Focus.
I need to fucking focus.
Garrett comes at me again, smelling blood now, thinking maybe he's got a chance. He doesn't. I slip his next combination anddrive my fist into his solar plexus hard enough that he folds forward, and then I bring my knee up into his face and he goes down.
He doesn't get back up.
The crowd roars.
Tank steps into the ring, checks Garrett, confirms he's done. I step back. My face is throbbing where he hit me. It'll bruise. I'm going to have a black eye tomorrow, which is fucking embarrassing, which is what I deserve for getting distracted.
I look toward the stairs.
Chloe is still there.
Her hand is pressed to her mouth. The blonde next to her is talking, saying something I can't hear over the crowd noise, but Chloe isn't looking at her. She's looking at me. Our eyes meet across the basement, across the crowd, and I see something in her face that I don't have time to interpret before she turns and disappears up the stairs.
Gone.
The blonde follows her.
And I'm standing in the ring with blood in my mouth and a growing bruise on my face and absolutely no idea what the fuck just happened.
Tank approaches. "You good?"
"Fine," I say.
"You sure? That hit—"
"I'm fine."
I'm not fine.
I step out of the ring. People are trying to talk to me, congratulate me on the win even though it was sloppy as hell, ask about the next fight. I ignore them. I move through the crowd toward the stairs, toward the door she just left through, and I don't know what I'm planning to do when I get there. Follow her? Demand to know why she's here? Pretend I didn't see her?
I reach the stairs.
I stop.
Following her is not an option. Whatever reason she had for being here, it's none of my business. She paid for self-defense lessons. That's the extent of our relationship. That's all it can be.
I turn around and go back to the ring.
There are three more fights tonight. I watch them from the edge of the crowd, my back against the wall, my hand pressed against the bruise forming on my face. The pain is good. The pain is useful. The pain reminds me that distraction in the ring gets you hurt.
Distraction anywhere else can get you killed.
By three a.m., the crowd is gone. By four, the basement is clean. By four-thirty, I'm alone in my apartment staring at the ceiling and replaying those five seconds when our eyes met.
She looked terrified.
Not of the fight. Not of the violence.
Of me.
And I have no fucking idea what to do with that.
Chapter 4 - Chloe
