The Savage Gentleman

by Harlan, Christopher

  “Damien is a very persuasive guy, you know?”

  “What do you want, Matt?”

  “I want to let you know that Damien did a great job to show me that both of us—not just you—are pigheaded, stubborn guys, who always think they’re right. Sometimes that leads to a clashing of the minds.”

  “Yeah.” I don’t really feel like a heart to heart right now. I want to get my body ready and stay focused, but at the same time I feel comforted by him being around. I’ve never had a fight where he isn’t getting me ready in the back. “So, I have to get ready.”

  “Look,” he says. “I get it. I’m still against this, and I really didn’t want to be a part of this whole thing—I thought it was a shit idea, and I kind of still do.”

  “Is there a ‘but’ in this Matt, cause your timing is shitty right now.”

  “But,” he says, smiling. “You’re like my son, and I’ve been there for you your entire career. Being a coach isn’t just being there when your student is doing what you want, but being there for them unconditionally.”

  He extends his hand. Matt’s a stubborn guy, like he said, but he’s a man of honor and integrity. There isn’t a fake bone in his body, so when he goes to shake a hand and says all is forgiven, I don’t even question it. My hands are gloved, so I tap his fist and we hug it out.

  “Awww,” Damien jokes. “A Kodak moment between men. This is some deep shit.”

  “Shut up, asshole.”

  We all laugh, and then Matt gets serious. “Listen, I have some ideas for how you can beat Jason. You wanna hear, or you want to do what you and Damien decided? I respect your decision either way.”

  That’s all I need to hear. “What I need is Master Splinter to help me beat the Shredder.”

  “What?” he asks. “Does that mean yes?”

  “Dude, after this fight we’re gonna have to sit down and watch the first movie—you really need to start catching these references I throw at you. There’s more to watch online than fight footage.”

  “If you say so, champ. If you say so.”

  Champ. I like the sound of that. Time to make it a reality.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Lucas

  35 minutes Later

  You never get used to a straight punch to the nose, no matter how crappy of a striker your opponent is. It always stings, no matter what. Lucky for me it’s not a clean shot. With my hand out of commission, and the fight starting on the feet, I have to use my footwork and angles to avoid getting knocked out. Not that it’s a huge risk with Jason—he used to have another nickname on the amateur circuits, Pillow Hands. Not the name you want when you’re trying to be an MMA champion, but he had a reputation for being a crap striker and being a cheat.

  What he is really good at, though, is Jiu Jitsu. He’s a great grappler, and right now I haven’t had to deal with any of that. Master Splinter had a great game plan that’s all based around psychology. I guess that’s why I gave him the nickname—man’s a genius when it comes to fighting. Most people have the stereotype of fighting as purely physical, but about ninety percent of it is mental. We all know how to fight—how to grapple, strike, and use footwork. Few of us understand the mental game as well as Matt—and part of victory at a high level is using an opponent’s psychology against him.

  I slip a few more jabs. A few connect as I’m moving, and I’m trying to keep my jab in his face to maintain distance. I have a pretty significant reach advantage of five inches on him, and I’m going to use it all to keep him the distance I need him from me. If he gets in past that range he’ll try to clinch me and take me down so he can use his Jiu Jitsu. If I keep him too far back I won’t connect with my jab. I need him right on the end of my working hand, and I need to mask the fact that I’m not throwing any right hands.

  That last part is harder than you’d think—after a while he’s going to notice that no right-handed punches are coming at him, so I throw a high right kick to mask it. He blocks right away and we’re back to jabbing at each other. He dives for a lazy takedown from too far out and I sprawl out so that he can’t get a hold of my legs. I’m happy to let him burn his energy out trying for a takedown that definitely isn’t happening. He gives up, and we each get back to the feet.

  The round goes on like that, and before I know it the bell rings signaling a third of the fight being over. When I get back to the corner, Matt and Damien look intense.

