Punching and Kissing (5 page)

No response. But I could see a hint of movement in his chest. He was still alive—just.

The crowd was clearing out fast, now the entertainment was over. I heard the distinctive rattle and clang of Rick descending the stairs. As he approached, I spoke without looking up. “Have you called 911? We need to get him to the hospital….” I looked up, expecting to see...not
apology,
not from Rick. But concern. Regret.

What I got was something else altogether.

“
Wake up!”
screamed Rick. His cane sliced through the air and hit Alec’s leg only a few inches from where my hand was resting. I heard the snap as the bone broke.

Alec jerked but didn’t open his eyes. I flung myself instinctively off him and crawled to one side, my arms up to protect myself.

“
You cost me twenty grand, you weak little fuck!”
yelled Rick. Oh Christ—he was even more coked up than before.

My brain was trying to come to terms with what I was hearing. How could he blame
Alec?
But this was Rick. Someone else was always to blame.

“It—It wasn’t his fault,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “The other guy was ex-Army or something. I saw the tattoo.” I looked towards Alec. “Please, Rick—we have to get him to hospital.”

Rick ignored my plea completely. He rounded on his bodyguards. “I
told
you to check that guy out!” he bawled to Al. “I
said
there was something wrong about him.”

The bodyguards were smart enough to nod apologetically, even though I was betting they’d had no part in picking Morgan. More likely Rick had chosen him himself during a coke-fueled binge.

Alec’s breathing was growing weaker. I crawled back to him and put my arms around his neck, drawing him close. “
Please,
Rick!”

“You think I’m letting him walk out of here?” Rick asked. He brandished his cane. “After what he cost me? I got another fight in a month and no one to put on!” He suddenly swung the cane down again, hitting Alec’s ankle, this time. There was a sickening crunch.

I threw myself across my brother’s legs. “
Please!
Please, no more!”

Rick’s face darkened even more. He was angrier than I’d ever seen him. I saw, to my horror, that even his bodyguards were backing away.
He’s out of control.
“You’d better move,” he told me. “Unless you want this cane shoved up you.”

I wasn’t crying. I was too scared to cry. He was going to kill Alec. He was going to rip my one remaining piece of family away from me. “
Please!”

“He’s better off dead,” said Rick. “If he can’t fight, he’s worthless to me.” He twirled the cane and then raised it over his head. “Get the fuck out of the way.”

I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t move. I knew that me being there wouldn’t stop him. I knew that he’d just swing that cane straight down and batter his way through me, again and again, until he hit Alec. But I couldn’t leave my brother to die. I hugged Alec’s legs and tensed my whole body, waiting for the pain to hit. I searched for something, anything, to say that would stop this. And as the cane whistled down, my brain finally came up with two words.

“I’ll fight!”
I screamed.

The end of the cane smacked into the concrete an inch from my head. For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was the eerie ringing of it.

“What?” asked Rick. He sounded genuinely puzzled.

I was still pressed against Alec’s body. I could feel his breathing—
God, so weak.
I gingerly raised myself up and twisted around to face Rick. “I’ll fight,” I said again. This time, the words actually registered in my brain.

One of the bodyguards started to laugh.

“I’ll fight, here in The Pit,” I said. “Put me on instead of Alec. I’ll fight whoever you want.”

Rick looked at me with something between disgust and fascination. “
You?”
He looked at his two bodyguards for help. Al was laughing. Carl just looked amazed.

“Please,” I said. Now the tears had started. I could feel them rolling down my cheeks. “Please. Let me—Let me fight.”

Rick’s forehead wrinkled. “A
girl
fight?”

“A catfight,” said Al, grinning cruelly.

Rick considered. Then he lifted his cane and poked it under my chin. He used it to lift my head and turn it, examining me from all sides. I let him. “You’ve never fought in your life, have you?” he asked.

I shook my head.

He squatted down so that he was on my level. “That crowd up there wants
blood,”
he told me. “That isn’t going to change, with two women. Whoever I get to fight you is going to beat the living crap out of you.” He leaned closer. “
It goes on until someone can’t get up.
You know what that means?”

I nodded slowly. Every loser got beaten unconscious, but death was always a risk. Even Alec had come out of this fight barely alive—he still might die. For me—small, fragile and untrained—the ending would be inevitable.

If I lost, I was going to die.

I looked down at Alec. My tears were leaving dark, spreading pools on his tank top, mixing with the blood from his wounds.

“I understand,” I said. “I’ll do it. I’ll fight.”

Aedan

I could have ridden the train all the way back to Newark. Hell, I could have gotten a cab—I was okay for money, since I didn’t have much of anything to spend it on. But I like walking. No one bothers you, walking at night. Not if you look like me.

