The Savage Sinner

by Harlan, Christopher

  “God, gyms never stop having that smell, do they?”

  “If they did, I’d stop coming—I love that smell.”

  “I see. The smell of sweaty men and dirty rubber mats makes you feel at home. I might have to put that in the article. My readers like details like that.”

  “You mean the ones that make me seem like a total weirdo.”

  “Hey, if the shoe fits. Oh, you’re not wearing any shoes are you?”

  Just as we’re deep into our little banter, Master Splinter comes out to greet Harper like he greets any new person who visits us at the gym.

  “Welcome to the New York Fight Club. Harper, right?”

  “That’s right. And thanks for having me.”

  “You got it. I’m Matt. I’m the owner and head trainer here.”

  “That’s not all you are,” she says. “You’re “El Nino” — I’ve seen your fights on YouTube. You were a killer back in the day. That one you had with Matshuhito Fukaki in Japan was a classic. I feel like you should have gotten the nod with all the damage you did in the second round, but I get it, he was the hometown kid and Japan was notoriously corrupt back then with MMA judging.”

  I’m impressed and so is Matt.

  Normally, if a woman walked into the gym and said those very words I’d think she did it for effect—that she looked Matt up last night as a strategy to make an impression when she walked in and referenced some old obscure fight he had. But that’s what Harper is—a real fight fan.

  Matt’s trying to hide how impressed he is with her knowledge of the sport, but he’s not doing a great job. I know the man too well. “Well. . . thank you Harper. I agree, but I’m biased, right? I appreciate it, though. Not too many people know that I was a fighter long before I was a gym owner or trainer.”

  “That’s a crime. You were one of the best. It’s really an honor to meet you. And thanks for giving me access to your gym. If it’s alright with you, I’d like to do some background stuff about the gym itself in the exposé of Damien, but only if you’re okay with it.”

  “Okay with it?” I joke. “Are you kidding? As soon as you leave the room, the man is going to start thanking the Lord that someone’s actually going to mention this gym. Matt’s an attention whore, don’t let him fool you.”

  “Oh, I’m the attention whore?” he jokes right back. “I’m not the one having a reporter follow me around for weeks so she can report my every move.”

  “Actually, that’s not quite what I’m going to be doing,” Harper interjects.

  “Shh,” he jokes, looking at her and grinning. “I’m trying to win a debate here.”

  “And you’re failing, as usual,” I tell him. “Now, let me take all of this woman’s attention while you go get on the phone and get me a fight. Anything else that’ll get me closer to that title. No cans, got it?”

  A ‘can’ is a fighter who sucks—like those jobbers who used to wrestle Hulk Hogan just so he could do his finishing move and get a roar out of the crowd. WWE is mostly scripted, but combat sport has those people too—the guys who fighters use to pad their records and make themselves look better than they really are.

  I want to test myself against the best, and nothing but the best, so help me.

  “No cans, got it. Thanks for that, Damien.”

  “Don’t be a dick,” I tell him.

  “Is that any way to talk to your sensei?”

  I laugh. I can’t help but laugh. I’ve never seen Matt around a pretty girl such as Harper, and clearly, it’s making him act like a total idiot. “Sensei?” I say, barely able to hold back the snickering. “You see, Harper, you had to go and mention his old glory days in Japan and now he thinks he’s in some old movie. Go get me that fight, sensei. I’m taking Harper over to the ring.”

  Matt wants to punch me but he’s not going to show that in front of his new friend. I take her in the back while he hopefully gets to finding me a man willing to stand across from me in that cage.

  “Do you always talk to him like that?” she whispers to me. “That’s “El Nino”.”

  “And I’m “The Sinner”,” I tell her. “Luckily, we’re not fighting each other. We just have that older brother/younger brother banter. He’s too young to be a father figure, and frankly I have issues with father figures, so we’re just kind of dicks to each other sometimes—out of love.”

  “Dicks out of love. Got it.”

