“No,” Bull argued from behind me.
I turned and looked at him with a sneer. “You knew what would happen here today, Prez. You know who I am, what I can do. and you know I won’t take the coward’s way out.”
Bull climbed into the ring. “Get out of here,” he yelled to Wolf and Patch, and they both immediately obliged. He crouched in front of me. “That’s where you’re wrong, kid. Yeah, I know who you are, what you did, and yeah it’s fucked up. But I put you in this ring because I believed in you.” He shook his head and looked away. “He’s going to kill you. I should have gotten you some warmup fights first or something.”
“Prez, I’m good. I’ve been in worse shit than this…trust me. Do not end this fuckin’ fight!”
I watched the hesitancy on his face and when the bell went, before he could say anything I stood up and pushed past him. Mouthguard or not, I was doing this.
Bench and I both charged forward. My hearing was still whack, but my vision had righted itself and my mouth had stopped bleeding. I smiled at Bench, bloody teeth and all, and he cocked his head like I was fucked in the head. Little did he know that I was the epitome of being fucked in the head.
He was taller than me, and as he swung at me, his body tucking down to get me in the ribs, I stepped to the side and swung at him.
Everything went into that one hit.
Everything.
The hate.
The anger.
The guilt.
The shame.
The murdering son-of-a-bitch that I was came out and poured himself and his whiskey-loving soul into that one punch, hitting Bench hard in the right temple.
Fury and blood pounded through my body, anger and desperation to belong, to live without regrets, and just this once to not let someone down.
I couldn’t save my mother.
I refused to save my stepfather.
And my baby sister was already gone before I had known what happened.
Most things in the world you could replace, or they didn’t matter. A crackhead mother. An abusive, manipulative stepfather. But a little girl who had wanted to grow up and become a ballerina was irreplaceable. And I had let it slip away.
I was an evil man and I destroyed everything I touched. And today I would destroy Bench and make Bull proud of me, or I’d fuckin’ die trying.
As Bench started to topple forward, I threw punch after punch at him, his stomach muscles turning to putty under my reign of destruction on them. And then he dropped to his knees and I followed, slamming my fists into him, my aim on his head even as his eyes rolled back. I kept on punching until the ringmaster, Bull, and Wolf pulled me away. And then Bench fell, the feel of his motionless body vibrating through the floor of the ring as he collapsed, and the crowd fell silent.
Sweat poured from me in rivers, and blood blinded my right eye as the cut Bench had created opened back up, but none of it mattered. None of it.
I turned to Bull, shrugging out of everyone’s grip. They let me go, taking a step back as my fury came off me in waves. Bull knew who I was. He had to know what I had done. Had he been fucking with me the whole time? Using me like my stepfather had?
“Did I do you proud now, Prez?” I snarled at him.
~ 14 ~
I sat in the dressing room, which wasn’t a dressing room at all, but a men’s bathroom with a “do not disturb” sign on the door and a plastic garden chair for me to sit on. It had been fifteen minutes and I still hadn’t taken my gloves off and no one had come to tell me if Bench was okay.
He’d been out cold when I’d been dragged from the ring, blood pouring from his nose and mouth and his eyes rolled all the way back.
My arms were still shaking, still needing to hit something and destroy it. My body was taut with tension, sweat and blood mingling at my feet. The voice inside my head had calmed, and my breathing had finally returned to normal, but I was waiting. Waiting for Bull. Waiting for what would happen next.
As if on cue, the door swung open and Hammer, Patch, Wolf, and Bull came in. I looked up, chin raised and eyes burning, ready for a fight. Wolf and Hammer flanked Bull, both men looking uncertain of me. I hated that look from them almost more than I hated myself. I’d felt like perhaps I did belong there after all. That perhaps it wasn’t all for nothing.
The look on their faces made me believe I was wrong. But instead of feeling sad, I just felt more angry. Bull and this club had given me hope. Not hope for redemption, because I was long past that, but hope for some meaning, and it felt like that was being snatched away from me now.
