The Clinch

by Nicole Disney

  “Calm down,” I say quietly, as if I can bring her down with my voice. She explodes with power, trying to tear me to the ground, but her hips aren’t under her, so I weather it. She tries again, but I raise my knee in what would be a devastating strike if I followed through.

  “You’re not in position,” I say. “Calm down and think. Break my hold.” She ignores my advice, intent on keeping her underhooks rather than addressing the vice grip I have around her neck. Her arms tighten around me. Weirdly and suddenly, I’m aware of just how much contact we’re sharing. We’re glued to each other, something that’s happened in sparring more days of my life than not, so why am I thinking about it now?

  She pauses, then pulls me away from the fence. Her arms strain as she tries to topple me. I pull the clinch tight, step right, and yank her so she has to slam her foot down to catch herself, forcing her to abandon her own maneuver or fall.

  “You can’t muscle your way out of this.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Use your head. Break my hold.”

  She finally listens, putting her palm to my chin and straightening her arm, twisting my face away from her while pushing and loosening my hold enough she can back away. The second she’s free she throws a right hand. I duck just in time and hear it rattle the fence behind me.

  “Good,” I say, but as soon as I can compliment her, she’s throwing wild looping punches, leaving absolutely everything open. I could light her up if I wanted, but I circle under and out.

  “You’re brawling again.”

  “Yeah.” She raises her hands to her side for an instant, then swings again. “I’m a brawler. That’s what I do.”

  Her anger is intriguing more than anything. I send a few straight down the middle to slow her down. “You can be more.”

  “I’m not a calculated fighter, Bauer. I’m not brainy like you. I’m just guts and muscle. You said it yourself.”

  She swings, and I feel the wind of it against my cheek. “You’re a Jiu-Jitsu specialist. Of course, you’re calculated. You don’t just go for a submission, you get in position, control, and exhaust them first. You time it. This is the same. You have to set me up. You can’t just swing.”

  She feints a jab, but shoots for a takedown just before the end of my sentence is out. I sprawl, but she powers forward despite all my weight pressing her toward the mat. Her shoulder finds my hip and slams me into the fence. I try to flatten her down, but she has her legs under her now. She pauses with all her weight crushing me against the fence, bear hugs, and lifts me off the mat in such a powerful motion there’s not a thing I can do about it. I’m hanging in that moment of zero gravity between raising up and falling, and all my instincts switch from the fight to my neck. It’s a different motion, but the familiarity of it as her arms constrict around me and her shoulder drives down makes my very blood tense in anticipation. I orient myself for the best fall, attempting to square with the mat.

  Then her hand is behind my neck, holding it, and the momentum of my fall slows by half. She switches from hurling me down to lowering me there, then moves into side control as if nothing happened.

  She wraps an arm around the back of my neck and holds the back of my shoulder, then pushes her head to the mat so we’re chest to chest and my own bicep is pinned against my ear. Her weight crushes down as she hops her legs over my body, using me as if I were the ground. She’s in position now and starts cinching up an arm triangle, a technique that will choke me with my own shoulder and her bicep. She applies it so slowly and precisely it feels safe, but I can’t stop her. When she tightens it up, I tap her back and she releases the choke. She leans back a little and holds my neck again.

  “You okay?”

  I nod, soaking in the ecstasy of this feeling, of my shirt soaked with sweat resting heavy on my chest, of muscles relaxed in a way they only can after drained of all they possess, of animosity morphing effortlessly to friendship to competition to survival to love.

  Brooklyn slowly smiles. “Good. Crazy girl.” She starts to sit up, but I reach out and grab her shirt before she does.

  “Hey.”

  She freezes and looks at me.

  “Forget what I said about you only being strong. I didn’t even know you then. What you just did was smart and precise and controlled and aggressive and powerful. You can be all of it, Brooklyn. Don’t let anyone call you just a brawler. You’re an elite martial artist.”

  She leans down and kisses me so smoothly I don’t know it’s happening until her warm lips are fitted perfectly to mine and all the air is sucked from my lungs in a shock of exhilaration. My entire body responds and lifts up into the weight of her before I even know what I’m doing. The kiss is slow and comes in gentle surges, an unstoppable force, both soothing and dizzying.

