I refused to think about that. If we weren’t going to have the chance to talk him out of it, the only thing on my mind was trying to get close enough so Bash would see us and at least know we were there and he wasn't alone. That people who loved him were there and had his back.
"We need to get to the ring,” I said, bound and determined now. “Let him see us cheering for him. Maybe if he isn't worried about us or feeling guilty for lying, he'll be able to focus more. What do you think?"
Matty nodded slowly, his chin going firm with determination. "Okay. I don't like it, but at this point, I don't know what choice we have."
We linked arms and angled our way through the crush of people, both of us dead set on getting as near to Bash as possible. When the commentator's voice sounded through the speakers again, we were firmly entrenched in the wall of people forming the front line that circled the perimeter of the makeshift ring.
As boxing rings went, it wasn't fancy. It was set above the ground only two feet or so, and held up on risers. The steps were wood blocks increasing in size, and rather than ropes, the space was encircled in some sort of mesh material.
"Like I said, you're in for a real treat here, fight night fans. In this corner, we have our defending champion, Stan ‘The Tank’ Kulpinksy!"
A guy with a chest the size of a refrigerator lumbered up the steps of the ring to death metal music, and my palms went slick with sweat. Bash was a big boy, but this dude was well over 250 pounds and at least four inches taller. It was like a bad joke. Like they'd flown Goliath into town just to take on Bash.
Matty and I exchanged nauseated glances as the fans went wild.
"And in this corner, straight out of Boston with fifteen wins, all by knockout, and no losses, Sebastian ‘Bash’ McDaniels.”
For a long moment I didn't see him, and I was dizzy with hope, thinking maybe he'd wised up and bowed out, but a second later he emerged from the crowd and climbed the wooden steps.
He was wearing a pair of shiny gray gym shorts and a black robe over the top of them. The hood on the robe was up so I couldn't see his face, but I could tell by his posture he wasn’t afraid. He looked ready to fight. There was no hesitance in his step. No slouch of his shoulders. In fact, he bounced lightly on his feet as if he were getting ready to go out for a run.
He and Mr. Tank exchanged scowls and Bash went to his corner without waving to the crowd.
Matty shouldered his way over to get closer to him, calling his name as he went, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears. With the room as pumped as it was and everyone talking, it was no surprise that Bash didn't hear him. Rather than follow suit, I hung back, just watching him, hoping he’d glance in my direction. He scanned the audience, his gaze skimming over me before snapping back and landing on my face.
His lips parted, and he closed his eyes for a long moment, looking poleaxed.
That hadn't been my goal at all. My pulse tripped and I willed him to look at me again. Things hadn’t gone to plan, but we had to work with what we had, and the last thing I wanted was for him to be worried about me.
I waited, heart in my throat, until he opened his eyes, then I managed a shaky smile. I pressed my pinkies to the corners of my mouth and let out the hair-curling whistle that had been the envy of all the boys in my neighborhood growing up.
His brow wrinkled until Matty moved back to stand next to me, both thumbs raised in support.
"You can do it, Bash!" he called to his brother. “Kick some ass out there!”
The crowd had been shifting slowly forward and we were close enough now that if Bash and I reached out at the same time, our fingers could almost touch, but I tamped down the urge. That would seem desperate, melodramatic, and way too serious. Like I was sending him off to the guillotine. In spite of Stan The Tank’s ominous build, I wanted Bash to feel like a fucking terminator out there. I was going to cheer my head off and smile while I did it, until he stepped out of that ring.
And then?
I was going to fucking kill him for this.
Chapter Two
Bash
She’d come.
I didn’t know how they’d found me or why they’d even been looking, but there she was. Olivia Beckett, standing there in a pair of worn jeans and a black hoodie with the word pink emblazoned across the front in green letters, which made no sense.
Strange how the mind worked when you were in a dire situation. I was noticing the weirdest stuff. Like the way the fluorescent bulbs caught the amber highlights in Liv’s dark hair as she tugged nervously at her curls. Or how the smile on Matty’s chalk-white face looked pasted on.
Who did they think they were fooling? They were both scared shitless for me, and I couldn’t blame them. Stan was a goddamned monster. A veritable fucking ogre who looked like he’d taken a break from eating live goats in his lair to come and fight me. I’d reconciled myself to it more than an hour ago, when I’d first laid eyes on him from afar, but my brother and girlfriend were understandably concerned at first glance.
I waved a taped hand at them and worked up a reassuring half grin through the dump of adrenaline that rushed through me.
As much as I’d wanted to keep my plans from both Matty and Liv, having them here made something in me click. I’d prepared mentally in the dressing room beforehand and knew what I had to do, but for the first time, the fire was back. The burning rage at the injustice of it all.
Rage at Andy for putting his hands on my girl. Rage at his father for being a pompous, entitled asshole who thought he had the world by the short and curlies. Rage at Mickey for fucking with my family and thinking he was going to get away with it.
And all that rage hissed and popped inside me to a molten boil, and I harnessed it. Every drop of it was now aimed at Stan The Tank.
I was going to destroy him.
