There's a few boos from my side of the ring, where my fans and father are watching. The referee issues a stern warning to Jackson, who merely smirks.
I can't let him clinch me. He'll play dirty. He doesn't want me to win. So I'll play in a way that will irritate the shit out of him. I start dodging more, focusing on light taps with the southpaw – and when the bell dings – it's ten points to two. I'm ahead of him by eight points, because he got deducted one from hitting me below the belt. Fucking deserves to lose. My coach pours water on my head and nods.
“You got him. He's too emotional. Just stay calm, don't let him clinch you, don't be lured into his left side openings, he tends to bait his opponent that way for straight rights, going for the knock out.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, grinning, before getting up for round two. He's desperately aiming to knock me out now. His coach must have warned him for that, warned him that I'll play the long game and I'll win it. My muscles ache, but in a good way. I plan to wear this punk out. He's putting a lot of power into his hits. I take a bunch on my gloves, weaving my body each time to reduce the power of each impact, deflecting some of them. A few blows still snake through, but for the most part, he's expending all his energy trying to knock me out. My jaw is tight, and I'm breathing hard through my nose.
Round two – he wins, ten points to my seven. It was longer than the last round. Three, I see some signs he's beginning to flag. His punches have a little less ferocity in them, but I don't dismiss the possibility this might be a trick. The commentators keep burbling. I can barely hear them. It's just me and Jackson, our eyes locked and taut in hate. I'm here for vengeance, he's here because he thinks I'm an easy target. That someone, because I'm not a proper man, it means I can't fight like one.
Fuck him. Round three takes even longer, and he wins it again, ten to eight. I'm still ahead, but my goal's being achieved. Four, the same dancing game starts again, and now the crowd is screaming, telling me to fight and stop pussyfooting around. Four is faster. He wins again, ten to eight. My lead is dropping, but judging by his red, exhausted face, and the way his jaw drops open in round five, I see he'll soon be mine. An open jaw is a bad sign for him, it means he's tiring, and it's easier to deliver a knockout blow on an open jaw. Easier to break it as well. Sure enough, his blows are coming heavier. Slower.
I win this round, ten to six.
The crowd continues roaring, but it's obviously to anyone that Jackson spent too much energy in trying to use his awesome strength to punch the living daylights out of me. And now I command the field. Round seven, he lurches towards me, and I make his attack awkward with my footing, and deliver a swift left uppercut that sends him on his back. A knock down. He groans, getting to his feet on the count of six. Everything about him seems heavy, like a sack of potatoes. Now my side of the crowd is getting louder, and Jackson's is getting quieter. I can even hear my dad bellow, “Go on, son! Do it!”
I have to grin at that. I inflict another knock down within thirty seconds. Jackson grunts and gets to his feet. His eyes are groggy. He's on his last legs already.
“Looks like you're about to be beaten by a faggot,” I tell him, with malicious glee. “Nice going, Case. Guess you shouldn't have fucked with me before.”
The look of dumb astonishment in his face, along with tiny gears whirring in his mind as he comprehends just who exactly I am, is worth everything. Then, I pounce on him like a tiger, mauling past his defenses, until I deliver a clean punch to his open jaw, and his eyes roll to the back of his head, and he collapses. I hit my gloves together in front of my sweat stained chest, taking huge breaths as I watch the referee count down, and Jackson lie on the floor, out cold.
He begins to blink at the count of seven, but is unable to muster the energy to get up as the referee finishes the count, and raises my hand up as the clear winner.
Jackson's fans howl in fury. Their hero has fallen, and they loathe me for it. I take all the abuse, not flinching, accepting that this is the way of things, that I cannot expect anything more from them.
Jackson is helped into his corner, and he looks at me, still with that baffled expression. I look back at him coldly, shaking my head, before stalking off. I don't want to talk to any reporters. One stops me anyway, asking how I feel about the match.
“He had that coming,” I say simply. “He couldn't get away with that attitude forever, not without karma coming to kick him in the ass. He's a good fighter, but a bad person. And I don't like letting bad people win.”
The reporter nods, and cameras flash at me. My coach is already, with two other people, distributing shirts to my fans, who roar in happiness. I clap hands with some, and stop to give my father a hug. He yells near my ear, “That's my boy. You showed him! You showed him!”
I laugh and hug him tighter, before leaving the place in a blaze of glory, in triumph – riding the best high of my life.
Chapter Three
Most likely, I've caused the biggest upset to land in this area yet, and I'm not exactly bothered about it. I'm going back to my hotel. My father's in a different one. And I'm about ready to sleep, now that I've gotten my fight out of the way. I'm proud of what I did.
And I'm elated that I beat that piece of shit who hurt me four years before. It might be petty vengeance, but boy does it feel good. And now that I've beaten the former champion, and earned the belt, I'm obviously not going to be an obscure name for long. I hope fame doesn't go to my head, though I don't know how I'm going to behave with it in a year's time.
