Always For You (Books 1-3) (36 page)

No, I couldn't kill someone. I
couldn't do it
. I had no idea that this place was like that, that
people would pay to watch it. I knew that tickets were expensive, but
only now did I realize why they were so high. It dealt in pain and
death, and the rich people in this town would pay through the nose to
see it. It truly was like the arenas of old, and I now knew why my
name of Spartan was so appropriate.

September 20
^th
2014

Grace

The image was still in my head. The
image of a man having his head battered against a concrete wall. His
limbs were limp by his side as this man cracked his skull against the
hard surface again and again. You could feel every impact, see the
blood splatter against the stone, watch on as the skull was bashed to
nothing.

I couldn't keep my eyes off it,
watching a man killed in front of my very eyes. It was the most
barbaric thing I'd ever seen, something I didn't think still went on.
It was as if I'd woken up two thousand years ago, watching as two
slaves fought to the death in the arena. I felt like being sick.

Don had apologized after, telling us he
had no idea the last fight would be like that. When the announcer
stepped up to introduce the final pair, he'd shouted out “to the
death.” I knew from then on what we were about to witness.

The announcer stood up at the end and
thanked everyone for their presence. His final words were riddled
with menace, though, as he spoke directly to those who had come for
the first time.

“To all you newcomers, never speak of
what you've seen down here. Do so, and you'll quickly come to regret
it.”

He didn't say too much, but it was
enough of a threat, I knew, to put anyone off from ever saying
anything. I supposed that everyone knew what they were there for
anyway, everyone that is, except for us. It was the third time in as
many years that I'd seen a man killed, something I would never want
to boast about.

I feared for Cain more than anything.
He had won his fight easily, confidently, but I was afraid he'd walk
out one day to the sound of the announcer calling “to the death.”
My lust for excitement, for seeing two men caught in battle,
disappeared that night as I watched on, in horror, as this man was
robbed of his very life in front of a roaring crowd, betting on his
death, profiting from it. It was horrific, and from that point on I
welcomed the thought of returning to my normal life.

It had been five weeks since that day
and I hadn't seen Cain since. In fact, I hadn't talked to him for a
couple of months now. I'd heard that he and Emily broke up, but I
could never catch him. I tried calling, going to his apartment,
everything, but he wasn't there.

I found him eventually, coming back to
his flat after training at the gym. He looked drained and worried,
like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

“I saw you Cain,” I told him as we
sat up in his flat. It was messy, like he hadn't cleaned it in weeks,
“I saw you fighting a few weeks ago.”

He looked up at me sharply. “Where? I
don't want you watching me Grace.”

“I had no idea you'd be there Cain.
It was in the pit.”

“The pit. What the hell where you
doing there?”

“A friend of Chase bought us tickets,
we had no idea what to expect. Have - have you been fighting there
regularly?” I asked.

He nodded slowly, his eyes steely.
“Every week.”

“You haven't fought in the last
fight, have you?” My words were nervous.

He went silent for a while. “You saw
did you? You saw what happened in the final fight?” He looked at me
intently, a slight look of fear on his face.

“We did. It was horrific. I can't
believe they'd do that, that anyone would do that.”

“It's for the money,” he said
quickly. “The money makes it worth it.”

I got the sense that he was defending
it, that maybe he'd been involved already. “Have you fought the
final fight?” I said again.

Again he was silent for a moment. “Not
yet,” he said, “but soon, yes, I will.”

“No Cain, no you can't. Do you have
any idea what happened, what I saw. You can't let that happen to you
or...do it to someone else. You can't Cain.”

“I will do whatever it takes,
whatever I have to do. I lost her Grace, I lost Emily. I want her
back, and the sooner I stop fighting, the sooner that will happen.
This fight, it's a big step forward.”

“But no, screw that. You'll risk your
own life, be willing to take someone else's, for money? What do you
think Emily will think of you when she finds out, when she knows that
you've killed for money. Or worse, what if you die, then what?”

