 
# American Dream  
Book Two

### Z.M. Kage

PUBLISHED BY:

Blank Page LLC

Copyright © 2014

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be copied or reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locations, or people – living or dead – is coincidental.

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# ONE

Jon couldn't explain it. Even if somebody asked him, if somebody demanded him to put into words how that first glimpse of her made him feel.

He was still too far away to make out any details, he couldn't see her clearly, but he knew. Something was going on. Something out of his control. It wasn't random, the way that demoralizing inner voice of his decided to pack up and leave the second she came into view.

It wasn't coincidence. It was a sign from the universe.

Savoring the sweet silence, Jon resumed running. He ran toward her as she ran toward him, his curiosity and excitement growing as the distance between them kept shrinking.

Thirty yards and closing.

Blondish-brown hair, pulled back into a ponytail... swaying side to side with the rhythm of her stride. Black running shorts. Short, black running shorts. Tanned, toned legs.

Twenty yards and closing.

Blue tank top. iPod strapped to her arm. White wires leading to what looked like ear bud headphones in her ears.

Ten yards and closing.

Eyes connect. His, hazel... hers, blue. Smiles, warm smiles, interested smiles are sent, received and returned just in time for the invigorating rush of air generated by their fast-paced meeting to soothe; purify; cleanse.

One thousand one. One thousand two. One thousand three.

Jon turns to look back at her before they drift too far apart and finds just what he'd hoped to see. She's looking at him, too. With another smile, no less. He'd cranked his neck around at just the right time to catch her gawking at him and watch her refocus on the path in front of her; watch her run away.

Coincidence? Maybe, but it was still awfully quiet upstairs. No arguing whatsoever. Doubt had gone home early and the only thing Jon was aware of was the unexplainable pull, the need, to go after her, to chase her and catch up to her.

He could feel it working out well for him. There was no questioning, no but-what-ifs, and no second-guessing. He'd never felt it before; it was exhilarating.

So he acted on his new sensation before she'd put enough distance between them to make closing the gap in a timely manner a suicide mission. She'd been moving at a pretty good pace. He wanted to have enough energy left by the time he caught up to her to open his mouth and say something.

But what should he say? Jon's hamster wheel started turning.

Gaining ground on her now, he doesn't have much time to decide.

Should he jump right in with the truth? _Hey, you miraculously got the depressed, melodramatic voice inside my mind to take a hike, just wanted to thank you?_

Forget that... Jon knows better than to lead with crazy.

He's right behind her now; he's out of time.

"Hey," he says just before pulling up alongside her and matching her pace.

Crap, Jon forgot about the iPod and headphones. She didn't hear him. But she's looking over and smiling at him again, that's gotta be good. Up close and personal like this, he notices that the blue in her eyes is an almost perfect match to the blue on her shirt. So beautiful. It's the first thing his 'voice' had said since he'd seen her.

She removes the ear bud headphone from the ear closest to Jon without breaking her stride. Oh boy, now she can hear him. _Hey_ doesn't seem like a good idea anymore. He doesn't want to repeat himself, so he goes with his next instinctual thought and lets it flow out in words. "You look so familiar," he says, smiling, looking her in the eyes the best he can but at the same time keeping an eye on what's in front of him.

She giggles. "I should look familiar," she replies, blushing. "We went to the same high school. Same graduating class, too." Her words stun Jon, completely stopping his forward momentum... but only for a second.

"You're kidding me," he says, catching back up to her again. "Guess that explains why you look familiar, but how do I not know who you are?"

"Uh, because our school was huge and our class had about a thousand students in it?" She laughs. "Yeah, I bet that's why."

"But..."

"And," she adds, "I wasn't popular like you."

"But you recognize me? When you saw me today, you knew who I was right away?"

"Of course I did, Jon. I've had the biggest crush on you since, like, freshman year."

He loved the way his name rolled off her tongue and he loved how brave she was to say that to him so soon. He wasn't that brave. "Why didn't you tell me that back in high school? You know... say something or do something to show me you were interested?"

"Because I thought you were outta my league. And you only had eyes for Erin..."

Jon's chest tightens at the sound of her name. _Erin_. He lets it go, feels the tension dissipate. Out of her league? Was she serious? "Erin and I are done," Jon says, "have been for months. And every guy on the planet is in your league. I mean, look at you."

"Yeah... right," she replies, smiling, face turning red again. "So what happened with you and Erin?"

"I'd rather not talk about it," Jon tells her, glancing at the river to their right, responding without looking at her for the first time since they'd been running side by side.

"Oh. I'm sorry." Worried that she'd stepped over some invisible line and struck a nerve, she didn't know what else to say.

"It's not your fault," Jon assures her, "no need to apologize." He smiles at her. He winks. "So, does my sexy stalker have a name?"

Was she dreaming? She had to be. The one guy she'd been infatuated with and secretly obsessing over since her first year of high school just told her she was sexy; just admitted he was attracted to her. "Tara," she replies, wanting to jump in his arms, wrestle him to the ground and kiss his face off right then and there. "Tara Tate."

He wouldn't have put up much of a fight if she had, that's for sure. "Well, Tara," Jon says, trying not to seem like too big of a doofus... "Care to catch a movie with me tonight?"

"I'd love to," Tara replies.

He had her at movie.

# TWO

They had a quirk in common.

Jon's experience with women started and ended with Erin, who, much to Jon's dismay, wasn't all that big on movies. Sure they watched them – everybody watches movies – but Erin found it annoying the way Jon liked to randomly inject movie lines into conversation.

Tara was more experienced. She'd had a handful of boyfriends, but not one of them could keep up with her in the movie quote department. Not that she'd had that on her checklist for boyfriend material, but it was a frustration of hers with guys she'd been with before... loving movies, reciting something funny from one of her favorites on a whim, and never, not once, feeling like her guy was 'there' with her – that he liked it.

It was a part of herself she was almost afraid to show Jon for fear that he'd react like every other guy she'd dated: with a blank stare and a 'what the hell are you doing' look. Until their first date, that is.

Jon shows up to Tara's apartment precisely when he said he would. Like a typical female, she's not ready yet, but Jon's not agitated at all. Brownie points for Jon.

They hop in Jon's black Tundra and head to the theater. The one downtown, not the drive-in. Only an idiot would attempt to start fresh with a brand new girl at the exact place his (now) ex-fiancé accepted his marriage proposal. Admittedly, Jon behaved like an idiot sometimes... but even he knew better than _that_.

So they're on their way there when Jon lists off what's currently playing and asks her what she'd like to see. Another first for Tara – no guy she'd ever gone to the movies with had once shown an interest in what she'd like to watch... they'd just picked one without involving her in the decision. More brownie points for Jon.

Tara was in the mood to laugh, so of her choices she picked the comedy title she recognized from recent trailers she'd seen advertised on TV. And as soon as she'd made her selection, out of nowhere Jon rattles off a line from another movie featuring the star of tonight's show.

A line from a movie Tara had seen... a line she recognized right away.

"No freakin' way! You like quoting movies too??" she asks before picking up right where Jon left off and delivering another funny line from the same scene.

"OH yeah, I do it all the time," Jon replies.

Neither one of them said it, but they fell for each other that quickly, in that moment. Words weren't necessary. It was enough to exchange smiles and breathe a mutual sigh of relief having finally found an attractive member of the opposite sex who understood that particular kind of weirdness.

Minutes after finding a couple seats and getting situated Tara leans into Jon and drapes both legs across one of his before he even has time to think about unleashing the trusty 'yawn and stretch' move. She cuddled right up to him like they'd been out together a hundred times.

This was the beginning of something beautiful.

**********

Tara had a competitive side. Walking hand-in-hand down the sidewalk after the movie had finished, knowing Jon's pickup truck is just around the corner, Tara lets go of Jon and takes off. "Race you to the truck!" she screams, running around the building.

The second Jon lost sight of her, he _really_ heard her scream. Like, an I'm in trouble, come and help me kind of scream. When he bolts around the corner to catch up to her and sees what's got her so shaken up he lays eyes on a knife-wielding, afro-sporting homeless man, demanding that Tara give him her money.

"Hey!" Jon shouts just feet from them, trying to distract the threat, to take Mr. Afro's attention off from Tara and put it on himself.

"Oh, you must be the boyfriend," the homeless man snarls as he captures Tara, pulling her into him, her back to his chest, while wrapping his arm around her neck and putting his knife to her throat.

"I'm the boyfriend." Jon replies calmly, gazing into Tara's scared blue eyes. He wanted it to be true. And, terrified as Tara was, she wanted the same. She couldn't believe how unflustered Jon looked right then. She felt safe.

"Well I hope you got money, _boyfriend_ , or your girl's gonna _bleed_."

"I've got about a grand in my wallet," Jon lied. "Will that do?"

Mr. Afro's eyes bulge. "Oh that'll do just fine..."

"Great, I'll give it to you." Jon removes his wallet from his back pocket and holds it in front of him, showing the homeless man he's not kidding. "But not with her like that. Take the knife off her throat, let her come to me, and the wallet's all yours."

Tara gasps when Mr. Afro complies. He removes the knife from her skin, and he lets her go. She gets behind Jon, breathing heavily, trying not to cry.

"The wallet, boyfriend. Give it here!" the homeless man demands, holding his knife about a foot in front of him and pointing the tip at Jon like he's ready to lunge forward and use it.

Jon extends the wallet toward Mr. Afro, handing it to him. "A deal is a deal," he says. "You held up your end." The homeless man reaches for it, but right before he grabs it Jon flings the wallet into the air, just a few feet above their heads.

Afro-man's eyes follow the airborne wallet, and that's all the time Jon needs. In one fluid, seamless motion he brushes the homeless man's knife-bearing arm off to the side, secures it with his left hand and steps inside Mr. Afro's reach for a devastating head-butt, forehead to forehead, knocking him out cold.

He retrieves his wallet and turns back to Tara. "You OK?"

"I... uh... yeah. I'm fine... I think." Tara can't believe what she just saw. He made it look so easy. How did he do that? "Are _you_ OK?" she asks. "I mean, doesn't your head hurt?"

"Oh I'm fine... but yeah, my head hurts."

"Where'd you learn how to do that?"

"How to head-butt somebody?" Jon laughs. "Well I've never done it before; not until just now, anyway. Damn, this hurts like a bitch. As for knowing how to react to situations like that, I guess I can thank the Marines and the various training I had on the road to becoming a cop."

Jon walks to the driver's side of his truck. He gets in. Tara joins him inside.

"So you're a cop _and_ a Marine?" Tara asks.

"Unfortunately, no. I'm neither... not anymore."

"Oh..."

"It's a long story, but I promise I'll tell you all about it."

"OK... well, thank you for saving me." Words didn't feel like enough.

"My pleasure. I'm glad I was here," Jon says as he leans across the center console and kisses her, ever so gently.

She looks into his eyes as their mouths drift apart, wanting another one, wondering if he'll kiss her again. "Do you really have a thousand dollars on you?"

"Of course not," Jon chuckles, "but he believed me, didn't he?" He winks at her. "Yeah, I figured a grand would be more than enough to get his attention. C'mon, let's get you back home before our Afro-buddy decides to wake up."

With that Jon fired up his truck and they hit the road.

Jon was a lot of 'firsts' for Tara that night. He was the first guy she'd met that loved quoting movies with her, the first guy to let her pick the movie, the first guy to rescue her from a homeless psycho with a knife... and the first guy to keep her up all night on the first date. She didn't complain.

But her neighbors did.

# THREE

Jon told Tara everything.

He told her what he'd been through overseas. He showed her the nasty scars on his torso... marks left behind by the bullet that entered him, exited him, and entered him again... marks Dr. Flynn made as he dug it out and did his best to repair the damage... marks that told a story.

She almost went into shock when she first saw it. Hand covering her mouth, she asked him how he could've possibly survived such a thing.

