Chapter 8 #2
“I can handle it,” I said, the same useless words I’d thrown at Holbrook.
Cappy snorted. “That what your ribs say? Your face? How about your wife?”
My jaw clenched. “Chloe’s not—”
“Don’t,” he cut in. “You’re the one who told me she moved out. You’re the one who said you weren’t sleeping. That you felt like you were going to fly apart unless something hit you first.”
He pointed a thick finger at my chest.
“This place doesn’t exist so you can self-destruct where I have to mop you off the mat. I like you, kid, but I like you breathing more. You want a fight, go deal with whatever the hell’s going on at home.”
I looked away, jaw grinding.
“Go home,” he said more quietly. “You’re benched here same as you probably are at the station. You don’t like it, tough. Live long enough to be pissed about it.”
I knew he was right.
I also knew I wasn’t going home. Not yet.
Chloe was probably still there. In my kitchen. In our space. Looking at all the ways I’d come unglued and trying to find patterns in the mess.
I didn’t have it in me to face her. Not with my chest this tight and my fists this restless.
“I’ll just do some light work,” I muttered. “Bike. Shadowboxing. Nothing fancy.”
Cappy grunted. “Nothing that twists. Nothing that takes you to the mat.” He held my gaze. “You feel a pop, you’re done. You hear me?”
“Yeah,” I lied.
He shook his head and turned back to the cage, shouting, “Guard up, Tommy! Your face ain’t bulletproof!”
I headed for the row of equipment along the far wall. The assault bike mocked me from the corner, all fan wheel and misery, so I skipped that. I settled on the rowing machine. Straight lines. No twisting. Just legs, back, arms, repeat.
I eased onto the seat and started slow, testing my ribs. The first few pulls burned, but it was a clean pain, not the sharp, wrong kind. I could work with this.
Legs, back, arms. Slide forward. Do it again.
Maybe if I did it enough times, the noise in my head would quiet down. Maybe if I wore my body out, I’d go home and be able to sit in the same room as Chloe without feeling like I was going to jump out of my own skin.
The fan whirred with each stroke. My breathing fell into rhythm. Sweat rolled down my spine.
“Hell of a fight yesterday.”
The voice came from my left, smooth and casual.
I kept my hands moving but turned my head just enough to see the guy standing there. Mid-thirties, maybe. Athletic build under a fitted T-shirt, clean sneakers, clipboard in his hand. Not a regular. I would’ve remembered him.
“You watched?” I asked, pulling through another stroke.
“Hard to miss,” he said. “You and the Baumgartner kid. Thought you had him in the second.” He smiled, quick and professional. “Name’s Maurice. Maurice Benson.”
He held out a hand, and I reluctantly let go of the handle with one to shake it. His grip was firm, his skin cool and dry. Not a gym rat’s rough calluses. Something else.
“I was pretty sure you were going to take it,” he went on as I grabbed the handle again and got the rower moving. “You’ve got weight on him. Experience, too, if I had to guess. Could see it in the way you shifted. Read him.”
“Didn’t read him well enough,” I said. “He got the tap.”
Maurice’s smile didn’t waver. “Even the best lose sometimes. That’s how you know who’s serious. They come back.”
I didn’t answer.
He watched me for another few pulls. “So,” he said. “When’s your next one?”
I huffed out a breath that was half laugh, half grunt. “Next what?”
“Fight,” he said. “You looked like a guy who was just warming up.”
“Benched,” I said shortly. “Ribs.”
He clicked his tongue like that was a shame. “Ah. That explains the tape.” His gaze flicked over my side, then my face. “Shame. You’ve got a lot of potential.”
My grip tightened on the handle. “Yeah, well. Potential doesn’t take much to ruin.”
He chuckled softly. “Depends on where you aim it.”
The rower’s fan whirred. My ribs burned steady.
“You train anywhere else?” Maurice asked. “Or just here?”