I see Jackson's interview when I get back to the hotel – it's already on YouTube, and one of the reporters is a little aggressive with him, asking how it feels to be beaten by a gay man. That according to his theory, he's weak and gay because of it – and this creates a venomous glare from Jackson to the bold reporter, before he's shoved away and asked something by someone else.
I grin, turn off the television, and sleep.
Again, I picture Jackson in the dream, though it's a mix of the one four years ago, when I knew him as Casey, and the one today, with his look of frozen surprise when I revealed my identity to him. He had no idea. It hurt me on a level, because I don't think I've changed that drastically. I still have the same eyes, the same face, though I trimmed off the wisp of a beard I was trying to grow, and maybe I've fleshed out a bit since then. Maybe it's the haircut. My hair was too long for a boxer, too liable to get in my way or be used as a weapon against me, so when I started going professional, I lopped it all off.
To be fair, there was the name changes as well. I know Jackson had some troubles growing up. I didn't get to hear all of them, but it was obvious to anyone that he wanted to box to get away from his family. He didn't just do boxing either. He fought in MMA amateur rings, he tried Judo, he tried Karate, Krav Maga and Muay Thai.
He really went for all the arts, while I just focused on boxing and gym work. Jackson had an injury just above his eyebrow when I first met with him that evening, which had two little bandage tapes upon it. There were many things I asked him that evening, but the top one was focusing on that little injury, because it seemed so fresh at the time.
He wasn't really open about it, but from his body language, from the shit his friends said, I figured out that he didn't have an easy time at home.
Maybe I even started feeling sympathy for him at a point, and when our evening progressed to the point where he sloppily kissed me, drunk on the numerous drinks he'd gulped down at the behest of his friends – I thought that maybe we could make something more of this chance meeting. Not when he was drunk out of his skull, but afterwards.
To this day, I'm still not one hundred percent sure he remembered what happened. But he certainly seemed to remember something when I used that simple nickname – when I stared at him from above and showed him who was boss.
Waking up, my body aches. I did a lot of moving, and I still gained some nasty blows. The physician checked me, saw no major harm done, but I'll have a few scrapes from my fight all
the same. He was a monster, even with my guard, sure footing and advantage from the fact he wasn't used to fighting southpaws, I still obtained some ringing hits from him, though I could shrug them off in the adrenaline of the fight.
And I'm stuck in this place for another day. Not that I mind, I wanted to explore further before returning to my home state. I arrange to meet my dad though, since that sly bastard decided to turn up and support me anyway. I'm flattered, of course. He didn't have to, and I'm infinitely grateful that he did.
Social media seems to compare our fight as a David versus Goliath scenario, though I doubt it was anything like that, really. Then there's the endless technical analysis of who fought better, and whether it was a fluke that I won, or the fact that Jackson's own hubris condemned him. He so believed that I couldn't win, that he forgot the rules of fighting in general, in that it doesn't matter who you are. All that matters is your skill, which has nothing to do with your personal beliefs and feelings.
Imagine my surprise when I return to the hotel for the evening, opt to drink in at the bar on the ground floor – only to find that Jackson is there as well. The lights are dim, and there's only a few people here, most of them sat on the high-rise stools by the bar, getting served, whilst Jackson is nearer to the corner, moodily drinking from a foamy, golden beer. The screen in the bar is showing a movie, and Jackson has his eyes upon it. I don't recognize the movie, but I remember that the bar allowed people to pay a bare minimum to watch whatever they wanted, since they had subscriptions to all the best services, such as Netflix and HBO.
I live in a modest apartment myself, though with the earnings from my win, I can probably end up advancing further than I expect. My coach recommends for me to start a line of goods for others to buy too, though I'm uncomfortable with the concept.
My blue eyes lock on Jackson, who appears to have not noticed me yet. No way. I'm sure he wasn't staying at this hotel. I didn't see him around at all in the first couple of nights I was here, and I came to the bar every evening. Now he's here. I take deep, angry breaths, imagining punching him in his stupid, bearded face, and watching his neck snap back from the impact. I see it in slow motion, and for some reason, a prickling of tears comes to my eyes as well.
I didn't want him to spit at me and hate me. I didn't want that at all. Part of me regrets not just going for it that night, because now I'll never get the chance with him. And maybe if we went all the way and fucked one another, he wouldn't be like this today. He wouldn't have hurt me so badly. He could have woken up at my side.
It's another past, another time. I grab my drink, contemplating for a moment, even as I swirl the dark beer around, before deciding to approach him. Both of us wear normal, unimaginative clothes. I'm a blue shirt and black shorts, he's wearing a black shirt with jeans, looking more like a blonde redneck than anything else. I suppose I look like I'm one step away from getting a tattoo across my neck and knuckles with love and hate scrawled across them. Even with my approach, he's oblivious until I choose to slide into the chair opposite him.
His green eyes latch onto mine. Blank concentration to surprise to an unpleasant narrowing, and a twist of his lips. I place my drink on the table, cool.
“What are you doing here?”
I don't believe for a second he's here by chance.
“Grabbing a drink and watching a film, what does it look like?” He challenges me, but I'm no fool.
