by Jinx, Hondo
Freddie smiled. “So far.”
“Well, you’d better get used to people buying you drinks, then. There might be no free rides in Fight Town, but from what I’ve seen, fighters drink for free. At least the winners!”
Johnny and Freddie raised their beers to the smiling couple and went back to drinking and kissing.
“So, you got over your fear?” Johnny said. “Over us, I mean?”
Freddie beamed up at him. “Yup. Sorry for making you wait, Johnny.”
He shrugged. “It was worth it.”
“It sure was,” she said, and drew him into another kiss.
“But what was holding you back?”
Freddie shrugged. “Marvella, mostly. She said I couldn’t kiss you until after my fight. She didn’t want me getting distracted.”
“Fair enough. She cares about you.”
“She really does. That was part of it, too. She wanted to make sure you weren’t just a player. I guess maybe I wanted to make sure, too. Don’t look at me that way, Johnny. You seemed too good to be true, okay? I mean, here’s this perfect guy and—wow, I’d better shut up before I make a fool of myself.”
“No, keep going,” Johnny said, grinning at her. “You were saying something about me being perfect?”
“Smart-ass,” Freddie said, and socked him in the arm. “I meant it, but I’m not saying anymore. I don’t want your head getting so big we can’t leave the bar. Phew—you drink after a fight, the beer goes straight to your head. Especially when you’ve been cutting weight.”
“Well, take it easy, then. You don’t want to have a hangover when you wake up at my place tomorrow morning.”
“Nice try, slick. Not going to happen. Mom would murder me. Besides, we just kissed. I mean, I’m all in. I told you that. And that’s the main reason I waited, really. Just to be sure. Because now you’re stuck with me. I warned you. When I commit, that’s that.”
Johnny caressed her face and stared into her beautiful eyes. “Me too, Freddie. Together—all the way to the top, right?”
“And after that?”
“And after that,” he assured her. Then he smiled. “But let’s not forget to win titles along the way, all right?”
“Sounds good, Johnny.”
They kissed for a while, drank more, and swung back around to the topic of Trongo.
“You know what you’re going to do?” Johnny asked.
Freddie frowned and shook her head. “Sign, probably? I don’t know. I appreciate Marvella’s faith and yours, too. Really. Thanks. It means so much. But there’s so much risk, you know? Like, what if I don’t sign, and then I drop my next fight?”
“You won’t lose.”
“You don’t know that, Johnny.”
“No, but I believe in you.”
“That’s great, but what if you’re wrong? What if I lose, and then nobody wants to sign me? What do I do then?”
“On the flip side, what if you do sign then win the city championship? Then you’ll be locked in with Trongo, and he’ll get you for a thousand bucks, when somebody else would’ve paid ten times that much, maybe more.”
“Ten thousand would be amazing,” she said, staring through the table and smiling wistfully. “With ten thousand, I could afford treatments for Daddy and still have money left over, if the treatments didn’t work out, to hire some help around the house.”
Johnny gave her hand a squeeze. He really did love this woman. “You’re a good person, Freddie.”
She rolled her eyes. “He’s my daddy. Anybody would do the same thing for their father.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” Johnny said, remembering his oldest brother, Kurt, fighting with their dad when Johnny was six or seven and Kurt was in high school.
Blood on the walls. Blood on the fucking ceiling.
But these weren’t thoughts for this happy night. He brushed them aside. “It’s your choice, Freddie, but all I’m trying to say is it’s a risk either way. Like I said, I’ll put my money on you every time. Maybe you should, too.”
“Maybe,” Freddie said, “but for now, what do you say we quit talking business and just have another beer?”
“Sounds good to me.”
The waitress appeared immediately, proving it was indeed a magical night.
Johnny ordered them two more beers. Then, as the waitress was leaving, he saw something near the bar that made him grin. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a date with destiny.”
“Huh?”
Johnny pointed to the smallish black lab standing improbably beside the last bar stool. The dog had only three legs. “I am destined to pet that dog.”
