Falling for Colton (Falling #5) (13 page)

But I never back down. Not from anyone.
 

So I hold my chin up, work on looking aloof and arrogant. I ignore the pounding in my chest, the thrum of adrenaline and fear in my bloodstream, the slight shake to my hands as I clench them into fists.
 

Ruiz steps back, drops his arm between us. “Fight.”
 

Moreno is like greased goddamn lightning. He’s on me and hammering his fists into my gut with machine gun rapidity before I have a chance to even set my feet. And then he’s dancing back and weaving, feet working him around me like a dancer. A bob, a weave, a feint, and then he’s hooking a vicious right into my ribs and I’m gasping and seeing stars, and it hasn’t been six seconds yet. Goddamn.

Fuck this.

I curl down, root my feet in the earth, feel the ground under me like an anchor, and feel the blood haze settle over my brain.
 

Moreno ducks in, expecting to land another flurry of wicked slugs, but I’m faster than he is this time. He’s mid-punch, committed. I pivot, and his torso is wide open. I twist with the power of the rotating earth, grunt as I put all my force into it. I swing my arm, twist my hips, curl my torso around, haul my fist like a motherfucking freight train into Moreno’s liver.
 

He’s staggering backwards, stunned breathless by the raw, bone-crushing fury of the hit. No fucking mercy. I’m on him like a mauling bear, settling down into each punch and drawing colossal, primal vigor from the ground under my feet.
 

To his credit, he endures the battering I give him, and manages to deliver an elbow to my throat.

I gasp, and we’re both tottering backward, taking a breath.
 

And that’s when he changes shit on me. Instead of coming at me like I expect, fists flying, he darts forward, hops, and sends the ball of his left foot into my chest. I can’t breathe, and he’s spinning like a cyclone, and I can see the next kick coming but I can’t get out of the way. I manage to throw up a forearm, intercepting the kick; I’ll have a hell of a bruise there, that’s for damn sure.
 

The next minute or so is a wicked, vicious blur of kicks, knees, punches, elbows, body blows and hammering hits to the face. He’s bleeding and so am I. The crowd is wild, as if they can’t believe the fight they’re witnessing.
 

I have to end this.

I’m hurting so bad I can’t see, can’t breathe, can’t think. I can barely move.
 

Moreno launches another flying sidekick at me, and I don’t think, don’t plan, just react. I catch his ankle in the crook of my elbow, pivot over him and pressure the joint hard in the wrong direction, swinging the flat of my fist down onto his knee like a jackhammer.

CRACK.

He screams.
 

He drops.

I stagger backward into the silenced crowd. I sag, then I’m hurled forward, and I fall on the ground beside Moreno.

I vomit and gasp.
 

Moreno is on the ground a foot away. Tears gleam in his eyes, and he’s screaming, clutching at his knee as three Hispanic dudes rush toward him, shouting in Spanish.

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry—” I’m gasping it as I retch from exhaustion and agony.
 

Ruiz is in the ring. Staring down at me. “You only win if you’re on your feet, Colt.”
 

“Get up, motherfucker,” Moreno snarls at me through clenched teeth. “Stand your ass up or you a dead man.”
 

I roll to my back, gasp, spit and feel it land on my cheek, on the side of my neck. I taste blood and bile. I roll to my side and lever my feet under me, plant my palms on the cold, gritty, greasy concrete and grunt with the effort of holding my weight up.
 

I can’t breathe. Each inflation of my lungs sends a spear of agony through me, each motion is utterly excruciating: broken ribs. I don’t remember that happening.

The crowd is still and silent. Latinos stand in a protective circle around Moreno, and more than one is wielding a knife. Shit is about to go down, for real.

The tension is so thick it’s like a fog in the room. No one even dares breathe. Apparently it’s fine to beat a dude to a bloody pulp, but it’s not okay to cripple him. Who knew?
 

“Winner, Colt.” Ruiz shoves me unceremoniously through the crowd and outside.
 

The warehouse is on a wharf, water lapping gently against the pylons. The moon is full overhead, illuminating shapes in the water, evidence of a pier that had once stood here. Manhattan is a gleaming, twinkling vista across the water. We might be in New Jersey, I don’t know.
 

“Jesus goddamn, Colt!” Rhino is there, suddenly, whacking me on the back. “You crushed his ass, man. I can’t believe that shit. You fucked him
up
!”

