“I’m slow,”Aedan told me. “Use that! Come on!”
We’d been in the ring all morning. He was driving me hard and yet, at the same time, he was giving me lots more openings than usual. It was almost as if he wanted me to hit him.
I shook my head. “But how do you knowhe’llbe slow? The guy replacing Lowell?”
Aedan had returned, the night before, and told me that Lowell wouldn’t be fighting me. The blood on his knuckles told me why. But he’d also said he’d seen Rick, and that I’d be fighting someone else.
“I just know,” said Aedan. “He’ll be big, but slow.” I’d never heard his voice so strained. “You’ve got to go in fast and go for the head. Don’t let his size faze you. Don’t be intimidated. No matter what.”
“You don’t understand,” I told him. “It’s not a normal fight. Whoever Rick’s got to replace Lowell—he won’t just want to win. He’ll want to get me down on the floor and—”
“No,” said Aedan sharply. “He won’t. Not this guy.”
“How do you know? How can you be so sure?”
“I just do! Now hit me!”
I stared at him and saw the helpless fear in his eyes. I slowly lowered my fists as realization dawned.
“Come on!” he snapped at me. “Keep going!”
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “It’s you. Rick wants me to fight you!”
Aedan closed his eyes and lowered his hands. He nodded reluctantly.
“But that makes no sense! He knows we won’t fight each other!”
Aedan looked at me from under those heavy Irish brows. “He’s not going to give us a choice.” He sighed. “If we don’t fight, he kills us both; if we don’t show, he kills Alec.”
I swallowed, thinking desperately. “Okay, so...I have to knock you out? Or you have to knockmeout?” The thought of doing it made me nauseous, but it was something we could survive.
Aedan shook his head. He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned forward until his forehead touched mine.
“Oh God,” I whispered. “Oh, Jesus, no….” I pushed back from him. “Thatwas your plan? To train me to fight you and then just show up at the fight and expect me to kill you?!”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I figured the later you knew, the better.”
Before I knew what I was doing, I’d slapped him hard across the face. “Asshole!Stupid, selfishasshole!What’s the matter with you? I can’t do this! You know I can’t do this! I love you!”
He stood there, a red mark rising on his cheek, and stared at me. His quiet calm was scarier than any amount of anger. “You have to,” he told me. “This is the only move we have left.”
“You’reinsane!What are you thinking?! We have to go to the cops!”
“We’ve got no evidence. If we go to the cops, Rick’s lawyer will get him out within hours. And then we’re both dead and Alec too. We can’t run and leave Alec in the hospital. We don’t have a choice. Only one of us can come out of the pit.”
“Ican’t!Jesus, of course I can’t! Are you kidding me?!” I turned and ran, slipping under the ring’s ropes and racing out of the doors of the gym.
He caught up with me half a block away, in an abandoned lot. Seizing my hand, he jerked me around to face him. “You have to.” He squatted down so that he was on my level and ran his fingers throughmy hair. “Sylvie...one of us has to go. And there’s no way I’m letting it be you.”
I could feel tears pouring down my cheeks, but the deep, hot horror of it was so painful in my chest that they barely even registered. It was too cruel, too twisted. After everything we’d been through together. After finally finding the person I was meant to be with. “I can’t do it!”I screeched.
He hugged me close. “You have to.”
And, underneath the sadness in his eyes, I could see the calm. Jesus, he though—he thought this was a way to redeem himself!He thought that, if he sacrificed himself—
I tore myself out of his arms and ran.
This time, he didn’t chase me. I ran three or four blocks and only stopped when I reached the docks. It was another beautiful afternoon, with the cranes reflected in glass-calm water.This isn’t right.It felt like the wind should be howling and the rain lashing down.