“You’re crazy, Johnny. But hey—do me a favor and hold on a sec? I really have to go to the bathroom.”
“All right—if you’ll give me another kiss before you leave.”
Freddie smiled. “Deal.”
They kissed, and she left, cutting across the crowded room, past the pool tables, toward the restrooms in back.
Their beers arrived.
Johnny drank, feeling incredibly happy and grateful and glancing across the bar from time to time, excited to pet the three-legged dog.
He was still sitting there, waiting, a few minutes later when the trouble started.
Chapter 43
At first, probably because he was so happy, Johnny ignored the laughter coming from the pool tables.
Yeah, it was loud, which should’ve keyed him in. But hey, tonight was the greatest night of his life, so the boisterous laughter made sense in a life soundtrack kind of way.
But then he heard a deep voice say, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty,” and the laughter erupted again. Not just loud but nasty, too.
With a spike of alarm, Johnny rose from the booth and saw Freddie flipping a double bird to a huge guy leaning against the pool table leering at her, much to the amusement of his three or four friends. They all wore beaters and slouch hats and looked rougher than hell.
Freddie turned on her heel, looking pissed, and started toward Johnny, who headed in that direction to meet her.
The huge guy scowled, carving deep frown lines in his stony face. He lashed out, grabbed Freddie’s tail, and dragged her back toward him.
“Get over here, girl!” he said, tugging her tail.
Freddie spun around and started swinging.
“Oh shit!” Johnny said, rushing forward as Freddie smashed the big guy’s face with a lightning flurry.
Surprised, he released her tail and came off the table glaring at her, his face bleeding from cuts over both eyes. “You like it rough, huh? Get her. Gonna take her out back and fuck the tail off her. You can all have a turn. There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
One of the guy’s toadies grabbed Freddie’s arm, but she dropped him with a kick to the balls.
By then, Johnny was in the mix.
A thug came at him with a pool stick.
Johnny dipped the attack and sunk his fist into the guy’s gut, doubling him up and sending him to the floor.
Johnny kept moving, fighting his way toward the big bastard who’d started it all.
He decked another thug, then his head jerked, full of light, and he staggered sideways, rocked by a sucker punch that triggered an explosion of pain in his ear.
The big guy lumbered forward, his big fists raised like boulders in front of his laughing face.
Then, all of a sudden, he wasn’t laughing anymore.
Getting kicked in the face can do that to a guy.
Freddie came soaring into Johnny’s view and smashed into the guy’s jaw with a flying side kick.
She landed catlike on the floor and rolled under the pool table when the big guy swung at her.
Johnny rushed forward, badly confused. When you’re in a fight, your brain speeds up, slowing the world around you. It’s a survival thing, helping you to recognize and respond to dangers accordingly.
But other brain processes, like deduction, lag during these moments.
How in the world
had Freddie managed to change outfits in the middle of a bar fight? Suddenly, she was wearing a short blue dress. The dress matched the blue streaks in her hair, which looked more pink than purple.
Seeing Johnny coming, the hulking asshole braced himself and threw a haymaker.
Johnny ducked it and hammered the guy in the ribs with a vicious left hook. It was like punching a sack of wet grain—but apparently one with a stick buried inside, because Johnny felt something break inside the guy.
Johnny came upstairs with a right uppercut, grazed the guy’s chin, and felt the man’s huge arms wrap around him like a pair of synchronized pythons.
Johnny had fucked up, gotten too close, and given this gigantic monster of an asshole the chance to grapple.
The huge arms crushed him tight to the barrel chest and squeezed. The guy’s face lit up with triumphant glee, red as a demon’s with excitement and exertion and the cuts from Freddie’s knuckles.
Johnny couldn’t punch and couldn’t break the bear hug. The guy was too big, too strong.
But Johnny had grown up fighting, and this was no boxing match.
Johnny reared back with his head and slammed it forward, smashing his forehead into the guy’s nose, which exploded like a rotten tomato.
