I ran, trying to leave it behind me. I ran, trying to outrace my past. I ran from AM’s fear, from my fear, from everything until I realized running wasn’t my answer.
Panting, I pulled up and jacked a number into my phone.
“Yes?”
“I need a fight. A big one. Someone who legitimately stands a chance at beating my sorry ass. Do you have someone like that or do you just trade in little girls dressed up and pretending to be men?” I snarled.
“Come to the Casino. We’ll hook you up.”
“Twenty minutes,” I confirmed.
I ran back to my car, which I’d left in AM’s parking lot. I tried to think only of the lights of the Casino, the raised boxing stage, the springy mats. I envisioned the type of opponent I would have and how I’d feint and jab. Do a power kick.
I sped out of the lot as fast as I could, thinking that distance would help me forget her, but all I could see was her hair spread across my pillow. Her lips swollen from my kisses. Her body flushed with arousal. Her face white with fear. Fuck me.
My hands twitched with the desire—no, the need—to get back to AM and throw myself at her feet so I could beg for forgiveness. But I forced myself forward. I was too afraid to go back. Too afraid I was going to use my fists on something other than the wall. I ignored the pain in my gut, the coin burning a hole in my pocket, and the wetness on my cheeks to prepare for the fight ahead.
The lights of the Casino blinded me as I pulled into a reserved spot for employees near the rear entrance. I pulled out my gym bag out of the trunk and unzipped it. There were shorts, a wife beater, and some wraps. No shoes. I didn’t need shoes. Grabbing the bag, I went to the staff entrance and pounded. It opened immediately to reveal Noah, Finn, Adam, and Mal. The four of them wore thunderous looks.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I barked.
“That’s the same damn question I have for you,” Noah spat back.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m here to fight.” I lifted my gym bag.
“You look like you were in a fight already and lost it,” Mal observed, his nonthreatening voice making the words seem all the more disheartening. It was Mal’s connections that likely brought them all trooping out here. Either that or someone from the fighting community ratted me out to Noah.
I rubbed a hand down my face. On top of everything, I didn’t need a lecture from these guys, who were supposed to have my back.
“Am I five?” I asked Noah.
“No,” he replied.
“Then I get to make my own decisions. I’m going in to fight, and either you guys are with me or you go home.” I waited, arms crossed. Noah and I stared at each like gunfighters in the old west, but finally he gave in and moved aside.
“I’ve got your back, always,” Noah said as I brushed by him. “It’s just that sometimes that means keeping you from danger instead of running behind you into it.”
“We were Marines. We laugh in the face of danger. We lean the goddamn whole way into danger.”
“If we’re smart Marines, we avoid it until we have a plan to defeat it.”
“I’m trying to defeat it right now, Noah,” I told him tiredly.
Noah sighed. “Okay then. Let’s go beat the shit out of danger.”
AM
THE BUZZING WAS INCESSANT. I thought it was my dream, but then I realized it was someone downstairs wanting to come up. Ellie wasn’t responding. I dragged myself out of bed and answered the phone in the kitchen.
“Whosit?” I mumbled.
“Noah Jackson. Can you let me up? It’s urgent.”
“Um, yeah.” I pressed the access code. I was barely awake, and Bo’s roommate and best friend was bringing urgent business to my apartment at a godforsaken time in the morning. I peered blearily at the microwave. The clock said it was two in the morning. A knock, more like a pounding, woke me from my reverie. I walked like a zombie and opened the door. The sight at my doorstep jerked me out of my stupor.
Noah and Finn held a beaten, nearly unrecognizable man between them. Noah immediately muscled his way inside, pushing me aside. “Sorry,” he said, but he wasn’t sorry at all. “Which bedroom is yours?”
I pointed numbly down the hall. None of my synapses were firing here. I couldn’t really process this scene or having a half-bloodied man being dragged into my apartment and put on my bed. “Is that Bo?”
“Yes,” was the clipped response from Noah.
The sounds of our voices must have roused him because I heard noises coming the battered and bruised face. I crept toward the bed.
Bo’s eyes were both swollen shut. He had cuts above his eye. His nose was taped. There were abrasions on both cheeks and a cut on his right cheek. His upper lip was split and swollen.
I leaned down because I couldn’t make out what he was saying. “I’m sorry, AM,” he breathed against me. “So sorry.” I didn’t realize I was crying until I saw tears drip down on top of his cheek. He winced slightly, a tiny drawing up of his cheekbones. Even that small pressure was painful. My heart clenched.
“What’s going on?” I hissed at Noah, trying to keep my voice low so that I wouldn’t wake Bo again if he passed out.
Noah avoided my question, but instead gestured for me to help me him undress Bo. The jeans were bloodsoaked in spots, particularly on the thighs. Noah unsnapped the shirt that was thrown over Bo and pulled it out from under him. Each movement made Bo wince and moan. But Noah got Bo down to his boxer briefs, and I threw a blanket over him, not wanting to look at the desecration made of his body. His hand crept out from under the blankets. I looked at it but made no move to take it. Noah knelt down and grabbed the hand.
“I’m here, buddy. What do you need?” His tone was almost motherly, soothing.
“AM,” Bo groaned.
I came over and knelt down beside Noah. He removed his hand, and I laid my head on Bo’s outstretched palm. It was the one thing on his body that seemed to be unhurt. I pressed my cheek against it and turned my head to the side. “Shhh. I’ll be here when you wake up.” This promise seemed to settle him. He pulled his hand out from under my cheek and placed it on top of my hair, tangling his fingers in the threads of my messy bed hair.
Noah had dragged my chair up to the bed and pulled out his phone. He propped his feet up on the edge of the bed. He fiddled with his phone and then dropped it on his lap. I hadn’t even noticed that Finn had left.
