I rolled my eyes at his explanation; I knew he was just trying to irk me.
“Hold this for me, please?” I said sweetly, not waiting for an answer and handed him my bag. I knew that his alpha male persona wouldn’t like to hold my things for me.
I quickly pulled my hair up out of the way, exposing the dark strangle marks on my throat. I could feel Aiden’s eyes on me as I did so, but I ignored him. I then took a deep breath and met Brandon up on the mats.
“Alright, there’s not many rules . . . just no biting, no hair pulling, and no deliberate shots to the genitals, that’s just plain cheating!” Aiden called out for my benefit.
“It’s not too late to back out, you know,” Brandon said to me as he eyed my bruised neck and off-colored face. I knew he was seeing how messed up I looked, and he didn’t want to hurt me anymore than I already had been. It would have been a nice gesture, however, I couldn’t afford his niceness.
I just sighed exasperatedly and shook my head in reply. I was mostly just trying not to think about how sore and beat up I already was. I needed this chance.
He sighed and got into a fighting stance. I copied him, and my whole body felt weird and off balance. I was sure that I was doing it wrong, but I had no other experience to go by, so I just stayed in the copied position.
“Fight!” Aiden yelled out to both of us.
We were both unmoving. We stayed in our spots, simply eyeing each other wearily. He sighed after at least twenty seconds went by. He finally realized that he was going to have to attack first. I had never attacked anything first in my whole life, I hadn’t a single idea on how to do that. I always simply reacted to the things around me, I wasn’t an instigator.
He moved at me in a slow place; it was like he was stalking his prey. With each step forward he took, I took one back. I quickly reached the end of the mats and was cornered.
I glanced around for an opening as he raised his fist. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t actually very scared of the fist coming towards me. I was simply just strategizing. He was moving sluggishly. I took that opening and used his slow pace to my advantage and quickly stepped around him and twirled out of the way from his hit.
I saw the look of surprise on his face when I was able to get myself out of the cornered position that I had put myself in. He tracked me easily however, and caught up to me.
This time, even though he was much slower than me, he was also much more trained. He sent out a few warning kicks to my shins making me wince a little, but other than that, they hadn’t much of an effect on me.
“Brandon . . .” I heard Aiden warn from the sides. I knew that he was just playing with me. Those kicks hardly even fazed me.
Before I could even look back up from Aiden’s warning, I heard Brandon grunt and then lifted his fist and hit me. His fist hit the whole right side of my face, all the way from my temple to my jaw. As my body plummeted to the ground, a high-pitched noise rang in my head. My already dizzy head went swimming even more. I felt like I could throw up if I had more than a stupid apple in my stomach.
I suddenly smacked the ground, hard. I closed my eyes. The mats on the floor didn’t provide any sort of cushion. My aching body wanted to just hunch over in the fetal position and call it a day. Heck, ready to call it a life.
At that point, not only did my face hurt even more than before but also my head spun. I felt myself right on the verge of giving up; maybe this wasn’t a very well thought out plan.
It didn’t matter, though . . . It couldn’t matter. This was a life or death situation, and my giving up meant that I couldn’t get myself out of the family that I was born into. It meant that I couldn’t make my own life for myself. It meant death. I wasn’t sure what I wanted in life, but I did know that I wanted to decide that for myself. I didn’t want my father or Sunny to be the one to take that away from me. I had to get up. I had to keep on fighting!
Before I could back down and decide that it was a hopeless cause, I forced my body back up. I whined at the pain in the rest of my body and clenched my teeth from the dizziness that I was feeling in my head. I wiped my face blank of all pain and emotion and got back into a fighting stance.
“B-But . . . You’re supposed to be knocked out,” Brandon said incredulously.
“Really?” I said sweetly and looked around at everybody’s shocked faces. “I guess I didn’t get the memo.”
I took a quick glance over at Aiden. He had an unreadable expression on his face. “It’s legal,” Aiden said with a nod and a look at his stopwatch. “She only took six seconds to get back up, continue B. Under five left.”
Brandon huffed out a breath and stepped up to me again. This time, he meant business. He was punching quickly, but compared to me, he was slow. He was powerful as hell, but I was too quick to get caught.
I would not make the same mistake twice. Just one of his punches was enough for me to know that I never wanted to receive one of them again. I figured out his footwork easily from years of practice in anticipating hits from too many people, so I used that to stay away from him.
The match turned into a game of cat and mouse after I figured that out . . . unfortunately, that game never turns out good for the mouse. I was clearly the mouse.
I was tiring quickly, and my body was at its breaking point, but I wasn’t backing down. I was staying away from his punches, but his legs were too long for me to dodge every single time and stay away from his hands. I could barely even breathe by the time Aiden called the two-minute mark.
Brandon used my tiring body to his advantage and sent out a big kick combo that I had to dodge, making me get too close too his body. He punched out before I could recover fully from my dodge and his powerful punch collided with the front of my right shoulder.
I cried out as I felt the wet and sticky blood spill down from the cut that had been made by Daniel’s knife the night before. It was a good thing that I had black on. I stumbled back but caught myself letting out a whimper at the jerks that my body was enduring.