  “Who won that one?” I ask.

  “Hard to tell. Could go either way. Not a lot happened.”

  “I know. I’m trying to get my jab off enough to win me the round. That, plus the failed takedown on his part, might win it for me.”

  “Maybe,” Matt says. “But I don’t want two more rounds of that. You leave it up to the judges and weird shit can happen. We don’t wanna get there in a championship fight. I need you to step it up to phase two.”

  Phase two. Matt and I discussed it backstage in the locker room. A three-phase game plan that’ll hopefully pay off. Phase one was what I just did—keep him at range, see what he’s going to try to do, and counter it. Phase two is me stepping up my offense.

  The bell for round two goes off—I meet him in the center and throw a spinning back fist with my left hand. I expected him to duck it, but I hit him square in the face and he stumbles back. I hear my coach yell, “He’s hurt!” as Jason stumbles back to the cage. I rush at him, throwing left kicks, left hands, and right elbows as he covers up against the cage. This wasn’t the plan, but I’m going with it. I’m not paying attention to the fact that almost none of my strikes are getting through his guard. I start to feel the lactic acid building up, and my arms are feeling heavy. With each punch and elbow my arms feel more and more heavy. I realize that I’m punching myself out, and as soon as I slow my attack he throws a wild haymaker and hits me right on the chin.

  I don’t feel any pain, just the sensation of falling. For a second, I’m not there—my consciousness gone, but when my body crashes against the canvas it snaps me back into reality. He’s standing over me. I go to scoot my hips to the side so I can get up, but he drops his weight on top of me and I have to pull full guard. If you’ve never had a two hundred and twenty-five-pound man put all of his body weight on you, then you have no idea how crushing it feels. And he knows how to make himself feel even heavier than he is.

  I get him into what’s called butterfly guard, with the insteps of each of my feet on his upper inner thighs. With that I can control his weight a little bit, and if he’s off balance at any point I can lift him up and maybe get out from underneath. But he’s never off balance. Not once. We ride the rest of the clock out with him on top, throwing a punch every now and then. When the bell rings I get up and go back to my corner. I don’t have to ask who won that one.

  “I had that as your round for about forty-five seconds,” Matt says.

  “Me too. Unfortunately, rounds are five minutes long.” You gotta love Damien, he can be a prick even in the most tense of circumstances.

  “I’m aware, asshole. So it’s 1-1?”

  “Probably. We’re going to go straight to phase three now. No choice.” Phase three. That’s where I give him a look he’s not expecting. It’s do-or-die.

  “Alright.”

  “Listen, Lucas. This is it. This is the last chance you may have. It’s now or it’s never—so make it now!”

  Matt doesn’t usually raise his voice—he’s more of the measured type, so seeing him get amped up gets me amped up. No matter what happens, I’m going out there to win. The bell sounds, and we meet in the center for a final touch of gloves. Leather hits leather, and then we each step back, ready to do battle.

  I take the center first.

  I claim my space and keep my hands high in case he tries to knock me out like my last opponent did. He doesn’t. He just throws a couple of lazy shots. He’s standing low, with a huge bend in his knees, and that only means one thing—he’s planning on shooting for my legs and taking me down. He knows that I
know this, and what he wants is for me to throw something at him that’ll put me off balance and make it easier for him to take me to the ground—something like a high kick. I won’t be throwing those, or anything else that’s going to make his job easier.

  Instead of a high kick, I throw a low kick. It’s low and slow, slow enough for him to catch, which is exactly what I want him to do. As he grabs my left leg he goes for the takedown, only I’ve been working one of my favorite submissions—the guillotine choke. It’s the perfect counter for a lazy takedown, which he shoots for. Once his head is beneath my armpit, I wrap his neck with my left hand. As he goes to take me down I let him, and as we fall to the canvas together I slip my right arm underneath his neck also and clasp my hands. We land in my full guard, and I cut an angle so that the guillotine is all but locked in.