“If you're looking for a rematch, you may have to wait until next year,” I say. “But I don't intend to let you beat me up again. You know who I am, right?”
He licks his lips, appearing irritated. The blonde hairs under his nose seem to shift like his eyebrows, whenever he changes his expression. His muscles are practically bursting out of that black shirt, with the Metallica logo sprawled across it. They're the type of muscles, when I'm not dreading them punching the consciousness out of me, as sexy. The kind you'd want to protect you, to feel up close and how the flesh ripples under the touch. They are the result of hard dedication and effort.
“I didn't know who you were at first. You look hella different from the guy before.”
To be fair, I thought the same of him. However, what's pissing me off now is his contrite tone, like he's not doing anything wrong by being here. I don't want him here. I want him gone.
At the same time, I want him to stay. I want to know if there's any way to push past that disgusting façade he puts on, and find out the reasons for why he does what he does. If he really hates me, and why he chose to hate me, when I was nothing but kind to him. The conflicting emotions simply cause me to freeze, and not want to move. Finally, I say, because he's not offering anything more, “I don't know what you're expecting. I know you weren't here in the hotel before. You obviously wanted to find the opportunity to pick a fight with me.”
“Don't put yourself so important,” Jackson hisses, his green eyes flashing. “Like I'd be here for you.” Then he hesitates, and pinches the bridge of his nose, letting out a huff of annoyance. “No. That's not what I came here to say. That's my mouth running away with everything again.”
“Does that a lot, does it?” I'm not making this easy for him. His cheeks brighten, becoming an ugly red. He clenches his hands into fists, clearly one step away from pummelling my face.
“Stop with the clever remarks. I want us to have a talk.”
I sigh. Then I fold my arms, kick my legs onto the table, and give him a wilting gaze. “If you want us to have a talk, you better start explaining why the fuck you put me in hospital.”
“I...” Now something like guilt goes over his face. The guilt surprises me, but also irritates me at the same time, because if he'd felt guilty, then he should have visited me in the hospital. Not that I would have been exactly thrilled to see him, but it's a damn sight better than knowing he happily left me for dead and didn't feel sorry about it. “I'm sorry I didn't go and visit you. I didn't think I'd be welcome.”
“And how exactly do you think I'll take it when you don't turn up at all, and then disappear out of my life for four years? Not exactly a great thing to experience.”
If anything, he goes so red, he's practically turning purple. To my utter astonishment, I see fat tears leak out of his eyes, and he braces his fists against the table, his drink temporarily forgotten. I just gape stupidly, unable to comprehend why this tough, minority bashing bastard is now showing unmanly tears in front of me. It shocks me enough into silence that I don't bother adding any jibes. I don't know what to say or react at all.
Have I gotten this wrong? Did I completely miss the reasons for why he's acting the way he does?
“I really thought you wouldn't want me to come and see you?” He says, before smashing his fingers against the bridge of his nose again – I suppose his go to gesture when he needs to correct himself. “No. I was scared. I was scared that people would think I was gay.”
I blink. My hostility starts to evaporate, especially when I realize where this conversation is going. My heart picks up in pace. My blood pounds strangely about my body. My ears seem to thunder with my heartbeat, and my mouth goes dry, like I'm getting nervous and excited at the same time.
“I think we're going to have to start all the way from the beginning, aren't we?” I say. I bite my lip, trying to fathom if he's for real or not. If he's actually here to explain to me why he's such a massive dick, and if he's not going to be a total douche about it.
“Yeah. I owe you that much.” He shakes his head. “I'm still shocked you were my opponent. And that you got so fucking good. I deserved to lose that match.”
Yes, he did. But I don't say it out loud. Instead, I say, “Best get on with it. I don't know if you're serious or not, given how you behave. If you're serious, we better replenish our drinks first.”
He raises one blonde eyebrow at me, reminding me that under that hair is a devastatingly handsome face, and he goes over to the bar to order a round of drinks. Honestly, he's handsome even with all the hair covering it. It giv
es a different, rugged shape to him someone. I presume to enhance his manliness, make him tougher in the eyes of others.
I wonder what he'll tell me. If I'll find it ridiculous, believable, or nothing but a pack of lies. He has a lot of ground to make up for if he wants me to even come close to regarding him in a favorable light. It might be better for us to part on more amiable terms, rather than the humiliation and rage that's been bottled up in my soul for so many years. It's funny, because that might have been the closest night I came to losing my virginity, and I stalled it because I wanted to be legal, and not take advantage of a drunk person. And since then, well... I got more into my training. More into making my father proud. And much left on pursuing relationships. Sure, if I really wanted, I could have just gone into a gay bar and sought out someone, but I wasn't desperate to have sex.
Masturbation goes a long way, after all. And relationships tend to lead to a plethora of problems. Unless both sides have sufficiently matured enough to approach it in an adult way, and understand that it won't be easy or smooth sailing, and the best relationships come from those who have stuck with their partners for the long run.
To Love A Hitman Page 15
