AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Blood poured from his nose, dripping down his face and all over me.
His blood was on my face.
We probably looked like something out of a horror movie right now.
Lucky for me, though, this dude had shit for jiu-jitsu. He was a fucking purple belt. There was no way he could finish what he’d just started.
I basically bucked him off like an annoying fly and flipped him onto his stomach. I pressed his head to the concrete and when he naturally pushed against me, shoving his body off the ground, he pushed right into my trap. I was on him, my arm around his throat in a rear naked choke… and fifteen seconds of patient squeezing while he scrambled to mount some defense, and failed…
He slapped a hand on the ground. He tapped the fuck out and the fight was over.
We didn’t even go a full round.
And that was it. Four weeks of training culminating in a fight that lasted less than three minutes.
Another victory for me, and very possibly, a broken hand. The ref would announce my win, money would rain down on me, my guys would celebrate.
But I met Jolie’s eyes, and somehow, the victory felt weirdly hollow.
ChapterThirty-Four
Shane
My head was ringing slightly, my whole system flooded with endorphins, adrenaline. In the post-fight chaos, the first thing I did when my crew surrounded me was ask Lex to bring Jolie. It was fucking loud in here, crowded, and I’d lost sight of her.
Buddy Sleazebag was already having people corralled the fuck out as his guys paid out on bets.
One of my guys dumped bottled water over my hands, washing away the blood. Another one patted them off with a dry towel and then they started wrapping my fingers, my split knuckles. I could barely feel them as guys jostled around me, slapping my back, squeezing my shoulders and reveling in the fact that I’d just kicked ass.
And of course, they’d cleaned up on it. Most of my guys put money on me, every fight.
“You need to get these looked at,” one of them told me. “You might have some breaks.”
But my attention was on Jolie. She was standing close now, next to Lex and Maddox. She met my eyes, and she had that same look on her face; that disturbed look she wore as the fight got bloody. She tried to smile a little. She waited, watching the whole time, as I got my hands attended to.
Which meant she definitely saw it when Buddy pushed in and tried to hand me a whack of cash. Since my hands were still being bandaged, Lex took it for me.
As the crowd cleared out, I saw my opponent sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall with his guys around him.
“He okay?” I asked Lex.
“Yeah, just checked on him,” Maddox said. “He’s good.”
When my hands were done, I mopped off the sweat and blood with a towel. Someone handed me my hoodie and I pulled it on, threw the hood up, and Lex shoved the money into my pocket. I went over to thank my opponent, tell him it was a good fight. Because that’s what you did when you respected your opponent. And if they gave me a good clean fight, I did respect them.
Fact was, most of the guys coming out here did it for the money. Some did it for ego. But the one thing most of them had in common was that they really tried their best. And they had balls to come out here and fight me. Not only was I the reigning champ, but most of these guys couldn’t afford the kind of training that I could; the quality of my trainers, my gym, even my diet and the supplements I took were far superior to theirs, and even if they were ignorant to that fact, I wasn’t.
Outside of winning some underground fight, they’d never make any money as fighters and they’d never get much farther than this: getting their ass handed to them by me in some parking garage or abandoned warehouse.
Then I said goodbye to my crew, thanked them for coming.
I collected Jolie. When I took her by the hand, she held my hand gently, like she was afraid of hurting me. Lex and Maddox escorted us out of the building and over to the waiting limo. The driver came to open the door for us and we said goodbye to the guys.
I released Jolie’s hand so she could climb into the limo first. But she paused, watching Lex and Maddox walk over to their Harleys, parked nearby. “Are we heading to the hospital?” she asked me.
“No. Why would we?”
“I heard what that guy said. You need x-rays.” She glanced at my hands, practically cringing. They were all bandaged up, though. It wasn’t like I was bleeding all over the place and sobbing in pain. Honestly, I didn’t feel a lot of pain yet. I’d be feeling it tomorrow, though, for sure.