When the makeshift bell rang, I prowled forward, nice and easy, eyeballing my opponent to see how he moved in the ring. He was slow, which was good. But his fists were like a matched pair of Easter hams and I knew if he got one off clean, he could easily knock me into next week.
So don’t get hit, my father’s voice cautioned in my head, followed by the memory of his trademark wheezy chuckle.
He always was a jokester like that. I remembered as far back as age eight, him teaching me how to fight, offering advice. Some of it was still good, some a little dated, but he tried. He never had much to say the rest of the time. My mother did most of the talking at home. Boxing had given us a thing. A common interest to bond over. And even when everything else sucked, and money was even tighter than usual, or my mother had unleashed her twisted fury on one of us boys, we had that, at least.
Weird thing to have a houseful of boys who beat one another and other people up for sport, while they secretly got the ever-loving shit kicked out of them by a 112-pound woman with a vicious streak a mile wide. Dad didn’t have it in him to stand up to her. As weak and flawed as he’d been, I missed him at times like this. He’d been sick, burdened with a drug addiction that my brothers and I were too young to understand, but he had a good soul in there somewhere.
Right now, though, his playful, oft-repeated advice wasn’t going to cut it. There was no question I was going to get hit tonight. All I could hope to control was how often and how hard, and I was gunning for “seldom” and “not very.”
Stan lumbered forward, closing the rest of the space between us. Up close, he was even uglier than he was far away. Bald except for a smattering of stubble around the ears, he had a broad pie face that seemed like nothing but a blank canvas for the wide, snub nose plopped in the middle of it. His gray-blue eyes locked on mine and were lit with glee.
Old Stan liked his job. That wasn’t good. But in better news, he didn’t have that crafty, thoughtful look I’d seen on the faces of some of my past opponents. He might be a sadist, but he wasn’t a smart one, and that would hopefully be the edge I needed to take the win.
I kept my distance, circling him at first, leaning in
with a few rapid-fire jabs to check his reaction time, which wound up to be nonexistent. He literally stood stock-still and took four straight to the face without making a single attempt at shielding himself or moving away.
What the fuck was that about?
I skipped back and stared at him, wondering for a second if Mickey’s golden boy had been hit one too many times and maybe didn’t have the mental capacity left to fight. I came back in, stronger this time, and hit him with back-to-back combinations, one set to the bread basket, one to the face. The last shot was a screamer of an uppercut that would’ve lifted a smaller man off his feet. Again, Stan didn’t cover up or try to deflect. He just stood there like a giant lump in the middle of the ring.
Blood flowed freely from both his chin and my knuckles, seeping through the white tape on my hands as my mind raced. The spectators roared and screamed; most of it was garbled, but a low chant was building.
Stan. Stan. Stan. Stan. Stan.
What to do now? The pent-up rage I’d felt started to fade. It went against the grain to hit a man who wouldn’t defend himself.
I sensed Matty’s eyes on me, and could almost hear his thoughts, urging me to finish it. To end it and land a knockout blow. If I knocked him out now, in the first round without him ever throwing a punch, Mickey would be pissed that we hadn’t put on a good show and he’d dock me.
But if I walked away, he wouldn’t pay me at all. Matty would still owe him the whole ten grand, and this crowd could very well start a riot. I had no choice. A quick and clean knockout would be the kindest thing to do for poor, addled Stan.
I rolled my shoulders to loosen them and came at him again, this time with a brutal right cross straight to the tip of the chin, where the knockout button lived. The blow landed so clean and hard, my teeth rattled. Stan’s head snapped to the side and I waited for him to topple like a felled oak tree.
He didn’t.
He just stared down at me and smiled through bloodstained teeth.
The din of the crowd faded to the background as I stood there, at a loss. There was something humbling about hitting someone with literally everything you had inside you…just stomping on the gas and letting it rip, and having them look back at you, totally unfazed.
It was clear as crystal to me now that Stan wasn’t called The Tank because of his size. He was called The Tank because he was near-motherfucking-invincible. A mere mortal punching him wasn’t going to cut it. I could hit him until every bone in both my hands was shattered, and he wouldn’t go down. I knew that now, and I had to use that information to somehow win this fight.
While I was regrouping, Stan had apparently decided show-and-tell was over and sent an anvil-sized fist out to greet me. It came from on high, right over the hands I had strategically placed to block my face. I knew the second it connected that my eyelid was split. Blood mixed with sweat stung my eye and I squeezed it closed, keeping the other trained on a still-grinning Stan. I could hear Liv’s scream above the rest of the crowd and I held up a fist in her direction to let her know I was okay.
“Come on, pretty boy,” he said, gesturing for me to come closer again. Before I could move to comply, the bell rang and I backed up to my corner.
Not a good start. I took a few seconds to focus in, to try to feel the pain through the haze of adrenaline so I could assess the damage.
The eye socket didn't feel broken, but it was definitely a deep cut that would likely need stitches, and that presented a problem. Earlier, Mickey's boys had introduced me to the in-house "doctor" who just went by Doc, but whose mug I was pretty sure I'd seen on a highway billboard for Pappy Paws Veterinary Clinic. Still, he could get me patched up. The problem would come later when that mended flesh hadn't fully healed.