  I wrap my arms around her, running my hands up her back, feeling the shape of her, blindsided by the sensuality under the tough exterior. Her palm molds to me as she slowly moves up my side to my chest. Her tongue slips into my mouth. When our tongues meet, I feel her tense with desire in my arms, and she pushes her thigh between my legs, pressing against me in a motion that shatters all sense of reality. Her fingers thread into my hair at the base of my neck and close. Every piece of me dissolves into her, and I pull her deeper into the kiss, my palm on fire against the back of her soft neck.

  She moves against me again, pressing firmly with her thigh and pulling a quiet moan I can’t stop from my throat. She breaks the kiss to move down, breathing over the sensitive skin of my neck and kissing my collarbone. Her fingers trace the exposed skin showing across my stomach, and her hand gently moves under my loose shirt, pushing it slowly up while she kisses. I bring my left glove to my mouth, grab the Velcro strap with my teeth, and rip it to free my hands. The sound of it tearing apart seems to energize her, and she moves to pull my shirt over my head.

  The cool mat is a pleasant shock against my screaming skin. I pull her shirt off too, and she crashes back against me. She kisses me hard and groans in a deep, visceral sound. I move my hand up her stomach while she rips off her gloves, feeling her ragged breathing on top of me, until I brush over her nipple and feel her strength buckle. She tugs on my earlobe with her teeth, setting off every path of pleasure in my body.

  “Yo, Brooklyn! You ready or what?”

  She leaps off me so fast I feel like my soul’s been waxed. She yanks her shirt back on so haphazardly it’s a wonder everything makes it through the right holes, and she’s on her feet. I get up too and just kick my shirt and gloves against the wall where they look more appropriately abandoned as a normal end of session routine. Fighting in a sports bra is par for the course, so I’d rather Leandro sees that than me frantically trying to get dressed.

  He rounds the corner and fills the doorframe. “What the hell are you two doing in the dark?”

  “Training. Duh,” Brooklyn manages. He flips on the lights while looking at her like she’s an idiot.

  “Didn’t notice the sun go down,” I say.

  “What’re you doing here?” Brooklyn asks.

  “Théo took the Escalade,” he says. “Figured you’d need a ride.”

  “I could’ve called a driver. You didn’t have to do that.”

  “Okay, well, I’m here, so we going or what? Looks like you two were wrapping up.”

  “Yeah,” she says, a little too fast. “Sure, that’s fine. See ya, Eden.”

  I know it’s an act, but the way her eyes pass right over me like I’m nothing is more convincing than I was prepared for.

  “Later,” I say as coolly as I can manage. She doesn’t look back as she walks off with Leandro. In the long, empty minutes after I hear the front door close, I just sit in stunned silence. I figure a text will come any second, but it doesn’t happen. What the hell do I expect her to say? Maybe it’s coming to her now the way it is to me that we’re out of our fucking minds. I can’t hook up with Brooklyn. What kind of stroke did I just have?

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fin
ding a second alone with Brooklyn proves impossible. The Shaws seem to travel at least two at a time wherever they go. We even drive to the airport as a group to fly off to New Mexico for the event, then share a cab to the hotel. I spring to bring Laila along as part of the team just to not feel so outnumbered by them. Interviews, meals, weigh-ins, the face-off, morning jogs, always at least one Shaw brother. Now that it’s fight night, there’s certainly no room to talk. Don’t get me wrong, the Shaw boys are lovely. They’re focused but funny, fierce but friendly, opinionated but curious. They just happen to be making it impossible for me to gauge where Brooklyn is on the kiss.

  I’ve snuck around with girls before, a friend in high school who didn’t want her boyfriend to find out we were making out on the side, a coworker who didn’t want the boss to know about us and separate our shifts, but those experiences don’t touch this. Those situations were kept secret with a heavy dose of playfulness. We were still flirtatious, taking chances and daring anyone to say something. Brooklyn doesn’t play around like that. There’s no wink with her standoffishness.