"Because I was meant to come home and meet you," he'd replied, leaning in for a kiss. He truly believed that; that she was the reason he made it back.

He also came clean about the nasty drinking problem that he used to have. How he'd been able to quit, successfully, but had resumed drinking upon his return to the States because he'd been having trouble adjusting, felt awkward and out of place, and was using alcohol to make his boring job and annoying coworkers tolerable.

Which scared the crap out of Tara, but it wasn't a deal-breaker for her. Past boyfriends of hers had had drinking issues, that's why it worried her, but Jon treated her so much better than any of the jerks she'd been with before. When Jon promised her that he was done drinking, that being with her made him not even want to touch the stuff anymore, she believed him.

He even trusted her with what had happened to his parents, a sensitive subject for him. It saddened Tara to learn that Jon, as far as immediate family was concerned, had nobody. No mom, no dad, no brothers or sisters. But her situation wasn't much different. Like him, she was an only child. Her dad abandoned her and her mom when she was too young to remember, but she still had her mom.

Who, unfortunately, wasn't all that crazy about Jon.

"A Marine with a drinking problem, oh that's _just_ what you need," her mother said when she first met Jon, eyeing him up and down, judging him.

"He's not a Marine anymore, mom," Tara replied. "And he had a drinking problem. Had. Since we've been together, he hasn't touched it."

"Yeah, we'll see how long _that_ lasts," her mother grumbled, rolling her eyes.

Definitely not the first impression he was hoping to make, but Jon did his best to not take it personally. After his lovely first meeting with her mother Tara told him how her biological father had been in the Army, and that he'd been a raging, violent alcoholic. Which explained why her mother had jumped to such a harsh conclusion with Jon: her life experience told her that men who'd served in the military and had an issue with drinking automatically meant pain and abandonment.

Most daughters turn to their mother for advice about those important decisions in life. Job decisions, relationship decisions... and when given that advice, they take it seriously. Tara wasn't like most daughters. She loved her mother, but that didn't mean she wanted to end up like her – alone and unable to trust.

She didn't care that her mom didn't think Jon was the right guy for her. To her, that was actually a good sign. What she had with Jon was special, she could feel it.

Secrets didn't exist between them. _Or so she thought._

The one thing Jon didn't talk about with Tara was Erin. It was the one thing she couldn't get him to open up about. She tried a few more times after she'd first asked him about her that day by the river, the day they'd met, but every time she'd bring it up he'd grow cold and distant.

So she stopped pressing the issue. She kept thinking about it, though... the wheels in her head kept turning, kept searching for the reason Jon was totally comfortable talking about anything under the sun except Erin, the reason something as simple as hearing her name had such an effect on him. She wondered what Erin could've done to Jon to make him that way.

If he could've found the words to say how he truly felt, Jon would've made Tara cry.

He wanted to let it out. He wanted to tell her.

That she was everything Erin wasn't. That he was ten times happier with her than he'd ever been with Erin. That, for the first time in his life, he felt completely fulfilled. That he was the luckiest guy on earth, having such a passionate sexual relationship with a woman who just so happened to also be his best friend.

Tara was Jon's miracle; his angel.

If he hadn't gone running that day, he wouldn't have found her. If he hadn't found her, he'd still be drinking. If he hadn't stopped drinking, he would've stayed at that boring, dead-end, ice-cream-stacking job.

She didn't tell him to do anything, didn't try and force him to make changes... to sober up and leave that worthless job behind. Jon made those choices himself based on how being with Tara made him feel inside. Her presence strengthened him, made the impossible seem possible, convinced him that he could conquer the world, reach for the stars, and achieve any goal he set his sights on.

His primary goal?

Living the entrepreneurial lifestyle and creating an independent income online. He was done taking orders. He was done trading time for money. He was not going to let himself fall in with the majority of American society... settling for a job that pays the bills and spending most of his waking life doing something he doesn't want to do, just to have enough money to survive during his time away from work.

Jon thought there was more to life than that. He believed that if other people had successfully created their own livings using the internet, then damn it, he could too.

And Tara believed right along with him. She supported him whole-heartedly, in the beginning. His ambition, his drive, his courage to pursue something different, to do his own thing... that's what she found most attractive about Jon.

Well... that and his cute butt.

A breaking point lingered on the horizon, though... a time when Tara's support would dwindle and her faith in Jon was stretched so thin, ripping to shreds was inevitable:

Their first big fight.

# FOUR

"It's been more than a YEAR, Jon, and still... STILL... nothing. Nothing to show for it. Where is this 'living' you keep telling me you 'have what it takes' to create? You keep jumping from one idea to another, and nothing's happening. I'm losing my patience!"

OK. Tara's pissed. That much Jon can see.

He'd asked her to move in with him just a few months into their relationship and they'd been sharing Jon's house ever since.

She was right.

He had jumped from one thing to another – in the beginning. He didn't know a thing about what he was setting out to do and it's hard to know who to trust online, so the first few miles on his road to being an entrepreneur were rocky to say the least.

And he could understand her frustration. She'd been patient with him – very patient – and a year is a long time. But it's not like Jon hadn't gone to great lengths to try and turn his situation around. He certainly hadn't been sitting at home with his thumb up his ass while Tara continued slaving away at her two jobs.

He'd been fortunate enough to find a guy online with a lot more business experience than he had. And after telling this guy part of his story – his Iraq experiences, his past issues with drinking, his ongoing struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and trying to transition back into civilian life – this guy told Jon to write a book about it.

So he did.

For the first time since deciding he'd carve out a living for himself, Jon was completely focused on one thing, and determined to see it through. He spent five months straight working day and night – no days off. He poured his heart and soul into that book in hopes that his experiences might make someone else's life just a little bit better.

When it was finally done and Jon put it up for sale online, releasing it to the world, the results were beyond disappointing. He'd given away some free copies to help generate some extra buzz during the initial launch, but two months into his book being 'live' online, he'd made less than two hundred dollars in sales.

So yeah, Tara was pissed.

What she didn't understand, though, was that Jon was more pissed.

The dollar amount that resulted from all the hours he put into creating it (not to mention all the time he spent trying to promote it) infuriated him. It was pitiful.

Tara had dropped her purse and teaching materials on the kitchen floor when she'd walked in. She'd stormed right past Jon, seemingly unaware that he was at the stove cooking dinner again, like he had every day this week. She was sitting on the living room couch, where she'd been during her sudden outburst, arms crossed and stewing over what she'd like to say next.

"Dinner's ready if you're hungry," Jon calls out to her, not bothering to poke his head around the corner and look at her.

It had clearly been a stressful day for Tara. Another stressful day. She worked seven days a week. Monday through Friday she watched after, cared for and taught toddler-aged children. On the weekends, she cleaned offices.

She worked herself to the bone, thinking that was what she needed to do to get ahead in this world... while Jon worked around the clock to create a way to get ahead without working like a dog for someone else. So it'd been a stressful day for him as well.

Tara barging in the way she did and having the audacity to yell at him like that, it set him off. He wanted to keep his frustrations to himself, but what was the point? If she could unleash on him, he could unleash on her.

So he let her have it as soon as they sat down to eat together. "Wanna know what _I'm_ losing _my_ patience over?!?!"

"Oh geez, not this again," Tara says with a sigh. They'd had mini-arguments about it before, but never had Jon barreled into it with such volume, with such intensity.

"Sex."

"Knew it." Tara rolls her eyes.

"And it's not that the sex is bad... it's amazing. When it does happen. When you are in the mood. But you're never in the mood anymore. You said the less I talk about it the more you'll naturally want to. Guess what? This is the first time I've brought it up in more than a month, and _nothing_ has changed."

"But I work..."

Jon cuts her off. "Yeah, you've said that before. You work too much to want to have sex. Why do you think I've been doing so much around the house lately? Cooking dinner, taking care of the dishes, vacuuming, cleaning..."

"So you've been doing all that just to get sex."

"No, I've been doing it so that when you get home, your mind isn't loaded down with all kinds of stuff you think you've got to take care of around here. I thought it would help you relax after work, and yes, eventually, hopefully, result in more 'us' time."

"Maybe if you were more supportive, I could get in the mood more often."

That got Jon's goat. "How am I not being supportive? Every day you come home stressed out and upset about work. I don't just listen to what you say when you start going off about whatever's got you all worked up... I actually hear the words, and I talk to you about it. Or do you mean financially supportive? Last I checked you wouldn't have gotten the degree that earned you that teaching job if it weren't for me – or the smart-phone you check fifty times a day."

"I guess..."

Jon wasn't finished. "And how about you being supportive of what's going on with me? How about that? I don't remember the last time I felt like you were behind me with what I'm trying to accomplish. The only time you ever ask about how things are going, you do it with a tone in your voice that expects something now, like you don't really give a damn, like you already know that my answer isn't going to be good enough for you."

"OK babe, about the sex." Jon was amazed she willingly steered the conversation back to that topic, and even though they were knee-deep in an argument, he loved that she called him babe. "Your sex drive is a lot higher than mine. That's the issue here. And we've always had that issue, that's the way it's been since the beginning."

"That's not how I remember it," Jon replies, confused. "We were inseparable when we first got together. We had sex all the time. Every day, sometimes multiple times a day. You couldn't get enough of me, I couldn't get enough of you. Your drive was just as high as mine was."

"No it wasn't," Tara corrects him, tears forming in the corners of her eyes.

"So what are you saying?"

Her blue eyes leak as she drops the bomb. "I'm saying my natural sex drive was the same then as it is now. I'm saying I matched your urges every step of the way, in those first few months, because I wanted you to like me, I didn't want you to leave me, and I didn't have the backbone to stand up for myself."

"Wow," Jon says, completely shocked. "Well, you did a damn good job pretending.

I thought it was real."

"I'm so sorry, babe," Tara says softly, wiping away tears so more can leak out and ride down her face. "I've been making an effort to keep up. I've been doing my best."

'Babe' didn't have the same effect on Jon this time. It didn't comfort him, it upset him. "Oh, you've been making an _effort_? Is _that_ the word you've chosen to describe the occasional, robotic, emotionless blowjob that, judging by the complete absence of enthusiasm, is clearly just another 'chore' for you to do? Oh please."

Tara's done crying. Her expression cold as ice, she fights back. "You're going nowhere, Jon."

He almost cuts her off right there, but he lets her continue. "Yeah you've got drive, yeah you're determined, but nothing's happening. What I want is to move forward in life with you. I want to have kids with you, I want to start a family with you."

"And I want the same," Jon chimes in.

"I don't think you do. Not like I do. If you did, you would've gone out and gotten a job a long time ago instead of being so damn stubborn with what you're trying to 'create' online."

He still doesn't see it coming. "What are you saying?" he asks for the second time in the same fight.

"We're not happy together." She pauses, gathering the strength to say something she never thought she'd say. "I think it's time we took a break."

Ouch.

There goes Jon's appetite.

# FIVE

He didn't think she was serious.

Not until she got up from the table, set her half-eaten plate of food in the kitchen sink, loudly, and started packing. She packed fast, too. In what seemed like a matter of minutes to Jon, she'd gathered everything she thought she needed, slammed the front door and roared out of the driveway like she was escaping from prison.

She'd said nothing else. No goodbye. No see you soon.

She'd given no indication of how long this 'break' was supposed to last. Could be a day, a week, a month, a year... or it could be permanent. It could be forever. Jon had no way of knowing. The only thing he was reasonably sure of was where she was headed. Having terminated the lease on her apartment when she'd moved in with him, she only had one place to go: her mother's.

Marvelous, Jon thinks. She'll fill Tara's head with all kinds of crap about how she told her so, he's an asshole, he's just like her father and any other guy who'd ever served in the military or had an issue with alcohol, they're all the same, he'll never change and he doesn't deserve her.

If that's the case, he's screwed. They're done.

But he knew Tara better than that. He knew she didn't see eye to eye with her mother and had listened to her say, countless times, that she didn't want to end up like her. Remembering that was a relief, but all Jon could focus on was what she'd said to him. How much her words had hurt.