Eli is on my other side. “That was fuckin’ brutal, my man.”
 

I keep feeling his knee crunch under my fist. I could be sick again from the memory. “I didn’t mean to—”

“But you did it. Can’t take that shit back, now.” Rhino is standing in front of me, prodding my torso with thick fingers, nodding when I wince and groan at his touch. “Broke some ribs. You done fightin’ for a minute, son. Come on.”
 

I have to walk on my own. I refuse to lean on him, or anyone. It’s a battle, though, just to make it the hundred yards up the wharf to Rhino’s car, a big Escalade with shiny spinner rims and ground effects. Climbing into the smooth leather saps me of everything I’ve got left.
 

I see Eli’s car ahead of us, and then he’s gone and Rhino is bobbing his head to the thudding bass of the hip-hop coming from the speakers.
 

“Nothin’ to be done for broke ribs but let ’em heal on they own,” he says. “But I got some shit that’ll take the edge off.”
 

I just groan and collapse against the window. Yellow-orange lights brighten overhead and recede, and then there’s the buzz of the tunnel and the occasional wash of oncoming headlights, and I have to fight for each breath.
 

“That was a hell of a fight,” Rhino says. “You made a name for yourself with that one. The big dogs will want a piece of you, now. Big money comin’ your way.”

“I can’t…I can’t breathe…” I gasp.

Rhino just chuckles, a sound like an avalanche. “Busted ribs’ll do that. Straighten up, lean the seat back. Don’t stress them fractures an’ it’ll feel better. Still hurts like a mo-fo, but not as bad if your torso weren’t twisted.”

I lever the seat backward until I feel the tugging tension lessen, and then I can suddenly breathe a little easier. The lance of agony recedes just a bit, enough that I can draw a shallow breath. Not too deep, or the pain hits likes a gunshot.
 

Miles and minutes pass in silence. Rhino glances at me. “I saw a guy get killed in the ring, once. Just a freak fuckin’ accident. Took a hit to the skull, fell, cracked his head open. We was miles from any doctors, so he just…bled out. Twitched and bled until he wasn’t breathin’ no more.”

“Jesus.”

“It’s underground fighting, dog. Bad shit is gonna happen.” He twists his fist on the steering wheel. “I wrecked a few people in my time. Broke a guy’s jaw so bad he needed reconstructive surgery, wires and screws and shit. Put another guy in traction for a month. Broke legs, knocked out teeth. It ain’t pretty. You don’t fight in those rings and not dish out pain, just like you don’t fight in those rings and not take pain. You gonna hurt, and you gonna get hurt. Can’t pussy out now. Just gotta deal with it.”

Chapter 7: Split; the Drive-by

Five months later

After my ribs finally healed, Rhino worked me like a fucking dog. Hours and hours and hours in the gym, to where I couldn’t fucking move afterward. He forced me to choke down protein shakes and protein bars, forced me to eat fish like I’m a goddamned penguin. I’d eat two steaks at a time, half a dozen eggs every morning. He made me run five miles every morning and pushed me to lift, lift, lift, deadlifts and dips and all sorts of fancy shit all day long. No fights, no girls, just endless hours in the gym, technique lessons and hours working the bag and the speedball and sparring with Rhino. Rest on Sundays, smoke weed until I’m floating in outer space, drink a forty, listen to hip-hop, cruise the streets in Rhino’s Escalade.
 

He introduced me to hundreds of people. He knows everyone in his neighborhood, old and young, male and female. Everyone. Kids, old folks, hard-as-fuck OGs, little babies. They all hug him, clap him on his burly shoulder and are happy to pass the time. They eye me warily at first, but eventually they accept me.

By the time the fifth month has passed, I’ve put on fifty pounds of solid muscle. If I was a beefcake before, I’m a fucking monster now. We never skipped leg day, either, so I’m light on my feet. There were entire days when I’d do nothing but practice footwork, hop the tires like you see on football camp news clips, do explosive jumps onto platforms three and four feet high. I’d shred my legs until I was jelly from the waist down, barely able to put one foot in front of the other.
 

I didn’t see Eli once in that time. Rhino says he told Eli I needed time before my next fight to heal my ribs and get conditioned. In return for food and board and conditioning, Rhino has me help run his gym. I clean the machines, stack the weights at the end of the day, spot on the bench press, restock the drinks cooler, spar with training fighters in the ring. I do anything and everything, and I don’t mind it. I’ve always relished the burn of a killer workout, but the difference between the bodyweight workouts I did in my bedroom and the targeted muscle training and bulking possible with specialized equipment is amazing. I’m not lean and muscular, now, I’m honestly ripped. Bulked out, padded with layers of muscle, low body fat. But quick, and my fists are lightning.
 

