Long Shot: An MMA Stepbrother Romance Read Online Free PDF Page A

house, but now it’s mine. I’m back here like I always said I wouldn’t be, just so I can live free and pay my med school loans. The windows leak in cold air in the winter, the basement floods with every hurricane, and bits of wood keep splintering from the baseboards. I walk inside and throw my purse down on the table.  

    After I finish the residency, I’ll leave this damn tourist town behind me. This place… all these memories and disappointments… it’s all too much.

    My cat Beatrice meows in return, staring at me with her bright yellow eyes. I strip off my scrubs and throw them on the floor. I worked a sixteen-hour shift for the first time today, and now I know why people drop the fuck out of the doctor game. Medical school was no big deal for me. I could close my eyes and pass every test, every practicum. I know the human body inside and out. But being on my feet for sixteen hours at a time, that shit is going to ruin me. I feel it deep in my bones, the longing for sleep that started to take me over about four hours ago. Beatrice meows again.

    “Don’t worry. I’ll take you, Bee. It’ll be you and me, none of these ghosts from home. And no Josh either.”

    I know paying off the bills is a lame excuse—I coulda found cheap rent anywhere else in the great state of North Carolina. Maybe I’m here because I feel a kinship to Roanoke Island. My people have been here for generations, though it’s not like we have a proud family name. We’re poor, white trash dirt farmers—and the worst of the worst, my father and stepmother. Josh’s mama is still somewhere on the island stirring up trouble, but Daddy died three years ago. And still, I came back here. Drawn back to my ancestral home.  

    Josh, on the other hand, is stuck here, an indentured servant in his own right, serving Frank, the worst kind of criminal who promises his fighters the world and never delivers. Well, that’s the life he’s chosen, and he’s made it clear I’m not changing his mind any time soon. He’s a fighter, a manwhore, a loser of the worst kind. The kind our two families have produced, year after year, polluting the Carolina coastline like oil.

    Beatrice follows me through the house, meowing plaintively. I glance and see that she has food and water. The wind is starting to kick up outside, a storm about to come off the water. Maybe she’s warning me, in that weird animal kind of way. I stop and listen for a moment. There’s a banging outside, probably one of the live oak trees slamming its branches against the rickety old roof.

    “I hope Josh ain’t out on the beach, Bee. We’re in for a whopper tonight.” The cat meows in response and rubs her face against my leg. She looks at me like she knows who I’m talking about, like she’s judging me for even thinking of him. But I do think about him, still and always. The anger inside of me ebbs and flows, mixing with the deep hurt he left me with. “Let me tell you, cat. Josh McRae’s not the reason I’m still on this island. Stop thinking it. It’s because I still love the water, when all is said and done. I do like a good island sunrise.” My voice sounds a bit stilted, and I know I’m not even convincing the cat.

    I stroll back to my bedroom in my bra and panties, and I brush out my hair. After the hospital, even my hair smells like sweat and piss, and I wonder if there’s anything I can do to keep the hospital residue down. I fall onto my bed and turn off the light, my body drawn down into sleep. My brain starts to cycle back through the shift, images of sutures and x-rays swirling through my head. The road is hard and long, but it’s worth it to get ahead, to be the woman I need to become. As I dive into that place that exists somewhere between sleep and waking, I hear a scratch at the door. Or I think I do.  

    My eyes flutter open and slowly adjust to the dark. There’s another faint sound, almost like knocking, but too low, too soft. Beatrice hops on the