and concern.

  Ah, my brother’s a smart man. I would turn my phone off too if I were lucky enough to have a few hours alone with Meg. In fact, I would give anything under the sun to live in an alternative reality where Meg and I were out spending my birthday together…

  Ugh, I facepalm myself in the forehead and decide right then and there with the chill of the open refrigerator cooling my hormones that I’m gonna forget all about Megan fucking Warner and finally ask out one of the girls from my sophomore class. This stupid crush has gone on for way too many years, and it has to stop. It’s not healthy, especially since Eli and Meg are planning to get married after graduation so that her super Christian parents will let them live together when they start at Clemson next fall. Being in love with my brother’s girlfriend is one thing; but when she walks down the aisle and officially becomes his wife, it’ll be way too pathetic.

  My stomach roars at me again, reminding me to get a move on, so I pull out some lunch meat and cheese from the fridge while my Mom gets up from her seat and starts wrapping Saran Wrap around Eli’s cake.

  When the doorbell suddenly rings in the quietness of the night, the two of us both freeze and look at each other in surprise.

  “You expecting anyone this late on a school night?” my Mom asks, her face noticeably paler.

  “No,” I tell her, tossing the sandwich goods down on the counter. Since my dad’s already asleep in bed resting up for his early surgery in the morning, and Eli’s not home, I intend to be the man of the house, finding out who would be coming over here this late.

  Peering out the peephole before I unlock the door, my heart nearly jumps up into my throat. I’m not sure what it is about seeing uniformed police officers that always makes me panic like I’ve done something wrong but didn’t know it and now they’re coming to arrest me.

  Reminding myself that unless video games and masturbation are now illegal I have absolutely nothing to worry about, I turn the deadbolt and open the door.

  “Can I help you?” I ask, hoping the two men didn’t hear the tremble in my voice.

  “Are your parents home, son?” the taller, slender one asks.

  “Um, yeah. Mom–” I start to call out, but when I look over my shoulder, she’s already standing there behind me, her face now a ghostly pale.

  “Mrs. Campbell?” the same officer asks and then removes his hat to place it over his chest. “I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this, but we believe your son, Elijah Campbell, was in a car accident tonight.”

  “NO! GOD, NO!” my mom shrieks. And before I can reach for her, she falls backward onto the staircase.

  Her cries are apparently loud enough to startle my dad awake, because he appears at the top of the stairs in his pajamas, freezing a moment before he rushes down and wraps Mom in his arms.

  “I’m so sorry,” the officer says. He pats me on the shoulder, but what he’s saying isn’t making any sense. Eli’s the most careful guy I know and drives like an old man. I tease him about it constantly…

  “Eli…which hospital did they take him to?” I ask the officer. “How bad…how bad is he?”

  Lowering his eyes, the officer says, “He didn’t make it, son. He was gone before EMS arrived.”

  “Gone? No!” I exclaim, shaking my head in denial. “There has to be a mistake. People have accidents all the time! They get bumps and bruises, airbags deploy, and it’s no big deal. Eli’s a fighter! He’s…he’s tough. Nothing could hurt him!”

  “Again, I’m truly sorry. We’re not exactly sure what happened, but he lost control of his truck and ran off the road, hitting a tree head-on. His injuries were instantaneous and…fatal.”

  “So…so you’re saying that Eli…Eli’s
dead?” I ask in disbelief, my throat closing up while my vision clouds with moisture.

  With a single man’s nod, time stands still. The world must have stopped spinning on its axis because how can it possibly still be moving without my brother in it?

  No, this can’t be happening.

  But the world doesn’t stop or even give me a courtesy second to comprehend what the hell is going on.

  The two police officers continue talking to me while my parents’ wails are all I can hear behind me. I can’t seem to concentrate or understand any more of their words. Not until I hear, “His passenger’s condition is unknown at this time, but we believe he’s stable and being evaluated at Duke.”

  “His…his passenger?” I ask, wiping away the tears to see the officer who is speaking more clearly.

  “Yes, we can try and get you an update on his condition, if you would like,” the cop says, and his words finally hit me.

