AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After thirty more minutes, I gave up staring at the meaningless letters on the screen and got up to stretch. There was no point in this. I might as well go and get some food or keep training.
Or down an entire bottle of whiskey.
Anything to get her taste out of my mind.
* * *
The bloodin my mouth was the only reminder that I was alive. The rest of the pain in my body had disappeared behind a killing rage. Every part of me was focused on fighting to hit, destroy, and kill a part of the motherfucker in front of me. I wasn’t going to literally kill him, but I did have to kill his spirit. I needed to make sure he stayed down and never got up again.
No matter what happened, I had to tear him apart and make him bleed.
There was also blood dripping into his eyes, those crazed orbs that were as lost in the bloodlust as I was. He was a crazy fucker who didn’t care if he killed me, so I had to kill him first. All the rage streamed through me, but it wasn’t the type that would make me sloppy. It was the type that kept me focused above the aches and bruises. The kind that made it more likely that I would come out of this alive.
So I spat the blood out, ignoring everything except his legs and breathing. Pain was burning in my chest where he’d very likely broken one of my ribs, and I knew he’d fractured my arm, too, with a roundhouse kick. But I’d gotten him as well. I’d shattered his nose and dislocated his knee. It was still anyone’s game.
The last round would define which one of us walked away with one million dollars.
We were watching each other to see who would move first, who would attack. He snarled at me, showing reddened teeth with a few knocked out. Mine were knocked out too.
After a few moments, he charged at me with an angry cry. I ran to him in turn, blocking his blow by taking it to the side while I caught his other arm in mine and twisted it. Then, I jerked. I felt it snap out of the socket, feeling a sick satisfaction that I’d officially paid the bastard back.
He bowled and dropped, and that was when I finally got him into the headlock he’d been trying to avoid the entire match. The headlock I had him in was inescapable. We both knew this was the end.
As I choked him out, he clawed at my hand and threw his elbow back once or twice so he could get me off him. I didn’t move, taking the blows to the jaw while maintaining the lock. But the blows were decreasing in strength, a testament to his lack of oxygen.
“Tap out,” I snarled at him. “Tap out before I fucking kill you, you evil son of a bitch.”
He somehow craned his head in my hold to stare at me, his ice-blue eyes spitting out his hatred and disdain.
But he didn’t have a choice. This was the end.
Finally, the bastard did it. His working hand reached across the floor, and he tapped twice.
A roar went through the other motherfuckers surrounding us. My fist went up into the air, and they started swarming us, some of them taking my hand and others contesting the match like they didn’t just see their king fall. Hands grabbed me, lifting mine up, and money rained on the floor. But through it all, I saw Toby.
He was standing somewhere in the crowd and staring at me with a horrified look on his face.
As he stared at me, his eyes slowly rolled back into empty sockets, and blood trailed from his head the very same way it did in the past.
You didn’t come, he said.
And then he caught on fire.
I jerked up in bed, feeling my heart rattle in my chest. The familiar combination of nausea and despair ripped apart my gut, and I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to count down until I got my mind back. Fuck. The evening chill had turned my entire body to stone, and I couldn’t shake off the feeling that something or someone was watching me.
Probably Toby’s ghost. This was his retribution.
Shit. I had the same self-destructive urge to enter the ring and beat the shit out of someone. Or better yet, someone else could beat the shit out of me for a change.
Before I could think any further, I grabbed my phone from the bedside and pulled up the text again.
Who the fuck are you?
I sent it and then glared at my phone as if it would invoke a response. It was the picture that caused this, I knew. I hadn’t had that nightmare in years now, but here he was, haunting me again with things I couldn’t answer or explain.
This was probably what he wanted.
I got out of bed and started pacing. I couldn’t stay here. I needed to leave, or I would go crazy. Pulling on some shorts, I went out, not caring that I would look like a maniac running shirtless at midnight. I ran until my lungs burned and everything hurt. I ran and ran, trying to run away from the images, but I couldn’t escape them. They were burned into my brain, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t get rid of them.