  “You wanna watch me move around? How does this work? I’ve never been interviewed before by a legit MMA journalist, let alone had a. . . what did you call it out there?”

  “An exposé.”

  “Right, an exposé. I’ve definitely never done anything like that before either. Do you need me to do anything? How does the whole thing work?”

  “At the gym, I just need you to train. It’s more for me to see what you go through every day, what the culture of the gym is like, the kind of thing you do to get ready for a fight—all that stuff. So when we’re here, just be yourself—act like I’m not around.”

  “That’s going to be difficult. You are kind of distracting, you know?”

  For the first time since I met her, she doesn’t have a witty comeback. She just smiles like she’s not used to getting compliments, and then goes right back into being her normal self. “Still, just do your best to be yourself. It’s afterwards that I need you to ‘do’ something.”

  “And what’s that?” I ask. My sick mind is going in twenty directions that I know hers isn’t, but when a beautiful woman tells you that she needs you to do something, your mind tends to think about one thing and one thing only.

  “Talk. That’s the real interview part. The training is for background and exposition on my part, but it’s the interview part—and I kind of hate that word, by the way. I like to think of it more like a conversation between friends. It’s less weird that way.”

  “Are we?” I ask.

  “Are we what?”

  “Friends?”

  She smiles again. “We’re getting there, I think. Don’t you?”

  “I do. And talking is fine. Ask me whatever you like, I have no boundaries.”

  “So, I can ask you about, like, butt stuff?”

  I almost spit the sip of water I just took all over the floor. “Excuse me?”

  “You said you had no boundaries—I think butt stuff counts. It’s not like I was just going to go right there or anything—I’m not a weirdo. We can talk about, like, punching and kicking first, then transition.”

  “I’m not sure there’s a smooth transition from MMA striking to ass play. That would take a very special conversationalist.”

  “Don’t doubt me,” she says. “I may surprise you.”

  That’s right, Harper. You already have.

  7

  Harper

  I thought my Saturday Pilates workout was intense, but what I just saw was something else.

  I got to watch Damien Reyes train with his shirt off, glistening and muscled up, beating the hell out of more than one training partner.

  He was magnificent out there.

  I’d be lying if I told myself that I’m only doing this for the story. There’s just something about Damien Reyes that I can’t resist. I’m surprised he hasn’t put two and two together yet. I knew who he was when I sat down next to him at the PT office, but the last thing I wanted him to think was that I was just some fan girl who was googly-eyed over him.

  I mean, I am, but that’s not for him to know yet.

  I loved watching him in his element, and I agreed to go to something called cryo-therapy with him. I honestly have no idea what that is, but every time I ask he just smiles at me in a way that makes me think he’s going to get a kick out of my reaction. I don’t care—I just want to be around him a little longer.

  I’m sitting in the passenger seat of his car, the wind blowing through my hair, wondering just where the hell he’s taking me, and why he’s so happy about it.

  “For real though, what’s cryotherapy?” I
ask.

  I get another grin. I go to grab my phone and he grabs it from me. “Nope. You’re not looking it up. We’re almost there. Let me surprise you.”

  “Oh boy.”

  We get to the place, which is called Cryo-New York. “Remind me to compliment the owner on the super clever awning, okay?”

  “Don’t be a hater. If I can paraphrase the late, great George Carlin, I think what it says on the outside of a place should tell you what’s going on on the inside of the place.”

  “Except I don’t know what cryo is, so it’s a double fail.”

  “I’m gonna enjoy this so much.”

  We go inside and Damien shakes the guy’s hand. “Two today?” he asks.

  “Yup. The usual for me, and I have a guest today. She’s a reporter. If you treat her right, maybe she’ll give you a shout out in her next article.”

  “Except I don’t do that. But hi, I’m Harper.”

  The guy shakes my hand. He seems super nice. Even though I have no idea what kind of business he runs. “Nice to meet you, Harper, I’m Dave. Right this way.”

