Punching and Kissing

by Helena Newbury

I did it fast, before she had too much time to be scared. I swung fast and got her right in the mouth. Her head whipped to the side and she cried out...and the crowd roared even louder. Jesus, the sick bastards!

  When she looked at me again, her lip was split open and blood was dripping onto her tank top. I’d picked the place where it would look the worst, to appease Rick, but where there’d hopefully be no lasting damage. So I was ready for the blood. What I wasn’t ready for was the look on her face—the momentary shock and then the deep betrayal. The look that no man should ever, ever see.

  I looked at her in horror. Then I lunged at her and pulled her into a clinch, gasping in her ear so that she’d hear me over the crowd. “I’m sorry!”

  And then the bell went for the end of the round and Rick’s goons were dragging us apart.

  Sylvie

  I sat down on my hay bale. My mouth was filling up with coppery, salty blood and I knew that I’d vomit if I swallowed it, so I spat it out.

  Rick had left the ring. He knew that we got it. He knew that we’d finish it, now. The only question, for him and the crowd, was how it played out. Had we made a pact...and would we honor it?

  I stared at Aedan across the ring. Both of us had tears in our eyes. Both of us knew it had to happen.

  I nodded at him and he nodded back, looking relieved. He thought I was going to go through with the plan. He thought I was going to kill him.

  And he had to go on thinking that. Right up until the very end.

  The bell went and the final round began.

  Aedan

  This time, when we came towards each other, our fists were already raised. This time, neither of us was denying what needed to be done.

  I felt this overwhelming sense of...relief. She was going to be okay. Sylvie was going to be alright.

  Her first punch slammed into my forehead, hard enough to make me stagger. Good. She was going for the head, not wasting time on the body. The head would make me go down and then she could finish it.

  The next punch hit my cheek and I heard something crack. I saw the anguished look on her face and I wanted to tell her that it was okay, but she was already lashing out again. I lifted my hands a little, to make it look good, but I made sure it hit me. This time she got my eye and I rocked backward on my heels, pleasantly surprised at how hard she was hitting. She was getting it over fast. That was good.

  I saw her reach down and touch the pocket of her sweatpants and I wondered what she had there. Some good luck charm, maybe, or a photo of her folks. Then she put up her guard and came in close. “Hit me,” she said quickly. She didn’t even have to lower her voice. There was no way the crowd could hear anything except their own insane yelling. “Just once. Under the chin. Make it look good.”

  I glanced at Rick. Did we need to? He was still outside the ring and looked content to see her pummel me. But maybe she was right. One quick hit on her and then she’d return to me and knock me out and this whole thing would be over.

  Forever.

  I drew back my hand, feeling sick. Just do it. One hit. Get it over with. “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you, too.”

  I swung, aiming for her chin. An uppercut that would knock her back a little but not do any real harm.

  And everything went wrong.

  Just as I swung, she kicked both her legs out in the air, as if she was deliberately flopping onto her back on a trampoline. My punch, instead of making her stagger, sent her soaring through the air.

  She landed hard on her back. And she didn’t get up.

  The crowd fell silent.

  I was on my knees beside her in a second. I didn’t know how hard she’d hit her head—the roar of the crowd had covered the sound of the impact. “Sylvie? Jesus, Sylvie?”

  I checked for a pulse. I couldn’t find one. Her eyes stared up at me, fixed and unseeing.

  I refused to believe it. “Sylvie?”

  Then I saw how her beautiful angel’s hair was turning sticky with blood under her head. “Sylvie?!”

  No response.

  She was dead.

  Aedan

  “Well, holy shit,” I heard Rick say. “I didn’t expect that.”

  I was on my feet and across the ring in a heartbeat. I didn’t care about the bodyguards anymore. I didn’t care about the guns anymore.

  The crowd moved out of the way as they saw me coming and that started a general exodus. There was something about the way Sylvie’s body lay there on the floor, crumpled so awkwardly, legs stretched out but one hand to her hip. Suddenly, none of those bastards who’d thought they were so brave and edgy for sampling underground entertainment could bear to see it.