I don’t really know what made me snap. The pain at that point was astronomical, and I assume that the adrenalin finally kicked in. All I know is that I got mad. I was beyond angry. Angry at my life, angry at my messed-up situation, and angry at the guy before me who punched me and spilled my blood. I knew that it was irrational, and the guy had no idea what he had done, but I couldn’t help but to be angry.
This time, when he went to punch me once again, I used my small stature and speed to send an uppercut out to his chest. He obviously wasn’t expecting the tiny hint and curled down a little bit in instinct to protect himself from my little punch. I then used his slightly hunched form to my advantage and kneed him in the face.
He straightened up instantly, no longer playing around. He looked completely unfazed from my small offensive moves, but the little bit of blood that trickled from his nose made me slightly satisfied. He spilled my blood, so I spilled his.
He stared at me for a moment trying to figure me and my game out. I was too honest; I had no idea what I was doing. I was just using my instincts and anger. Before he had a chance to retaliate, I used the time that he was eating up by studying me and my moves to kick him right in the stomach, making him growl at me. I knew right then that I messed up.
He was behind me quicker than I had expected and wrapped his giant arms around me squeezing me too hard. My whole body was opposing the treatment, but he had me locked in his grasp. I was trapped.
Without thinking, I threw my head back at him and came into contact with something very harshly. He let go of me promptly. I didn’t know which one of us hurt more, but I knew that it worked.
I hit the ground rather hard when he let me go. I crumpled to the ground completely and coughed violently in response to the hard squeezing. My ears were ringing, and I could only hear static and my own breathing.
As I looked up from the ground, I realized that he was stalking me once again, but my legs wouldn’t let me get up. Instead, I used my mo
mentum to roll away. I was backing away as he got closer to me.
I knew I was done for. There was no way that I wasn’t going to get beaten up by this dude. I felt like I had fought hard, but it wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t good enough.
Who knows . . . maybe this time I would just die instead of living through it?
“Annnd time!” Aiden yelled from the side lines. I barely heard it through my ringing ears.
Brandon looked around and then stared at me intently. I stared back at him as I breathed hard trying to catch my breath. However, with every breath, I just received more glaring pain.
He reached his hand down to me, and I flinched on instinct. “Hey, the match is over . . . I’m not going to hurt you.”
I studied his outstretched hand and cautiously let him help me to my feet. I had to bite my tongue in order to not cry at the pain that was radiating off my body.
“Thank you.”
Both of us made our way over to Aiden. I could feel his eyes roaming over me in question as we both walked towards him. Everyone was staring at the pair of us.
“Go back to working on what you were doing before!” Aiden yelled dismissively, making me flinch at his loud voice.
“I was fighting my hardest,” Brandon said defensively before Aiden even spoke.
“I know,” Aiden said, reassuringly patting Brandon’s back.
“She’s too quick . . . I think she’s even faster than you, dude!” Brandon looked excitedly at me.
“How were you anticipating his hits Aubry?” Aiden asked me seriously.
“His feet. His footwork gives away which way he is punching towards, most people do. It’s common sense actually, you just have to know what to look for.”
“And you do? Know what to look for, I mean,” Aiden asked me skeptically.
I shrugged. “It’s not hard. Plus, I am faster than him, so I just kept sidestepping him mostly. I was just trying to stay away from him. His punches are too powerful to take too many of.”
“Yes, pretty much everyone gets knocked out the first time he punches them . . .” Aiden said matter-of-factly.
“Tommy!” Aiden called out loudly. A boy with black hair and a tan complexion came jogging up and nodded at Aiden.
“Go help Brandon with his footwork?” Aiden asked, pointing to the other side of the gym. Both boys walked away after eyeing me suspiciously.
Aiden stared at me for a few moments. I got antsy and uncomfortable with his look, but I stood my ground. He began circling me like a vulture.
“Your punches are weak, you have no balance, you act impulsively, and your kicks are appalling. However . . . you just survived eight minutes straight with one of my very best fighters and barely even got a mark on you.” He paused and stood back in front of me. “I suppose I’ll train you.”
My eyes widened at his words. “Yes!” I exclaimed in victory and threw my arms around him. I quickly realized what I did and backed away quickly. Partially due to the pains in my body and because he was glaring at me.
“Thank you,” I added timidly.
“Let’s get started,” he said, walking away without even sparing a glance at me.
***
Aiden
To say that I was impressed was a vast understatement. I, along with all of the other elite fighters, had been subjected to Brandon’s powerful punches multiple times. It even took years for me to be able to withstand one of those punches without him winning in a TKO. For a little girl such as Aubry to be able to get back up and be coherent enough to last five more minutes with him was absolutely remarkable.
The girl obviously had no previous fighting experience. Her punches were a testament to that. However, she had excellent instincts and already knew how to watch footwork. She really had potential. Plus, she simply had a raw desire to fight.
I could see it in her eyes . . . She needed this.