And it wasn't that she wanted a break from him. That's not what hurt the most. What left him frozen in his chair, unable to move, as if someone had buried him up to his waist in the world's fastest-setting concrete, was that she truly thought he was going nowhere.

That her patience was entirely gone and she'd gotten frustrated enough with his lack of forward progress to lash out to him like that, to insult him. Jon felt like he'd been making tons of progress, that he was going somewhere. He'd remained sober for as long as he and Tara had been together, and he'd found the courage to open up about his experiences in that book he wrote.

Financially, though, Tara was right. He was going nowhere.

Jon gets up from the dining room table. He sulks his way into the kitchen, takes care of the food he'd prepared, and starts washing the dishes. As he's scrubbing his mind wanders through the past and systematically reminds him of everything him and Tara had shared.

Everything she'd done for him and helped him do. Everything she meant to him. She was the reason he'd stopped drinking. He felt like he owed his sobriety to her. Without Tara, he didn't think he could stay sober. That scared him.

Dishes are done. There weren't a lot to do.

Jon paces back and forth across the kitchen floor, still thinking, still remembering.

He remembers all the trips him and Tara had planned over the past year. How excited she'd been, picking locations, accommodations, listing out everything they'd do and everywhere they'd go down to the most intricate detail. None of these trips ever panned out. Something always came up... bills, usually.

It broke Tara's heart every time, but she'd get over it and start planning something else, only to be let down again when that didn't work out. Had he not been so damn stubborn they both could've been working jobs outside the house, making money, combining that money, and actually going on these trips.

_Maybe that was what tipped her over the edge,_ Jon wondered. Maybe that was what spurred her into wanting a break... she'd been let down one too many times.

He hears his phone going off in the living room. He runs to it, hoping that it's Tara calling to tell him she made a mistake and was on her way back already.

But it's not Tara.

It's Erin – again.

She'd started calling him a few months back, leaving desperate messages about missing him, wanting to start over, wanting to work things out. The calls were starting to get more frequent, though. This was her second attempt to talk to him this week.

He doesn't pick up. He ignores it like he'd ignored all of her previous calls.

He wants to drink. He wants to drink _badly_. He wants to drink so badly his nagging inner voice comes back, rationalizing how quick and easy it would be to shoot a few blocks down the street and hit up the liquor store, the same one he stumbled to in his police uniform the day he got his PTSD test results in the mail.

How ironic that, as soon as Tara leaves, he can hear it again. He argues with it.

C'mon, it's just down the street.

No.

It'll make you feel better. You know it will.

No it won't.

Can't believe you stopped drinking for HER. She won't come back, you know that, right?

YES, SHE WILL.

Just like that, the voice was gone again. He couldn't believe it. He'd gotten it to leave on his own. Maybe he was stronger than he thought he was. Maybe he didn't need Tara to maintain control of his life and stay sober.

Which was great for Jon to realize, but he wanted her. He wanted to be with her, he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. He knew this was only temporary, he knew they weren't done.

She'd left a lot of her possessions behind. She'd only taken the essentials with her, so he knew she hadn't left for good. At least not yet. There was still hope.

She told him he was going nowhere. He was determined to prove her wrong. It all came down to money. Jon knew that. To get Tara back, to show her how much she meant to him, he had to get money coming in... and FAST.

She'd mentioned him getting a job, but he crossed that off his list of options right away. Jobs took too long to get paid. He'd have to wait at least a couple weeks before he'd see his first paycheck from any job he might be able to get.

Everything he'd tried doing online had proved fruitless. What he hadn't thought of, though, was taking his entrepreneurial drive and seeing what he could do with it offline.

Jon had an idea. A genius idea.

An idea that, if it worked, would have him rolling in cash by the end of the week.

He picks up his phone. He calls Erin.

# SIX

One ring. Two rings.

Erin answers, excitement in her voice. "Jon! So good to hear from you, how have you been? Did you listen to my messages?"

Jon sighs and rolls his eyes. "No, Erin, I haven't listened to your messages. I didn't call to catch up, chat, take you back... none of that."

"Oh," Erin replies, sounding deflated. "Well then why'd you call me?"

Jon gets a pen and paper ready. "Because I'd like the name and phone number of the drug dealer you couldn't resist when I was in Iraq."

Five seconds of silence. Erin is obviously suspicious. "We're not together anymore. What do you want with him? You're not gonna hurt him, are you?"

"No, I'd just like to talk to him, that's all."

"You mean you wanna arrest him..."

"Erin, I'm not a cop anymore. No badge, no gun. Even if I wanted to lock him up, which I don't, I couldn't. C'mon, give me his name and phone number."

She pauses again, thinking. "Tell me why you all of a sudden want to talk to him."

"Ugh," Jon groans, losing his patience with her already. "Fine. I'm in a tough spot right now, financially, and I'd like to talk business with him."

" _You_? Deal _drugs_?" Erin laughs. "You must really need some money."

"I do, and I need it... yesterday. This is all I could think of, can you help me?"

Erin cooperates. She helps him.

Jon jots down the dealer's information. He calls him.

No answer. It didn't even ring... went straight to an automated recording. Robot voice _. This guy must not have set up a personalized greeting,_ Jon thinks.

He gives it ten minutes and tries it again. Same thing. No ringing, went straight to the same recording.

He tries again an hour later – same.

_OK_ , Jon thinks, _either this guy is the ONLY coke dealer in town to have his phone turned off this time of night... or Erin gave me a fake number._

Erin had to have lied to him. She probably had her hopes up when she saw his call coming in... she probably thought he was calling to take her back.

So much for his brilliant plan of getting into the drug-slinging business... but that's what Jon gets for trusting a woman who'd already proven herself untrustworthy.

If the sound of her voice didn't make him want to throw up, eat it, and throw up again, he would've called her back and given her a good, old fashioned ass-chewing.

It was times like these Jon wished he had a dog at the house. Someone to talk to, bounce ideas off of, sort shit out with. Because now he was back at square one, back to the drawing board in terms of what he could do to start bringing in some green.

Maybe spending a little green will help you be more creative.

The voice is back. That's just what Jon needs right now.

Go to the bar. Have a drink.

"But what about Tara?" Jon talks to himself, out loud, because he's got no one else to talk to.

WHO CARES about Tara? She walked out on you, dude. Shit, she must REALLY have you by the balls if you're freaking out about her knowing you went to the bar for ONE drink.

"I gotta call her. If she picks up, I'm not going."

Fine, be a pansy. Pansy.

He calls her. Nothing – straight to her voicemail greeting. But he hadn't planned on leaving a message, so he hangs up before the beep.

See? She doesn't give a damn about you. Take me to the bar, I'm thirsty.

Jon's tired of arguing with the crazy part of himself, the part he has to fight around the clock to keep in check, the part Tara can make disappear in the blink of an eye.

**********

"Long Island, please. And make it strong."

He's at the bar. He caved.

As the bartender goes to work on his drink Jon notices an attractive brunette sitting a couple stools over from him, on his left. Actually, attractive wouldn't do her justice. Gorgeous is a better fit.

Breasts, butt, waist, stomach, eyes, teeth, lips... and any other physical feature he'd ever felt attracted to had somehow converged on one body. And to top it off, she was being very suggestive with that red straw in her glass.

He shouldn't have met her gaze.

If he hadn't, she wouldn't have left her stool. She wouldn't be sitting right next to him, throwing another temptation in his face when he already feels like garbage for giving in to the one that got him here.

"Never seen you around here before. What's your name?"

"Jon."

"Hi there, Jon. I'm Heather. I saw the way you were looking at me."

Jon isn't sure what she means. He only glanced at her for a second before she decided to walk over to him. "How was I looking at you?"

"Like you wanted to have some fun." She winks. "Do you live close by?"

Wow. Never in his life had Jon had a woman come on to him this strongly, this quickly.

Especially a woman this stunning.

He ignores the growing tightness in his jeans and does his best to clear up her confusion.

"Look, I don't know what gave you the impression that I was single, but I'm not. I'm happily taken by a woman who loves me," he lies (but he wanted it to be true). "Heather, if my brief glance in your direction led you to believe anything different, I'm sorry, because it wasn't intentional."

Jon's drink is ready. He stirs it, making sure everything is mixed well as he waits for Heather to respond.

"I should be apologizing to you," she says, finally. "I didn't see a wedding ring, so I assumed you were single. I'm so sorry about this... I'm normally not this type of girl, at all, but I just had a nasty fight with my..."

Heather couldn't get the last word out before being torn out of her stool from behind and thrown to the floor like a rag doll.

"Jesus, Danny, you're such an asshole!"

"Hey!" Danny confronts Jon, nudging him, but not hard enough to knock him off-balance. "You hittin' on my girl?"

"Actually, your girl was hitting on me," Jon replies, calmly.

Danny looks at Heather. "You're such a slut!" he shouts, backhanding her across the face while she's still on her knees. "One little fight and you go and jump on the first guy you see... unbelievable."

Heather sobs, holding her head in her hands.

"Don't hit her again," Jon says, his voice even. He still hadn't tasted his drink.

"How 'bout you shut the hell up? Don't tell me how to handle my girl." Danny clenches his fists, his breathing rapid. "You know what, bitch? I think I'd like to take you outside and teach your punk-ass a lesson."

Jon sighs. "If that's what it takes..."

He leaves his Long Island Iced Tea untouched. He never even tasted it. _So much for enjoying a drink at the bar to clear my head,_ he thinks.

He follows Danny outside.

# SEVEN

Danny looked like a fighter.

Only a true fighter would peel his shirt off and expose his chiseled midsection before engaging in battle. And if he wasn't a real fighter, he wouldn't have bothered taking the time to stretch before the big event.

There was something else that Danny did, though, to really convince Jon that he had some fighting experience. When his cronies circled around behind him, letting Danny know they had his back if things for some reason didn't go his way, he urged them to back off.

He didn't want them to jump in and help him. He believed in a fair fight. He wanted it to be one-on-one all the way, not one-on-one in the beginning and then five-on-one if he started taking a beating.

Jon respected that small part of Danny, the part of him that wanted to fight fair. But that's all he respected about him. He didn't agree with how he'd seen Danny treat Heather, who watched nervously from the side, looking like she was afraid for what Danny might do to him – or what he might do to Danny.

Hell, Jon didn't even want to fight him. Fighting just wasn't his thing. He'd never done it competitively, never watched a fight on TV, and he certainly wasn't dressed for a fight right now. He was wearing blue jeans, a red tee shirt, and brown work boots... whereas Danny, topless, barefoot, nothing but red shorts... looked like he was ready to climb into the ring.

"You ready for your lesson, punk?" Danny taunts him with a cocky smile, bouncing quickly from one foot to the other, shadowboxing, exhaling sharply as he delivers each punch into the cool night air.

"Ready when you are," Jon replied, standing perfectly still with his arms at his sides, watching Danny dance with his imaginary opponent.

"You sure you don't want to stretch first? Maybe warm up a little?" Danny turns to his crew. They share a laugh over Jon's amateurish lack of preparation.

"No... no, I'm fine. I'd just like to get this over with." He doesn't join the laughter. He looks over at Heather and waves at her, throws her a wink. She returns both of his flirtatious gestures, and it has just the effect on Danny he'd hoped it would have.

A jealous rage washes over his face. He's done laughing. He's ready to fight.

He advances toward Jon, closing the gap between them quickly. He looks like he's going to lead with a punch but he switches tactics at the last second and throws a violent kick with his right leg instead.

Danny's kick lands, but it doesn't do any damage. Jon catches it, pinning Danny's right leg under his left arm. In one swift motion Jon plants his own right leg behind Danny's left, grabs Danny's throat with his right hand, sweeps Danny's grounded leg out from under him and takes him to his back.