“Just here,” I said. “Cappy runs a tight ship.”
“That he does,” Maurice agreed. “Also seems like he’s pretty firm on this whole ‘no self-destructing in my ring’ policy.”
I shot him a look. “You overheard?”
He shrugged, unbothered. “You weren’t exactly whispering. And the boss isn’t exactly subtle.” He leaned one shoulder against the wall. “Sounded to me like he might not be eager to put you back in with the newer guys. Liability, and all that.”
I looked straight ahead, jaw tight. Legs, back, arms. Pull. Breathe.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I’ll wait. Heal up. Do what he wants. Maybe he changes his mind.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Maurice asked lightly. “You just…stop? With what you showed yesterday? Seems like a waste.”
I felt my pace pick up. Just a little. Enough to make the chain sing. “It’s not worth it.”
“What’s not?” he asked.
“Going somewhere else,” I said. “Trying new gyms. New coaches. I’m not trying to go pro.” A humorless snort escaped me. “I’m not that guy.”
“You’re the guy who came in here two days in a row with cracked ribs and a taped face,” he said mildly. “And the way you looked in the third round? You might not think you’re that guy, but your body hasn’t gotten the memo.”
I didn’t want to hear that. At all.
Maurice straightened, pulling something from his clipboard. A card. He held it between two fingers.
“Look,” he said. “I recruit talent for a few different circuits. Nothing shady. Amateur, semi-pro. Some local shows, some regional. We like guys who can go three hard rounds and still look like they’re hungry for more.”
“I tapped,” I snapped, more defensive than I meant to.
“And?” he said. “You tapped smart. You didn’t blow your shoulder trying to be a hero in a match that doesn’t pay your mortgage. You know when to fold. That’s a good thing.”
He extended the card toward me. I kept rowing.
“I’m not saying you sign up tomorrow,” he said.
“Hell, with your ribs, I’m not saying you sign up next month.
I’m just saying—if you’re serious about this, if you want more than one fight every few weeks when your old-school coach decides you’ve ‘earned it’—” he made air quotes I could hear in his voice— “give me a call.”
I slowed the rower and finally took the card.
Maurice Benson, Regional Matchmaking & Event Coordination. A phone number. An email. No logo. No gym name.
“Think about it,” he said, straightening. “You’ve got something a lot of guys don’t. Power. Heart. A willingness to get hit and still come back. That’s not common.”
He tapped two knuckles lightly against the frame of the rower. “Heal up, Post. Call me when you’re ready.”
Then he walked off like he’d just commented on the weather, stopping near the cage to watch the kids spar.
I stared after him for a second, then looked down at the card in my hand.
Fights. Circuits. More.
It was stupid. Insane. Dangerous. Every firefighter instinct in me screamed that this was how guys ended up on disability with blown knees and fused vertebrae. It was how lives went sideways. How relationships denigrated.
I slid the card into my pocket.
Then I picked up the pace on the rower.
By the time I finished, my shirt clung to me, my ribs felt like they were wrapped in hot wire, and my lungs burned in a way the EMT in me knew wasn’t healthy.
I didn’t care.
I wiped down the machine, grabbed my bag, and headed for the truck without saying goodbye.
Outside, the daylight hit me square in the face. I squinted against it and climbed into the cab, dropping into the seat with a wince.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked myself out loud.
No answer, obviously. Just the familiar interior of the truck.
I rested my forehead against the steering wheel and let the silence press in.
In less than twenty-four hours, I’d let Chloe see my cleaning compulsion.
Had her tape up my ribs. Promised her I wouldn’t go back in the cage.
Shown up at the station unfit for duty. Got myself benched by my captain.
Fucking, showed back up at the gym like Pavlov’s dog.
Was psychoanalyzed by a gym rat, who should have a doctorate in psychology, and then had some recruiter look at me like I was a piece of meat.
Yep, I sure knew how to fuck-up twenty-four hours.