Page 27 of Ravaged From Fate

“You’re on, brother.”

* * *

“How about we do a few practice drills first?” Cyrus suggests as I duck into the ring.

“What do you have in mind?”

The giant man shrugs. “I’ll put on my punch mitts and we’ll see where we go.”

I fit my hands into boxing gloves and Cyrus fits his into punch mitts, designed to take my blows.

“Let’s go,” I mutter darkly.

“Jabs first,” Cyrus instructs.

He lifts up his gloves and starts to yell out drills. I jab at his mitts in accordance with how many punches he yells.

“One!”

“One, two!”

“One, two, one!”

“One, one, two!”

“Good,” Cyrus says, stopping. I’ve barely warmed up. “Let’s do some real punches now. I’ll call out either jab, hook, or cross.”

“Got it.”

“Jab! Jab!”

“Jab! Hook!”

“Jab! Jab! Hook! Cross!”

“Cross! Hook! Cross! Jab! Jab!”

“Really good,” the man says.

I’m starting to feel it, the familiar anger rising inside me. I can’t stop it.

This is only practice. Steady yourself.

“Man, I’ve been doing this a long time,” Cyrus says. “I can tell when I see talent, and you’ve really got something. You really do.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ve been in the ring most of my life, so I can get to know certain things about a fighter,” he continues. “The way they hold themselves. The way they throw a punch. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he acts in the ring, and I know something about you, Caspian Pierce.”

What’s he talking about? He doesn’t know shit about me…

That anger flashes back up. The defensive walls rise.

Cyrus laughs. “There, I can see it. There’s something inside you, bro, waiting to come out. Something broken. A lot of us have that. I did, for a long time. I used to get into street brawls. I carried myself around looking to get into a fight, just to prove something that doesn’t exist to someone who doesn’t exist.”

“I don’t have anything broken,” I growl, lying. “I don’t have anything waiting to come out.”

I don’t like where this is heading.