Jon releases his grip, gets to his feet and takes a couple steps back while Danny remains on the ground, stunned, processing what just happened – how quickly Jon was able to read his attack, intercept it, and take him down.

Danny shakes it off. Within seconds he's back on the offensive, charging at Jon with a different strategy in mind. He unleashes a fury of quick punches, none of which hit their mark. Jon deflects whatever Danny throws at him. It's like he can read Danny's mind, like he can predict what Danny's going to do next and knows just how to block it.

The punches don't stop. Danny throws one after another, determined that one of them will break through Jon's defenses, one of them will surely connect, but then he slips up. And Jon is right there to take advantage of it. Danny over-extends. He puts just a little too much forward momentum behind a violent right-cross.

When he does, Jon deflects Danny's right arm to his left, captures his right wrist with both hands, pivots one hundred and eighty degrees and drops his center of gravity, shoving his butt into Danny like he's 'boxing out' to claim a rebound in a game of basketball, and throws Danny over his right shoulder.

Danny's on his back again. Take-down number two. Before Jon releases Danny's wrist he slaps him on the forehead, very gently... teasing him, playing with him.

He smacks the ground in disgust and launches himself back to his feet, embarrassed and angry at being made a fool of. Who the hell was this guy? He'd caught Danny's kick, blocked every one of his punches and laid him out on his back twice in less than two minutes. Danny decides it's time to take the fight to the ground.

He shoots in for a double-leg takedown, but again, he makes it easy for Jon. As soon as Jon sees Danny lunge toward him, as soon as he's over-committed and off-balance, he takes a quick step backward and pushes on Danny's shoulders so he sprawls himself out on the ground, face-down.

Danny kissing pavement, Jon circles around, kneels on Danny's left shoulder and pries his left arm upward just enough to keep him there, to save him from further embarrassment.

"Are we done here?" Jon asks. He hadn't even broken a sweat.

Danny catches his breath. "Yeah, we're done." He was out of ideas.

Jon lets go of Danny's arm. They both get to their feet.

"Where'd you learn to fight like that, man?" Danny asks. "I've been fighting competitively for years... and damn, man, I can't even lay a finger on you." He wasn't looking down on Jon anymore. He was looking up to him, like Jon was someone he could learn from, someone he could emulate.

"I've never really fought before," Jon replies. "But everything I know about self defense and protecting myself, I learned when I was a cop – and when I was in the Marines."

Danny chuckles. "Shoot, no wonder I couldn't touch you... you're a Jarhead AND a Pig."

"Was," Jon corrects him.

Danny doesn't question it. He knows he's serious. But he can't believe Jon isn't a trained fighter. "For real, though? You've never fought before?"

"No, I haven't... not competitively, anyway."

"Well you should, bro. I make my living fighting and you just took me to school out here. With your skills you could make a killing. Hell I'm tempted to let you in on what I'm doing, just to see what you can do."

Danny had his attention. The ' _you could make a killing'_ part put him in a trance.

"Tell me more," Jon says without blinking.

# EIGHT

They're back inside the bar.

Danny's nursing a beer. Jon declined his drink offer.

"OK, this is how it works," Danny begins. "I said I fight competitively and that's how I make my living, right? Well, what I'm involved in... it's a..." Danny pauses. "It's a different kind of competitive fighting."

"How so?" Jon asks.

"It's cage fighting, but there are no refs. There are no rules. Anything goes, and the last man standing wins. Every time I walk into that cage, there's a very real chance that I won't walk outta there. That's what makes it so damn exciting. It's a rush!" Danny smiles.

"Where do you fight? How often?"

"It's a very secretive thing. Happens once a week, every Thursday night, in a basement underneath the biggest real estate company in the city."

"So when you say 'underneath', you mean the fights... literally... happen underground. And nobody knows about this? Cops haven't gotten wind of it?"

"Cops don't know a thing, man... and they won't, either. It's real hush-hush, everybody keeps their mouth shut about it."

"But you opened your mouth about it to me," Jon points out.

"You're the first dude I've told about it, bro. You earned your way in by putting me in my place outside. I don't know how comfortable you are, financially, but I meant what I said out there. You could bank some serious cheddar with your skills."

Jon wasn't comfortable financially. He needed this. "How much can I make?"

"Five hundred per fight, maybe a thousand... and that's as a nobody, that's just walking in, that's just starting out. If you do well and end up fighting for one of the gamblers with deep pockets, you could make even more."

Five hundred, at least, for winning a single fight? With a strong potential for more? Slinging coke on the streets may have been less dangerous, physically, but it hadn't worked out the way Jon hoped it would. What other choice did Jon have, if he wanted to start bringing in money as soon as possible and prove to Tara that he had what it takes to 'go somewhere' financially?

Fate had stepped in and given Jon a golden opportunity to do something he clearly had a natural talent with, and get paid well to do it. He wasn't going to let that slip through his fingers.

"My financial situation is shit right now," Jon replies. "I'm in." He double-checks his watch. "It's Wednesday night. You say these fights happen every Thursday. So what do you think, can I start fighting tomorrow... or should I train first?"

Danny looks at him like he can't believe he's asking him that question. "Bro, you're good to go as is. Seriously. I mean yeah, you'd benefit from training – you'd be straight-up unstoppable if you took the time to train, and trained hard – but it's honestly not something I think you need to do. Based on what you've shown me tonight I know you could walk in there tomorrow and whoop some ass."

Jon breathes a sigh of relief. "Whew, that's what I was hoping for. I really don't have the time to train. I need money now. My life depends on it." By 'life' he was referring to Tara. She was his life.

Danny's last statement stuck in Jon's mind for a second. "Now, based on how you've described this secretive, underground cage fighting opportunity to me, if I _don't_ kick ass tomorrow night, then I _won't_ be walking out of there. Is that right?"

Danny thinks about it. "Well, not necessarily. But the risk is there. Like I said, no rules and no refs... no one to blow the whistle when things get outta hand. I'm not saying that if you don't win you will die... but I've seen it happen before. I've seen a lot of good fighters lose their lives in that cage. I guess that's why it pays so well."

"Not exactly the reassurance I was looking for, but I like your honesty."

"Hey, no problem." Danny scribbles the address of the real estate company on the napkin in front of him and slides it over to Jon. "That's where it goes down, my man. I put my cell number on there, too... in case you need anything or have any other questions. Meet me there tomorrow night, eleven o'clock... and be ready to fight, stud."

"You got it, I'll see you there." Jon gets up to leave but stops and turns around before he gets to the door. "Just a couple more things, Danny..."

"Yeah?"

"First, I really appreciate the opportunity. It means a lot to me. If I'm as good as you think I am, if I don't get beaten to death in that cage tomorrow night, you may have just singlehandedly saved my relationship with my girlfriend."

"No problem at all, bro, happy to help." Danny gives him a little nod to signify that the pleasure is all his, that it's no big deal. "And second?"

"Secondly, I want to apologize for what happened earlier. I really wasn't hitting on Heather. I wasn't. I'm having issues with my girl right now, that's why I came here at all, but I wanted to make it clear that I had no intention of coming between you two and that I wish you guys the best at working things out."

"Oh, Heather and I will be just fine," Danny says, confidently. "We'll work it out. We fight all the damn time. You should see us get into it when we're both drunk!" He laughs.

Jon drives back home from the bar. He walks into his house. Passing through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room... pictures of him and Tara, happy pictures, everywhere he looks... he can't help but think about her, can't help but miss her.

He picks up his phone. He calls her again. It's late. He doesn't expect her to pick up. In fact, he knows she won't... but he calls her anyway.

It rings. Once, twice... three times.

As he gets closer and closer to her recorded voicemail greeting, Jon contemplates leaving a message this time. He considers telling her what's happened since she walked out.

Her sweet, cheerful greeting begins. He's only got a second or two to decide. Tell her, or don't tell her? Leave a message, or don't leave a message?

Jon decides it's enough to hear her voice. Having Tara talk into his ear, those few seconds of her voice recording... it was the only reason he picked up the phone.

He ends the call before the beep. Before he's put on the spot.

She'll know tomorrow that he called her twice tonight. That he said nothing both times. Maybe she'd call him back, maybe not. Jon was done worrying about it.

Because he finally had a plan. A plan to start bringing in money, start turning his life around... a plan that would – hopefully – draw Tara back into his life.

He was half excited and half scared to death.

But at least he had a plan.

# NINE

The next morning.

A knock at the door. A loud knock. A desperate knock.

A wake your ass up because this is an emergency kind of knock.

Jon jolts to life. He looks at his alarm clock. Seven-thirty. Good grief, who in the name of all that is holy would be so hell-bent on talking to him in person at this hour?

He groans and rolls over onto his stomach, letting his right arm dangle off the bed. Maybe he's just hearing things.

But the knocking returns. Sounding louder, more desperate, more urgent. Jon throws on a tee shirt and a pair of shorts and zombies his way across the house.

Groggy and annoyed by his premature awakening, he's ready to give whoever's responsible for all this racket a piece of his mind. He unlocks the front door and rips it open to find the last person he'd expect to see.

It's Tara, her eyes burning with lust.

Jon is speechless. He wants to say a million things, but nothing is coming out. All he can do is stand there like a goon and absorb the beauty standing before him. Tara is wearing the short, revealing white skirt she knows drives Jon crazy.

And it certainly wasn't an accident that she'd neglected to wear a bra underneath her skin-tight, teal tank-top. To top it off, she'd done up her hair in braided pigtails. She wasn't here to wake him up. She wasn't here to argue. She'd come over to rustle up the pervert inside of him.

Tara closes the distance between them and wraps her arms around Jon before he can say anything. "Follow me," she whispers into his ear before pinching the lobe in her teeth, ever so gently. Chills dance down Jon's spine as she takes him by the hand.

She leads him to the bedroom, releases Jon's hand and turns around to face him. Their eyes connect again. Tara bites her lower lip. "I'll be right back," she says, letting herself into the master bathroom.

Jon didn't even have enough time to pace back and forth next to the bed and wonder what this was all about. Under a minute later Tara's back, wearing nothing but her birthday suit. She focuses her attention south of the border and smiles ear to ear as she watches Jon's favorite body part grow right before her eyes.

Shedding his own clothing as if it were on fire, Jon hoists Tara into the air and gives himself the most pleasurable arm workout ever. As she hugs him and hooks her legs around his waist Jon puts his hands on her butt and squeezes her, lifts her, pulls her down as he thrusts up and picks her up as he pulls out – fast, slow, all speeds in between as they tag-team Orgasm Mountain and reach the summit just seconds apart.

"You are... amazing," Jon manages to say as he catches his breath and starts coming down from his natural high.

"Me? What about YOU?" Tara replies. She loved that position, loved when Jon held her in his arms and made love to her... but never had he taken her from start to finish with her whole body off the ground – and off the bed. "That was like having sex on a cloud! Hang on, let me make sure my legs still work," she giggles.

Jon laughs with her. "Whew, my arms are toast. Who needs dumbbells?"

They re-clothe themselves and share breakfast in satisfied silence. When they'd finished eating, Tara wishes Jon a wonderful day and starts heading toward the door like she's going to leave.

"Hold on," Jon says, catching up to her before she can let herself out of the house. What he couldn't say when he'd first answered her knocking, he had the words to say now. "Does all of this... you showing up outta the blue, what we just did, all of it... does this mean you don't want to take a break anymore?"

Tara looks at him like she thought he would come to this conclusion on his own, like she didn't think it would require an explanation from her. "No, I still think a break will do us good. You know, so we can learn to be happy with ourselves, without each other. This morning was my way of apologizing for my abrupt exit last night. I'm sorry about that, and I'm also sorry I didn't let you know that this separation is a 'break' – as in, temporary. Not a 'breakup' – I don't want to breakup with you, Jon, but I really do believe some time apart will be good for both of us. Do you agree?"

