by Amity Cross
“Ren?” Josie asked, frowning at me.
“Josie,” I said, setting the cup back down on the counter. “Can you do something for me? I wouldn’t ask unless it was important…”
“Okay,” she said slowly, obviously not liking where this was going.
“If anyone asks, I was here all night.”
“Ren, what's going on?”
“Please, Josie,” I pleaded. “I can't tell you. Please can you do this for me?”
She eyed me suspiciously, but nodded. “Don’t make me regret this, Ren Miller.”
I threw my arms around her and hugged her tight. “Thank you.”
Shuffling all the way from Josie’s house back to Beat, I was in a daze. So much so that when I walked around the corner, I stopped mid-step and almost stumbled at the chaos that was waiting.
There were two cop cars parked out the front of Beat, lights flashing like a bloody carnival ride, and people milling about on the footpath. I couldn’t see from this distance, but it had to be Dad and some cops. Maybe even the Twins. Monica. Fuck. Monica.
What was I going to do about her? Smash her into the next plain of existence. She had as much a hand in this as I did. If it wasn’t for her then Ash would still be here.
Taking a deep breath, I got my story straight in my head. I went to stay over at Josie’s. I don’t know where Ash is.
As I approached Beat, Dad glanced up and said something to one of the police officers, and then he practically ran down the street to meet me. Bloody hell, a little police action and I was flavor of the month.
“Ren,” Dad exclaimed, throwing his arms around me. A hug? I finally get a fucking hug? The sensation of his arms around me was alien and felt all kinds of wrong.
“What’s going on?” I asked, eyeing the cop over his shoulder.
“The studio was broken into last night,” Dad said, pulling back to look at me. “Thank god you weren’t there.”
I blinked. “Broken into?”
“They smashed the place up,” he went on. “Nothing seems to be stolen, the police think it might’ve been kids.”
“Kids?” I glanced over his shoulder where the roller door had been raised. There was police tape inside as well and a couple of plain clothes cops with cameras and dusting for prints.
“Where were you?”
“I was staying with Josie,” I said, desperate to know what they’d found.
What the fuck had Ash done on his way out? Covered his tracks. How did you cover up a murder? There was blood on the mats, but I’m sure if it was still there, the cops would’ve found it already.
“Have you heard from Ash?” Dad asked and I blinked hard. “Ren?”
Shaking my head, I said, “No. Not since he left last night.”
“He’s not answering his phone.”
“What—” My gut churned as I realized what Dad was hinting at. “No,” I exclaimed. “Why would he trash Beat? I don’t believe it.”
“Not Ash,” Dad said, pulling me out of ear shot of the cops. “Someone from that fighting racket.”
My eyebrows rose and any response I could’ve given him died in my throat.
“If you know something Ren, you have to tell me.”
I couldn’t. If I did, I may as well sign Ash’s arrest warrant myself. So, despite every moral compass inside me pointing at saying yes and spilling, I said, “No.”
I don’t love you, Ren. I can’t love you. I’m already lost. Get the fuck out and don’t come back.
He was such a fucking liar.
Dad eyed me with worry and nodded. “If you’ve got something to say, you can come to me, you know.”
“After all this time?” I said, rolling my eyes.
“Ren, please. This is serious.”
I nodded. “Okay. Fine.”
Patting me on the shoulder, he wandered off to talk to the cops again. Where was I going to stay now?
There was movement on the footpath as Monica got out of her car and walked towards the scene that was all of her own making, her mouth dropping open as she surveyed the damage.
She glanced up and our gazes met, invisible sparks of pure hatred passing from me to her. For the first time, I saw the vulnerable side of Monica Miller, the stupid little girl who’d made the biggest mistake of her life.
Yeah, I know it was you, I thought. I know what you did.
I should pity my poor little sister, blinded by misguided lust, but all I wanted was her blood. The moment I could get my hands on the bitch, she would pay.
“Ren,” she squeaked as she came to a halt a few paces away from my trembling form.
“Don’t you fucking talk to me,” I hissed. “I know what you did.”
“I never meant—”
“Do you know what they were going to do to me?” I asked, shoving her down the gutter between a van and a parked car so we were out of sight.
She shook her head, panic setting into her features.
“He was going to rape me, Monica. He almost did.” I shook my head, utterly disgusted. Anger had replaced last night’s hysteria, but it wasn’t any prettier than that had been.
“Ren, I’m—”
“Sorry?” I spat. “You ruined his life, you know that? Whatever happens to Ash next is on you.” I shoved her hard and she slammed into the back of the van, a whimper bursting from her lips. Poor fucking Monica. Poor. Fucking. Bitch.
It was too late for apologies. And it was too late to take back a life.
Ash, where are you?
They were after Ash. I’d become his greatest weakness and by forcing him to take me to The Underground and fighting like I had, I’d made myself his kryptonite. Take me out and they take out the only thing between them and a million bucks.
It was all my fault.
Ash could be anywhere. He could’ve done anything to Hammer. He could’ve killed him.
It was all my fault. Ash was ruined again, but this time it was because of me.