  I shoot Damien a where-the-hell-are-you-taking-me look but he blows it off and just gives me that face again. We walk down a hallway and stop just outside a door. I peek inside and see two large things that look like something from a sci-fi movie from the 1990’s. Dave turns to me. “Okay we’ll wait out here while you get naked and get in.”

  “Wait, what?”

  “You need to take your clothes off and step inside that chamber. Just put on the protective gloves and socks and close the door before you call us in.”

  “I repeat—say what?”

  Damien’s laughing over Dave’s shoulder. “Cryotherapy is when they drop the temperature in that chamber you’re about to get into to about -248 Fahrenheit for about two minutes or so.”

  “Okay. . .” I say, not sure what to make of this. “And the gloves and socks are?”

  “So that your fingers and toes don’t get frostbite.”

  I raise my eyebrow about as high as it’ll go. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

  “It’s great for recovery. Even depression and anxiety.”

  I turn to Dave who’s giving me the full pitch. “But I’m getting anxiety right now, how is it going to help me with that?”

  “Oh, stop being dramatic,” Damien says. “I do it once a week. This one’s on me. Now get undressed then call us in. We’ll do it at the same time.”

  I’m not sure which I’m more surprised by—the fact that he brought me here, or the fact that I’m blindly going to follow him. I tell myself that it’s all for the story—that I’m just an up and coming MMA journalist who wants to make her name by doing an early exposé on a guy who could really be someone in this sport one day. That’s what I’m trying to tell myself. But, the truth is, there’s something about Damien that I can’t put my finger on—a quiet confidence that would make me follow him to do almost anything.

  I just hope I’m not going to freeze my toes off. Protective socks, right! Can’t forget that part. “Fine. Give me like two minutes and I’ll holler for you. I can’t believe I’m about to do this. We’re talking for those two minutes. I need some details about your life to distract me from the negative two-hundred-degree chamber.”

  “Deal.”

  A few minutes later, I’m naked in one chamber and Damien is naked in the other. Part of me wishes we were naked in the same chamber, but that’s what fantasies are for. Dave is adjusting the setting and then stepping to the back of the room so that I can start my interview. As soon as I see the white smoke, my whole body freezes up. It’s the most intense cold that I’ve ever felt in my life, and I’m trying my best to not act like a total wimp in front of a guy who gets punched and kicked for a living.

  “How’s that?” he asks. “As bad as you were thinking it would be?”

  “Much, much worse, but I’m not going to focus on the cold or it’ll be the longest two minutes of my life. Ready? Good. So, what made you want to be a professional fighter?”

  All we can see of each other are our heads, and I swear that he rolls his eyes at me. “Oh, come on.”

  “What?”

  “What made me want to be a fighter? You can do better than that. That’s what everyone asks every fighter. Challenge yourself a little.”

  “You’re feisty when your insides are slowly dying, you know that?”

  “I’m always feisty,” he jokes. “Now, ask me a better question, we only have a minute and a half left.”

  I think for about three seconds—I know it’s that long because I’m counting, waiting for this ordeal to be over. That’s about how long it takes me to reword the question in a slightly different form. “Okay, fine. Do you feel like you had a choice in being a fighter?”

  He doesn’t answer, he just looks at me as I study his reaction. There’s no eye roll this time. He looks up and considers the question. “No,” he says. “I don’t think that it was ever a choice. And no one’s ever asked me that question, that way, so good job.”

  “Thanks,” I say, quietly continuing my count to one hundred and twenty in my head. “I thought of it myself. Now tell me why.”

  “Why I don’t feel like it was a choice?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Because,” he says. “Asking me if I have to fight is like asking a volcano if it has to erupt. It’s like asking a wolf if it has to hunt and kill. The answer is always yes. There’s no choice there. It’s just something that I have to do, and I’m lucky enough that the thing I have to do is something I can do legally and in a controlled environment. I fight because it’s in me, Harper. No more, no less.”