"Actually, I do." Jon couldn't believe how much he'd changed his mind on this. Just yesterday he'd been freaking out inside, not wanting the break at all, but with everything that had happened between last night and this morning, he realized that time away from Tara was a good thing for him.

His most frustrating, scariest question was answered. The break wasn't going to be permanent. So with that massive weight off his shoulders, he could relax and focus on himself without worrying about Tara moving on and forgetting about him.

"Great," Tara replies. "So what's on your agenda for today? Working on your computer?"

"Nope, not today," Jon says. "You were right, babe, I'm not getting anywhere with what I've been doing. I decided it's time to let go of that and get back to the real world. You would've been proud of me last night. I got my ass out of the house and I've already got a very promising lead on a job."

"Aww, you do? That's awesome! I'm so proud of you!" Tara was beaming. "What kind of work is it? When do you start?"

"Well it's not 'for sure' just yet. I gotta go see a guy later on today... you know, to learn a little more about it, and see if it's as good of a fit for me as he thinks it'll be. But I feel good about it."

"That's the most important thing." Tara smiles. "That you feel good about it, I mean. So are you going to tell me what it is that you _might_ be doing, or are you gonna be a punk and keep it a secret?"

Jon gives her a smirk. "I'm gonna be a 'punk' – for now... just because I don't wanna get your hopes up when I don't know if it's a sure thing. But I'll keep you posted, and if it works out, you'll know about it very soon."

He walks Tara to her car, opens her door for her, hugs her tight and kisses her like it was the only thing he got out of bed to do that morning. They say their goodbyes and promise to keep in touch with each other periodically as they resume their 'break'...

...which, unlike before, is now completely mutual.

# TEN

"You almost here?"

It was Danny, making sure Jon was still planning on showing up to fight.

"Yup, I'm on the way right now. I'll be there in five minutes, tops."

"Cool, I'll meet you outside," Danny replies.

Jon hangs up.

After Tara had left that morning, he had spent the rest of the day wondering if he should've told her more about what he was doing. He'd thought about it right up until Danny called, and then he wondered about something else: whether he'd lost his damn mind. He knew there was a fine line between brave and stupid. Which side of that line he was on... that was the question.

Jon leaves his truck in a parking garage and walks the remaining couple blocks to find Danny waiting for him on the sidewalk, just as he'd said he would.

"He shows up," Danny says, playfully nudging Jon on the shoulder. "Dressed to impress, are we? Nice! Marine in the house!"

Jon didn't have any fighting trunks, so he went old-school and threw on his Marine Corps issued combat boots and desert digital camouflage pants for his cage fighting debut. A zippered black hoodie completed the outfit.

He laughs at Danny's comments. "I gotta make do with what I've got, man... these clothes make me wanna fight. Is there some dress code you forgot to tell me about?"

"Nah, you're cool with what you've got on, bro. You can wear whatever you want, but you gotta lose the shirt and boots when it's your turn to brawl."

"Gotcha," Jon says.

"C'mon, Marine, let's get you registered and see who they're gonna throw at you first." Danny corrects himself. "Ahem... I mean: let's see who you get to pulverize first."

They enter the building through a door that's hardly even visible from the street, make their way down three flights of stairs and arrive in the basement. Danny leads Jon through another door, and there's the cage... surrounded by a mob of fans cheering and hollering as they watch the action unfold in front of them.

"This is a secret?" Jon asks Danny as he scans the miniature-warehouse-sized room. "There are hundreds of people in here."

"I know! It's crazy, right?!?!" Danny replies directly into Jon's ear, competing with the crowd. He has to scream for Jon to hear him. "Wait here, I'll get you signed up!"

"OK!" Jon shouts back.

_Sound-proofing_ , Jon thinks. That's why this place is still a secret, that's the only possible explanation. A senior citizen with a hearing aid could pick up on this ruckus from blocks away... _yup, somebody must've sound-proofed the heck out of this place._

Danny returns with a disappointed look on his face; disappointed bordering on scared.

"What's up?" Jon asks. "Problem getting me in?"

"No, bro... you're in. I tried to negotiate for a thousand, if you win tonight, but they wouldn't go higher than five hundred."

Jon didn't care. Five hundred dollars was more than he'd made in the past month, and he'd only have to 'work' a few minutes to claim it. "OK, that explains why you seem disappointed, but why so worried? You look terrified."

"Because of who you're up against tonight: Victor Vasquez. I didn't think they'd throw you in the cage with _him_... especially not for your first fight."

"Good fighter is he?"

"He's better than good," Danny replies. "He's never lost. He's never even been knocked down. And he's got a reputation around here for not knowing when to call it quits once he's won the fight. He's killed five fighters, Jon... five that I know of."

Before Jon could react the crowd roared in unison, redirecting his and Danny's attention to the cage. The fight they'd walked in on was over. Jon and Victor were up next.

"Take him down quick," Danny says. "That's your best option. C'mon, let's get you in there."

Jon enters the cage and takes his corner, grateful to see Danny standing on the other side of the steel grating. "Remember," Danny reminds him, "take him quick. Don't waste any time dancin' around in there."

"Got it," Jon says with a nod. "No rules, right?"

"That's right," Danny confirms. "Anything goes."

Jon turns his back to Danny and leans against the metal as Victor enters the cage. If this was a legit fight, they would've never been matched up; Victor looked to be at least thirty pounds heavier than Jon – all muscle – and about six inches taller.

As Jon watches Victor take his corner he sees an older man in an expensive-looking burgundy colored suit and an attractive young blonde right next to him, half the guy's age, if that.

Jon cranes his neck to the side so Danny will be able to hear him. "Who are those two, standing over in Victor's corner?"

"The guy in the suit is Rich Payne," Danny answers. "No idea what he does for a living, but I know the dude's loaded. He's here a lot, always gambling on the fights. The girl next to him, I don't know... probably his trophy wife. Hope you're ready, man, the bell's about to ring."

Outside the cage and just in front of the crowd, a heavyset man with glasses as thick as antique Coke bottles sits at the desk with the bell on it. He looks at Victor. He looks at Jon. He grabs his microphone. "Fighters... are you ready?"

Victor waves. Jon nods.

DING – DING – DING!

"Look alive, Marine, here he comes!" Danny screams as Victor stomps toward Jon, murder in his eyes. "Get him!"

Jon leaves his corner in a hurry to lock horns with him in the middle. He lands a sharp kick on the front of Victor's thigh, temporarily stopping his forward momentum. Victor didn't expect it. He's stunned.

Wasting no time Jon stuns him even further with a quick jab to the throat, leaving his alleged badass of an opponent gasping for air. When Victor's hands instinctively move to his neck, Jon sees another opportunity and pounces on it by kicking him square in the crotch.

Victor's hands follow the pain as he crumbles to his knees. Adrenaline pumping and knowing he's got this in the bag, Jon plants both hands on the back of Victor's head and drives his right knee into his face. One time. Two times. Three times.

Jon drives his knee, and resets. Drives his knee, and resets. Faster and faster, over and over, the desert camouflage fabric on his leg growing redder and redder with each successive strike. On number ten, he stops. He lets go of Victor's head and watches him crash to the mat like a freshly-chain-sawed tree in the woods.

He'd estimated his 'work time' incorrectly.

He hadn't needed a few minutes to make five hundred dollars.

He'd needed less than one.

# ELEVEN

Jon's phone rings early the next day.

It's a number he doesn't recognize. Normally he ignores calls like these, calls from people he doesn't have saved as a contact, but he decides to answer this one.

"Jon?" A voice he'd never heard before asks.

"Uh, yeah... this is Jon. Who's this?"

"Hell of a fight last night. I lost a lot of money because of you."

"That's too bad," Jon replies, faking a tone of concern. "Did you not hear my question, douche bag? Who are you?" Jon had very little patience for this type of thing and what little patience he did have was just about used up already.

"Rich Payne," the man on the other end replies, entitled, like he expects Jon to sit up straight with respect and change his tone at once. "I was behind Victor outside the cage last night. You probably didn't notice me."

"Oh I saw you," Jon replies. "I asked Danny who you were. He told me your name. How'd you happen to get this number, Rich?"

"Don't you worry about that. I have my ways. Listen, Jon, if you've got a minute I've got just two questions for you."

"My favorite color is blue," Jon says. He laughs. No response on the other end. "I'm kidding, Rich," Jon continues. "I've got time for a couple questions. Fire away."

Rich finally gets the joke. He chuckles. "OK, first question: how much money did you walk away with after your victory last night?"

"Well that's a very personal question, Rich, but I suppose I can let it slide this time – just this once. Five hundred. It was my first fight."

Rich ignores Jon's continued attempts at being funny. "Excellent. OK, second question: would you like to make more?"

Jon pauses before answering. "I'm happy with five hundred, considering how long it took me to earn it... but absolutely, I'd love to make more."

Rich responds before Jon can ask him how. "Perfect," he says, "meet up with me this afternoon and we'll talk about it." He gives him an address and a time.

**********

Jon shows up at the fanciest restaurant he'd ever seen in his life exactly when Rich had asked him to. He spots him in a booth toward the back, wearing a navy blue suit this time, and he notices the same attractive young blonde from the night before sitting beside him, decked out in a gown fit for a prom queen.

He suddenly felt under-dressed in the faded jeans and V-neck tee shirt he'd decided to show up in, but he was here, and they'd both seen him already... so he had no choice but to walk over to them and deal with feeling out of place.

Rich and Jon shake hands as they make their first face-to-face introduction. "And this is Lucy," Rich says, gesturing to the blonde next to him. Jon shakes her hand as well.

As soon as Jon takes a seat across from Rich and Lucy, Lucy excuses herself to use the restroom. "You gotta be doin' _somethin'_ right, Rich," Jon says when Lucy walks out of hearing range. "Smokin' hot _and_ half your age... well done, sir, bra-vo. Watch your back, though" – Jon leans across the table and lowers his voice – "she might be more attracted to your wallet than she is to you. Not sayin' she's a gold digger, just sayin' there's always that possibility."

"Lucy? My wife?" Rich bursts into laughter. "No, no... Lucy is my daughter." He looks across the restaurant as he finds the words to describe what she means to him. "She's my only child, my pride and joy... she's the most important person in the world to me. When I leave this world and pass on to whatever comes next, she'll take over all that I've created. Everything... will be hers," he smiles proudly.

Jon's face glows red with embarrassment. "Well don't I feel like an ass... sorry about that, Rich. I didn't plan on putting my foot in my mouth today. It doesn't taste good."

"No apology necessary, Jon," Rich assures him.

"I appreciate that, thank you. So are you still married to Lucy's mother?"

"I'm afraid not," Rich says, looking down at the table. "My first wife, Veronica, Lucy's mother, passed away when Lucy was three years old. And I didn't waste any time remarrying... I mean I had businesses to worry about running. I never once made the mistake of thinking I had what it takes to be a single father..."

**********

Right as Rich tells Jon that he's been divorced from his second wife for ten years, that he's done with commitment, done with marriage, and perfectly happy banging his young secretary... Lucy comes back from the bathroom and reclaims her seat.

"Ugh, I told you not to talk about her around me," she says in disgust, referring to Rich's second wife – her stepmom. "And I think it's totally gross that you sleep with your secretary, dad. She's, like... my age."

"Oh, she's a year or two older than you, my dear." He winks at her. Then he looks at Jon. "So, let's get this meeting started, shall we? I'm curious where you learned to fight the way you did last night, Jon. Ever fought professionally?"

"Nope, never. Last night... I just did what felt right. I felt threatened, so I reacted. Everything I know about protecting myself, though, I picked up between my police training and my time in the Marine Corps."

"I knew you were in the military!" Rich exclaims, shooting a quick 'I told you so' glance in Lucy's direction. "I could tell by the pants you had on last night. I don't know if you know this, Jon, but the guy you thumped on last night – Victor – he was professionally trained. He was my fighter. I had him working with the best Mixed Martial Arts trainer in the business. I'm not a guy who likes to lose money." He winks.