  “His condition?” I repeat. “See, you’re mistaken! Eli was with Megan tonight, Megan Warner,” I tell him in a rush as hope begins to fill me up. “You must have the wrong person.”

  The cops look at each other, and the one who had been silent pulls out a small notebook from his uniform shirt pocket.

  “The second victim was a nineteen-year-old male, but I don’t have his name,” he says.

  “Mom, Dad, it’s fine. This can’t be Eli,” I tell them. And then, needing more proof that the cops are mistaken, I rush over into the living room and pick up the landline phone to dial the number for the Warners’ house.

  “Hey, babe. Feeling better?” Megan answers right away.

  “Meg? Did Eli just drop you off? Is he on the way home?” I ask her frantically.

  “Luke? W-what? No,” she replies. “Isn’t Eli there? He canceled on me, said he was sick, maybe coming down with the flu and not to come over.”

  I glance over at the cops and my parents’ optimistic faces, and my gut twists with dread.

  “Luke?” Meg asks. “Luke, are you there? Where’s Eli?”

  “I…I don’t know,” I tell her, dropping my head that feels like it’s gonna explode.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” she asks just as the phone beeps indicating another call is coming through.

  “Hold…hold on,” I tell Megan before I look down at the caller ID to see who it is.

  The words “DUKE HOSPITAL” send a chill up my spine before I press the button to click over with a shaking hand.

  “Hello?” I answer, but no one speaks. “Hello?” I ask again. That’s when I finally hear rustling on the other line and sniffling sobs.

  “Luke…it’s…it’s Nate…”

  “Nate?” I repeat since I can barely understand or recognize the voice of my brother’s best friend. “Oh, God,” I mutter when it finally hits me. “You were with Eli tonight?” I ask him in confusion.

  “It’s all my fault,” Nate says before he breaks down, telling me everything I need to know.

  My brother lied to us all, and now he really is gone.

  Chapter One

  Megan Warner

  August 2016

  “Sing it again, Mommy,” my little man says from the front of the buggy as I push him up and down the aisles of the grocery store.

  Glancing around, there’s no one within earshot, so I do what my son asks to make him happy, even if it means looking like a fool. Not that it really matters. We just got back to Cary, North Carolina a week ago for the first time in almost four years, so no one probably remembers me. And if they do, they likely wouldn’t recognize me.

  “Okay, here goes,” I tell Lennox as I grab a box of Cheerios from the shelf and throw them in the buggy behind him. “Lennox, Lennox, bo bennox, banana fana fo fennox, fe fi fo fennox. Lennox!”

  My three-year-old son throws his blond, curly head back, giggling until he snorts. He’s the cutest thing in the world, and he’s the absolute center of my universe. While I never planned on being a single mother at nineteen, now, three years later, I wouldn’t change a thing. It would’ve been nice if my parents hadn’t shunned me, but living with my Aunt Pattie in Phoenix wasn’t all bad. She supported me every step of the way and helped with Lennox so that after I graduated high school, I could get my nursing degree from a local university. And of all the places in the world, now I’ve ended up back in Cary to start my first real job as a Safety Education and Reproductive Health teacher. This town unfortunately still holds a lot of old ghosts…

  I’m so preoccupied with my thoughts that I nearly ram into another shopper as I turn the corner for the next aisle.

  “Whoops! I’m so sorry,” I tell the lady when our buggies miss each other by about a centimeter.

  “Megan?” the woman asks with an audible gasp.

  Shoot. I had hoped no one in this town would remember me.

  Pasting on a fake smile, I look up at the woman’s face to see who’s unfortunately spotted me. It takes several seconds for recognition to dawn since she’s aged so drastically since I last saw her. Wrinkles surround her tired hazel eyes, her frame is much leaner, and her long blonde hair is now streaked with gray.

  “Oh my God. Nancy?” I mutter as my jaw drops. Of all the fucking people…

  “It’s so good to see you! How have you been?” she asks sweetly before her eyes drop to Lennox in the front of the buggy. I would give anything for an invisibility cloak for him to wear right about now. “Oh, is this your son?”

