For the first time in my living memory, Christmas didn’t suck major ass this year. And now that New Years’ is long gone and everyone’s quit singing Silent Night, things are finally getting into a routine. A fucking routine. Sounds so stupid, and yet here I am. My favorite part of this routine, after hanging out with Sloane and all that entails, is working at the gym.
If there’s one thing I know how to do in this life, it’s how to knock someone the fuck out. Michael reels backward as I hammer my fist into his face, blood exploding from his mouth. Pain sings out in my right hand—my knuckles were split open about seven minutes ago. Now they’re a royal fucking mess.
My boy rights himself, swiping his blood from his lips, giving me the kind of dark, shitty look I normally reserve for the spineless motherfuckers who come in here trying to spar with me on a Friday night. The t-shirt fillers, wanting to bulk up before they go out on the weekend to impress the women. Wanting to feel like proper badasses by taking down the owner of the gym.
Pity for them I don’t go down easy. Or ever, really. I’m betting it’s hard for them to feel very masculine with the busted-up noses and the black eyes I hand out, either. Serves them right.
“You call that a hook?” Michael spits blood onto the ground, flexing out his own hands. His white wife beater is stained with his blood and mine, kind of like some weird hippy Rorschach tie-dye. All I see in the patterns our blood makes is guns and explosions. Make of that what you will.
“I nearly put you on your ass, motherfucker,” I growl at him. If he’s trying to bait me, he won’t need to do much to succeed tonight. I haven’t fucked Sloane in two days. She’s been working nights at the hospital and I’ve been training early. It’s left zero time for me to drive her crazy, or for me to expel some of my pent-up tension. Since I’m no longer working for a gang lord, the extra energy that would have been burned up by the adrenalin firing through my veins as I sped through the streets of Seattle on whatever dark and dangerous mission I’d been commissioned with now sits dormant in the pit of my stomach, gathering momentum. It explodes out of me in these matches I hold with Michael, or any other asshole dumb enough to verse me. Owning a fighting gym, I’m not exactly in short supply of those.
“You look tired. You wanna call it quits?” Michael asks, and even as he says this he’s laughing. He knows what his words will do to me.
“Tired?” I clench my hands into fists, lowering my cantering of gravity before putting my guard up and stalking forward. “I don’t get tired when it counts, Michael.”
“And when does it count?” he laughs, putting up his own fists, rocking from side to side on the balls of his feet. Michael may not be able to hit quite as hard as me, but the guy’s quick on his feet. He snaps out punches faster than lightning.
“When I’m fighting and when I’m fucking, of course,” I tell him. “Not that you’d know anything about the last part. When was the last time you got laid again?” I feint to the left, bringing home a nasty uppercut with my right hand. It connects with his side, right in the ribcage. His breath wheezes out of him, but his guard stays up. Whoever taught him to fight taught him well.
Yeah, that would be me.
“I got laid last night, boss.” Out comes his left fist in a jab. It makes contact with my jaw, snapping my head around. Fucking hurts, but I grin at him. I know my teeth are stained red with blood—I can taste it on my tongue, the copper lighting up my senses. I’m vaguely aware that I must look like some kind of monster.
“Bullshit,” I say. “If you used your dick last night, you wouldn’t be fighting like such a fucking pussy.”
We circle one another, both looking for an in.
“If I’m fighting like a pussy, then I dread to think what kind of pussy you’ve been getting.”
I immediately stop, freezing to the spot. I straighten up, letting my hands drop to my side out of guard. Tipping my head to one side, I shake it at the same time, pinning him in my unblinking gaze. My boy stills himself too, realization dawning on his face. He knows what he’s said. And I can clearly see that he wishes he could take it back.
“Fuck, man, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just not used to you having a partner.”
I give him a dark look.
A girlfriend?”
I growl, low and deep in my throat.
“A mistress? Fuck, man, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. You know I love Sloane.”
“You’re not helping.”