  That’s easily the most interesting answer I’ve heard in a long time. Athletes in general, and fighters specifically, are notorious for giving stock answers to in depth questions. Usually they’re painful to listen to.

  But I can tell right away that Damien is not your average bear. He has something to say, it’s just my job to try and bring it out of him.

  “And why do you have it in you?”

  Just as he’s about to answer, the cryo machines beep and the session is over. Dave comes over and unlocks the chambers, throwing towels over the edge so we can cover ourselves up. “Step out when you’re ready,” he says.

  I wrap myself up then step into the room, and I feel the rush of warmth come over my entire body. It’s an amazing feeling—like the rush of a drug hitting every part of you that was freezing a moment ago.

  “Feels incredible, doesn’t it?” Damien asks. “Like you’ve never really felt your body before.”

  I listen to him as I stare at his bare chest. The man is chiseled in pure muscle. His chest is a tribute to the countless hours he must have put into making himself look as much like a Greek god as possible. My eyes travel all over his chest, and then make their way down to his towel. He’s holding onto the edge of it, keeping it just below his waist, teasing me to what lies just underneath.

  “Exactly. I was scared, but it’s fun. So are you going to answer my question?”

  “Another time,” he says. “That’s a much longer answer. You have time to get some food?”

  I look down at my watch. “Actually. I need to be somewhere in like an hour. Can I get a raincheck?”

  “Blowing me off so soon? We were just getting to know each other as our blood was thinning.”

  I smile. I really did enjoy this little experience, even though I’m not so sure that I’d do it again without him.

  “I’m not blowing you off. I need to take my brother to PT. I’m driving him.”

  “Still?” he asks. “You’re still seeing Roy?”

  I snicker. “Don’t knock Roy until you’re tried him. And my brother hurt himself worse than he thought. He wants to avoid surgery at all costs.”

  “Yeah, I don’t blame him on that one. Back surgeries are no joke. Some people never recover.”

  “That’s exactly what his doctor said. And my brother still wants to
fight, so he’s trying the longer, harder road. I just help him out by taking him.”

  “Well you’re a good sister. How about tomorrow? Same time at the gym.”

  “Let’s do the day after. I have something tomorrow. Lunch? Let’s say noon on Wednesday, does that work?”

  “Whatever you want to do works for me.” We get dressed in separate rooms and walk out of the place together. After he drives me back, we say our goodbyes for the day. I don’t expect it, especially from a guy who looks like him, but he gives me the biggest hug I’ve ever had, and I feel like I disappear into his arms. “Thanks for doing this again.”

  “Anytime you want to freeze your nipples off, I’m your girl.”

  I stop myself from focusing on her nipples. “Wednesday, then.”

  “Bye.

  As I get in my car I have two thoughts—the first is how much I like Damien “The Sinner” Reyes. And the other is how bad I feel for lying to his face about where I’m going to be the next few days.

  8

  Damien

  Lucas throws a high kick right at my head.

  Lucky for me, he hasn’t hit me with one of those in a long time.

  “Nice try,” I mouth through my head gear. “Keep ‘em coming, maybe in a few years you’ll actually make contact with something other than my glove.”

  He doesn’t respond. Lucas is a proud and cocky guy, and I love to mess with him because of it. He’s always been able to stay humble when it comes to training, but sometimes success can go to a fighter’s head. I’ve seen it before, even on a smaller level than getting into the UFC. This guy who used to train at our gym—Colin—got signed by a promotion overseas that doesn’t nearly have the name recognition as the UFC, and his head got so big, so fast, that Matt had to ask him to leave the gym. I’m praying Lucas doesn’t go down that psychological rabbit hole.

  “If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about that kick,” he mumbles through his mouthpiece.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not.”

  Then, out of nowhere, a straight left hits me right on the chin and drops me. My ass hits the ground hard and suddenly. I instinctually cover up like I’m in a real fight. That’s when I hear Matt’s voice yell out.