"Danny told me he was good, that he'd never lost, but he didn't say Victor was a pro. Losing money sucks, and I'm sorry about that, but like I said, I reacted. I did what I had to do."

"You put him in a coma."

# TWELVE

Jon must've misheard.

"I did what?" Shock spreads across his face. "Wow, I didn't think I'd... I mean..."

Rich raises his hand to cut him off. "It's fine, Jon; really, it is. You told me on the phone earlier that you walked away with five hundred last night, right?"

"That's right."

"Here's the deal. If you fight for me, that five hundred becomes two thousand."

"Now that's more like it," Jon says. "Sounds good to..."

"But there's a catch," Rich interrupts again. "You'll train with the same guy who'd been training Victor." Rich was very excited to see what kind of fighter Jon could turn into with some real training. "And I want to keep you a secret."

"Keep me a secret? Why?"

"To keep the other gamblers from finding out that you're working for me. Your pal Danny was right – Victor hadn't lost – until last night, of course. And I'm glad it happened, actually, because my deep-pocketed gambling buddies with fighters of their own were starting to get upset."

Rich pauses, takes a quick swig of water and gets right back to talking.

"So what I'm going to do is bet against you every now and then, to avoid raising anymore red flags with the other gamblers. And when I do bet against you, you have to take a dive. You have to lose on purpose. You have to go in there and willingly get your ass kicked. No exceptions. What's good about it for you is, dives pay double – four thousand instead of two."

"Interesting... very interesting," Jon replies. "It'll be hard for me to lose on purpose. The extra money, though, does sweeten the deal..."

But does it sweeten the deal enough?

Jon had no problem putting himself into a situation where physical pain was virtually guaranteed, but letting himself surrender like that? Summoning the willpower to override his ingrained survival instincts, what he'd been born with combined with what had been drilled into him through training...

...turning off his will to win and letting somebody walk all over him, own him, believe he's better than him, tougher than him, stronger than him?

As hard as it would be and as much as he didn't want to do it, Jon would. For the money, and for a better life with Tara. He'd do anything for her.

"One question, though," Jon says to Rich. "Why me?"

Rich considers that for a moment. "Because I know a wise investment when I see one. We can make a lot of money together, you and me. Because you look like a guy who could use a break... a guy who has been waiting for a break for way too long. And lastly, because you're a Marine. You're used to being told what to do and doing what you're told without question. You're a guy who can take orders."

That last part didn't sit too well with Jon. Rage stirred deep within, but the lure of earning a lot of money – doing something he was obviously pretty good at – was strong enough to keep his emotions in check.

"I'm not in the Marines anymore," Jon replies. "Therefore I don't take orders anymore. But if you ask me nicely, if you treat me with respect, then we may have a deal."

Jon doesn't give Rich enough time to respond.

"You know, Rich... just out of curiosity, how much are you worth? Just how deep are your pockets?"

"Oh I've got about three hundred in the bank right now," Rich replies.

"Thousand?"

Rich smiles a devilish smile. "Try million."

Jon's eyes explode. "If you've got that kind of dough, why are you trying to make more? Why gamble on ungoverned, no-rules fights underneath the biggest and most profitable real estate company in the city?"

Rich's smile looks even more wicked than before. "Because I happen to own the company sitting above the cage. This restaurant we're sitting in right now? Yup, this is mine, too."

His smile takes a hike as he stops to take a breath. Rich was suddenly serious and Jon couldn't get a word in, even if he'd wanted to.

"Listen here, you little shit. I run this city. If you knew how much I own, how much power I have, how much I control... well, it would probably be too much for your Marine brain to comprehend. And now I own _you_. I control _you_."

Jon wants to tear his head off, but Rich isn't done trying to establish dominance.

"The fact of the matter, Jon, is I now have no fighter because of you. If you're smart, if you're a good boy, you'll do as I say and I'll make you a very rich man. Well, rich in your terms. You wouldn't get my kind of rich if you lived to be four hundred years old."

Lucy smiles at her father's show of force. She looks at Jon like she thinks she owns him just as much as her daddy thinks he does.

Jon had plenty that he wanted to say; an armory full of verbal ammunition, eager to do some damage... but in an exercise of self control he looked Rich right in the eye and said the words he knew would make his financial worries disappear:

"You've got yourself a fighter."

# THIRTEEN

Jon belonged to Rich now.

Fighting only happened once per week, but every day in between, he was expected to train. Hours after Jon had verbally agreed to be Rich's fighter, Rich introduced him to Oscar. Oscar Brown, the best Mixed Martial Arts trainer money could buy.

"So you're my new ball of clay," Oscar says, extending his hand toward Jon.

"I suppose I am," Jon replies, returning the handshake. "I'm excited to see what you can mold me into."

Jon humored Oscar – made him think that he believed training with him would do him some good – but it was all an act. He knew that professional training, no matter how expensive, or how good... meant squat for the type of fighting he'd signed up for.

He knew that Oscar couldn't turn him into a better fighter. It didn't matter how much he made him sweat, how many 'moves' he taught him, or how many padded 'practice' fights he lined up for him between the real ones.

Had winning or losing when he got in that cage depended on points, scoring, technical things – had he been pursuing the _sport_ of fighting – Oscar's knowledge would've proven useful. But it hadn't done a thing for Victor, had it?

Jon didn't want to end up like Victor, so he viewed his days with Oscar more as exercise sessions than an education in how to win fights. He thought his natural instinct to protect himself would be enough to win. And he was right.

Before he could blink he was eight weeks into his new fighting lifestyle. Eight Thursdays with Rich and Lucy standing outside his corner of the cage, eight flawless victories, and eight two-thousand-dollar paydays to show for it.

Jon couldn't believe he was getting paid to do this.

His work week was simple:

He'd workout four to six hours per day – climb into the cage once per week and spend sixty seconds, at the most, knocking somebody out – and do it all over again the following week. It was the easiest money he'd ever earned.

And he didn't have a problem with Rich making even _easier_ money. Rich never got in the cage himself, and he paid Jon just a small fraction of the profit Jon generated for him, but Jon didn't care. Two thousand per week was plenty. He was happy with it.

Rich was happy, too. He started treating Jon like the son he never had. "Jon, if you keep this up," Rich says, "I just might have to bring you into the family. I'd certainly sleep better at night knowing my Lucy was safe with a man of your... skills."

Jon hadn't told Rich about Tara. And he didn't plan on it. It was none of his business. But listening to Rich hint at a potential romance between him and Lucy, it made Jon think of Tara... as if he hadn't been thinking about her enough already.

He'd found himself thinking about her all day, every day – much more often than he would've considered to be healthy. He would've acted on those thoughts, he would've tried to end their break and get back together with her, but he didn't want to push things. He didn't want to force it.

He didn't want to be that 'needy' guy and snuff out the attraction she'd so clearly shown him when she showed up on his doorstep and just had to have him. He cherished the memory, held onto it tight, and relived it over and over again in his mind. It motivated him, it made him train harder, and it made him fight harder.

Jon hadn't seen Tara at all since that one, passion-filled morning. They'd spoken on the phone about once a week over Jon's first two months of fighting, but they hardly ever went deeper than small talk. She was busy. He was busy. She was so busy with her own life that she hadn't even asked what was going on in his.

It was hard for Jon to keep the good news to himself. He'd wanted to give Tara an update ever since his first two-thousand-dollar night fighting for Rich. Now, with more than ten-thousand-dollars sitting in his bank account and finally feeling good about having a reliable way to keep the money flowing in, Jon wanted to tell Tara what he was up to more than he ever had before.

But it wasn't time yet. Just a little bit longer, he told himself. He'd surprise her tomorrow, after winning his fight tonight.

It's Thursday again.

Rich, wearing yet another attention-grabbing suit, tangerine orange this time, pulls Jon aside before he can climb into the cage. "The other gamblers are starting to get suspicious again," he says. "I'm on the verge of losing their business. You're unbeatable, Jon. It's starting to become unfair."

"I thought 'fair' went out the window with the rules," Jon replies.

"Look, we've got a good thing going here. I love ya, kid, I really do. But I love money more. Business is business."

Rich treating him like a son made Jon feel weird at first, but the weirdness went away. Having gone so long without a father figure in his life, Rich began to fill that void, began to close it. But turning on him like this, it re-opened the void and made it feel bigger than it was before. Jon didn't know what to say, but he knew what was coming next.

"I've held off on doing this to you as long as I could," Rich says. "It's time for you to take a dive. But you're a tough guy. You'll be just fine," he assures him. "And don't forget," he adds, "you get paid double tonight for losing on purpose!" – as if that was somehow supposed to make everything all better. Rich flashes Jon a thumbs-up. It isn't returned.

Jon enters the cage, walks to his corner, and turns around to face Seth, his opponent for tonight. The guy he's supposed to let kick his ass. He didn't know a thing about Seth, but by the looks of him he was as far from being a 'professional' fighter as Jon was.

While Jon had shown up in his desert camouflage pants, same as every week, he was surprised to see Seth wearing farmer's clothing – a red flannel shirt and blue jeans.

That's about all Jon had time to notice before the bell rang and the fight was underway. He wasn't sure he could go through with this; he'd never willingly lost a fight before.

Seth storms at him right away, fire in his eyes. Jon dodges his first couple swings, but the third connects and throws him into attack mode. Instinctively, Jon returns a blow of his own, sending Seth to the mat.

He isn't moving.

One second... two seconds.

Jon looks through the cage and finds Rich sitting in the front row of spectators off to his right, staring back at him in a strange combination of disappointment and rage, shaking his head slowly, back and forth. He's not in his corner tonight, but Jon doesn't have time to think about it or wonder why.

Three seconds... four seconds.

Rich reaches into his tangerine jacket, going for the inner pocket, like he's fishing out a checkbook... but instead he exposes his revolver just enough so Jon can see it.

He's sending him a message:

End this fight the way I want you to end it, or I'll end you.

He probably bet against me tonight, Jon thinks to himself. It's all about the money with him... but as soon as he has the thought he realizes he's not much different. Take the money away and Jon wouldn't have himself in this mess.

Five seconds... six seconds.

Seth twitches back to life. He starts to get back to his feet.

Jon looks back over at Rich and gives him an understanding, reassuring nod... a wordless gesture saying 'Yes, I will do what you want me to do.'

After regaining his footing, Seth closes the gap quickly. Jon fakes a jab with his left hand and intentionally misses with his right, stepping right into a stiff uppercut to the chin and a follow-up of five fast, sharp, devastating blows to the head.

Still conscious, Jon does his best to act like he's been knocked out – to 'sell' the dive. He falls to the mat as limply and lifelessly as possible, and he closes his eyes, but Seth isn't finished.

He straddles Jon and continues delivering hard blows to his head, one after the other, faster and faster. _Fight back,_ Jon's body tells him. But he doesn't.

He forces himself to lay there and take the beating...

...wondering if he'd wake up after his world went black.

# FOURTEEN

People.

Two people. Men.

Voices Jon doesn't recognize. Talking, laughing.

He's conscious enough to be aware of something cool, something damp raining down on him from above, but he's not completely awake. He can't move.

But he doesn't know that yet.

He tries to move his head – nothing. His arms – nothing. His legs – nothing. No part of his body wants to cooperate with his mind.

He feels awake, he feels alive. Why can't he move?

A familiar chopping sound mixes in with the strange voices talking and laughing, followed closely by another damp, heavy rain. Jon panics when he finally puts the pieces together: they're burying him alive; suffocating him under a blanket of dirt.

After everything he'd been through, _this_ was going to do him in? He couldn't help but think so. No matter how much he screamed inside for his body to come back to life, it was no use.

Jon's whole life didn't flash before his eyes, the way people say it does when facing the reality of the end. No, as he began to accept his fate, only one image came into focus. He saw Tara, running by the river. He remembered their first meeting.

