by Callie Hart
“Fuck me, you guys are insane!”
My head snaps to the side, my right fist frozen in mid-air, Michael’s bloody wife beater bunched up in my other hand. Michael stills too, peering out from behind his guard.
There’s a kid standing at the side of the ring, chewing on gum, ball cap flipped backward on his head, staring at us like we’re fucking insane. I look down at Michael, lifting one eyebrow. “You see what I see?” I ask.
Michael nods. “I sure do.”
“And there was me thinking we were closed.” I slowly rise to my feet, stepping over Michael and pacing carefully, deliberately toward the intruder. I let every single ounce of malice I can muster radiate through me as I stop in front of the kid. “You wanna tell me how you got in here?” I ask slowly. “Because I fucking know I locked up for the night.”
The kid has the common sense to look worried. I take him in, assessing him as he shifts from one foot to the other. Clear, open-looking green eyes. He’s tall, maybe six-one, six-two. There’s a small scar running down the side of his head, from his temple to the curve of his cheekbone. Can’t tell what color hair he’s got underneath that ball cap but from his eyebrows I’m going with dark brown. Even though he’s clearly shitting himself, he holds himself upright and rigid. It’s a fighter’s stance, if a bad one. I catch sight of his Gracie Barra hoody and I know what that means: he’s either a wannabe Ju Jitsu fighter or he just loves watching UFC on TV. “You feel like answering me anytime soon?” I rumble.
“I just wanted to train. I didn’t—”
“Break in?”
“Well, yeah, I mean…I did.” He looks lost, like he’s about to bolt any second. Michael comes and stands behind me, giving off an unmistakeable prepare-to-be-fucked-up vibe. I push the ropes of the ring down and vault over them, landing right in front of the kid. I’m on the fence. I should be right there with Michael, ready to give this little shit the beating of his life for breaking into my gym, but my curiosity is getting the better of me. “Why didn’t you leave when you realized someone was here? Huh? Answer me.”
He shrinks back into himself, shrugging his shoulders. “I was watching you guys. You were going to town on each other. People don’t spar like they wanna kill each other normally. Guess I was a little fascinated. Wanted to see who would win.”
Michael crosses his arms over his chest, still covered in blood, looking formidable. “And what do you think? In your expert opinion, who was winning?”
The kid’s eyebrows almost hit his hairline. He doesn’t realize he’s being fucked with. “I don’t know. You both looked pretty even to me. You gonna call the cops or what?”
I know Michael’s looking at me, waiting to see how I will react. I know full well how he wants to fucking react. He wants to laugh his ass off; I can feel it bubbling off him. I beat him to it, rumbling out my own laughter, right from the bottom of my ribcage. “How old are you?”
The kid looks from me to Michael, like this is some sort of trick question. “Twenty-three.”
“Twenty-three?”
“Yeah.”
“You got a job?”
Uncertainty flickers across his face again. “Yeah. I work at Mac’s.” He jerks his head over his shoulder, toward the door.
“Mac’s, the auto mechanics across the street?” I’ve seen the place. They deal in specialty cars. I thought about taking the Camaro over there before I noticed flashy pieces driving through the roller shutters at weird times of the night. Last thing I need is even stepping foot inside a place that cuts and shuts cars or burns VIN numbers off stolen vehicles.
The kid nods. “Yeah. I see you guys training over here sometimes when I’m on my break.”
I fit the gym out with a huge roller shutter of its own, so that we could get some airflow in here when we’re busy. It stands open during the day, when we’re open. “And your name?” I ask. “Better tell me the fucking truth.”
“Mason. Mason Reeves.” He says it too quickly for it to be a lie.
“All right, Mason, Mason Reeves, if you have a job working over at Mac’s and you’re earning money, why the hell aren’t you paying to come into my gym during daylight hours, huh?” I take a step closer to him, still considering planting my fist in his face. How the next few seconds play out right now all depends on what comes out of this fucker’s mouth.
Mason looks me in the eye and shrugs. “I don’t have to explain myself to you, man.”