  I squeeze. I squeeze like all hell. My arms are still a little shot from all those punches before, and a guillotine is a strength move. There’s technique to it, but it also requires a lot of strength, and I’m hoping I have enough. I see my corner yelling and jumping.

  “Squeeze, Lucas, squeeze!”

  I listen. I feel him trying to get out, and trust me he knows how, but I don’t think he was expecting any offensive Jiu Jitsu from me. I caught him by surprise just enough to sink in a tight choke that is very hard to get out of. I squeeze some more, waiting to see if he’s going to try and muscle his way out, but he doesn’t. I feel his body go limp, and I feel the fight drain out of him. I get excited and look up at the ref, who’s standing above us, watching closely.

  “He’s out!” I yell. “Check him.”

  Guillotines are weird for refs because the guy’s face is under my arm, facing the canvas, so refs have to be able to read body language and know when a guy’s out. If I hold the choke too long after that I could cause brain damage, so I hope this ref knows what the hell he’s doing. I yell again. “He’s fucking out!”

  “Stop, stop!” The ref grabs my arm and I hear the bell. The fight’s over, and I just won the championship!

  The crowd erupts, and I fall to my back in complete exhaustion.

  I did it.

  I fucking did it!

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Mila

  “YES!”

  My screams barely make a sound in this crowd. I just watched my man win the light heavyweight championship, and I think I may have destroyed my voice screaming. There are too many people here for him to see or hear me, but that doesn’t stop me from freaking out. Holly and Sophie are next to me doing the exact same thing as me, and so is everyone else in the arena.

  “YES! YOU’RE THE FUCKING CHAMP! YES!”

  I don’t recognize myself right now. I’m usually pretty calm, but I know what this means. For 99 percent of these people this is just another fight—almost fifteen minutes of entertainment and nothing else. But I know how much went into this, how much it means, and what Lucas was dealing with behind the scenes to get here.

  After a post fight interview and a whole lot of celebration in the cage, I try to catch Lucas as he’s walking off to the backstage area. I scream his name, wave, and do whatever I can to catch his attention, but he doesn’t see me. I work my way out of the isle and try to run backstage. A giant man who must be security stops me. He looks like The Mountain from Game of Thrones.

  “Excuse me, ma’am, you can’t go back there.”

  “But I know the guy who just won. I need to see him.”

  “Never heard that one before, ma’am. Sorry. Not happening. If you know him, you can catch up with him after he leaves, but right now. . .”

  Just as he’s about to turn me away I hear the commotion. A beer bottle smashes against the arena floor and two guys in the crowd start going at it. I guess the fights in the cage weren’t enough. The big security man rushes over to break it up before someone gets hurt, and that’s when I make my move. I rush past him, down the corridor that I think leads into the backstage area.

  I look around like a crazy person, going from locker room to locker room, until I hear the celebration down the hall. That has to be his. I dart over to the last room at the end of the hallway and rush inside like I belong there. No one notices me, and everyone is gathered around Lucas and the new gold belt that he has strapped around his waist.

  At first, I don’t want to ruin his moment. We haven’t really talked yet. I don’t want to take away from all this, so I turn around to sneak back out. That’s when I hear his voice. “Mila!” he yells. “Mila, wait!” He rushes over to me and wraps his huge, sweaty arms around me, and that’s when I know everything is okay. He squeezes me so hard it almost hurts, but it’s the best pain I’ve ever felt. “I didn’t know you were here, why didn’t you tell me you were coming?”

  “I didn’t want to distract you,” I tell him. “I saw the whole thing! That was a sick guillotine!”

  “You remember!” he says. I’ve never seen him this happy. He’s smiling ear to ear, covered in sweat and blood, but he’s never looked so sexy to me.

  “Listen, I. . .”

  “Stop,” he tells me. “I was an asshole. End of story. I took shit out on you that you didn’t deserve, and I’ll never do that again. And this wouldn’t have been a real victory without you here with me. End of story. I fucking love you.”