I was too chicken shit to turn up at The Underground on my own, just incase someone else was lying in wait for me, so I called the head honchos, but they hadn’t heard from him. They hadn’t heard from Hammer either, which was the most alarming thing out of the whole steaming pile.
He hadn’t contacted Dean or Lincoln, either. I didn’t know if he had any family or friends outside of Beat. I didn’t have anyone else to ask.
I’d run out of leads and had to resign myself to the inevitable.
Ash wasn’t coming back. Why the fuck would he?
I was empty. Hollow. Broken. Abandoned.
Figured.
39
Ash
I popped the boot of the car and kicked it open.
Staring down at the unconscious and bound Hammer, I squashed down the beast inside, deciding what I should do with him.
He’d hurt her. He hurt my Ren and he had to be taught a lesson.
I stood over the guy as his head rolled back and forth, a strangled moan echoing in the empty space around us.
I’d come close to the line and I’d mother fucking toed it, but I’d never crossed it completely.
If I went through with this, the line would be obliterated.
Ren was worth it. I’d do anything to keep her safe from scum like Hammer.
Anything.
I fisted my hands into the front of his shirt and hauled him up and out, letting him fall heavily on the ground.
He and I…we weren’t going to be winners in this game. It was all a matter of who was going to lose the most.
I might lose Ren and my freedom, but I would still have my life.
And she would have hers.
I warned them and they didn’t listen.
Now, they had to pay.
PULSE
#2 The Beat and The Pulse
1
Much Earlier - Ash
There’s an unspoken hierarchy in prison.
The fresh meat gets it the worst…until you earn the respect of the top dog.
&nb
sp; Three weeks in, they tried to take me down and pull me into line, but I fought back with my fists. Two weeks later, they tried to take me down with an iron bar and I steamrolled the lot of them. I steamrolled them with the same weapon they tried to get me with. I steamrolled them right into hospital. They never touched me after that.
They lock you in with people who are just as bad as you. They lock you in and turn off the lights and then you’re fair game.
It was my own fault I was in there. I committed the crime, but prison changes the best parts of you. I was a beast before, but that place made me a monster. It showed me what I was truly capable of.
I never beat a man to death before. I never took it that far, but after four years in that place?
I knew now that I was capable of anything.
2
In Between - Ren
I thought I was in love.
I wasn’t sure what it was supposed to feel like, but I was positive it wasn’t this.
I stood in the middle of Altona Memorial Park, staring down at the place where they buried my mum, trying to understand where it’d all gone wrong.
The wind picked up and I hugged my coat closer, trying to block the chill. Melbourne was notorious for windy days and sudden downpours and the sky was as black as my soul. Summer was gone, winter had all but passed, but it wasn’t the only thing that had left me feeling cold.
I glanced around, but I was alone.
“Hey Mum,” I murmured. Nothing but silence greeted me in return and I wondered if there really was such a thing as the afterlife and if there was...if she could hear me.
“So, it’s almost been a year since I found Dad. Did you know he had another family?” I sighed, glancing away from the headstone. “I guess you did.”
The day I’d turned up at Beat I’d been shoved into a storage closet like a fucked up Cinderella, I had a half sister who almost destroyed my life... Scratch that, she did destroy my life. I could tick off all the things that had gone wrong since I stepped into Beat, but I’d run out of fingers to count them on.
“Josie, Seth, Dean, Lincoln… They’re all great. Really nice and supportive. Things are getting better with Dad. I’m like the son he’d never had. I’m his ticket to the big time he never got for himself.” I sucked in a deep breath, filling my lungs to the brim, then let it all out in one long whoosh. “So much has happened, Mum.” I stared at the headstone like it would talk back to me.
“I’m one qualifying round off placing in a pro MMA league. Bet you didn’t think I’d get into that, huh?” I knelt down on my knees and began rearranging the flowers I’d bought. Some three-dollar carnations I’d plucked from a bucket of water at the grocer around the corner from the studio. People said carnations were cheap and tacky, total Grandma flowers, but Mum had liked them. They were a few dollars for a small bunch and all we could afford, so I assume she was always just trying to be nice, but old habits died hard.
“I’m also competing in an illegal underground fighting racket, but that’s another story. I know. I’m in so much trouble.” Satisfied with my mediocre florist skills, I stood, wrapping my arms around my stomach. “There’s all these people saying all these incredible things to me. They’re giving me things and I’m winning all this money, but I can’t hear or see any of it. I’m not a nobody anymore, I’m a somebody, but I don’t know if it’s what I want.”
I wish she was here. It was always us against the world. Me and her together. I thought it was going to be Ash and me…but he was gone. He left and he never came back.
“What should I do, Mum?” Tears prickled at my eyes, but even here where nobody could see me, I refused to let them fall. “They’re all counting on me and being amazing and supportive...but I feel empty.”
Fighting was never my dream. I never had one of those, so I wasn’t sure if this was how it felt to have one come true.
“How did you do it?” I asked the air, hoping and praying for a reply. “How did you get over your broken heart? Because right now, I can’t see a way forward.”