“What’s going on?” I asked again, unmoving. Bo’s hand lay warm but firm above me. When I shifted, his hand tightened and he moaned in distress. “Shh,” I tried to soothe him, stuffing down my anger.
“Why haven’t you taken him to the hospital?”
Noah’s breath gusted out, like it was some big ordeal to tell me what the hell had happened to Bo.
“I can’t. Bo’s condition would place the whole fight ring under scrutiny. No one would allow him to fight again, and a lot of people would get into trouble. Besides, I had him checked out by someone I trust.”
“Maybe it would be a good thing if he doesn’t fight again,” I whispered furiously. I was trying to keep my voice down, but it was hard, given how much I ached to yell at Noah, throw some things around, and just generally shout out my unhappiness. This was insane.
“He’s been in worse conditions.”
“Where? In Afghanistan, where you were fighting insurgents and dodging bombs? I mean, really, Noah, why can’t you leave that behind?” I stood and started pacing.
“Itemize his injuries for me,” I demanded.
Noah dully starting listing them off. “Possible concussion. Multiple contusions on the face, over the eye and cheekbones. Nose surprisingly not broken but damaged. Possible rib fracture, definitely rib bruising. Then just more contusions on the thighs and legs.”
“Contusions? Speak English.”
“Bruising and swelling. Superficial injuries.”
“So the worst is the ribs?”
“Yeah, but without an X-ray, we won’t really know. The fact is, for rib injuries, it’s just a matter of staying stationary until you heal. Like a tailbone. Nothing you can do about it.”
“You know a lot about injuries.”
“Can’t fight and not know the consequences. Bo knew the consequences. He wanted those consequences and given that he would not stop bothering me to come here, I’m guessing you had something to do with that.”
“Me? Bo and I are—” I started to explain but I didn’t know what we were. Before tonight, I would have said we were dating and now, with a hole in my wall and one in my heart, I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on. I was worn out emotionally and couldn’t think straight.
“Whatever.” Noah was just as angry as I was, I realized. He was angry at Bo, but he didn’t want to be angry with his old friend, so he redirected it at me. I was angry with Noah for the same reasons, because it seemed wrong to direct my ire at Bo while he was lying prone and defenseless and looking like a battered rag doll. I wanted to soothe his wounded brow with a soft cloth and then beat him with it when he recovered.
“AM, why don’t you try to get some rest, perhaps in your roommate’s room?”
Bo grunted a “No” and his hand reached for me again.
“Okay,” Noah said, trying for a placating and patient tone. “No one’s trying to take her from you. I’m only looking out for her, like you’d want.” Noah turned his attention to me. “I need to wake Bo every two hours. Since he may or may not have a concussion.”
I shook my head. Bo had moved silently to make room for me on the bed. I hadn’t heard him make a sound even though I knew it must have been excruciating. I sighed and climbed into bed next to him, leaning against the headboard. Bo grunted his approval and laid a hard, hot hand on my thigh. My presence on the bed seemed to settle him, because his breath evened out.
“So Bo got in a fight tonight? Or got hit by a car? And you guys like to play doctor, so he’s here in my apartment and not in an emergency room?”
Noah eyed me contemplatively, probably deciding how much truth and how much fiction I should be given. I cleared it up for him.
“I want the whole story. You owe it to me.”
Noah grimaced. “Right. Look, I only know that Bo wanted to come here so badly that he practically wrecked us in the car, fighting to get me to bring him here. So here I am.”
“That doesn’t tell me why Bo looks like he was an extra in Rocky.”
“Bo went to the Casino looking for a fight. He took one, and then challenged the crowd, asking for anyone with a set of balls to stand up. He knocked the next guy down and then the next, but with each bout he took a ton of hits. Finally, and I don’t know why but I suspect it’s because of something to do with you,” Noah accused, “he picked the biggest fucker in the room, someone who blew out his knee or he would have played professional football as a lineman. A pro athlete. And then Bo didn’t even try. He poked at him, taunted him, basically drove the lineman into a rage and then suffered a beatdown like none other. I kept yelling for him to tap out, to wave the white flag, but he kept going back in. Now we’re here. What’s your side of the story?”
“My side?” I was furious that Noah wanted to blame this debacle on me. Furious and feeling terribly guilty.
Noah sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “Sorry. I’m just frustrated. I don’t know what happened tonight, and I wish to fuck I did.”
I wasn’t going to tell Noah that Bo and I had fought over the frat party debacle or my refusal to transfer. I ached that my own wrongheadedness was what had driven Bo crazy. If only he’d waited just a few minutes longer, I could’ve told him I was going to confront all those things he rightly pointed out that I’d been avoiding.
“Oh, Beauregard, always trying to make things harder on yourself.”
“You know why Bo isn’t a professional fighter even though he’s far more naturally skilled than me?” Noah asked out of the blue. This seemed like a random question. Maybe they’d both suffered a knock on the head. When I shook my head, Noah continued, “Bo lacks discipline. He was constantly getting in trouble, just little things, when we were enlisted, but he’s so strong and capable and so damn brave that his little infractions were smoothed over. We needed every able-bodied person willing to step up, and Bo was willing to do all the things that were dangerous and scary and unwise. We all covered for him because every guy in the unit loved Bo. How could you not?
“But the rigidity of the unit helped him. Out here, he’s just a crazy-ass motherfucker waiting for the right person to piss him off. You need to get as far away from him as possible, so you aren’t hurt by the shrapnel when he takes one for the team.”
I struggled to understand all this military speak and how this applied to me. All I knew was that Bo was hurt and that made me hurt too. One argument shouldn’t have led to this. “You don’t have to stay. I can wake him up.”