Badly rocked by the headbutt, the guy released Johnny and staggered backward. He stumbled into a brick column, and Johnny was on him, blasting away with power shots, winging hooks and crosses, making the guy’s big head rock from side to side as it came apart, blood flying with every punch.
The guy went loose in his boots and started sliding down the column, but Johnny kept swinging, drilling him with half a dozen wicked uppercuts that landed clean before the asshole flopped to the floor, out cold.
A small army of bouncers and good Samaritans waded into the fray, busting up the fight and hauling the assholes toward the door. It took four of them to drag the ringleader across the floor. He trailed a slime of blood in his wake.
The whole bar stared in shock.
Johnny realized his hands hurt like hell.
Looking down, he cursed. Both were clearly broken and already ballooning. One of his knuckles was shoved a full inch back onto his hand, which throbbed all the way to his elbow. His ear was killing him, and he could feel a trickle of blood there.
He whipped around, searching for Freddie, and she came into his arms.
Despite everything that had happened, she grinned fiercely. “We wrecked them, babe!”
Johnny laughed, and held her a second longer, not wanting her to see his fractured hands. Because that would make what he was about to do super awkward.
Mentally, he triggered a unit of Minor Healing.
Instantly, the pain in his hands and ear lessened. But they still hurt. Especially his hands.
Which meant he was too banged up for Minor Healing.
Lamenting the cost, he triggered his unit of Moderate Healing.
That did the trick. He was completely healed—all a few blinks of the eye.
Freddie kissed him.
He was relieved to see she had no marks on her—save for the ones she’d gotten in her bout with Washington.
Now, the other Freddie was coming toward them from the other side of the pool table, a crooked grin on her face.
“I have to give it to you, sis,” Freddie said, grinning like a madwoman. “You really know how to make an entrance.”
Lennie shrugged, grinning to match her sister. She stuck out a hand. “You must be Johnny.”
He shook her hand. “And you must be Lennie. Nice to meet you. Weird circumstances, but yeah, nice to finally meet you.”
Lennie’s grin turned mischievous. “Nice to finally meet me, huh? You mean other than when I was sleeping in panties, and you stared at my ass?”
Johnny’s face burned as hot as if he’d been slapped. To Freddie, he said, “You told her?”
Freddie shrugged. “We’re twins. We share everything.”
“Well, almost everything,” Lennie said. “Don’t get your hopes up, Johnny boy.” Then she hollered across the bar to where a lean guy with a mustache stood, smiling uncomfortably. “You good, Steve? You didn’t mess up your hair did you, buddy?”
The guy’s uncomfortable smile widened and he came walking toward them.
“Steve’s my beau,” Lennie said matter-of-factly. “He is not going to be happy to meet you, Johnny,”
“Why?”
Lennie looked at him like he was crazy. “Um… are you fucking with me or what, Johnny? You did notice my sister and I kind of, you know, look alike, right? Like we might be, oh, I don’t know… twins?”
“Yeah, so?”
Lennie laughed. “You’re funny. Steve, glad you got over here, man. We all feel a lot safer now. Johnny, this is Steve, my special friend and the owner of the Hitting Fist Karate dojo.”
Steve frowned. “Not Hitting Fist. Hidden Fist.”
“Ooh,” Lennie said, bouncing her eyebrows up and down. “Kinky! Anyway, meet Johnny. He’s… wait for it… Freddie’s boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend?” Steve said, barely managing to hold onto a fake smile. He looked back and forth between Johnny and Freddie with naked incredulity and poorly veiled anger.
Instantly, Johnny understood Lennie hadn’t been kidding. This guy had been banking, somehow, on getting with both sisters.
“Nice to meet you,” Johnny said, and they shook, staring into each other’s eyes. It felt more like a stare down before a boxing match than a friendly meeting between potential friends.
The owner came over and apologized to them for what had happened.
“We don’t normally let such riff raff into The Hawk,” he told them. “I’m terribly sorry. Your tabs will be covered, of course. Is there anything I can get for you?”