“Then it's all over, and I don't have
to worry about it any more.” He was being so belligerent, so
pigheaded, not listening to reason. It looked like he didn't care
about anything, like this was all that was left of him.

“Cain, you can't do this. You just
can't. Please, can't you do something else, have a normal life?”

“Now you sound just like Emily. Why
can't everyone just fuck off and leave me alone. I know what I'm
doing Grace.” His voice was raising as he stormed into the kitchen
and took a shot of whiskey. “Please Grace, just leave.”

I stood there in silence. He'd changed,
given up caring. “Please,” I said once more, “don't do this.”

He stood leaning on the kitchen surface
with his hands, his back to me, his head drooped slightly. “Just go
Grace, go,” he said quietly, “I don't want you here right now.”

I couldn't argue with him, couldn't
persuade him. There was nothing I could do.

September 27
^th
2014

Cain

Why can't everyone just leave me the
fuck alone. I've never had to deal with this much meddling in my
life. Why do they care anyway.

It was Saturday, and the day of the
fight. By the end of the evening, I'd either be fifty grand richer,
or six feet under. I guessed that's what they did when someone died -
straight in the back of a car and into the woods. Maybe they'd
accidentally bury me next to Rex, wouldn't that be poetic justice.

I didn't tell Brad about it, about the
fact that I'd be fighting last, fighting to live, fighting to kill.
Why bother telling someone else who'd end up trying to persuade me
not to do it? I could simply ignore Grace, but Brad, he was there
with me all the time, helping to train me, supporting me, sparring
with me. I couldn't let him know.

As the day drew on I couldn't help but
think about the evening. I had tried to block it all out, but it was
sneaking in. I tried to think about the money, about nothing else,
but if I was going to win, if I was going to walk out of there, I
needed a strategy.

To win, I'd need to kill my opponent.
Kill him. End his life. How would I do it? Break his neck, bash his
skull in, beat him to a pulp. Killing someone with a weapon - a gun
or a knife - was bad enough. But doing it with your bare hands,
taking someone's life away with your fists and your hands, that was
entirely different.

I started to feel sick as I sat in the
dressing room, the crowd cheering behind me. Brad asked me why I was
no nervous, why I looked so pale. I was usually so calm before a
fight, sitting there quietly in my own little world, focusing on what
was to come. Now, though, my breathing was fast, my body tense, my
eyes hooded. I sat there fidgeting, my mind turning over and over.

As the fighters came and went my
heartbeat quickened. I couldn't do this. I couldn't. It was too much.
I didn't want to die. Not tonight.
I can't do this.

It was all suddenly so real, so close.
This was really about to happen, it wasn't just something in my head,
something I was thinking about. It was about to become reality, a
reality I'd never be able to escape from.

The door opened and the usual five
minute warning came in.

“OK here we go, another day at the
office,” Brad was saying, “game face Cain, game face. Cain? Are
you all right?”

I looked up in his face, his eyes
concerned. “Bro you look like you've seen a ghost. What's going
on?”

I started shaking my head. “I can't
do this, I can't.”

“Mate come on, it's you. You've done
this a hundred times, it's nothing. You're the fucking
Spartan
now.”

“No, this is different. It's not to
knockout or submission...”

“What's going on bro, tell me.”

“It's to the death Brad, to the
death,” I said, my voice now shaking.

A wave of realization washed over him
as his mouth opened and eyebrows shot up. “Fuck, why the hell
didn't you say? Mate, fuck no, you can't do that.”

“Look, I'll go tell them, let them
know that you're not fighting,” he continued, his words flying at
pace.

“Stop,” I said as he walked towards
the door, “they won't let me go. Do you really think these people
will let me off the hook that easily. Fuck no mate. We've got to
go...now, without telling anyone, we just need to get out of here.”

I stood up and went to the door,
opening it up and checking to the left and right. I knew the way out:
straight down the corridor and out the back door. They'd be bouncers
there, but fuck em, they didn't know what was going on. And if they
did, well I guess I would be fighting tonight in the end.

