by Shey Stahl
“I’m not doing it,” I told her, knowing she’d understand. The light from the bathroom shone into my room and the side of my face highlighting every detail for her. Could she see now how vulnerable I was? How quickly I could go from stone to dust?
A moment of silence passed, and then she asked, “What happens… I mean, to Danny?”
Shrugging, my head hung again, my eyes stinging. Believe it or not, fighters are vulnerable, emotional, and often fighting for something far greater than the pain their punches delivered. “I don’t know.”
“What if you gave him the money after the fight?”
“It’s two hundred grand now, but after the fight, I know these guys, it’ll be two million.” And then I stared up at her, hoping she understood where I was coming from and my struggle with this. She saw my tears, the bloodshot eyes and the defeat deep in my soul. She saw all of it in those moments. “He’s never going to stop. I’m his personal bank of Destry. Do you know how many times I’ve bailed him out? How much money he’s blown away on gambling?”
Tallan shook her head and sat next to me, her hands on my shoulder.
We didn’t speak for a moment until her hand rose, placed gently and tenderly on my cheek.
Tell her how sorry you are. Beg her to see this wasn’t you. You would never hurt her like that.
I turned and mouthed I’m sorry to her, my eyes still wet.
There was a sharp pain in my chest when I thought she wouldn’t feel my sincerity if I didn’t speak the words. Only I couldn’t make myself say them out loud. Twisting around, I brought her forward into my arms and against my chest. Her head tucked under my chin, instinctively as though she belonged there, always.
“I know you’re sorry.” Tallan pulled back to look at me, making sure my eyes never left hers. “So, this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to get back in that ring and you’re going to be great, and win. And you’re not going to do it for anyone but yourself.”
I needed to hear that. I did. And I needed to hear it from her.
“You’re not going to do it for Danny, or your dad, or her, or even redemption over Ray Lucas.” I blinked, waiting for her to continue. “And certainly not for me. You’re doing it for you. Destry “Southpaw” Stone.”
When I lost, for Stella, I regretted it the moment I let my guard down and allowed Lucas to get a hit on me. And like it or not, any other time, there was no way Lucas would have. It had been said that I was unhittable. I believed that to a certain extent. Inside and outside of the ring.
In a lot of ways, I wasn’t unhittable. I was vulnerable and open to everything around me. But this time, Tallan was right. I needed to do this for me and fuck everyone else. I had to be that way.
Tallan laid her head on my chest again, letting me hold her. I didn’t last long like that, needing to make her see how sorry I was. Framing her face with my hands, I pulled her mouth to mine. “I love you and I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
Her lips silenced me. “Stop. Just kiss me and let me be here for you.”
I let her. For the first time in a while, I let someone be there for me.
If a fighter is knocked down and seemingly cannot get up by the time the round ends, he is considered to have been “saved by the bell.”
A few days after Colt came to see me, Danny disappeared, as I assumed he would have. My fear of him being beaten to death was there, and I searched for him for an entire night before Tallan came to me, nervously and apprehensive after my morning workout as I was making scrambled eggs for us. “What?”
I looked over at her, and then to the pan as the gas clicked on and the blue flame lit the bottom of the pan. “I offered to give Danny the money.”
She offered Danny the money?
Two hundred fucking grand.
WHAT THE FUCK?
No warm up to it, nothing. Blurted it out as if it were a secret she couldn’t keep.
“I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about it first,” she added, as if that should make it better.
Immediately, I was angry. Fucking pissed at the world. My jaw clenched, muscles locking into place. She must have been able to tell I was upset. How could I not be?
It wasn’t about the money. It was about the fact that he would continue to do this to people. And her of all people. HER.
The anger jolted through me, suddenly, like a pang to my gut. Instead of looking at her, I watched the butter in the pan as it slid around and then finally bubbled around the edges. “Why did you go over there?”
Tallan remained quiet, my voice ringing through the kitchen and echoing off the brick walls. “He’s the only family you’ve got left, Destry. I didn’t want anything to happen to him.”
Taking the bowl of egg whites, I poured them in the pan, still never looking over at Tallan as she leaned her weight into the counter. “So, he didn’t take the money?”
“No, he wouldn’t accept it. Said he was going to deal with it on his own.”
I knew that line too. “It’s all bullshit.” I snuck a glance up at her when I reached for the spatula beside the stove. “You know that, right?”
Tallan glared at me, crossing her arms over her chest in defense. “It doesn’t matter. He didn’t take the money. He told me to give you this.” Tallan reached inside her pocket and handed me a note.
I didn’t read it. I tossed it on the counter beside the stove. “It doesn’t fucking matter.”
I was pissed that she didn’t come and talk to me before going to Danny. What if Colt had been over there or worse… she could have… well, I didn’t even want to think about what could have happened.
The realization that she could have been harmed had me just as mad that she hadn’t come to me first. We were in a relationship and she went behind my back. Again. I wanted her to understand what that meant. “I figured… no… I wanted you of all people to understand that I don’t like being lied to, and I don’t want you going behind my back.” My voice was sharp and well, condescending given our past. “I thought you would have learned from the last time.”