They'd been so happy together, in the beginning... but a lot had happened since then. Adjusting to civilian life, 'moving forward' the way Tara had defined it, it had been so hard for Jon. He could've – should've tried harder. It wasn't fair for him to expect Tara to be so patient with him. He'd taken her for granted.

He cursed himself and blamed himself for ruining the best thing that had ever happened to him, for being blind to how Tara was really feeling long enough for her to want to be away from him, to initiate the break.

He could've avoided this.

But no... he just _had_ to wait to see Tara until he'd fought one more time. Eight fights weren't enough. Had he gone to see her and told her what he'd been up to before that ninth fight, before Rich told him to lose, watched him get throttled, presumed him dead and told these two thugs to bury him...

...she would've begged him to quit, for fear that something bad might happen to him – like being buried alive, being aware of it, and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

Jon's most painful regret was realizing that he was going to die without patching things up with Tara, without restoring what they had together to what it once was... or if he couldn't, if it was out of his hands – at the very least, getting to see her just one more time so he could say goodbye.

He wasn't a religious man, but he asked for a second chance. He hadn't been in a church since his father's funeral so many years ago, but he prayed. He promised to change his ways if some higher power could somehow reach down to him and wake him up, to spare his soul from this permanent dirt nap.

Nobody answered his prayers. Nobody believed his promise.

But somebody was listening, because right then, as Jon had given up his last ounce of hope and broken down in total acceptance, the rain stopped.

Fate changed its mind.

He hears his two gravediggers walking away, their voices becoming distant. They'd only thrown a thin layer of dirt over him, six inches at the most. He could still breathe.

_OK, now's your chance_ , Jon says to himself. _Wake up. Wake UP. WAKE UP._

His eyes thrust open. His body roars to life.

He climbs out of the hole and starts tiptoeing his way toward the two voices, the two thugs with shovels, still laughing and joking with each other. Jon didn't know burying a body could be so humorous.

Head pounding, struggling with dizziness, fighting the urge to throw up, he stumbles to catch up, doing his best to keep quiet and maintain the element of surprise. Had they not been laughing so hard, they would've surely heard him.

Closer... just a little bit closer. A few more steps.

He's on them. Springing up from behind, Jon subdues thug number one with a quick snap of his neck. Thug number two, in the half-second he'd wasted by watching what Jon did to thug number one, unknowingly signed his own death warrant. There's nothing he could've done to stop what was coming his way.

Jon lunges at him.

He socks him in the throat as hard as he can, collapsing his esophagus.

As number two goes to his back, assuming the universal body language that says 'I'm choking,' Jon picks up the shovel he'd dropped on his way down – the shovel number two had used to fling dirt on him not three minutes before.

"Move your hands!" Jon commands. "MOVE... YOUR... HANDS!!!"

Number two complies. Without remorse, without so much as a second thought, Jon stomps the sharpened spade through number two's throat like a landscaper carving out a healthy chuck of sod.

Head still pounding, still dizzy and still nauseous, Jon stumbles his way to the silver Mercedes the two deceased thugs no longer had a use for.

He slides into the driver's seat and assesses the damage done to his face in the rearview mirror. It was a bloody mess, already starting to bruise. Both eyes were puffed right up, almost swollen shut. It was a miracle he could see at all.

Jon hurries to the hospital. The receptionist takes one look at him and shows him to a room right away, no paperwork necessary. When the nurse walks in and looks at his face, it's hard to say which of the two were more surprised.

"What... the hell... happened to you?!?!"

"Heather. Damn. I had no idea you were a nurse." Jon pauses and it dawns on him that he hadn't answered her question. "Oh, this? Just a bad night in the cage, that's all."

"Looks like a little more than that," Heather says, concerned. "What's with the dirt?"

Jon decides to tell the truth. He can trust Heather. "I was told to take a dive tonight. Lose on purpose. So I did. I let the guy knock me out. Apparently whoever dragged me outta the cage thought I was dead, because when I woke up I'd been nestled under a thin layer of God's green earth. That's what's with the dirt."

"Jesus..."

"Yeah. Hey, is Danny still fighting? Haven't seen him around 'the basement' in weeks. Please, if he's still involved, urge him to stay the hell away from Rich Payne."

"No, he's been done with that for about a month now. I got so worried about him I finally found the courage to beg him to stop. And he listened to me, for once." Heather smiled.

Jon forced a smile of his own, but again he wished he'd gone to see Tara before his last fight. She would've pleaded that he stop, just like Heather had done with Danny, and he would've listened, just like Danny. "That's good. Real good."

"I know, I'm so happy he's put that behind him."

"Heather, I'd like to follow his lead. Danny got me into this. I followed him in. And now I'd like to follow him out." Jon pauses to find the right words. "If I told you I had a plan to get back at the guy responsible for this," Jon points to his beaten, swollen face, "would you and Danny be willing to help me?"

Before she can respond Jon realizes what he forgot to explain: what's in it for them.

"Aside from the obvious victory of helping a guy you came onto in a bar serve up some very well-deserved revenge to a pompous jackass... the four of us will be set for life."

She smiled at that, but she was confused. "Four of us?"

"Yes, four – you, Danny, me... and my girlfriend, Tara. If we work together and pull this off, we'll never worry about money again. No more jobs, no more struggling to survive, no more letting life pass us by because we don't have the time and money to do what we want to do. We'll have what everybody chases, but very few can ever catch."

"What's that?" Heather asks.

"The American Dream."

"We're in!" Heather blurts.

Her quickness and enthusiasm almost startle Jon. "You don't wanna ask Danny first?"

"Oh no," Heather tells him, smiling. "This is, like, the only thing we're ever on the same page about. Danny and I are struggling right now. I _hate_ having to work and he hasn't found anything he wants to do since he quit fighting... for me, the sweetheart... so yes, we're in. We're all over this; just tell us how we can help!"

"Excellent," Jon says. "I'll be in touch."

# FIFTEEN

He'd kept it from her long enough.

And considering the look the bank teller had given him during his quick withdrawal errand before hitting the road, the sunglasses he'd put on to hide the evidence of his beating the night before weren't doing a damn bit of good. She would learn the truth today. Even if he said nothing, she'd worry. She'd have questions.

Questions he'd have no problem answering.

He'd made up his mind. He was done, out, finished.

Jon drives to the house of the woman who judged him, where Tara had been staying since the argument that made her walk out. He sees Tara's car in the driveway. She's out of work, just as he'd thought she'd be at this time on a Friday... but her mom's car is nowhere to be found.

He picked a good time to come over and do this. He wanted to like Tara's mother, but she was so closed-minded. She compared him to Tara's dirt-bag father without even knowing him. He didn't need her negativity making an awkward conversation even more uncomfortable. To say he was thrilled that she wasn't around for his visit would be the understatement of the year.

Tara was in the kitchen when he pulled in. She saw Jon's black Tundra and went outside to greet him before he'd walked halfway to the front door. She ran to him and wrapped him up in a tight embrace reflective of how long they'd gone without seeing each other... so caught up in the moment that she didn't notice his face.

"I missed you so much," Tara says, burying her face in Jon's shoulder and squeezing like she meant it.

"I missed you more," Jon replies, kissing the top of her head and inhaling the tropical shampoo scent radiating from her hair. Mango never smelled so good.

"So," Tara begins to say as their bodies disengage, "how have you..."

She stops mid-question, the last word caught in her throat, and stares at Jon with the same combination of surprise and concern as the bank teller he'd seen on his way here.

"It's really not as bad as it looks, babe," Jon says, carefully removing the sunglasses from his face. "It's actually a lot better than it was."

Tara's jaw drops. Her hands instinctively rise to hide her O-shaped mouth. How had she not seen this before the hug? The bruises creeping out from under the sunglasses? "What... what happened?" she finally asks. What else could she say?

Seeing the look he'd put on her face, the pain in her eyes that only he was responsible for, was not worth that one extra fight. But what's done was done. There was nothing Jon could change about what had already happened. "Before I get into that," he says, "I want you to know upfront that I'm done, I'm out, and I'm never going back."

Dodging the question gave her three more to ask. "Done with what? Out of what? Never going back to what?"

"Fighting."

"Fighting?"

"Yeah, fighting... cage fighting, more specifically." Jon takes her back in time. "Remember how, when we last saw each other, I mentioned that I had a good lead on a job? That 'job' was fighting in a cage, once a week. For money."

" _That_ was the job you wanted to surprise me with... if it worked out? _That's_ what you've been doing these past couple months? Getting your face beat-in once a week? And here I thought you'd gone out and gotten a _real_ job..."

Jon wasn't crazy about the way she'd said 'real' – as if, yet again, what he'd decided to do wasn't good enough, but he'd come into this knowing she'd be upset.

So he didn't let himself get angry with her. Instead he reached into his pocket and pulled out the four thousand dollars in cash he'd withdrawn from his bank account that day, just to prove a point. He fanned the hundred dollar bills like a deck of cards.

"See this?" Jon asks her. "This is four grand – my pay for the last couple weeks – MUCH more than I saw as a Marine, a cop, an ice cream stacker, or anything I tried to do online."

Tara was astounded. "That's for two weeks?"

"Yup. Two grand per fight. And for the record," he says, smiling, "I didn't 'get my face beat-in' _every_ time. Last night was the first time I got touched at all, honestly, but I didn't really have a choice."

"Because the guy you were fighting was better than you?"

Jon laughs. "No... because the guy paying me told me to take a dive, to lose on purpose. I took the beating because the guy paying me said dives pay double. So he still owes me four thousand, for last night, but I doubt I'll see it."

"Why?" Tara asks.

"Because he thinks I'm dead. These fights, they have no rules. There are no refs to stop the fighting when there's a clear knockout – it's very dangerous, and the loser, quite often, doesn't walk away. When I let myself get knocked down last night, the guy I was fighting didn't stop. He kept pounding on me until I blacked out...

"...and when I woke up, I was out of the cage, outside, in the middle of nowhere, and two guys I'd never seen before were throwing shovelfuls of dirt on me; they were burying me alive, Tara."

Seeing the cash with her own eyes, so many crisp one hundred dollar bills, fanned out so nicely... Tara almost got herself to the point of agreeing with Jon fighting. But that all went out the window with the 'buried alive' story.

He saw her expression darkening and jumped in to cheer her up.

"But it's all behind me now. I promise. I'm done fighting for that jackass who, clearly, couldn't care less about my wellbeing. I'm done fighting, period. And I've got more good news for you, babe."

Before Jon could continue, Tara cut in. "I've got some news for you, too," she says, "and I'd like to tell you before you say anything else. It's... life changing."

"Of course," Jon replies. "What's up?"

She looks him in the eyes. She takes his hands in hers. "I'm pregnant."

"What?" He smiles ear to ear. "You are?"

Was he surprised? Of course he was.

But he wasn't mad about it; he was ecstatic.

"Two questions," Jon says. "Number one, when did you find out? Number two, and much more importantly... am I the father?" He loved being a smartass.

Tara slaps him, giggling. "I found out yesterday. And of course you're the father, you're the only person I've had sex with since we met. You're not upset? You're not scared? Because I am..."

"I'm not upset at all, babe." He was, however, a little confused as to how it happened, but his mind travels back to their last passionate encounter with each other. And then he remembers. He remembers how quickly it had escalated; that he hadn't worn a condom, that he hadn't even had time to think about putting one on – it had happened so fast. Considering how effortlessly he put two and two together and cracked the case, Jon could've been a detective. "We've got nothing to be scared of," he assures her.

"How can you be so sure?" Tara challenges him. "Yeah, you made some good money doing your fighting thing, but it almost killed you, and like you said, you're done with it. Which I'm very happy about, that you're done with it, because I need you around, Jon." _Music to his ears._ "But the reality is, we're going to be parents. I'm still working two jobs, jobs that I won't be able to keep as my pregnancy moves along, and as of now you're back to not working. So I ask you again, how are you so certain that we've got nothing to be scared of?"