  Sometimes I think she intends to never talk about it. Maybe I should let that happen. The more time that passes, the stranger it seems to bring it up. If she was picturing a continuation, she could have made an effort to see me alone, or at least call, but she hasn’t.

  I zip up my Shaw hoodie, a UFC jacket with her last name up the left side of the back. It’s the first time I’ve worn one with someone else’s name on it. I grab my room key and head two doors down to Brooklyn’s room. She answers all dressed and ready. Théo is sitting in a chair in the corner.

  “Ready?”

  She nods, and they follow me into the hall. We collect Leandro and Laila and head out. The prelims are half over by the time we make it to the locker room. Brooklyn is the second fight of the main card, so we have time, but not an excess amount of it.

  I kneel in front of her and start wrapping her hands, much more deliberately than I ever am with myself. I don’t say a word, just let her know I’m here with passing eye contact. The moments before a fight are intense and the way people navigate them so varied.

  “I like the way you do that,” she says, watching the pattern I’m using to wrap her hands.

  I smile. “Good.”

  Théo, Leandro, and Laila are watching the fights on the TV around the corner, shouting at the screen as things happen.

  “Eden, about the other night.”

  My eyes snap up to hers. “Really?” I ask. “Now?”

  She laughs lightly. “In case she wipes my memory with a head kick or something.”

  I want to tell her that’ll never happen, but she doesn’t seem to be after reassurance. “Okay.”

  “We can’t do it again,” she says. Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I absolutely need to know in case she can’t tell me later, but I nod, reacting as little as I can. “I meant to come talk to you about it,” she says. “But I didn’t trust myself not to do it again, and I can’t.”

  “Okay.” I focus on wrapping her right hand. “Got it.” I have no idea if I manage the casual tone I’m going for. I figured if it didn’t happen already, it wasn’t going to. I was burning alive in my skin that night, and I’m pretty sure she was too. If she didn’t come back, she had reasons, and they were probably good ones. She’s my client. She’s hyper focused on her career and needs to be. Whatever’s going on with her family around the issue is obviously a problem. And after a long, shaky road, we’re finally getting along, may even be friends. Why jeopardize all that for a kiss? Earth-shaking or not.

  “It was incredible, though,” she says, catching me off guard. When I look up, she has a completely alluring, mischievous smile. God damn it.

  I smile back and keep it simple. “Yes, it was.”

  “I just have to keep my mind on training. You understand. You’ve been there.”

  I’ve never actually cited my career as a reason to shut someone down before. I’ve never had to. Keeping people at a distance has always come so naturally it’s never required a real conversation, but I’m sure I would have.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I understand.”

  “Are we cool?”

  “Of course, we are.”

  “Yo, they’re talking about you two,” Théo yells from the next room over.

  “Let’s warm up,” I say. I grab the pads and go to the area with the TV so we can listen while she throws some punches.

  The announcers speak in their typical smooth rhythm. “Brooklyn Shaw is coming back to the octagon off a brutal loss to Eden Bauer five months ago and facing what a lot of people believe to be another tough matchup in the former kickboxing champion Julia Mendez.” He looks to his cohost, who comes back in the same flow.

  “That’s right. Julia Mendez is on a tear right now, a five-fight win streak, her latest victory against the number six ranked Sara Tomil. She’s coming in with a lot of confidence, and there’s even talk that Mendez is on her way to being the new Bauer. Bauer beat her in just one round when they met in the octagon two years ago, but it’s pretty clear Mendez is not the same martial artist she was back then. What adjustments does Shaw need to make to see a better result than she had against Bauer?”

  I stay glued to Brooklyn’s eyes as she thwaps solid hits into the mitts, ready to move her out of the room if she starts reacting to the announcers, but she shows no signs she’s even listening.

  “She’s made a crucial one, and that’s her team. The Shaws have been slow to confirm this, but it’s official, Brooklyn Shaw has made what I believe to be a brilliant decision in bringing none other than Eden Bauer herself on as her new head coach. If anyone can get her ready for Mendez, it’s Bauer. I mean, what a move. I never thought they would be able to patch things up enough to do that, but I’m so glad they did because that’s the dream team.”