Tallan reached for me, her gentle touch wrapping around my forearm. “Don’t be mad. Please. It’s my money and what I choose to do with it, or who I help, is up to me.”
I turned and faced her, my stare heartless in some ways. “It’s not even about the money. It’s about you not talking to me about it.”
She blinked, her face calm, undeterred by the coldness in mine. “And I’m sorry about that. But if I would have come to you and said I wanted to help him, you wouldn’t have let me. You would have said no.”
“Yes.” The egg whites were done so I tossed the spatula back on the counter and flicked the knob on the stove. The sound of the spatula hitting the granite made a thud, loud enough to cause Tallan to startle beside me. “I would have said no because he doesn’t need the money. He needs help.”
“I couldn’t let something happen to him, Destry.”
“The fuck you couldn’t. Where did you even get the money?” I spit the question, as if money of that magnitude wouldn’t be something she would ever have.
Tallan glared at my remark. “I have a trust fund.”
She had a trust fund? She lived in an apartment with a door that barely locked yet she had two hundred grand she could give away? Not likely.
“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
“I didn’t think it was important. Is it?”
“No, not to me. But I don’t want you helping Danny.”
“It’s my money. I can do with it what I want.”
Is she trying to piss me off?
If she was, it was working. But then again, everything had been setting me off lately.
“You know, I can’t—” Drawing in a deep breath, I stopped short of what I was going to say, attempting to say what I meant and not what I really wanted to say. I faced her and let out the breath through my nose, my anger subsiding a touch. “Please, stay out of it. I don’t want you in the middle of it. Danny and those
guys are bad news.”
Tallan released her own weighted breath and reached for the pan of eggs, separating them onto the plates waiting on the table. When she finished, she turned to me and wrapped her arms around my waist. “I’m sorry. I won’t try to help without talking to you first.”
Didn’t she understand why this made me so angry? “You know why I’m mad, right?”
She nodded. “I do. I’m sorry that I didn’t come to you first. It was never meant to be something where I intentionally went behind your back to hurt you. I don’t—”
My lips on hers halted her words, much like hers did the other night. “I know.”
THE NEXT MORNING, I woke up around four for my run. Tallan stayed over and was still asleep, head buried in pillows so I didn’t want to wake her.
Stepping outside my apartment and onto the street, the stillness was almost unheard of for this city. The sun was lighting up the east side of the city, not yet peeking through but a distant glow within reach. I stretched my legs against the concrete building, drawing in a few heavy breaths and shaking out my arms before I began my jog.
Making my way up Cherry Street, I went eight miles the opposite direction of where I intended to go, which was the bar, and wound up at Danny’s place by the time the sun was up.
As I approached the house, an eerie alertness crept over me, a coldness felt deep in my bones. Gravel crunched beneath my shoes, the only sound my heart and unsteady breathing. Running the sleeve of my hooded sweatshirt over my forehead, I swiped away the sweat.
The smell around me was rancid, a week worth of garbage piled up outside and overflowing onto the parched lawn. I must have sat outside on the back porch for an hour trying to get up the nerve to open the door that was wide open.
My heart pounded in my chest, a rapid almost painful beat I couldn’t ignore. If I went inside that house, and he was in there, dead, then what? Could I handle that this close to the fight? Could I handle that in general?
Digging the heel of my palms in my eyes, I huffed out another breath and laid back on the porch with my hands on my stomach. “Just go inside, you fuckin’ pussy,” I told myself, my breathing beginning to slow, but the painful beat still there.
“Yeah, ya pussy.” I jumped up at the sound, scrambling away from the door and to my feet when I saw Danny standing in the doorway with a bottle of vodka and a cigarette in the other hand. “What are you doing here, kid?”
I gasped, swallowing rapidly. And then I was livid that he was acting normal, like someone wasn’t looking to kill him and my girl didn’t offer to bail his no good ass out of trouble again. My hand jetted out, shoving his shoulder. “Looking for you, asshole.”
“Well, I’m right here.” His brow furrowed as he searched my eyes for a moment and then he glanced away at the garbage on the ground.
“Where have you been?”
He seemed to fidget a bit and then swallowed, his gaze leaving mine. “Around.”
I wondered then what I was doing here. I said what I needed to say to him the other day. Or so I thought I did. And then Tallan got involved.
Naturally, I was going to warn Danny. Standing inches from him, our eyes locked on one another. “You can fuck me over, Danny, but you fuck with her and I will kill you myself.” My tone was as demanding as my words, and he never once looked away, the fear evident in his. “Colt is the last person you have to worry about.”
He knew deep down I didn’t mean it. Like it or not, Danny was the only family I had around me these days. Danny nodded to the car in the driveway and pushed past me, the stench of vodka prominent. Tossing the bottle in with the other trash, he swung open the door of his old Buick and lifted his chin but never made eye contact. “Take care of yourself, boy.”
I wanted to yell after him, tell him running made him a coward, but really, what did it even matter? I was pissed. How could he be so relaxed about it?