"My other piece of good news. That is why I'm so sure," Jon says. "Quit your jobs."

"Huh?"

"You heard me. Quit your jobs. Both of them. In less than a week, neither one of us are ever going to have to work again. That's a promise."

"Why? Jon, what are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about revenge."

"Revenge? Revenge on who?"

Jon points to his still-bruised, still-swollen face. "The guy responsible for this."

"I don't get it."

"We're gonna get all the money we'll ever need from a guy who doesn't deserve it, a guy who isn't doing any good with it, a guy who keeps getting richer off the blood, sweat, and deaths of men he doesn't respect or care about."

"But how?" Tara asks.

Jon smiles. "You'll see."

# SIXTEEN

They couldn't have been more punctual.

Jon opens his front door before they can knock or ring the bell.

"Dude!" Danny is first in line to come in. He locks hands with Jon like he wants to arm wrestle standing up and pulls him in for a man-hug. "Heather told me what happened to you... so glad you're alright, bro."

"Thanks, Danny, come on in."

Heather follows her man through the doorway and lifts herself up on her toes to give Jon a hug of her own, opting to skip the macho arm wrestling gesture before the embrace. She peeks over Jon's shoulder and sees Tara sitting across the room on the couch. "Oh, is this the lucky lady?" Heather asks, excited to finally meet her.

"She's my lady, but I'm the lucky one," Jon replies, releasing himself from Heather and turning around to look at his angel. "Danny, Heather, this is Tara. Tara, I'd like you to meet Danny and Heather, the couple I told you about who will be helping us with our little... plan."

"The plan you somehow managed to keep secret the whole ride over here," Tara says as she gets up to greet Danny and Heather with hugs of her own. She gestures for their guests to have a seat in the living room and returns to her place on the couch. "But if you'd told me, you would've had to repeat everything right now, so... I suppose I can forgive you." She winks at Jon and pats the couch, inviting him to sit next to her.

"Precisely, peaches." Jon plops down really fast hoping to pinch Tara's hand against the cushion, but she's too quick for him. "Damn, almost got ya." He gives her a quick peck on the cheek. Tara giggles. Danny and Heather laugh along with her. "I also wanted you all here together," Jon says, "because Danny and Heather are – hopefully – going to help finalize the plan. I've got the basics worked out. Some of the details, though..."

Danny jumps in. "Hell yeah, man, we're here for you. All Heather told me was that you'd thought of a way to get revenge on Payne, and if we helped out, she could walk away from nursing and I could quit looking for something I'm good at besides fighting. Frankly I'm sick of looking, so I'm very curious as to what you've got in mind. Lay it on us, bro."

"OK, this is the plan." Jon leans forward, elbows on his knees. He looks from Danny to Heather and over to Tara like he's a Marine again, like he's taking the reins of a squad in Iraq and briefing them on their next mission. "There's only one thing in this world that Rich Payne cares about more than his money: his daughter, Lucy. When I first met Rich, he told me she was his pride and joy – the most important person in the world to him. So we're gonna take that away from him. We're gonna kidnap her."

"Ransom," Danny concludes on his own. "I like it. How much you thinking?"

"If Rich wants to see Lucy alive again, he'll have to cough up twelve million," Jon replies. "An even split: six million for you and Heather, six million for Tara and me."

Danny didn't think that was enough. "Twelve? That's it? But he's worth so much more than that, bro! If his daughter's so important to him, let's bankrupt his ass!" He wasn't angry; he was excited about getting filthy stinking rich.

Jon kept his cool. "Here's the way I see it, Danny. Yes, Rich has more. He has a lot more, actually. When I asked him how much he had, he told me a few hundred million. He said it very casually, too. But here's the thing: neither one of us _need_ that much money to spend the rest of our lives in comfort – to eliminate the need to have jobs so we can spend our time doing things we want to do.

"Six million is more than enough for you to spend the rest of your life in total relaxation, without a care in the world. Do the math, man. If you and Heather allow yourselves to spend a combined one hundred thousand per year, that's sixty years of paid vacation. You're telling me you're turning your nose up at that? That it isn't enough?"

Heather nods. It makes sense to her. Danny, however, still doesn't look convinced.

"This is how it's gonna be, Danny," Jon continues. "You can go back to cage fighting, which will upset Heather... you can keep looking for something else to do for money, which you said you're sick of doing... or you can settle for your six million dollar cut of this deal. And six million doesn't have to _stay_ six million. You can do a lot of investing with a chunk of change like that... you can turn it into _more_. So what's it gonna be, big guy? Are you in... or are you out?"

Danny looked at Jon. He looked at Tara. He turned to look at Heather, sitting beside him. It was pretty clear; he was looking at a three versus one situation. He was by himself with his insatiable urges for mega-millions. "I'm in," Danny replies with more than a hint of reluctance in his tone. "Sorry for getting greedy, guys... I still want more, Jon. Heck I'll probably always want more, but everything you just said makes sense."

"Trust me," Jon assures him, "as long as you don't blow it all on worthless crap right off the bat, six million will be more than enough."

"I can't promise how I'll behave when I actually see that much money in my account, begging to be spent, but I'll try not to go overboard."

"If he does he'll have to answer to me," Heather chimes in, nudging Danny's shoulder.

"That's right, Heather, you keep him in line!" Jon says, jokingly... but serious.

"You got it, boss." Heather salutes Jon. "Sir, yes sir."

"I wasn't an officer, Heather, so that won't be necessary. But thank you." Jon smiles. "Anyway, let's continue with how we're going to get this done. The one thing I haven't thought of yet is where we're going to grab Lucy. Every time I've seen her she's been with her dad, and it'd be pretty stupid to try and kidnap her right in front of him, right? Danny, you wouldn't happen to know what she does when she's away from him, would you? Like, where she spends her time?"

Danny didn't have to answer right away for Jon to know.

The look he gave Heather, the look she gave back... they knew.

They knew just where Lucy liked to hang out.

# SEVENTEEN

They were enjoying this.

Danny and Heather were getting a kick out of dangling it right in his face, the one piece of information Jon wasn't able to scrape together in his own mind. They felt powerful, like they were all of a sudden vital to the whole plan coming together.

And they were.

"You gonna spill the beans or what?" Jon asks.

"Sorry for the delay," Danny finally says. "We're just psyched to be needed for this to work, you know? Teamwork, bro, that's what it's all about. We know where to find her."

Jon looks at Tara and wraps her up in a hug without notice, excited that the last piece of the puzzle was about to fall into place. "Where?" He asks Danny.

"At a club... a nightclub Heather and I go to a few times a week. Every time we're there, she's there too, dancing and letting every guy that approaches her buy her a drink."

"Excellent." Jon has more questions. "What kind of car does she drive? Have you guys ever seen her go home with anybody?"

"That's the interesting thing," Danny says, scratching his head. "She always shows up and leaves by herself. Maybe she gets off on teasing guys and never putting out, I don't know..."

_Or there's a certain guy out there she's been holding out for_ , Jon thinks to himself.

"...but what I _do_ know," Danny continues, "is that she drives a neon pink Porsche. It's impossible to miss – it's the only pink Porsche I've seen around the place."

Jon shakes his head in disbelief. "Nothing flaunts your family's wealth more than a neon pink luxury sports car. Fantastic, she'll stick out like a sore thumb. One more question, Danny. What nights of the week do you and Heather normally go to this club?"

"Thursday night, Friday night, and Saturday night; we normally get there around nine."

"Awesome... well I'd say that puts a lid on things. Danny, my friend, you've just made this plan bulletproof. Pat yourself on the back."

"Happy to help, bro," Danny says. Heather gives him the pat on the back. Danny couldn't reach.

"OK," Jon says. "Heather... we're gonna need something to knock Lucy out when we... invite her to come with us. It's gotta be strong, I don't want her screaming and drawing attention to us. I was thinking chloroform. Can you get your hands on some?"

"Chloroform! Goin' old school, nice!" Heather chuckles. "Yeah, I can get some."

"Outstanding. Danny?" Jon says.

"Yeah?"

"We're also gonna need four black ski masks, and four of those voice-altering... things – hell I don't know what they're called – the things that make you sound like a robot so nobody can recognize your voice; those things. Can you make that happen, bud?"

"I sure can. Any idiot can run to the store and pick up ski masks, that's a given, but I know a guy who could hook us up and turn us into robots. Consider it done."

"Good man. Well, that's about all that needs to be done... let's get everything together and be ready to move on this tomorrow night – Friday. Clear?"

"Clear," Danny and Heather reply as one.

Jon turns to Tara when she doesn't say anything. "Something wrong?" He asks.

"You mean aside from the fact that everybody has something to do, some way to help, except for me? Besides _that_ , no... nothing's wrong," Tara says, sounding more left out than angry or upset. "By the way," she adds, "how are we all going to cram into your truck to even get to the club, much less have room to move Lucy somewhere else?"

Danny and Heather look at each other like they hadn't even considered transportation. Jon, however, had it all worked out.

"Well I certainly didn't mean to exclude you," Jon says, putting his arm around Tara to comfort her. "So if you feel that way, I'm sorry. I was actually planning on doing our part of the preparation phase together." Tara's eyes light up. "You, my darling, get to pick out the sexy, sleek kidnapping van we're going to blow some of my fighting money on."

Tara liked that. Danny and Heather did, too. Heather liked it so much she expressed just a twinge of jealousy about it. "Shoot, girl," she says, already laughing at her own joke, "You know how lucky you are? It was like pulling teeth, getting this one over here to let me decide how to spend _his_ fightin' money."

"Oh please... are you ever gonna let that go?" Danny hangs his head playfully as he responds, revealing the truth in Heather's words. He's guilty and he isn't proud of it.

"Not in a million years, babe!" Heather draws Danny's mouth to hers for a kiss. "You know I love you."

"Actually," Jon chimes back in, "I can't believe I said that – how I phrased it as my money. I may have earned it, but it's _our_ money." He looks softly into Tara's eyes. "Everything I've done since meeting you, I've done it with you in mind. Whatever's mine is yours. Forgive me for getting possessive. It's our money. Not mine."

Their mouths connect, zooming right by the 'quick peck on the lips' and cruising straight into deep and passionate territory... a kiss that could've easily escalated into something more, if they'd allowed themselves to get carried away. But they remember that they have guests and snuff out the flame before they burn the house down.

"Aww!" Heather gushes. "You two are so cute! How long have you guys been together? And how did you first meet, if you don't mind me asking?"

"That, I'm afraid, is another story for another time," Jon replies with a sly grin. "I think we're about ready to call it a night, if you know what I mean..."

"But it was just about to get good!" Danny complains, pretending he's bummed. He knew exactly what Jon meant. "I was two seconds from rummaging through your kitchen in search of some popcorn, bro... can't have a show without popcorn!"

Four laughs erupt at once. Everybody gets up, hugs and shakes hands goodbye.

Danny and Heather start making their way to the door, but Danny turns around halfway. He's got something he'd like clarified.

"Hey, Jon, one more thing bro. Can I talk to you alone for a second? Just a second."

"Sure, no problem." Jon meets him on the front porch. He closes the door behind him. "What's up, Danny?"

When Danny asks him the question he'd forgotten to bring up during their meeting, Jon is glad they're outside a closed door; he's glad Tara can't hear it.

He's very glad.

# AMERICAN DREAM: BOOK THREE

# AVAILABLE NOW HERE

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"They thought they'd taken every precaution. They thought they'd executed their plan perfectly. They thought wrong.

A mistake was made. A very amateur mistake.

Jon won't know about it until it's too late - until the danger's on his doorstep threatening to destroy what matters most to him - but a familiar face from Fallujah shows up with it.

And when the dust settles, he and Jon perform a miracle in one deserving man's life and set out to change the world, one audience at a time.

American Dream (Book 3) proves that money isn't everything... especially when it isn't earned."

\----------

CLICK TO CLAIM YOUR COPY OF BOOK THREE

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