Long Shot: An MMA Stepbrother Romance (3 page)

What have you done, Josh? You’ve gotten your thoughts so tangled that you don’t know anything.
 

I watch her for a minute, maybe more. Her eyes stay glued to mine the whole time. Finally, I just wave and turn away without looking back again. I get into the old Camaro and start it up, then head out to the causeway that connects Manteo to Nags Head. Instead of stopping at my old apartment, I grab a couple of six packs of beer from a Brew Thru and head north on Highway 12 until I’m at the very end of the Outer Banks. I sit on the beach all night, drinking and trying not to think about Natalie, until I fall asleep sometime near dawn.
 

When I wake, the sun is blazing down on me, and there are twelve messages from Natalie on my phone. I click it off and put it aside.
 

I know I won’t be seeing her for a long time, maybe years.
 

When I see her again, maybe the conversation will be different.
 

A man can fucking hope, anyway.

Present Day

Go in quick for the first round. Shuffle to the side, avoid his punches so he thinks you’re afraid. Take one punch and then another. That’s the way it goes down.
 

Right hook, left hook. Make it look like a pattern. Knock him down for a second, run a tight ground game, and choke him out in the last.
 

I practice my formula on the punching bag in the corner. I’ve been training for weeks, and my body is tensed as tight as a hot coil, ready to spring into action. Tonight’s the real thing. Well, as close to the real thing as I get in the underground fighting world.
 

Think about going pro, Joshie. You’ll get there. You just gotta get through this fight first.
 

I can’t believe I’ve signed onto yet another fight with fucking Frank. He’s used and abused his fighters in all the years I’ve known him—and no one more than me. Tonight’s just another in a long series of shitty, horrible fights where I throw down an opponent in front of an audience of drunken idiots. I think back to the first fight I lost—I didn’t have a trainer like Ash back then. It was Frank, all Frank. And he’d taken me back to the locker room and punched me so hard that it took my breath away. I was sixteen. Just like a lot of the kids fighting for the club right now.
 

I shake off the memory and look to the side of the gym. My opponent walks in, head shaved bare, tribal tattoos adorning his shoulders.

I know my opponent tonight is bigger than I am, a middleweight from out of town named Cade. His record is twelve wins this season, two losses. But I’m not weak from having to make weight. I’ve bulked up, and he probably spent yesterday trying to lose five pounds in a sweatsuit. Today, I’ll consider my weight class an advantage.

Welterweight champion of the Outer Banks, last fight of the tourist season.
That’ll be me. Last year, I would have been happy to get this opportunity to fight at Frank’s club. But last year, I was still working the steps, still saving money. I needed Frank’s Gym as much as it needed me. But this fight is only one of many loose ends to tie up, a game I’m playing to come out on top.

The courses, the forms, the money. But the other loose ends involve people.
Natalie. Frank
.

Natalie
.
 

She’s back, and I didn’t know it until three days ago. Just the thought of her takes over my mind, my body, throwing me into a world of distraction. I try to keep reminding myself that I don’t need a woman caught up in this mix. Frank is fucking dangerous, and I’ve got secrets that neither he nor my trainer know.
 

But I know I’ll be drawn back to Natalie, even if it’s a terrible fucking idea.

Her full pink lips the night I kissed her, her face when I left her behind. Text messages and emails asking if I’m still alive... Those have died off in the past year.

Hitting the punching bag with two knee strikes and an uppercut, I wonder if she found someone new, someone who wouldn’t hurt her. The thought makes that place in my gut twist again, this time with jealousy.
 

That’s why I left, wasn’t it? The fear of destroying her, possessing her, taking her under with me. I left to fix my life and get the drinking under control. I’ve done that now, more or less.

Mostly less, since Frank’s been breathing down my neck and trying to figure out what I’m doing
.

I pause, crack my neck, shake out my arms to loosen up. Reminding myself that this is a fight night, that people will be arriving soon, I punch and shuffle to the side again, trying to push her face from my mind.
 

Jab, uppercut, get him from the side.
Let him think you don’t know what you’re doing, that he’s going to break you. Make it believable for the people watching, the writhing mass of tourists in their seats.
 

I know the way the game is played. I’ve known it for a long time, since I got kicked out of my house at sixteen. Back then, Frank wasn’t as mean as he is now. That sounds almost impossible when I think about it. Frank had me convinced—and hundreds of others over the years—that we were the golden boys of the Outer Banks, that we’d rise in the ranks and take over the damn town, that we’d go pro and book fights in New York.
 

Fifteen minutes tonight. That’s all it is. You got this, Josh. You own this cage.

I shake my head and warm up with a few more punches to the bag. The people are starting to pour in now—townies and tourists alike, all coming for a taste of blood. If there’s one thing Frank’s good at, it’s providing blood—booking dirty fights, getting fighters as young as sixteen hooked on steroids, hiding razor blades in our gloves. A cut to the forehead bleeds and bleeds. The audience goes fucking nuts and throws money into bets, thirsty for more.
 

From the first row of chairs around the chain-link cage, Katy smiles at me and blows a kiss. Girl’s pretty, with red-blond hair and a tall, lanky body that looks slick while she’s holding up the cards. But I wrote her off long ago. I know I fucked her at some point, but I barely remember it now. It’s one of those memories that slips away from me until I see her carrying the cards and booking the bets on nights like this. She works for Frank sometimes, works hard for fighters on other nights. Always hits on me, though I don’t take the bait anymore. She’s not the one I want. None of these girls are.
 

Katy smiles broadly again and squeezes her tits together. I turn my gaze back to the punching bag without acknowledging her. Word is that she’s staying with Frank, so I know whose side she’s on right now.
 