Rhino spars with me, late at night. As I begin to get better in the ring I notice him holding back less and less, feel his hits gain power, see him working to dodge mine and tensing to take them. I’d still never want to tangle with a beast like Rhino, but I’ve gained more confidence in my fighting abilities.
 

When I work my next fight, I’m gonna be unstoppable.
 

Eli shows up one Sunday and tosses a massive bag of icky-sticky on the table. Rhino pulls out a bud and breaks it up into crumbs. Eli has a cigarillo with him which he unrolls, shaking out the tobacco into the ashtray, and then hands it to Rhino, who fills the empty paper with pot, and rolls it back up into a tight thick blunt. He lights it, hands it to Eli first, his rights as the provider of the dope. Eli puffs deeply, holds it in, passes it to Rhino; there’s a pecking order to these things, and I go last as the new guy.
 

Eli shoots a glance at me as he slowly lets the thick smoke billow out of his nose. “You beefed up, dog.”

I nod. “Rhino’s been kicking my ass.”
 

“Looks good on you. You look like a straight-up killer.”
 

“That’s the point,” Rhino rumbles. “He’s gonna crush some mothafuckas, now.”

Eli rubs his palms on his knees as I take my hit of the blunt. “I’ve got him a fight on Tuesday. A new guy, big and bad. Train’s pick, as a come-up in case Julius don’t cut it.”
 

“How is Julius?” I ask.

Eli shrugs. “Still kickin’ ass. Train put him through some Muay Thai classes with a guy named Johnny. He’s been puttin’ on the hurt.”
 

I watch Rhino take a huge drag. “What’s the new guy like?” I ask.

Eli shrugs again. “Like I said, big and bad. Not as big as you, now. But new. Only had one fight, and it was a close one. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.”
 

Rhino shakes his head. “He won’t. I don’t think many guys on the roster can touch him.” A sharp glance at me. “Don’t get cocky. You never know what a fighter is like until you fight him. The only fight I ever lost was to a little Filipino dude. Faster’n fuck, hit like a mothafuckin’ bazooka. Jumped around so fast I couldn’t get a hit in. He took me down so fast my head was still spinning the next day. I went in thinkin’ I’d crush him like a bug, he was so damn tiny. Point is, don’t go gettin’ cocky. But I don’t think you’ll have any trouble.”

* * *
 

I didn’t have any trouble. I dominated that fight, and two more that night.

And after four months of monkish celibacy, thank god Raquel was working the fight that night. She introduced me to her friend Lisa, and the three of us got it on like Donkey Kong, my first time with more than one girl, which, honestly, was a lot more work than I thought it’d be, keeping two girls going at once. Good thing I’m coordinated.
 

Three more fights the next week, and the same the next—and now that I’d met Lisa, if Raquel wasn’t there, Lisa was, or one of their other friends. The kinds of girls who work topless at underground fights…they’re a good time, and they all seemed to like me. Maybe it was just because I crushed every motherfucker put in front of me. I was a one-man wrecking-machine. I made bank, as they say, a thousand per fight in the first month, two grand per fight the next month, made it to five by the third month. And I stashed it all. Every penny. Kept shredding myself in Rhino’s gym, kept running the ship for him, and trained in the ring and at the bags until my knuckles were like stone. I started taping them up, all the way up to my forearms, and fought barefoot, like Julio Moreno. A nod to him, partly, and partly because it felt right. Bare concrete under my feet, I could feel the floor, I could feel each punch twisting up like a tornado.
 

I saved my bank, and I fought like a wounded tiger. Fight after fight. Weeks. Months.
 

Sooner than I expected I’m past my nineteenth birthday, hitting on my twentieth. I haven’t heard from Mom or Dad, or anyone back home. I do wonder about Kyle, how he’s doing. He’s thirteen, now, I think. Almost fourteen? I don’t really miss home, but I do sort of miss Mom. She was cool to me, for the most part. And Kyle, too. But…I’m here now, making progress. Not much of a life, but it’s mine. Better than being at fucking Harvard or wherever the fuck Dad wanted me to go. That shit sounds like hell, if you ask me.