“Were you too clingy?”
That was it. My pulse thumped in my ears as I stormed toward him. He grinned.
I yanked myself up into the cage, and he raised his fists, beckoning me closer.
“No face hits,” I huffed. I was pissed but not entirely fucking reckless. “You don’t have a mouth guard.”
“You are so boring.”
I refastened my gloves and raised my fists. Then we were circling each other, each waiting for the other to make the first move.
“Clingy,” he whispered.
I threw the first punch.
It had been a long time since I’d sparred with Rikky, before I made it pro, when we were mostly just messing around. I’d gotten much better since then, but so had he.
The first hit I landed, I still held back.
The first hit he landed, he definitely didn’t. His punch connected like a sledgehammer to my ribs, a familiar jolt into a recent past I’d lost. A past where I’d been something, until I’d lost it. Lost everything.
I grunted as I hit him back, this time giving him everything I had, all the rage, all the sadness compressed in my core like a furnace. It powered my body, threatening to combust if I didn’t relieve the pressure with my fists.
Rikky didn’t even guard himself. He took the hits and chuckled as he pulled in an unwilling breath.
I didn’t let up. Heat radiated from my fists, traveled up my tense forearms, higher. It scorched my neck and shoulders from the inside, until it made its way up to my eyes and I could hardly see. I was untethered. Unmoored. Unhinged. The furnace was overheating. Explosive. It wanted destruction. Pain.
Everything I’d bottled up and tamped down inside me was bursting out and I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t want to.
Smack. Smack. Smack.
Leather on skin.
He wasn’t fighting back now, just letting himself absorb my rage.
“Hit me.” I spoke between clenched teeth.
Smack. Smack.
He didn’t listen.
“HIT ME!” I screamed.
An arm like a steel bar collided with my chest. A leg hooked behind mine. My back slammed against the mats. He was on me.
The heavy thuds of large bodies rattling padded wooden boards echoed throughout the silent gym. I was burning up. Burning out.
Rikky had inhuman strength. Whenever I had him in a hold, he’d flip the both of us again. Again. Until his legs locked around my waist and his arms locked around my neck. I couldn’t break free. I refused to submit, until darkness danced in the corners of my vision. I tried to swing my arms behind me to hit him. He didn’t budge.
Shadows swallowed me. I tapped out. Rikky let me go.
I gulped in air. My chest heaved. My lungs burned.
I stared at the too bright ceiling light as the shadows eased off. Vision blurred from lack of oxygen. Cleared. Then blurred again as my eyes burned with sweat and tears. I was choking again, this time on my sobs.
A wall had broken, and everything was bleeding out. Emotional pain converted to physical. Grief and rage replaced by bruises, transformed so they could escape me in a form I understood. One I could deal with and process.
Rikky’s hand scooped under my head, lifting me into a sitting position before he smacked our foreheads together.