“Hey Long Shot,” she yells. “Good luck tonight!” I nod back to her, but I keep punching the bag, listening to the sounds of the audience as they pour in. From the swell of voices and the chatter swirling around, I can tell that the other fighter has arrived. I turn to see him walking through a doorway on the other side of the gym.
 

Shit, that’s a big dude
. The middleweight towers over the men standing next to him. His chest looks like it might be twice as broad as mine, and his muscles are ropy, twitching, ready to fight. His head is shaved and covered with tattoos, and his trainer looks almost just as mean as he does. Frank claps Cade the fucking monster on his shoulder, and then Frank’s beady dark eyes dart over to me for just a moment. Frank’s wearing his button-down shirt tonight, his black hair slicked back and his shoes polished bright. It’s occurred to me before that he looks like a fucking mobster, and tonight is no different.

I watch as Frank shakes Cade’s hand, and I watch as his trainer leads him up to the cage. My coach, Ash, appears from the sidelines and walks me up to the cage to meet my opponent. Ash’s blue eyes meet mine, and I look over at his stern, angular face. He’s serious about his own beef with Frank, and he’s worked through my plan with me again and again. Not only has he given me the best training I’ve ever had—far better than Frank had ever done—he’s gotten me to where I am today, in every way.

“Remember the plan, Josh,” he says. “Get him hard in the last round. Run that ground game so he can’t flip you with his legs. Drag it out.” I put in my mouth guard and nod as Ash ushers me into the cage. Frank doesn’t even bother to check us for weapons before the fight starts. After all, blood is best when it comes to fighting. Ash puts my gloves over the yellow tape that coats my knuckles, and Katy walks along one side of the chain-link cage, carrying her round one card. The other fighter’s eyes are glued to her body, and the audience roars with appreciation.

“First fight of the night is the Outer Banks’ own Long Shot McRae.” Katy gestures to me. “And for his first fight in Frank’s cage is middleweight and small-time champ, Cade Davis!” The din of the crowd is deafening now. They’ve risen to a fever pitch. “Fight one! Round one!” Katy yells in her shrill, nails-on-a-chalkboard voice.
 

The ref steps between us and nods, then blows his whistle. “Gentlemen, let’s fight!”
 

The crowd roars, and soon we’re shuffling. Cade fakes a punch and comes in with a knee strike. It’s sloppy, and there’s no grace in it, but it gets me in my left side good. I deliver a roundhouse, pretending I’m sloppy too, barely hitting him in the face. I like to see them overconfident, make them sweat before I move in at the end. He nearly knocks me down in the first round, but I’m still standing as we move into the second. I hold and wait, watching Cade’s face as he tries to size me up. And then I’m playing my game, entering the second round hard as the crowd erupts into loud, insane cheering.
 

Cade’s face is angry now, especially when I start with the carefully designed pattern of side strikes and punches. I hit him where it counts—nose, side, close into the groin. He gets in a few punches, and the sucker is strong as hell. He comes at me with shots to the face I don’t expect, and I end up with a gash on my forehead and on my side. The fucker has razors, and I didn’t even know. We’re both angry going into the third round, and I let the rage take me over. It’s good for me now, fuels me through to the end. The sweat pours down Cade’s face, and the audience is deafening now.
 

I scan the audience. Natalie’s friend Summer would have told her I have a fight tonight. There’s a flash of blond hair, and I wonder if I’ll see her, hope to god I will. Cade slips in three knee strikes and slams me into the side of the cage. There’s a sickening crunch, and I know something’s broken or dislocated, but the pain’s not coming yet. I’m still able to turn him, able to get a hold and choke him out until he drops to his knees. When Cade comes to, the ref is already calling it.

“Another win for Long Shot!” Katy screams. Ash gives me water and leans in close.

“You okay kid?”

“Partially dislocated shoulder, I’m fucking betting,” I say. “Gonna hurt like hell.” The crowd is still cheering, and Ash leads me down, holds my right hand above my head. The flyweights—both of them probably sixteen, though Frank somehow reports them as eighteen—are in the cage now, and I can get the hell out of dodge. Frank spots me heading back to the locker room and hands me my money unceremoniously.
 

“Purse is light tonight.” I look down and count about three hundred dollars. If it were any other night, I’d give Frank a piece of my mind. I don’t fancy Frank putting his boot in my face and grinding the grit into my skin—he’s taken me by surprise and done it more than once when I questioned his authority. These days, he’s more likely to get someone else to do his dirty work for him, but he’s meaner than he ever has been. And that makes me sure as hell that I don’t want to fuck with him tonight. Not if I’m going to try to see Nat.

Like he’s reading my thoughts, I see Frank coming towards me from the corner of my eye. He’s got his button-down shirt on and that plastered on grin that I know he thinks looks cheerful. He claps me on the shoulder—fortunately not the one that’s likely dislocated. I try to smile back, but I’m betting it looks more like a grimace.

“Good job, kid. You like the purse tonight?” I nod and don’t respond. He knows damn well how I feel about it, but I ain’t trying to start anything, not when pain is starting to pulse through my entire body, threatening to knock me unconscious at any moment. “I said, you like the purse kid? You enjoy that fight?”

“Yeah, man. It was alright.” I pull away from him and keep my head down. I’d give anything to rise up and beat the shit out of this piece of trash, but sometimes, being in control of your body and mind is the highest form of domination. Not giving in to what he wants me to do. That’s what I need in this moment.
 

“I’ll see you in tomorrow?” Frank asks, catching my eye and staring hard.

“Naw, man. I need some time to get healed up.”

“We better see you around soon, Long Shot. Or I’ll find a way to make your life a living hell.” There’s nothing I can say that won’t be angry or sarcastic, so I shrug and pocket the money. Frank’s threats are usually empty, but I’ve seen him find ways to do exactly that.