Nobody was answering and I was all alone out in the cold cemetery, a sharp breeze cutting through my jacket and chilling my skin.
How could I hold on, when everybody else always let go?
3
Ren
Guard. Duck. Feign. Punch. Guard.
I ducked as Dean took a swing, holding my stomach taut, using my entire body to support my weight. Feigning right, I swung left, my gloved fist connecting with his forearm.
“You’re getting faster,” Dean said with a laugh as I put my guard back up.
“That’s the point,” I replied.
“You’re already quick, Speedy. Don’t go getting too big for your boots.”
“Don’t listen to him Ren,” Lincoln called out. “He’s full of it.”
“Full of what?” I asked with a grin.
“Shit, obviously.”
“Fuckers,” Dean exclaimed.
I took another swing while he was distracted and clipped him on the jaw. He stumbled back a step and shook his head as we started laughing at him.
“Fuck, Ren,” he cried out. “Watch it, hey?”
“Cry baby,” I replied. “It was soft—”
“Soft like you,” Lincoln finished.
“Gimme a break,” he moaned.
“You’re too easy Dean,” I said. “You cry like a baby every time.”
A lot of things had changed in six months.
If you wanted to get technical about it, a lot had changed in the previous six months too. Ash had left and taken my broken heart with him. Hammer could be alive or he could be dead. Six months of silence had left me empty and hollow, ready to crumble at the slightest provocation, but I had one thing left that was mine and had always been mine from the beginning. Fighting.
Dad had seen my inability to cope after Ash had left and without so much as a word, he brought me into his sessions with the Twins and everything had snowballed from there. We didn’t talk like father and daughter should, I was just another fighter and that was the thing that had finally brought us together.
He’d asked me if I wanted to start fighting in some competitions and my only answer had been a shrug. Then I found myself at my first professional bout with rules and regulations and it was a challenge I was determined to step up to. If I didn’t fight, then my dark soul would consume me. Soon one fight turned into twenty and here I was, somehow winning and accumulating points that had allowed me to almost qualify for the big time.
Like I said, a lot had changed in six months.
I was training full time with the Twins now, which meant that Monica oversaw my meals and wasn’t that a fucking party. Monica, the bitch who paraded around Beat like a princess, reminding me about how she’d almost broken my life. She had broken my life, but it could’ve been so much worse.
She’d utterly destroyed Ash’s, but I was beyond trying to formulate any kind of sympathy towards him. It had been his choice to overstep the line. I’d begged him not to, not to leave…and he ignored me.
Ash Fuller was a blip on my radar. Liar.
“Two weeks until your next bout Ren,” Dean said. “You better watch yourself until then.”
“Or what?” I retorted. “You’ll swat at me like a twenty pound weakling?”
“Empty threats,” Lincoln said with a wink. “He wouldn’t do anything to you even if he could. The wanker hasn’t got a bad bone in his body.”
“You’re making my balls shrink,” Dean said with a groan.
“Lunch,” Dad called out from the opposite side of the studio, clapping his hands to get our attention.
The Twins slapped each other on the shoulder, excited at the mention of food. Men.
I shook my head, my mood simmering at a healthy level of okay. There were good days and bad ones and sometimes there were mediocre ones, which were a mixture of all of the above. Today was panning out to be one of the okay ones. Time is what I needed. In the grand scheme of the universe, a lot co
uld happen in six months, but six months was still a blip compared to the rest of my life.
“Ren?”
I glanced over my shoulder at the sound of Monica’s voice. I suddenly wanted to asphyxiate on my own vomit.
“I’m sorry. About everything.” She fidgeted nervously, the once mean girl of Beat looking all demure like a snake in the grass.
It was like a daily ritual with her. If she could get me alone, she tried to apologize again and again. So I tried not to be alone with her, which was more about her safety than mine.
“And thank you for…” She hesitated when all I did was glare back at her.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I asked, wringing my hands into the towel so I wouldn’t wring her neck.
“You haven’t told Dad yet.”
I narrowed my eyes. I hadn’t told because she hadn’t fucked up yet.
“Thanks,” she said sheepishly.
I just wanted to smack the bitch into the next millennia. The last thing I ever wanted was her thanks. “Listen to me,” I snapped. “I will never forgive you for what you did to me and especially for what you did to Ash. I’m just waiting for the day you fuck up so I can tell the world about what you did.”
“Then why don’t you?” she asked, her eyes widening with fear.
I looked her up and down before saying, “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I don’t know how many times I can say it Ren,” she exclaimed.
“You’ll never be able to say it enough. Never.” Shoving past her, I went into the showers and sank down onto the bench.
Dropping my head into my hands, I breathed deeply, letting my rage simmer into a slow boil. It seemed like an eternity ago that I’d sat here with Ash, trying to calm him down after his epic meltdown in the studio. I’d heard nothing from him and I doubted I ever would, but that didn’t stop me from missing him every single day. Missing him and wondering if he’d gone through with it…killing Hammer.