It was crazy for me to train her. I mean, I had never trained anyone before. Sure, I helped out at the gym, I corrected their positions as they fought and gave pointers every once in a while though, but that is completely and totally different from taking on someone to train to fight at the Underground.
The Underground was a completely different beast on its own. We had a few of our elite fighters who participated in the pool there, but we all trained together. I certainly was not the one guiding and shaping them. I didn’t train.
This girl was something else though. I wasn’t sure what it was, probably the desperation, but I just knew I needed to help her. She was annoying and way over her head. For some reason, I just had to help her.
“Let’s get started!” I called out behind me. I did not wait for her to catch up to me as I led the way to a start up practice dummy. She had a lot to learn.
“First things first, the rules . . . You will be here to practice and train on time, the way I tell you to, okay?”
She nodded, though it was hesitant.
“You will do as I say with no arguments or questions . . .”
She frowned at that one.
“I am trying to help you; I won’t do something to hurt you.”
She nodded again.
“I will take ten percent of your earnings.”
She frowned, and I could see the hesitation in the nod.
I suddenly felt bad. I could see that money was clearly the reason why she was resorting to the Underground. I found myself sighing deeply. I was already making too many exceptions with the damn girl.
“However, if you absolutely need the money right now . . . I suppose I’ll wait until you can afford it.” Her eyes lit up at my clarification, and she thanked me profusely. “And lastly, you will not talk to me at school. Ever.”
She nodded again with a frown.
“Alright, take off your sweater and let’s get started.”
She looked at me with wide eyes as I said that.
“L-Let me go grab a shirt from my bag real—”
I cut her off briskly, I didn’t have time for this. “Why? You have one on. Or at least a sports bra, I see it right there,” I stated, pointing to her chest that was clearly covered with an undergarment.
“Well it’s a sports bra but I—”
I cut her off again. I didn’t have time or the patience to argue with the girl. “Look, the sweater with the too long arms will slow you down. I saw it during your fight. Just take the damn sweater off. You remember my rules? Are we already having issues?”
She hung her head in defeat and slowly took off her sweater. As she did that, I began setting up to teach her the fundamentals of a punch. We had a very long way to go.
I didn’t notice the silence for a few moments. What I did notice, however, was everyone’s eyes towards us. I turned and looked at Aubry questioningly.
What I saw was not what I had expected. She was standing there with her head down and heaving breaths too quickly under the scrutiny. Her sweater was off her body, and I could immediately see why she wanted to keep her sweater on.
Damn, and I thought her face was in bad shape. It was nothing compared to the rest of her body. There were bruises covering all of her torso and her sides, disappearing under her bra. The worst of the bruises were extremely deep black and purple at her ribs, there was no way that those weren’t broken. Then, just to top it all off, blood was still dripping from a decent-sized cut under one of her collarbones.
I felt sick as I took in the damage to her body. Just to think, she was that injured all while fighting Brandon for eight minutes. She was one tough girl to be able to endure all of that pain. I was as speechless as everyone else.
Without thinking about what I was doing, I quickly stripped off my shirt and threw it on her head. I didn’t think; I just acted. I didn’t want people seeing her like that, just as I knew she didn’t want people seeing her like that.
Note to self: I need to start listening.
“What is everyone looking at?! Get back to work!” I yelled intimidatingly at everyone. They need to mind their o
wn business. Everyone averted their gaze away quickly at the sound of my angry voice. I stood there for a moment and glared at anyone who dared to look our way again.
“Okay. So first, I’m going to teach you how to hold your fist correctly,” I began our lesson off and acted as if nothing had happened. The girl obviously didn’t want to talk about it. It was really none of my business, no matter how much I wondered about it and how much those bruises haunted me. If she wanted me to know, then she would have explained it to me.
We worked on fundamentals until the clock hit nine o’clock which was closing time. Most of the people in the gym had already gone home.
“Okay, it’s time to call it a night,” I stated.
She nodded quickly. She looked at her fist once again to make sure it was positioned right and threw one last punch at the bag.
“Brandon and I both train in the morning here from five-thirty to seven-thirty. So, be here then. Do not be late.”
She nodded wordlessly and removed my shirt to give it back to me. “A-And tomorrow, wear a tank top or a t-shirt. Just wear something without the oversized arms, okay?”
“Okay.” She paused before continuing, “T-Thank you for that, by the way. I really appreciate it,” she said, not meeting my eyes.
We both walked outside. It was pretty dark out as we walked out. I turned to lock the doors with my key. She actually stopped to wait on me as I did so.
Out of nowhere, Brandon came up behind us sneakily. “Boo!” he yelled.
She ducked behind me quickly, shaking and bracing for impact.
Brandon’s eyes widened at her reaction and his laughter died down.
“Aubry . . . I—”
She quickly cut him off. “I—Sorry.” Her voice was shaky, and she looked embarrassed. “I’ll . . . um . . . See y’all tomorrow!” she called out while walking down the street briskly.
“Idiot,” I said, hitting his arm as we watched her walk away. “Get in the car.”
“She’s going to be okay, right? Walking home in the dark?” Brandon asked.
Fighting For Life Page 6
