Against the Ropes by Carly Fall Read Free Book Online Page A

history.”
    “How long were you in prison?”
    “Just shy of two years. With me fighting off the cops, they got me for aggravated assault. I would probably have gotten longer except the woman testified in my defense and said that she had been afraid they were going to rape her, and she didn’t know what would have happened if I hadn’t shown up.”
    She studied his face for a moment and then asked, “Was it horrible?”
    Dylan couldn’t help but smile. He’d gotten respect in prison, simply because of whom he was. His reputation meant that he hadn’t been targeted for anything, but that didn’t mean that it was a walk in the park, either. The days seemed to stretch on forever, and the nights were never quiet. He kept to himself, did what he was told, and looked forward to his time in the sunshine every day. “It was worse than I would have imagined. Remember that show where they took stupid kids into prisons, pretended to lock them up and had the inmates yell at them and tell them how miserable their lives were? I think it was called Scared Straight ?”
    She nodded.
    “That’s me.”
    “When did you get out?”
    “Almost a year ago.”
    Regan looked him over a beat longer and then looked around the yard as if she were surprised by where she was. She gathered up her notebook and stood. “Thanks for telling me, Dylan. I hope you do get your life back together and you can have the future you want.”
    With that, she went into the house.
    The one thing prison had taught him was that he needed to get his shit together. If partying and wallowing in self-pity were it, then he was in for a world of hurt. Or, he could get up from the mats, dust himself off, and get back on a stable path.
    He had chosen to move on, and the fight the other night was the first step down the right path.
    However, a new component of his plan had taken root, and was growing at a fast pace. He wanted Regan in his future and he had thirty days to convince her that he had changed. Long gone was the young, cocky jerk who had the world at his feet. Dylan was now a man with purpose, honor, and integrity.
    He just needed to prove that to Regan.
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
     
    As Regan ran down the tree-lined streets past the middle-class cookie-cutter houses, the pounding of her running shoes against the pavement was keeping time with the beat of music blasting in her ears.
    It was white noise—it was there but in the background to her thoughts.
    What Dylan had told her about going to prison played over and over. Regan was happy that he had helped that woman, but what bothered her was that he said that the woman reminded him of her.
    It would have been about two years after she left that he went to prison, and it sounded like she was still forefront in his mind back then. How could that be when he’d broken her heart not once, but twice beforehand? She would have thought he had moved on because it certainly seemed like it that day she had gone to the gym.
    She’d walked through the door hoping that things could possibly be worked out between them, but Lila’s presence and possessiveness had put an end to that. The girl had practically peed on Dylan to mark him as hers. And her little quip about being his girlfriend the night before had sealed the coffin on their relationship. At that point, she was certain that Dylan had moved on and she was but a distant memory.
    Perhaps she was wrong.
    But if that were the case, why had he cheated to begin with?
    She’d tossed this question around for hours, if not days upon days in the past five years. Why had Dylan cheated on her to begin with? What was she lacking that he needed? And were there others? Was it something he did on a frequent basis, and he had just gotten caught that one night?
    Regan couldn’t see how it could have been a regular thing for him because they spent so much time together, unless he was doing it in the middle of the afternoon while she was at work. But even that didn’t really