Page 59 of Rayzor: Tell Me It’s Mine II

“See, you don’t have the answers.”

“When you weren’t boxing, wasn’t ball your thing? I remember the games, your favorite players…” I glanced around the room. “You still got the posters up on the wall.”

“You can be made for more than one thing. You know that, Court. You’re fire as hell at boxing, but you’re also a beast at football and other sports too.”

“Yeah, but you got a chance to do big with baseball. No record, clean living, it makes sense for you. That wasn’t my case, Leek. You keep trying to make our stories sync, and they don’t.”

“They don’t got to. I’m still doing it.”

“You think you got a choice?”

“I got somebody to back me. You and Mama don’t gotta like it.”

I stood up from the chair.

“Grab the gloves,” I told him and left the room.

Ma came around the corner with a white cloth in her hand. Tears and anxiety on her face. Prayers weren’t fixing this. Let me see if I had the answers.

“What happened? I told you he’s trailing a dark road.”

I put everything in my pocket on the hood of her SUV and stood in the front yard.

Ma came out seconds later.

“What’s going on?” she asked, worried.

“He wanna get in the ring, I’m about to see what he got.”

Maleek came out minutes later.

“I don’t got my gloves. Ma burned them.”

“It’s cool. A real hitta don’t need gloves.”

“You want me to fight you?”

“If you can beat me then you can continue boxing. If not, I want that mothafucka’s number that’s been putting a battery in your back.”

I got in my stance.

“Courtland, you don’t have to do this. I think he gets the point,” Ma pleaded.

“You called me. Your method wasn’t working. We’re doing it another way.”

Maleek wasn’t confident. His posture was droopy.

I didn’t want to do this with lil’ bro, but something gotta give. I saw too much of younger me over these last few months, and if I can stop it before it got too deep, then I did my job.

“I ain’t trying to do this with you, Court.”

“But you wanna get in the ring, right? One day you gon’ have to fight a nigga like me. What better time than now to get that practice in.”

He pulled up his sweats and switched off before locking in.

“This ain’t gon’ be practice,” his tone dripped.

“Show me what it is then.”