So I got off a few stops early and walked past the industrial parks and the docks, past walls of shipping containers taller than buildings and past black water as still and calm as glass.

My apartment block’s lousy for just about everything—no nearby stores, no nightlife. Half the apartments are empty, some with broken windows. No one in their right mind would want to rent there. Which is exactly why I liked it. No neighbors, no visitors. Everyone left me alone.

Upstairs, I opened the windows to try to let in some air—the air conditioning broke a long time ago. But there was barely a breath of wind.

I settled for a shower, cranking the spray up hard and cold and letting it blast against my body, foaming and hissing against my chest and then my back. Cold showers were a boxing thing, a good way of helping swollen muscles to heal. I hadn’t needed that for a long time. I’d kept in shape, still went to the same gym, but I hadn’t felt that burn and ache that comes from really using your body. Working out isn’t like fighting, in the same way cruising in your car on the freeway isn’t like a race.

But tonight...tonight, I could feel just a hint of it. Just a touch of that fire in my shoulders and chest, from swinging punches. Just a little throb in my fists where they’d connected with those bastards faces.

It felt good. I tried to tell myself it was because I’d
done
good, because I’d saved Sylvie. But I knew it went deeper than that.
Fighting
had felt good.

It was the first time I’d raised my hands to anyone in over a year. The first time I’d let myself be myself, instead of a locked-down, hooded nobody.

And something else had felt good, too. Her. The sight of her; the touch of her. I squeezed my hand shut, remembering the feel of her soft skin against my calloused fingers. The scent of that long dark hair when it had passed close to my face, like walking through a fucking meadow filled with blossoms.

I turned off the shower and toweled myself dry. But the memories didn’t stop.

The way her ripe breasts had pushed out the top of that pink t-shirt. The curve of her, from breast to waist, sculpted just perfectly for me to grab her and lift her and push her up against a wall.

I hit the light and flopped onto my bed, naked. It was way too hot for clothes. I lay there in the darkness with a faint breeze blowing in through the window.

Her back. That feline curve that ran from between her shoulders all the way down to the top of her ass. It made me want to strip her naked and run my palm down it. Maybe she’d gasp a little as the heel of my hand rubbed against that soft, tan skin, my fingers trailing along each sensitive vertebra.

Her legs. Those fantastic, sculpted calves and thighs, the tight denim hugging every smooth curve, leading up to—

I could feel my cock rising now, unbidden.

Her ass. Those tight, tight globes, high and firm and sticking out in just the right way. Just the right size for my hands to cup and squeeze. She’d groan. And then, with her on all fours, I’d gently part them….

My cock was pointing at the ceiling, now, throbbing.
No. For feck’s sake!
I wasn’t going to jack off to her like some teenager.

Her lips. Pink and full and so
soft.
Pressed together, a lot of the time, like she was worried about stuff. I wanted to take that away. I wanted to see her smile. The closest I’d seen was that little sigh of relief when she’d finally gotten her soda, and her lips had parted to show shining white teeth. It was burned into my memory: the little beads of sweat on her forehead, the way her lips had trembled when she paused her drinking and panted in air.

It was easy to imagine her on top of me: head thrown back, that long, silky hair flowing down her naked back and spilling over my hands. I’d be stroking her all the way from her ass up to her shoulders and my cock would be buried inside her, her thighs clamped around me. She’d pant and beg as she spasmed around me—

I snatched my hand away from my cock, thumped the pillow in frustration, and turned over on my side.

There was no use fantasizing about what I couldn’t have. The worst thing in the world for Sylvie would be to get mixed up with a monster like me. I liked her—feck, I was hard as iron for her.

So I’d have to steer clear of The Pit.

For both our sakes, I’d make sure I never saw her again.

Sylvie

There was a cab ride, paid for with the cash I dug from Alec’s pockets. Then the blinding fluorescent lights of the hospital. Alec on his back on a gurney and doctors shouting questions at me as I ran alongside.

What happened?

Was he attacked?

Do you want us to call the cops?

And me lying and making up a story about him getting mugged in an alley and the guy taking a crowbar to his leg.
I didn’t get a good look at him. It was dark. Please, just help him.

I saw them looking at each other and at the cuts on Alec’s knuckles—some new, some old. They didn’t believe me. He wasn’t the first bare-knuckle fighter to be brought in.

They talked about hemorrhaging and swelling and needing to relieve the pressure. One of them, before the others could stop him, demanded to know why I’d waited so long before bringing him in. I burst into tears.

They took him into emergency surgery, leaving me with a wad of forms to fill out. I went through them methodically, one by one, which took my mind off the horrors happening in the operating theater. Then I stared at the wall and tried to figure out how everything had gone so wrong, so fast.