“Ah, yeah, actually you do. Otherwise my boy Michael here is going to break something of yours. And it won’t be something small like your fingers. It’ll be something big. Something that means you won’t be working at Mac’s for a while, after all.”
Michael straightens up at this, as though he’s looking forward to the prospect of physical work. Things have been pretty low key since Charlie died. Michael’s been mostly checking in on Sloane to make sure no one’s following her. And also running tabs on the DEA. As Liam Neeson would say, though, he has a very particular set of skills, and he likes to use them. Just like me.
Mason lifts his chin, staring at us both. If he’s perturbed by the fact that Michael’s about to hospitalise him, he’s barely showing it. Barely.
“Whatever, man. I don’t come during the day because I’m at work.”
“There’s an all-night gym three blocks that way.” I point in the direction of the commercialized gym a five-minute walk down the road, raising my eyebrows. “Try again. This time the truth, motherfucker.”
Mason steps forward, a spark of something firing in his eyes. His chin is still lifted, showing me he’s not afraid of me. It’s a good show, but I can read him like a book. He’s freaked, but he won’t lose face by backing down. Good for him. Really fucking dumb, but good for him. “I have a sister to take care of,” he says. “I have rent to cover, and I gotta get school shit for her. I can’t afford expensive gyms.”
Michael looks down at his feet, smiling, arms still crossed. I sigh, not too impressed by the fact that I now feel obliged to not beat him up. “Where’s your mother?” I realize I sound like a fifty-year-old as I ask this. Fucking ridiculous.
“Dead. Drug overdose. It’s just me and my sister. My dad left when I was four. Millie’s dad left when my mom died. You want my whole life story, or are you just gonna call the fucking cops, so we can get this over with?”
Well, fuck me, the kid has stones. I get the feeling this isn’t the first time he’s had to front up to someone much bigger and much scarier than he is. I can appreciate that it takes some form of courage, even if that form of courage is mainly rooted in stupidity. Sloane would call him brave. I call him asking for it.
“I’m not gonna call the cops,” I tell him.
“You’re not?” He actually looks surprised, like the very sight of me isn’t enough to tell him that I’m hardly on the best of terms with local law enforcement.
“Nope. You’re gonna get in that ring with me. You can lay a couple of good hits on me, you can come train here during open hours.”
Steel forms in the kid’s eyes. “Why can’t it be him?” he says, jerking his head in Michael’s direction.
“Ha! I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended,” Michael says.
“What does it matter who it is? I thought you said we looked pretty even.” I smirk because I’m an evil motherfucker and I know, despite how much I respect Michael, that I was winning that fight. I usually do, which is not to say Michael isn’t seriously capable with his fists. I’m just more capable.
“And what happens if I don’t get a couple of good hits on you?”
“Then I probably knock you out and that’s the end of it.”
“I can go?”
“Sure.” I’m feeling very benevolent, even though I shouldn’t be. At least I know now that I need to replace the fucking locks.
“Okay, then. Fine.” Mason nods, as though he’s steeling himself, and then he rips his Gracie Barra hoody over his head. He moves past me to climb into the ring. The
guy’s not really a kid, after all. He’s clearly in shape, arms full of tattoos. He has a fighter’s physique. How long has he been training in my fucking gym without me knowing? I can see by the way he’s smiling that Michael’s thinking the same thing, as I jump back into the ring after Mason.
“You got gloves?” I ask him.
“You’re not wearing gloves.”
I pick up my gloves from the corner of the ring, arching an eyebrow at him. “I doubt you’re ready for the bare knuckle version of me, kid.”
I’ve been fighting like that since I was a teenager, training with Charlie’s bagmen and enforcers all throughout my physically formative years. Most people aren’t like that, though. Most people have never thrown a punch and felt their actual fist make contact with someone’s face. It’s not exactly painless.
Michael tosses up his own gloves to Mason, shaking his head as he takes a seat at the edge of the ring, ready to watch this go down. It starts as soon as the kid has his gloves on. I move in, fast and explosive, landing a heavy hit to his side.
