Rough Around the Edges by Ranae Rose Page A

were finally rising to the surface again. If he hadn’t had Ally to distract him from being reminded of who he’d once been, he might have hated that fact.
    When the waitress arrived, Ryan’s eye was drawn to the wine list propped in the middle of the table. Why not? It had been so long since he’d gone out for a real dinner. It would be dangerous to drink too much – he couldn’t risk the likely consequences in front of Ally – but he could have a little, and she would probably enjoy it. “How about a bottle of wine?”
    “Okay.” The way she smiled when she agreed made him glad he’d suggested it.
    He requested a bottle of Chianti Riserva. The flavorful red would go well with both of their meals. It was far from the cheapest wine on the menu, but he was beyond caring how much the dinner cost. Money meant a hell of a lot less than the happiness of the woman sitting across from him, and besides, he had weekly fights now. He’d win – he’d make up for the cost of the meal, and eventually his insurance deductible, too.
    “Tell me about yourself,” he said as he imagined a red bead of wine clinging to the full swell of her lower lip, the same color as her sweater. “Do you work? Other than competing in Cameron’s events.”
    She nodded. “My aunt owns a beauty salon. I’m a nail technician there.”
    “Do you like it?”
    “It pays the bills.”
    He recognized the note of ambivalent indifference in her voice – it matched the way he felt whenever he thought about his own job and the life he was living. “You make it sound like there’s something else you’d rather be doing.”
    “Honestly, I don’t know what I’d do if I could choose – if I’d had the chance to go to college, or learn another trade. It was never really an option, you know?”
    He’d had both chances – at a college education, and at a totally different path. Still, he knew what she meant. Despite the past privilege of choice, which he’d exercised, he had no idea what he’d choose to do now. Sometimes it felt like he hadn’t chosen anything at all, which was why it felt so good to be training at Knockout. For the first time since being plunged back into the civilian world, he felt in control of something.
    “Is there something you would do if you had a chance – something besides building roofs?” She raised an eyebrow in his direction, questioning, like she was really curious.
    He leaned back in his chair and drummed his fingers on the tabletop, thinking – about her, mostly. “I don’t know what I’d choose, either. Sometimes I wish I did. The only thing I really seem to enjoy doing is fighting.”
    Her expression brightened at the mention of MMA. “You’re in a different league than most of the guys who show up at Cameron’s events. Have you ever thought of trying your hand in some higher-profile circuits?”
    “Thought about it? Yeah. But I don’t think anything like a professional career is in the cards for me.” He’d dreamed about it at one time and had even harbored hopes of joining the USMC MMA Fight Team while enlisted.
    Not only had those aspirations been fucked away in Afghanistan, but his entire career had been shattered. His usefulness to the United States Marine Corps had flatlined in the wake of a single second that had left him absurdly whole and alive while crumbling his life – the parts that mattered most – around him. He could still fight, but not like before. He’d never rise above amateur level events like Cameron’s. Bile swirled in his unfilled stomach at the thought, making everything between his heart and his hips burn with emptiness.
    The food arrived quickly, but not so soon that Ally couldn’t have asked him why not, if she’d wanted to. But she didn’t. She was either naturally intuitive or extremely polite. In light of the way she’d told off Cameron and then wrinkled her nose at Ryan on the first day they’d met, it was probably the former. Either way, it was impossible