  Rick’s bodyguards slammed into me just as I reached him. I very nearly managed to drag them along with me, but then Al had his shoulder against my chest and Carl was holding my arms behind my back and all I could do was yell and snarl. I was less than a foot away from Rick and I couldn’t touch him.

  “I guess you get the winnings,” said Rick. He was staring at Sylvie’s body, genuinely disquieted. He shoved a bundle of bills into the pocket of my sweatpants. “Congratulations,” he said coldly. “That’s what you get for murdering your girlfriend. You really are a monster.”

  I remembered how she’d kicked her legs out from under her, ensuring she’d go down hard. She’d wanted to do it.

  She’d fooled me. She hadn’t gone along with my plan at all. She’d sacrificed herself for me.

  The crowd was dispersing quickly. The bodyguards pushed me to the ground and hustled Rick outside. I no longer had the energy to go after them. All I wanted to do was hold the woman I loved.

  I crawled over to her body and cradled her head, the blood sticky on my fingers. I closed her eyes. And then I wept and wept, my tears wetting her cheek as if she was crying, too.

  Aedan

  When I finally looked up, Rick and his goons were standing over me. Everyone else had gone.

  “Time to go,” said Rick. “We’ll take her from here.”

  Al stepped forward to gather her up. He wasn’t as careful as he normally would have been. He probably thought I was beyond fighting back.

  He was wrong.

  As he put out his hand, I grabbed his wrist and pulled, putting all my strength behind it. Al flipped over my head and hit the floor with a crack of breaking bones.

  “Don’t you feckin’ touch her!” I screamed.

  Rick and Carl took a step back. It had happened so fast they were caught off balance. Long enough for me to snatch Al’s gun from his holster. I pointed it right at Rick. Immediately, Carl pointed his own gun at me.

  “Whoah,” said Rick. “Whoah, whoah, whoah.”

  “Get out,” I spat. I needed them gone because, in another few seconds, the urge to put a bullet in both of them was going to become irresistible. And Sylvie wouldn’t have wanted that.

  “We can’t leave him,” said Carl. “He’s got the body!”

  Rick ignored him. “You go to the cops,” he told me, “and I’ll put a pillow over her brother’s face.”

  “No cops,” I snarled. “I just don’t want you to touch her. I’ll bury her. Me.”

  Rick stared at me for another few seconds. “Let him,” he said at last. “If he gets caught, he can take the heat.” He backed away. “I don’t ever want to see you again, Aedan.”

  I kept the gun on them until they reached the door, then waited until I heard their car drive away. Only then did I toss the gun away and cradle Sylvie’s body again. “It’ll be okay,” I said, rocking her gently. “I won’t let them touch you.”

  Sylvie

  Three hours earlier

  Heather, Alec’s doctor, listened as I laid it out for her. The Pit. Aedan. My brother’s fight. The fight I’d have to have with Aedan. I explained why we couldn’t go to the police and then I explained what I needed from her.

  “I can’t kill him,” I said simply. “And he can’t kill me. And that means Rick will kill us both. Our only chance i
s for me to do it to myself.”

  I swallowed and looked her right in the eye. I spoke slowly and deliberately.

  “I need you to give me something that’ll kill me,” I said. “Quickly. Within seconds. I don’t care if it hurts or not. But I need to be able to inject it, so I can do it just before Aedan knocks me down.”

  Heather’s mouth moved soundlessly. “He’ll think he killed you!” she said at last.

  “I know. And it’ll destroy him. But he’ll be alive and so will Alec.”

  She shook her head. “You’re talking about suicide! I can’t do that! I can’t help you!”

  “You’re saving two lives. If you don’t do this, we’re all dead.”

  Heather stood up and walked away. My chest tightened because I thought she was going to call security and then the cops, but she started to pace instead. “No. No way. There’s got to be another way.”