Mason absorbs the blow, wincing only a little as he adjusts his guard. He’s light on his feet like Michael, but I can also see immediately that he hasn’t benefitted from the same training. His guard is sloppy. There are so many gaps for me to get through, it’s not even funny. I point this out by jabbing my fist directly through his hands and smacking him squarely on the forehead. It’s not an actual hit. It’s me showing him how open he’s leaving himself.
We go on like this for a full minute. I see an opening. I take it. I prod or jab him. I show him all the ways I could hurt him, but I don’t. Mason just takes it. He stares solidly at me, wheeling around, trying to get away from me where he can. It’s the third time I jab him on his forehead that he gets tired of the abuse and counters.
I can see the moment where he decides enough is enough. I know what’s going through his head: It’d be better to have him actually retaliating and hitting me properly than to be mocked. He comes at me, sending punch after punch, fast, with a good rhythm, until I find myself taking a step back. One step.
“Boss, if you still want to collect your better half, it’s time we finished things up here,” Michael says.
That’s all I need to hear. I dodge one of Mason’s more powerful punches, pivoting my body to the right so that I have a clear shot at his open side, and then I hit him. I really hit him. He doubles over, and I bring my left fist up in an uppercut that sends him reeling. I didn’t hit him anywhere near as hard as I could, if I’d set my mind to it. I hit him hard enough for him to remember it.
He goes down.
He doesn’t get back up again for six seconds. That’s a hell of a long time to be on the ground if you’re fighting someone. The kid’s eyes are flashing with disappointment and fury when he faces me again. “I thought you were gonna knock me out,” he says.
“Not this time. Maybe I will next time, though.”
“What next time?”
I take my gloves off and toss them on the boards, shaking my head. I can’t believe I’m even about to fucking say this. “The next time you come in here. During open hours. We’ll train again then. But if I find out you’ve been in here again when I’m not, I’ll skin you alive, motherfucker, you read me?”
Mason ducks his head, then stoops and collects his hoody. He puts it back on and then fixes me in that weird, challenging stare of his. Has nobody told him he’s not fucking Al Capone yet? “All right,” he says. “Thanks, man. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then.” He vaults over the ropes and that’s it. He leaves without looking back once.
“You know you’re turning into a soft fucking touch, don’t you?” Michael says, slinging me my own zip-up hoody.
I glare at him, but we both know I don’t mean it. “Keep saying stuff like that and I’ll have to prove you wrong, asshole.”
As we leave the gym and I make sure everything is locked up tight, pointless though that now seems, Michael digs me in the side. “Seriously, though, man. A year ago someone would have found that kid unconscious in the gutter out here. And now you’re gonna train him?”
I sigh, scratching at my jaw. There are two reasons why I did what I did, but I can only tell Michael one of them. “He didn’t back down. He didn’t give up. He had enough fire in him to force me back a step, too. That’s something. Maybe there’s more.”
“Maybe.” Michael tosses me the keys to the Camaro, and I climb into the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind me. He remains silent on the drive over to St. Peter’s Hospital—the guy just knows when he should talk and when he shouldn’t—and I use the quiet to gather my thoughts. Yeah, I did let the kid get away with breaking into the gym because I can see some sort of potential in him. But I also let him get away with it because the way he looked at me, so fierce and determined yet downtrodden at the same time, reminded me of someone.
Someone we buried next to a river in the mountains.
Chapter Four
Sloane
I feel the tear widening even as I desperately try to pack the open cavity in front of me. Shit.
Fuck, shit, motherfucker.
The guy on my operating table is eighteen years old, and he’s been suffering from bowel cancer since he was thirteen. I’m not even his regular doctor. Since I came back to work, I’ve been making headway in the trauma department, forging a serious name for myself. I was always steady before, but now, after spending so much time with Zeth, dealing with psychotic mob bosses, human traffickers, and DEA agents, it’s like I’m bomb proof. Unshakable. People have started noticing, especially the chief.
So when Miles Rosenblat, eighteen, was rushed into the emergency room an hour ago complaining of severe stomach pains and Dr Wishall, his oncologist, wasn’t on shift, I was handed his patient and told to save his life.