They waved him off, thanking him for the offer, but just as the apologetic man was turning to leave, Johnny stopped him.
Because he’d noticed a palpable vacancy beside the bar.
“Hey, there is one thing,” Johnny said. “There was a dog standing over there earlier.”
The owner smiled. “You mean Stella.”
“I guess,” Johnny said, figuring Stella was the perfect name for a three-legged dog. “Well, I was really hoping to pet her.”
“I see,” the owner said with a little frown. “Unfortunately, Stella abhors violence. At the first sign of an altercation, she heads straight upstairs.” He pointed to a stairwell behind the bar. “I wouldn’t be able to coax her back down now with a T-bone steak. I’m so sorry, sir. Please do visit again, and I will make certain to introduce the two of you. Her fur is very soft.”
Shit, Johnny thought, I was really looking forward to petting that dog.
They went back to the booth.
Johnny could see the sisters were very close. Freddie replayed the whole boxing match to her sister, who apologized again for not being able to make it; she’d only just returned from a training camp with Steve, who was apparently not only her boyfriend but also her sensei.
When Freddie recounted her first kiss with Johnny and the fact that they’d both confessed their love, Lennie beamed.
“Oh, guys,” Lennie said in a singsong voice, “I’m gonna cry. I’m so happy for you both!”
Meanwhile, Steve stared straight ahead. His mustache seemed to lower an inch. Dude looked like he’d swallowed a gnat and was trying not to cough.
Lennie and Steve certainly were an odd pair.
She constantly joked around, and he was wrapped tighter than a tick’s asshole.
At least until their drinks came and Steve loosened up and started talking.
Then Johnny wished the guy had just stayed uptight. Silently uptight, that is.
Sitting with one arm around Freddie’s shoulders, Johnny smiled politely and nodded occasionally as Steve warmed up and slid into full-blown blabber mode.
To make matters worse, Sensei Steve wasn’t just blabbing. He was pontificating.
Meanwhile, Freddie was telling Lenni
e all about Trongo’s offer. She was still undecided, still afraid, still fixated on that training ring.
“Dude,” Lennie said, “you should wait. You’re gonna keep kicking ass, sis. You know you will. Hold out, get that extra dough.”
Freddie frowned. “But the ring…”
Steve patted Johnny’s arm. “See, what you should have done, Johnny, what I would have done, is kept my distance. I would have feinted with one hand, like this.”
Steve was really getting into it now. He raised one hand, and stared daggers at an imaginary opponent—the apparition of the guy Johnny had wrecked, actually—doing his best Chuck Norris imitation.
“When he thought I was going to punch him, I would have snapped out a front kick to his knee. Do you know how many pounds of force it takes to break a kneecap? Sixteen, that’s all. Even for an untrained person like yourself. Then, as he leaned forward, I would have finished him with a spinning hook kick.”
“That would’ve been something,” Johnny said distractedly, trying to listen to the sisters’ discussion.
Unfortunately, dude was way into his choreography. “Or,” Steve said, “I might have given him some bait. Let him grab my wrist, say. Here, grab my wrist, and I’ll show you.”
Fuck, Johnny thought, humoring the guy. To think I could’ve been petting Stella now.
Chapter 44
“Way to go, Johnny!” Annabelle cheered when Johnny woke atop the prospectors’ table again. “Oh my—that kiss! People love Freddie!”
“Yeah,” Paul said, smiling in yet another new shirt, “and the fight. You really trashed that guy. What an asshole!”
“But the way you guys confessed your love,” Annabelle said, beaming, “it was perfect. She is adorable. And it all felt so real.”
“It was real,” Johnny said.
“Yeah, but you know what I mean,” Annabelle said. “Your riders are going nuts, reliving the scene, the kiss, that look Freddie had in her eyes when she told you she loved you. They can’t get enough.”
“Well, good for them,” Johnny said, feeling irritated. Everything Annabelle was saying made sense, of course. It was ridiculous to feel irritated. But like Marvella said, we can’t control our emotions. We can only control our actions.