  “What?” I ask, not believing my ears.

  “I said I love you, and without you here this strap doesn’t mean shit.”

  “I love you, too,” I tell him, jumping into his arms and squeezing as hard as I can.

  “Easy, easy killer, I just fought another guy. I’m sore as hell.”

  “Oh, jeez, sorry.”

  “How about when all this dies down, we go to dinner and celebrate? Someplace nice.”

  “Are you sure? You don’t want to hang out with the guys?”

  “I see the guys enough. I’ll see them tomorrow. People are gonna come for this strap. There’s plenty of gym time to come, but right now the only person I want to see is you. What do you say?”

  “I say yes—to anything you ask me.”

  He leans into me and puts his mouth next to my ear. “I’ll remember you said that later on.”

  He takes my hand. I stay in the locker room with him until it clears out. He takes a quick shower and gets changed. He looks good dressed up. “Ready?” he asks.

  “I’m ready.”

  As he’s grabbing his bags, a man appears in the doorway and calls Lucas’ name. “Hey, Ghost.”

  Lucas turns around. “Holy shit, Sean, I didn’t even think you were here tonight.”

  “I’m always around,” he says. “That was an impressive win tonight. Listen, if you have a second, I’d like to talk. I think we have a few things to go over.”

  Lucas turns to me and smiles. “Baby,” he says. “No disrespect, but dinner is going to have to wait!”

  I thought it might. I think Lucas just got into the UFC! He’s right. Dinner can wait.

  The End

  Coming December, 2019

  The Three Kiss Clause

  ADD to your Goodreads here—> https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47566019-the-three-kiss-clause

  Synopsis

  Cormac Delaney was everything I hated about men—arrogant, smug and condescending, but he was also everything my body responded to—gorgeous, tall, brooding, and confident. Oh, and he happened to be a partner at the publishing company I was trying to get signed to! My book—“Fu*#$@Boys”—about how men are selfish, sex-crazed pigs—was one vote of ‘yes’—his vote—from being a published, but not only did he hate my book, he asked me a question that would change things between us forever:

  “How can you be an expert on men when you’ve never been in a real relationship?”

  He had a point, but I wasn’t about to let him know. Instead I did what any self-respecting academic would do—I proposed a radical social experiment. Cormac and I would live together for one month as boyfriend and girlfriend. If he could change my mind about men I’d withdraw my
book. If not, he’d agree to publish it.

  My only condition? No sex, or anything physical, whatsoever.

  I never thought he’d go for it, but I guess I was wrong about him, in more ways than one. Don’t get me wrong, I hate Cormac Delaney, even if he is easy on the eyes. . .fine, he’s good looking. . .alright, he’s hot as hell, but still! To do this I’m going to have to remind myself of a few things: we’re only an experiment, nothing more. He’s not the most gorgeous man I’ve ever seen in my life, he absolutely does not have a body that makes me tingle in all the right places, and I’m never, under any circumstances, going to let myself fall for him. . .

  Right?

  FuckBoy

  —Someone who is only looking for a piece of ass to use then throw away. . . He will always come crawling back because he is a horny prick and cannot withstand the dispossession of one of his baes, because he has more than one that's for sure.

  FuckBoy Syndrome

  —A chronic disease, in which a chemical imbalance located between the testicles and brain cause the affected male to act and think in a distorted and perverted way. No one knows the exact cause of Fuckboy Syndrome, but it is said to be both genetic and conditioned. If this disease is left to manifest, it will consume the fuckboys life and actions.

  —Urban Dictionary

  Chapter One

  Tori

  Let’s get one thing straight.

  Men are pigs, nothing more—slaves to the masters that are their dicks.

  Don’t bother arguing with me on this point, because my mind is firmly made up. In fact, I’ve written an entire book—my first—on this very subject.