“His father donates a huge amount of money to this hospital, Dr. Romera. Better not let his son die on your table,” were the chief’s exact words, in fact.
At this point, I’m not so sure I’ll be able to accomplish that. The kid’s bowels are a mess. He was supposed to be in remission, but it’s very clear that the cancer snuck back in and made itself right at home while no one was looking. His colon has just torn so badly there’s no way I’m going to be able to repair it. Best case scenario: I’m gonna be giving this kid a colostomy before I can close him up and his life changes forever. Worst case scenario: I give him the colostomy, close him up, he gets an infection, and then he dies in a couple of days’ time.
Either way, it’s not the bright and shiny outcome the chief’s waiting on up in the observatory. I’m sure she can see what I’m dealing with though.
Oliver Massey, my closest friend at the hospital, leans over the patient’s body and shakes his head. “Fuck.”
“Yeah. My thoughts exactly.”
“There’s too much to resect. You’ll have to take the whole thing.”
“I know.” I’m working quickly as I say this, already preparing to remove all of the damaged, necrotic tissue. Some doctors might be irritated by being told something so obvious by their colleagues, but I don’t mind Oliver giving his opinion. It makes me feel better about the decision I’ve made.
For the next three hours we work tirelessly over Miles, doing our best to remove anything that might be even faintly cancerous. When we’re done, Miles Rosenblat has a brand new stoma. He’s a fit, good-looking kid with a perky blonde girlfriend waiting for him out in the hallway. I already know he is going to hate having a stoma.
“Poor bastard,” Oliver says, ripping off his gown and tossing into the HAZMAT as we clear the OR. “I think the chief said he’s on his high school football team. Football jocks are assholes when it comes to this sort of thing.”
I scrub my hands over my face, my eyes stinging and tired from concentrating so hard. “But he’s alive.”
Oliver pulls a cautiously optimistic face. He knows Miles isn’t out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. He doesn’t say anything, though. He
knows I don’t want to hear it right now. Instead, he says, “Damn. It’s ten thirty. You wanna grab a beer before all the bars shut?”
My stomach rolls when I hear the time. Oh, boy. Zeth knew my shift was ending at eight. He was coming to get me. He’s either been waiting for me in the parking lot for two and a half hours or he’s already left. Neither of those options are good. “Ahh, crap. I can’t tonight, Ol. Maybe tomorrow?”
Oliver doesn’t even look surprised. I’ve bailed on him more times than I can count over the past few months. I’m a terrible friend. “Sure, Romera. Tomorrow it is. I’ll just head on over and pay Grace a visit instead.” He winks, leaving no doubt as to why he’s going over to see some girl called Grace. He holds the door to the residents’ locker room open for me, and I duck inside.
“Who’s Grace? What happened to Melanie?”
“Melanie decided she wanted to get married. Grace is happy for me to come over whenever we both feel the need to release some tension.” Another wink. Obviously code for sex.
“What? Melanie did not want to get married. You guys were dating for, what, six weeks?”
“Seven. And she wanted to introduce me to her parents. That’s what chicks do when they wanna get married.”
I stifle laughter as I remove my dirty scrubs, shrugging out of my shirt and kicking out of my pants. I bundle everything up so I can dump it in yet another HAZMAT bin. In just my camisole and the lycra shorts I wear underneath my scrubs, I place my hands on my hips, facing Oliver. “I never had you pegged as a player. Here was me thinking you wanted a steady girlfriend. You used to talk about that all the time.”
Oliver smirks, stripping off his own scrubs to reveal a tight white wife beater underneath. He’s gotten bigger over the last six months. He has always worked out, but now he looks like he could be a fitness model or something. Clearly all of his random five-minute hook-ups have kept him in shape. “Yeah, well,” he says, rummaging in his locker. “Things change. The girl I was interested in having a proper relationship with went and got herself attached to someone else, didn’t she?” He doesn’t look at me. Taking out a clean t-shirt, he pulls it on over his head, not saying anything else.