We rushed out the door and down the
corridor, straight towards the back door, passing by the doctors
office as we went. Another fighter was having a gash in his head sewn
up, pretty standard fare. We crashed out the back, and straight into
a couple of the bouncers, standing by the wall and smoking outside.

“Spartan,” one said, “you win
tonight man?” He looked me up and down. “Not a scratch on you.”

I nodded, my words rushed. “Sure,
sure, it was easy. Doing a good job fellas, gotta go though.”

We carried on past them and out into
the warm night air. I felt a wave of relief crash over my body, my
legs going weak. I was free, I wouldn't be dying, or killing,
tonight. I did know one thing though. I knew that it was over. I
could never go back there again.

Now though, now there was only one
person I wanted to see, one person I wanted to talk to.

Grace

I sat there with Emily as she cried on
the bed. I had battled with myself over whether to tell her, whether
to let her know what Cain was involved in. She knew he was fighting,
but she didn't know how serious things had become. I doubt anyone
knew but me.

I told her about the pit, that I'd seen
Cain there, that he'd won easily. It was pointless, though, pointless
trying to put her mind to rest knowing what I was about to tell her -
that Cain was going to enter a fight to the death. I knew that she
was the only one who might be able to talk Cain out of it. I just
hoped that he hadn't gone through with it yet.

When I told her she almost passed out
she was so worried. She broke down in front of me, her tears
uncontrollable. I could tell she loved him dearly, that the idea of
him being killed was almost impossible to bear. I thought back to how
I felt when I thought Chase had died in my arms in the car and knew
exactly what she was feeling. It was an unbearable pain, a stabbing
at the heart that I thought would never stop.

A crashing at the door downstairs broke
us from our fears and we heard Penny, Emily's mother, open it. After
a few muffled words we heard the door shut and footsteps coming up
the stairs. Then, suddenly, the door swung open and Cain stood there,
breathing heavily, his eyes wild.

He looked straight at Emily and then
over to me. “Grace, could you give us a minute please?” he asked.
He didn't bother with a 'hello', or 'hey Grace, what are you doing
here'. He just stood there, holding the door open, waiting for me to
leave, his eyes fixed on Emily.

“What's happening?” I whispered as
I passed him.

“It's over,” he said, “the
fighting's over.”

Cain

I shut the door behind Grace as she
left the room and turned back to Emily.

“Something happened tonight, Emily,”
I said, “something that made me realize what I want, what's most
important to me.”

She looked up, her eyes filled with
tears, speaking through her sniffs. “You killed someone didn't you.
You killed someone in a fight,” she sobbed.

I walked towards her and knelt down in
front of her. I knew that Grace had told her what was happening.
“No,” I said, “taking her cheek in my palm, “I walked away. I
couldn't do that Emily, I couldn't kill someone like that, I couldn't
risk dying without telling you how I felt.”

She looked up into my eyes. “I love
you Emily,” I said to her. “I'm not afraid to say that now.”

“I'm done fighting, if that's what
you want. I'll walk away from all of it, I don't care. I'll work for
peanuts if it makes you happy. That's what I want.”

It all gushed out, everything I felt
but had never said. I'd spent my life bottling up my feelings but not
tonight. I loved her, I always knew that, I'd just never said it,
never admitted it to myself.

She hugged me tight and I kissed her,
the first kiss I'd had in two months. It was the longest in years I'd
gone without feeling the touch of a woman to my lips, and I knew now
that she was the last woman I'd ever want to be with.

“I can't tell you how happy that
makes me,” she said to me. “I have some news too Cain...and I've
been trying to find a way to tell you....”

She went silent for a moment, gathering
herself. “Yes,” I said, “what is it?”

“I'm - I'm pregnant Cain. You're
going to be a father.”

I leaned back, the shock of it almost
knocking me off my feet. “I know,” she said, “I don't know what
to feel about it either.”