  “There isn’t, Heather. This is the way things are when you’re dealing with people like Rick. There are no ways out. Only ways to minimize the damage.”

  She walked back around to the chair she’d been sitting on and braced herself on it, staring down at the floor, thinking. I sat down, shut the hell up and let her think.

  “What if I gave you something to knock you out?” she said at last.

  I shook my head. “They’re not stupid. They’ll see I’m just unconscious. Then they’ll try to make Aedan kill me and he won’t be able to do it. Then we’re all dead—Aedan, Alec, me....”

  She went quiet again, hanging her head and letting her long blonde hair hang down to cover her face. I could see her knuckles whitening as she gripped the chair. I really thought she was going to snap and call security. But then she spoke and her voice was drawn from somewhere way down deep, as if each word made her feel physically ill. “I can’t give you poison,” she began.

  I stood up. “It’s okay,” I said. “I shouldn’t have asked you. Bleach will work, right? If I get a needle and shoot it into—“

  Her head snapped up. “Sylvie, stop trying to be a fucking hero and listen!” Her voice was like the crack of a whip.

  I shut up.

  She took a long breath. “I could mix you something,” she said. “Vecuronium would paralyze you. I could put in something to lower your heart rate and breathing. It wouldn’t be perfect. Any half-decent paramedic will be able to tell you’re not dead. But your boyfriend, in a panic...it’d fool him.” She bit her lip. “There’s a very good chance it’d just kill you. And there’s no way to tell when you’d wake up.”

  ***

  Daylight.

  That was the first thing that crept into my awareness. A red, warm light. My eyelids were closed. Why were my eyelids closed?

  I tried to open them, but couldn’t.

  There was sound, but it seemed muffled and distant. I was being carried like a baby. Then a softness under my ass and back. I was lying on a bed. Ow, my head hurt like a motherfucker.

  The bed shook and the room started to move. A car. I was in a car. Stretched out on the back seat.

  I hauled and hauled with all my strength but I couldn’t get even one finger to move. So I listened, instead, and the sounds I was hearing gradually changed into words.

  “—sorry,” I heard. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I swear, when all this is done, I’m going to get that bastard. I’m going to make him pay.”

  I felt my body roll back against the seat. The car was climbing up what felt like a winding hill. Where was he taking me? Now that my mind was swimming up out of the blackness of sleep, things started to sink in. We’d done it! The plan had worked. Aedan was alive and so was I and now we could move on!

  We slowed and then I felt myself roll awkwardly onto my side as the car jerked to a stop. I tried to turn back onto my back but my body still refused to respond. Some of the cocktail Heather had given me had worn off, but not all of it—I was still paralyzed. I wanted to tell Aedan I was alive. He was hurting so much and there was no need. I could grab and hug him and everything would be okay.

  If I could just...move...something.

  I heard him open his door and get out. And then there was a sound that was familiar and yet unplaceable to my drugged brain. A sort of metal scraping and the patter of something soft falling. Rhythmically, over and over again.

  At last, he stopped and I heard the rear car door open. I could see only reddish daylight through my closed lids, but I could feel Aedan looking down at me. “I picked a beautiful spot,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “Looking out over the water.”

  Oh God. Oh Jesus, no. I wanted to throw up with fear. I wanted to scream. But my drugged body just lay there like a lifeless doll.

  He leaned over me and wrapped me up in his arms and I felt myself being carried. There was the sensation of being lowered and then cold dampness was soaking through the back of my tank top and the smell of earth surrounded me.

  MOVE! But no matter how hard I strained, my body didn’t even twitch.

  I heard a rustle of clothing and the scrape of his sneakers as he knelt down. When he spoke, it didn’t sound like the Aedan I knew. He was stripped down, his soul bared; he was talking the way he talked when there was no one else to hear.

  “The first time I saw you,” he said, “I thought you were an angel.”

