“Bullshit,” he snarls, swinging and missing me completely.
I sweep him again. “That bullshit?”
He pops up and plows into me, trying to knock me down.
“Hey!” Jagger yells as he walks back toward the cage. “That’s enough.”
I push Buck off, and he comes at me again.
“Think I can’t take you? You’re fucking wrong,” Buck hisses.
“You learn to lose all that attitude so you can defend yourself without getting hurt, you may last more than five years in a legit fighting ring. You keep that shit up, you’ll be done in a year, asking your momma your name while she’s wiping your ass,” I tell him, pushing him off again.
“What the fuck do you know? You ain’t fought nothing but fuckers in a steel cage half your size,” he grumbles.
“Might be true, but you’d be calling someone Daddy if you ended up in there.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Now go take your shit out on the bag.”
“This is some bullshit, man,” he smarts off as he climbs between the ropes. “No idea why I even put up with you motherfuckers.”
“ ’Cause you ain’t got money to pay a trainer, young buck.” Jagger laughs. “Keep your disrespectful shit up, he’s gonna wash his hands of you.”
“Fuck you, man,” Buck sneers at him.
“That’s enough,” I tell him as I climb out.
I know Jagger is just taking my back because I look at Buck the way Shaw once saw Jagger and me, but I don’t want Buck’s shit out there like this. I still need him to back off Jagger. He can’t disrespect my partner. It’s not how this works.
I remember when I couldn’t find control inside, always feeling a constant rage. One I could never explain.
I never told anyone anything more than that I should have killed the fucker long before I did. Locked up, tucked away, it wasn’t rehabilitation, reform, or a transition for a young man who made a mistake. Nope, it was my own school of hard-knocks, run by men who were the darkest of the dark.
What I learned? Keep to myself, watch out for myself, and fight for myself harder than I ever fought anyone else.
Buck stays at the bags for the rest of the day, alternating between the heavy bag and the speed bag until closing.
“You good?” I ask as he comes out of the locker room.
He lifts his chin and walks toward the door. “See ya.”
“Yeah, see ya.”
After locking the door, I decide to follow young Buck’s lead by taking out my aggression on the bag, which is a whole different animal than rage.
An hour turns into two, and when I am damn sure I will drop due to exhaustion, without so much as a shower, I kill the lights and take the stairs, calling it a night.
***
I wake up fucking exhausted from lack of sleep. I didn’t take one of those fucking pills, and I regret it in a big way.
I throw on clothes and my tennis shoes before heading out for a run I am already dreading.
My feet pound pavement, my heart rate increases, my exhausted body fights itself first for sleep and now for the opposite.
I carry the curse of the dammed.
As I move, I decide I can’t hit the coffee shop since there is a chance I might run into her, the apple from the garden of Eden. Whatever we have going on is a tale told countless times, one that never ends well.
Fuck it. Fuck her.
When I get back to the gym, I stop and take my pulse before entering. Looking through the windows, I see Buck is already here. His back is facing me, and Jagger is tearing him up.
Half of me wants to turn right the fuck around and walk away, but where the fuck would I go? I have responsibilities, ones I never asked for, yet here I am, knowing I should be grateful. Hell, most of the time I am. Just not today.
I walk in and all goes quiet. Then Buck turns and looks at me, with a black eye and a cut over his forehead.
“What the fuck happened to you?” I ask.
“Well, because he knows everything there is to know...” Jagger starts to explain with a pissed off expression I haven’t seen in a long damn time.
“Wasn’t like that,” Buck interrupts. “It was me, or it was them, and I fucking chose me.”
“Shouldn’t have been there in the first place!” Jagger yells at the top of his lungs.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you, motherfucker.” Buck pokes Jagger in the chest.
Jagger straightens up, his fists clenching. Then, like God Himself is intervening, Tatiana walks out of the door from my apartment, stopping him from doing exactly what it is I know he wants to do—knock the boy down. He needs it, but Jagger won’t. His promise to her. He won’t fight again.