If Victor Spada caught sight of a fresh injury like that, he was going to punish the spot until it split open again. In real boxing, a bleeder that wouldn't stop was cause for calling it. If the fight was called, I’d lose by way of technical knockout. That would be a career disaster for me. I’d lose my undefeated status and obliterate my chances of landing another big fight any time soon.
I eyed the guy sitting in the opposite corner, determined not to lose focus and to stay positive. Judging by the reaction of the crowd, they were happy with the end-of-the-round action. If we gave them a couple more like that, Mickey would have no excuse to shortchange me, assuming I was still alive to collect the money.
Stan grinned at me again from across the ring, showing off his ghoulish jack-o’-lantern teeth as he wiggled his fingers in a taunting wave. Another good thing. He'd gone from confident to downright cocky, and cocky equaled careless. I had a plan, and if I could wear him out enough to execute it, I had a shot.
I felt a tap on my shoulder and my "trainer"—who also doubled as the janitor by mopping up blood between matches—squirted some piss-warm bottled water into my mouth. I swished and spat into a small red bucket that apparently hadn't been emptied since the first fight of the night.
"Go get 'em,” he murmured halfheartedly.
I nodded and risked a quick glance at Liv. She was pulling at her bottom lip, eyes filled with concern, but when she saw me looking at her, she pumped her fist and called my name.
The bell rang again and I wanted to howl in relief when I saw Stan coming at me like a freight train. He wasn’t going to play games this time. He just wanted to get in and brawl, which was fine with me.
Brawling, I knew.
And while I'd never be able to punch as hard as he could, I was way faster. His bulk was part muscle and part fat, and it made him sluggish. The big shots, the real haymakers he was throwing, came in like cruise liners. Long, wide, swinging arcs, and that, coupled with the grimace he made whenever he was going to throw one, gave me what felt like thirty seconds of warning. All I had to do was feint left or right to avoid them, and every time he threw one, it siphoned another gallon from his tank. He’d get tired, and I just had to wait him out and then get to the body.
Almost as if on command, he threw another, and I dipped to the left. He'd put so much sauce on that one, the momentum carried him three feet forward and he stumbled into the mesh.
I moved in fast from behind, capitalizing on his position by throwing a flurry of jabs at his kidneys from behind.
He grunted and turned quickly, but not before I'd tenderized him good.
I sent another quick glance down into the crowd to see Matty and Liv watching, eyes glued to the action. Liv was wringing her hands in front of her like she was praying for it to end, while Matty looked determined. The concern that had been there when the bell first rang was gone, replaced by keen observation and boxing know-how. He was working out strategy in his head instead of watching his little brother fight an actual giant in a no-holds-barred brawl.
That was good. As long as I didn’t have to worry about them, I could focus my attention on winning this fight.
The next time Stan lurched forward, rather than dodging, I stepped into it, taking the blow to my upper arm rather than my face, but also getting close enough to land some punches of my own. I got off one good right cross and it connected with his cheek with a resounding crack. Blood sprayed from his gaping mouth and his head whipped to one side. If there wasn't a tooth in the mix there, I'd have been surprised.
The room exploded into cheers and chants, but it took me a few seconds to make out what they were saying.
Bash. Bash. Bash Bash Bash.
Chapter Three
Olivia
They were calling his name.
The whole place was screaming for him now, those fickle bastards. Stan apparently wasn’t a fan of this change of allegiance, because he threw his head back and bellowed before coming at Bash again, fury giving him another burst of energy. I only hoped Bash could weather the storm again without getting seriously hurt.
He managed to dodge several blows before Stan put him in a headlock, and the spectators howled in protest. They didn't want to see wrestling. They wanted blood.
"He's setting him up," Matty said, leaning low so he could talk in my ear. "See the way he's leaning into it, not fighting to get free, swinging all the while? He knows he can’t take him out with a shot to the head or face, so he’s punishing his soft parts. Eventually, those blows to the body are going to be debilitating."
I clung to that hope, fists clenched at my side so hard I could feel my nails cutting into my skin. “Eventually” could be a long time away and I just wanted to go in there and help somehow. To run up and give Stan's nuts the same treatment I'd given Mr. Grabby-Hands a few minutes before.
But I didn’t have to. Right then, Bash jerked free, yanking out of the other man's grasp in one fluid motion and planting himself behind the giant. He tried to turn his massive block head to locate his prey, but Bash was already there, mercilessly pummeling his sides from behind. His fist connected with a thud so loud it actually hushed the room to near silence. Stan groaned and dropped to the ground in a heap, without even the courtesy of a “timber.” Bash stood there, sweaty, muscular chest heaving as he gazed down at Stan to see if the other man would get up.
He didn't, instead rolling into fetal position and clutching at his back. A second later, the place erupted into cheers. The MC climbed back into the ring and held Bash’s hand aloft before shouting into the mic.
“We have a new champion in the house!”
He’d won it. Bash had beaten The Tank and he wasn’t even close to dead, as far as I could tell.
Fix You: Bash and Olivia, Book 3 Page 2