  Going by where his voice seemed to come from, he was kneeling right beside my grave...but it still sounded horribly far away. The hole must be deep. I was going to be deep down in the earth, with hundreds of pounds of soil on top of me.

  “I thought you couldn’t be...because nobody would send someone to save a feckin’ waste of space like me. I thought I was long past saving. But you showed me—But then I couldn’t—“

  He took a breath. Something warm and wet splashed onto my cheek.

  “—I couldn’t save—God damn it, Sylvie! It was meant to be me!” More wet drops on my face. When he could speak again, he continued. “I promise I’ll take care of Alec. And I’ll find a way to get Rick. I’ll get that bastard, if it takes me twenty years.”

  I heard him pick up the spade and stand up. “You were the sweetest girl I ever met,” he said. “And I will never, ever forget you.”

  MOVE! I tried to open my eyes, but they weighed a thousand tons each.

  There was a whump and something heavy and powdery landed across my legs. A few bits bounced as far as my neck.

  MOOOVE! But nothing happened.

  And the earth kept falling.

  Aedan

  I put the spade down and looked out across the water. It really was a beautiful place. She’d be happy here.

  Jesus, how the hell am I going to tell Alec?

  I looked down at Sylvie’s grave. I’d thought that she’d have to do this for me—that’s why I put the spade in the back of the car. I never thought I’d be the one doing it for her.

  I knew I had to finish. She was almost covered up with the first thin layer. I’d left her face until last. I couldn’t bear the thought of throwing soil down onto it, the dark clods breaking across those lips.

  I stepped down into the hole instead, putting my feet either side of her body. I’d push the earth with my hands, instead. I’d gently cover her face and then I’d just be shoveling earth onto earth and it would be easier.

  Jesus, she looked so perfect. Like she was sleeping.

  I leaned down and pressed my lips to hers one last time.

  And heard a tiny noise from her throat.

  I jumped back, staring down at her. But there was nothing else. My eyes filled up with tears. I’d just squeezed her chest a little and the air had moved.

  I put both hands behind the earth that covered her stomach and started to push it onto her face.

  And her eyes opened.

  Sylvie

  I couldn’t see, at first. My eyes had been closed too long. There was just blinding brightness and then I felt myself being lifted up. Was this heaven?

  The shapes resolved and I focused on Aeda
n’s face as he lifted me out of the grave and hugged me to him. He was saying my name over and over again but my tongue was thick and slow and I couldn’t seem to move enough air to form words. He put his ear to my chest and listened intently and I knew that it was going to be okay.

  He put me in the back seat and drove us a little way away, in case anyone came along and saw the hole and started asking questions. Then he sat in the back seat with me and held me as the drugs slowly wore off. It was another half hour before I could speak again. Full movement took an hour and I was still weak and shaky.

  But I was alive. And the very first thing I could do, as soon as I was able, was to pull my man close and never let go of him again.

  Sylvie

  I called Heather to tell her that the plan had worked. Then I spent a week holed up in Aedan’s apartment, going stir-crazy, while we figured out what to do. I’d quit my job before the fight so no one was looking for me, but we couldn’t take the chance that word would get back to Rick that I was alive.

  Then Heather called to tell us that Alec had shown signs of movement. Apparently, his vitals had started to perk up every time a certain nurse came in and, that morning, he’d opened his eyes.

  I picked out the nurse at the nurses’ station when we passed, because all her friends were clustered around her saying how great it was. Blonde and curvy. Alec had somehow known, even in his sleep.

  When we walked in, he was able to weakly turn his head to look at us.

  “Don’t exhaust him,” Heather told us. “It’s going to be a while before he’s up and around. But from the tests we’ve done so far, there should be no lasting damage.”

  Alec croaked something. I had to put my ear right to his mouth to make out the words. “Everything feels heavy.”

  I hugged him close. “Yeah. I’ve been there.”

  Alec turned to look suspiciously at Aedan. “What’s he”—he coughed—“doing here?”