The Love Experiment (Stubborn Hearts 1)

“Your wife. Your kids?”

Jack defended his face as Alvarez’s pummeled him. “Not married.”

They were up in each other’s space. “Did you fuck up with your girlfriend?” Alvarez let out a grunt and Jack shoved him away. There it was. “What did you do?”

“Nothing. I did nothing.”

Alvarez came at Jack. He got the words “That’s not why you’re here” out before he took a jab to the hip.

They tussled again. Alvarez was enraged now. He stopped being careful. “She has problems.” He landed a blow on the same hip. That was going to bruise.

“What kind of problems?”

“Depression.”

He came at Jack hard and made him hurt. This was why Alvarez was here. “You walked out on her.”

“Her problems aren’t mine.”

“Nope, so why are you here?” The game was to make him say it. You didn’t get absolution until you said the words. The words were the power, not the punches, it was always the words that described the action; the thing you did that made you hate yourself that much more.

Alvarez dropped his hands, his shoulders slumped. “Because I love her and I’m a fucking shit for abandoning her.”

Jack could take any shot he liked, but his arms were heavy and his body hurt and this fight was over, at least for Alvarez. “Go back and make it up to her.”

“She won’t take me back. Says she can’t trust me.”

“If that’s all it takes to push you away, you don’t love her. She doesn’t love you if she won’t give you a second chance. Fix it or move on.”

“I know it,” Alvarez said.

They were done. They touched gloves.

“If all you two ladies are going to do is waltz, get out of the pit so I can go home,” Barney called from the upper railing.

Both of them wer

e unsteady and slimy with sweat. Jack could drink a river of water. He went to the ladder and hauled himself out of the pit.

“I’m not coming back,” Alvarez said. He had trouble getting his feet to the rungs. “Barney told me you’re a regular. How much do you hate yourself to do this more than once?”

“It’s not about that for me.” He’d have given Alvarez a hand up, but with gloves still on that was impossible.

“Then what makes you do this? I hated every minute of it.”

“Frustration.”

Alvarez made the top of the ladder. He waved a glove at Jack. “I made you bleed because you’re frustrated? It has to be more than that.”

No one part of his body hurt more, but his brow must’ve reopened. He’d feel it later. Generosity was helping Alvarez to his revelation, but it didn’t help Jack feel any better about what he’d done to Honeywell.

“I’m not that deep,” he said as Alvarez stepped up beside him and the assistant attended to Jack’s laces. He recognized that as the kind of answer he’d given Honeywell’s questions. Flippant, careless, and guarded as fuck. He and Alvarez had smacked each other near senseless, which was exactly what Jack had wanted. The man deserved a more accurate response.

And so did Honeywell.

One at a time.

“This fixes something in me. It takes the noise out of my brain. Gives me a quiet space. I’m more focused on the big picture for having had everything narrow to the question of how not to get hit too hard, how to stay on my feet. A fight is like renewal. It helps me forgive myself for what I screw up and to start over again clean.”