  “I get what you’re saying, but I’m not so sure. It’s such an important relationship. Switching coaches is a tricky thing even under the best circumstances, and here you have a ton of baggage, only a couple of months together, and listen, champion or not, Bauer is a brand-new coach. Mendez has had an ironclad training team for a long time now. She’s a veteran of the sport. She knows what works for her. I think she goes into this fight with a giant advantage.”

  “We’re about to find out! But first let’s talk about our next match.”

  They switch to talking about the martial artists who are up next, and Leandro spins around.

  “That was great,” he says. “They love talking about you, Brooklyn. You’ve got star power.”

  “They talk about everyone,” she says.

  “Not like you. Not all excited and shit.”

  “He’s right,” I say. She looks surprised and smiles.

  The crowd erupts. I look to Théo, who’s staring at the screen. “That’s it,” he says. “One-minute KO. You’re up, B.”

  I grab her gloves and look her in the eye. “She comes out hot, but fades. Control the pace. Work the legs and body. Get the takedown and tap her out, but don’t rush it,” I say. “She expects it from you. She’s going to try to knock you out on your way in.”

  “Let’s go!” someone shouts down the tunnel. Brooklyn makes nervous eye contact.

  “You’re ready,” I say. “I’ll be right there in your corner.”

  She nods and pulls up her hood. She starts her walk down the aisle with me, Théo, Leandro, and Laila right behind her. If she’s still nervous, all signs of it are gone. She looks like a wrecking ball, powering forward. She kisses me and her brothers on the cheek before kneeling in prayer at the stairs to the octagon. Julia Mendez’s intro is second, but Brooklyn has more fans. After the ref checks with each of them, he issues the start of the fight to roaring applause.

  Brooklyn steps toward the middle but has to back away as Mendez comes flying in with a strong right. Brooklyn circles out calmly.

  Mendez marches Brooklyn down, applying measured pressure. Brooklyn’s hands are up, her eyes focused as
she watches for Mendez to expose her next attack.

  “Leg kick,” I yell, and Brooklyn throws a banger of one that slaps Mendez’s leg so hard her heel comes off the canvas. Mendez bobs and twists her shoulders, feinting three times in a row, trying to draw Brooklyn into a punching match.

  “Hit the leg again,” I yell. Brooklyn is halfway through the kick before I’m even done saying it. She responds instantly, the best I’ve ever seen at it.

  “Inside!” I yell, and she does it, chewing up the inner side of Mendez’s lead leg. Mendez moves in with a beautiful straight jab and cross that slips right past Brooklyn’s guard. Brooklyn eats it without blinking and digs a left hook into Mendez’s body, tight and vicious the way we practiced. Brooklyn hits the leg again without me calling for it. It slaps hard. Viewers are used to seeing people take leg kick after leg kick without much, if any, reaction, but it’s a complete misconception that they aren’t a big deal. When one really lands it hurts so bad you can’t believe your leg is still attached. After too many of them your leg doesn’t work right anymore, and you can’t move well. All of Mendez’s fancy striking will be compromised if Brooklyn can keep doing this.

  Mendez knows that too, and this is when a martial artist is the most dangerous, when they’re hurt enough to know they’re in peril but not so much they’ve lost their weapons. Mendez comes at Brooklyn, throwing a snappy combo, ducking the counter, and going straight into the next combo. She cracks Brooklyn in the face and backs her into the fence. Brooklyn covers up, and the crowd roars as drops of blood trickle to the mat.

  I’m not prepared to be so affected by seeing her rocked. It’s so different when you’re in there dealing with it than when you’re watching helplessly as someone you care about gets hurt.

  “Clinch up!” Théo yells. Brooklyn pulls the back of Mendez’s head down and holds her there while she recovers, but Mendez slides her arms between Brooklyn’s and takes control of the clinch, then launches knees. They’re not hitting anything vital, but if they do it’ll be a game changer.