  “Ah, yes. Lennox, can you say hi to Mrs. Campbell?” I ask him.

  “Hi,” he says with a wave of his small hand and a broad smile.

  “He’s adorable. How old is he?” she asks.

  “Now I’m three!” Lennox answers before I can lie to her. He counts, holding his fingers up one at a time until he has the correct amount, just like I showed him this past weekend when we celebrated his birthday.

  “Three? Wow,” Nancy says with a warm smile before her forehead creases. I can see the wheels turning in her head as she looks at Lennox and does the math. Her hand comes up to her mouth that falls open with a shocked intake of air.

  “His hair,” she says, her voice and fingers trembling as she runs them through Lennox’s curls. “And my baby’s beautiful blue eyes!”

  Fucking hell.

  Coming back to this town was a mistake.

  “Nancy, I know what you’re thinking, but he’s not Eli’s,” I assure her in a quiet, calm voice. Her oldest son Eli and I dated for over two years. He was my first love, and he was supposed to be the man I married and started a family with. That dream abruptly ended the night of his eighteenth birthday when a horrible car accident took his life. The same night he lied so that he could spend the night celebrating with his lover instead of me.

  “Don’t you dare lie to me! This is my grandson, and you’ve hidden him from us the whole time! How could you?” she exclaims, her face turning various shades of red to nearly violet.

  “Please calm down, Nancy. He’s not Eli’s,” I tell her with tears threatening to overflow from my eyes as I see her pain and longing to get back a little piece of the son she lost.

  “I want a DNA test!” she demands. “Now. Right now!”

  “Ma’am, is everything okay?” a bald, rotund man asks when he approaches us wearing a white dress shirt and tie with a name tag that says he’s Ed, the store manager.

  “I’m really sorry about the groceries. I-I need to go,” I tell him, grabbing Lennox up from the front of the buggy and hoisting him on my hip, despite the fact that he’s already nearly half my size. It’s amazing the feats of strength a mother can have when her son is in danger.

  “No! That’s my son’s boy! My grandson!” Nancy yells from behind me as I race out of the store. Lennox is upset and crying before I get him strapped into his car seat, either from the argument or from just sensing how freaked out I am. My hands are shaking so badly that it takes three tries to get the harness over his chest to click into place.

  “Shh, baby. It’s oka
y,” I tell my son. “Everything’s fine,” I assure him.

  Although, I know without a doubt that it’s absolutely not.

  …

  Luke Campbell

  I’ve just finished my last rep on the weight bench when I hear my name being called over Havoc’s intercom.

  “LUUKE,” Jude drawls, followed by heavy, raspy breathing. “It is your father…calling.”

  I have to admit that Jude’s Darth Vader impression is actually decent.

  Then, I realize that since my parents have never actually tracked me down here before when they couldn’t get me on my cell, it must be pretty fucking serious. My heart thumps double time in my chest as I jump up from the weight bench and run to the front desk, worried that something’s happened to my mom.

  Ever since Eli’s accident four years ago this November, Mom’s been dangling from the cliff of insanity, ready to tumble over with even the slightest breeze. Dad’s had her admitted into a mental health facility twice for depression, the most recent one just nine months ago after the third anniversary of Eli’s death. That’s when Nate told us he was pretty sure that my brother was actually murdered when Richard Tillman, a homophobic asshole, intentionally ran him off the road. Thankfully that evil man is now dead following a scramble over his gun that Nate won and Tillman lost.

  My mother had just started to accept that Eli’s death was a horrible act of God. So, when she found out it was premeditated with malice, it was too much. In fact, I wish we could have just kept that truth from her. Regardless of what led to the accident, it doesn’t change the fact that Eli’s gone and never coming back.

  When I’m within reaching distance of the front counter, Jude holds the receiver out to me.

  “Thanks,” I tell him as I put it up to my ear. “Hello?” I say into the phone.

  “Luke, we’ve got a…situation,” my dad says gruffly.

  “Is Mom okay?” I ask.

  “She’s all upset. Something happened at the grocery store,” he tells me.