Worth the Fight

CONTENTS Author’s Note 1. Noah 2. Caden 3. Noah 4. Caden 5. Noah 6. Caden 7. Noah 8. Caden 9. Noah 10. Caden 11. Noah 12. Caden 13. Noah 14. Caden 15. Caden 16. Noah 17. Caden 18. Noah 19. Caden 20. Noah 21. Noah Epilogue Thank You Crave Bonus 1. Ethan 2. Maddox About the Author Also by Denver Shaw © March 2023. Denver Shaw All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage-and-retrieval systems, without prior written permission of the author, except where permitted by law. Published by: Denver Shaw This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. All products/brand names/trademarks mentioned are registered trademarks of their respective holders/companies. Cover Design by Steamy Designs Interior Formatting by Leslie Copeland Edited by Happy Ever Author BLURB A bad boy who lives outside the law. A compassionate soul focused on helping others. Sometimes rules are meant to be broken... for love. Caden Helping my brother was my focus. He got into trouble and I’ve been using my skills in the ring to prevent loan sharks from breaking his kneecaps... or worse. Until I met Noah. He’s a good man who makes me want to be better. A man who doesn't lace up his gloves and step into underground rings. But I have one last fight coming. This time the stakes are higher than ever. What I have to do to save my brother could cost me the man I’m falling for. Noah I should have walked away and never looked back when I first met the MMA fighter with honey-gold eyes. Yet Caden’s charms are too appealing to ignore. As a social worker it's important for me to keep my nose clean. And Caden is a red flag in every way. Still, he’s hot as sin and I can't seem to stay away. I’m taking a risk by opening myself up to him, but I'm convinced beneath that bad boy exterior beats the heart of a good man who is worth the fight. Worth the Fight is an opposites attract MM romance. It is book one of the Winning at Love series, a collection of standalone gay romance stories featuring MMA fighters and hockey and football playing heroes. Expect different tropes like enemies to lovers, GFY/bi-awakening, forbidden romance, single dads, found families and happily ever afters. To the ones who believe that the people around them are more than friends; they are family. AUTHOR’S NOTE A minor character uses hate speech. Fights in the ring are briefly described, but I promise there are no breaking of bones and none of the on-page characters dies. A happily ever after ending is guaranteed. CHAPTER 1 NOAH “No, Mr. Williams, you can’t poison your neighbor’s cats.” I sighed into the phone, rubbing my forehead. “That’s illegal. If you feel her cats are becoming a problem, then you should talk with her. I’m happy to come help you mediate.” Only four hours into the work day, and already I was getting a headache. It wasn’t a record, but it was close. “She should keep her cats inside,” Mr. Williams complained—one of my newer clients, a man in his seventies that had been assigned to me after his children all but abandoned him. “They’re a menace to my birds.” Mr. Williams’s birds were not his—they were wild birds. I’d seen his back yard, dotted with birdbaths and birdfeeders and birdhouses to attract them. It was a beautiful sight, really—but safeguarding all of nature was outside my scope of practice as a social worker. “I understand your frustration, Mr. Williams.” Saying a client’s name was supposed to put them at ease—sometimes it did—but Mr. Williams seemed to huff every time I said it. “How about I come by tomorrow at about noon and we speak with Mrs. Anderson about her cats?” I knew Mrs. Anderson; she was a widow, about Mr. Williams’s age. Maybe they’d hit it off and he’d have someone else to complain about things to. “What are you people even for, if not to help me resolve my problems?” Mr. Williams snapped. I barely stifled a groan—quietly, away from the phone’s receiver—and glanced up at Tracey, one of the junior assistants, as she winced and held up a file. I stared for a moment, and then rolled my eyes and tapped on my over-full desk—specifically, on a stack of other files that was getting to be almost a foot thick—and she mouthed “Sorry!” as she laid it on top. “I’ll help you resolve this problem, Mr. Williams,” I told the elderly man. “Just hold on another day for me and I promise I’ll come and see you tomorrow. Okay? We’ll work all of this out.” He grumbled something. I pretended not to hear before I wished him a pleasant rest of his day and hung up. Tracey was still standing by the door. She was frowning at my stack of to-be-read files with concern. She had this to look forward to, once she was finished with her last year of school and licensed. “Are you sure you don’t want me to see if someone else can take some of those off your hands?” she asked. Such a sweet girl. “Trust me,” I told her, “no one can. We’re all swamped. Welcome to the public sector.” She nodded once, and then pointed at my phone. “There’s a young man named Austin on line three.” “Thanks,” I said as she left. I took a deep breath. The key to staying sane was to keep breathing. Austin, at least, wasn’t one of my cases anymore. He had been for years; now he was more like a nephew. All grown up and successfully not a