He shrugs, but not like he doesn’t know—like he knows too well, and saying it out loud makes it worse.
“First time I hurt someone,” he says. “I was twelve. Maybe thirteen. I don’t remember the exact day. But I remember how it felt. The power. The fear in their eyes. And how afterward, nothing felt real except that.”
I watch his hands. They don’t tremble. They never do. But they tighten, just slightly, like the memory is still fresh somewhere behind his eyes.
“And it got easier?” I ask.
“No,” he says, looking straight at me now. “That’s the worst part. It never got easier. It just got familiar.”
There’s no bravado in his voice. No swagger. He’s not trying to impress me. He’s not trying to scare me, either. He’s just telling the truth the only way he knows how: plain, brutal, and without decoration.
“You ever try to stop?” I ask.
He laughs, not loud, but the kind that feels like it’s pulled from a cracked rib. “Yeah. Once. Lasted six months. Thought maybe if I stayed out of the ring, off the street, out of sight,it’d fade. Like a bad habit. Thought maybe I’d sleep through the night without grinding my teeth into dust. Thought maybe I’d dream about anything other than blood or breathing through broken noses.”
“And?”
His eyes close. Not for long, but long enough to make the moment feel like it’s balanced on the edge of something fragile.
“It got worse,” he says. “The silence turned mean. The stillness started scratching at the inside of my skull. Like I was starving, but not for food. For movement. For violence. For something real.”
I nod again, softer this time. “It’s not violence you’re addicted to.”
He snorts. “That so?”
“It’s control.”
He doesn’t argue. Just watches me like he’s trying to decide if I’m dangerous, too, in a different kind of way.
“It’s not about the kill,” I say, carefully. “It’s about the certainty. About knowing how it ends. About the rules, even if they’re brutal. They make more sense than the ones the rest of us live by.”
He looks away then, toward the window, toward the half-moon slung low behind the buildings.
“You talk like you’ve seen this before,” he murmurs.
“I’ve studied it,” I say. “But I’ve never sat this close to it.”
He doesn’t smile, but his mouth softens, just enough to make something in my chest twist.
“I didn’t want to come here tonight,” he says. “I told myself I was done. That it was safer for both of us. But then I couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t breathe, really. Not without hearing your voice in my head, trying to tell me I’m not a monster.”
“I never said that.”
“You don’t have to.”
I stand then, without thinking, and cross the space between us. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t flinch. Just watches me with those dark eyes, the color of storm clouds after the rain, and waits.
I stop beside the chair and rest my fingers lightly on his forearm, just above the wrist. The contact is small. Simple. But the heat that flashes through my hand is anything but.
It’s not sexual. Not exactly.
It’s cellular.
Like something under the skin recognized something in him and stood up at attention.
He inhales sharply, barely audible, but I feel it in the way his muscles go still beneath my fingers, like he’s holding himself back from something that doesn’t have a name.
I pull my hand away.
