I shift from foot to foot, step backward, then sideways. Dancing just out of his reach. He grunts, turns to face me—and I jump out of his way again.
The crowd boos.
Be quiet, losers. This is about the past and the present. Wait, no, this isn’t right. This is about the future. There is a future, I can see it, almost touch it, and I’ll fight for it.
Bricks growls. “Get here, boy. Stop running from me.”
Soon, fucker. Soon.
He stomps toward me and I duck under his fists to land two solid punches to his stomach. He stumbles back two steps, then returns, and I spring back.
I wipe blood from my lips, and spit again. My tongue feels swollen and burns.
The legs. The hits to his torso only tickle him. Kicking it is.
“Come back here!” he roars.
“Miss me?” I sprint to his side and land a hard kick to his shin that has him yelping in surpri
se. “Here I am, asshole.”
I follow through with a hook kick to the side of the knee, turn and drive my heel into the back of the knee—and watch him stumble forward.
Not down yet, though, and I jump back when he turns around, a murderous look on his face. He charges like a bull, head lowered, fists held in front of him, ready to strike. His knee is giving him trouble, but not enough to keep him back.
Shit.
Next thing I know, he’s battering me down. A solid hit to my stomach makes me gag, then an uppercut catches me in my bruised ribs and I weave on my feet.
Son of a bitch. Black spots swim in my vision. I can’t draw breath. Hurts like fire.
Bricks sends another punch to the side of my face and I go down like a sack of potatoes. I roll on my uninjured side, groaning. Blood dribbles from my mouth to the floor, spreading in a puddle.
Blood. Walls dripping with blood, the floors soaked with it.
“Tired, boy?” Bricks yells, bringing me back to the now.
I blink and the walls vanish. Reality returns: the cage. The fight club. Bricks.
As I lie there, gasping for breath, I realize two things.
One, fucker’s standing right here, over me. He’ll kill me if I don’t move, and getting up is out of the question right about now.
Two, we’re supposed to play dirty, and I’m looking straight at his legs. My target. His boxing boots are at eye level. All I have to do is reach out to touch them.
So I do. I reach out, grab his boot and wrench it toward me, until he’s stepping in my pooling blood.
A groan rises in my throat, because I’m also wrenching ribs whose status has probably gone from cracked to broken by now, but I don’t give a fuck. Now I have him right where I want him, standing in slippery blood.
Another wrench and he’s sliding, falling backward, arms windmilling. He crashes on his back with a boom that shakes the cage. And stays down.
I blink, hardly believing I did it.
For Meg, motherfucker. For a chance to do what I need to do.
The crowd falls silent. So silent I hear my wheezing breaths, hear the blood rushing in my ears. The men behind the bars, dressed in their elegant suits and ties, their polished shoes, stare with eyes wide as saucers.
Swallowing blood, gagging on it, I stare at Bricks’s fallen mass, just feet away from me. Like a mountain, indeed, I think randomly. A felled giant.