The way he sat in the car, staring straight ahead seemed almost eerie again. I buried my hands in my sweatshirt and glared. “So, you’re leaving? What about the bar?” My voice was barely above a whisper.
He heard me, his head angled to the sound of my voice. “Les and Kip are gonna take over for a while.”
My scowl deepened and I made the few steps to stand beside his car that was now running. “Where are you going?”
“It’s best I don’t tell you.”
I couldn’t rip my eyes from Danny and the vision of him in that car. His casualness infuriated me. I watched him. I wanted a reaction out of him. I needed a goddamn reaction from him. Something that told me he was sorry or that he never meant to hurt anyone the way he did. I got none of that because you couldn’t get a reaction out of someone who didn’t give a shit.
I had these memories, ones of him, my dad, and my mother, and everyone tied into situations like this, people fucking leaving. They haunted me. And staring at him, it was like they were real again. They were happening all over again. I could smell the blood of that night at Madison Square Garden, feel the chill in the air, hear Stella’s words, and see her legs as she walked away.
I could see my mother, the sadness in her eyes and the numbness she wore as her seven-year-old son stared blankly at her, wondering what it was he did to have her leave him. My fist clenched again at the memory, my knuckles white. All these memories weren’t memories any longer; they were fucking nightmares.
Tallan had been right though. As I watched him drive away, I realized that. If I hadn’t tried to help, I would have felt guilty. At least this way I knew it wasn’t me turning my back.
It was him.
I wouldn’t do that. I wouldn’t run away.
A boxer who is vulnerable to cuts.
I treated Tallan like shit the other night and wanted to make it up to her. I also knew the closer it got to the fight, the harder it would be to do that. She’d been so patient and understanding over the weeks that I wanted to do something for her. Only her.
Weeks before we were set to leave for Vegas, I took her up to Woodinville to Chateau St. Michelle Winery that she’d been talking about. On the way there, she was asking her usual questions about me and fighting, never letting the conversation drift to Danny. Which was a good thing.
It was then, about an hour into the drive when I realized I didn’t know a whole lot about Tallan’s family. Her parents lived in Seattle but I hadn’t met them and she never spoke of them. Given she had a trust fund, I gathered she came from money.
“Do you ever talk to your parents?” I didn’t make eye contact with her, because she was looking out the window, watching the freight trucks on the freeway rather than looking at me.
“Huh?” Her eyes suddenly snapped in my direction, caught off guard by my sudden curiosity.
I didn’t know why I hadn’t asked before now, and I felt like a tool for not doing so. I should know these things about the girl I was dating, right?
I knew she was an only child—much like myself—that she went to college for journalism and had lived in Seattle her entire life. That was it.
“I… uh… well….” Our eyes finally met briefly, before mine focused on the road. “I talk to them about once a month. I’m not exactly close with them.”
“Do they know about me?”
The question hung there, as awkward as it felt to ask. Would she tell them about me? Did she want to?
“They do. I told them back in May that I was seeing someone.”
I raised an eyebrow, curious as to what that meant. “Someone?”
Did she just tell them someone? Was I only someone?
“I told them who.”
“And did they know who I was?” Almost everyone in Seattle knew exactly who I was. My name, and my father’s, was all over the city and world for that matter. You didn’t exactly have to be a boxing fan to know the names.
“My dad did. Mom… well, she doesn’t follow boxing. She’s more into food.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yep.” Tallan reached besid
e her for her purse, retrieving a stick of gum. She unwrapped it slowly, pulling the foil back one edge at a time before answering me. “She’s a caterer.”
After merging lanes to let a car by, I glanced over at Tallan. “I’d like to meet them sometime.”
She looked over at me, her eyes wide. “You would?”
“Yeah… why not? You’ve met my dad.”
“Okay,” she agreed, a faint smile on her lips. “Dinner or something?”
“Yeah, whatever you want.”
I meant that too. Whatever she wanted. “So, your parents are they… loaded or something?”
“No, well, I mean they do well for themselves, but my trust fund came from my grandparents.”
Guilt hit my chest not knowing any of this. I’d been dating her since April and I didn’t even know what her father did for work. “Does your dad work?”
“He owns a car dealership. Have you heard of Smith & Spencer?”
I raised an eyebrow again. How the hell did I not know this given her last name? “Yeah, I bought this truck from them.”
She smiled and reached for her water bottle in the center cup holder. “Thanks for supporting my family.” After taking a drink, she put it back. “I think my parents assumed I’d follow in their footsteps, so when I chose journalism, it was like a slap in their face.”
I had to admit, I was relieved the conversation wasn’t about me for once and despite her feeling like she’d let her parents down, I was learning a lot about her. And how similar we were in many ways. “So, how’d the trust fund come about?”
“Well, my great grandfather started the first Smith & Spencer back in the fifties. He handed that down to my Grandpa Gene and then when he died, my dad took over. My Grandpa Gene left me his money when he died, the only thing he gave my dad was that dealership.”
She had an inheritance, but no one would have ever guessed it. She lived… normal. “Does Jared know you have that kind of money?”
Tallan shrugged. “Yeah, he knows.”
But I didn’t. Tipping my head to catch her eyes, I asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
