Chapter 24 Jake #2
Dimon leaned in. “I’m saying that your fucking fight was trending before the main event even happened, Radovitz.
I’m saying you pushed my top-tier fighters to ‘mention’ status with two fucking punches.
But you also got the EFC trending fast, so I let the charges drop as a courtesy for that.
” He gave me a half smile as he twirled a finger in a circle.
“And then it just kept going. Jake, look, I’m going to give it to you straight.
You’re having a moment. There’s no telling how long it’ll last, but I want in on it. I want you fighting for me.”
“Absolutely not.” I didn’t even have to think about it.
“You’re sore about some stuff, I get that.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think you understand just how sore I am. Your policies are hurting your fighters—do you get that? You were going to saddle Carson with over fifty grand of debt for something that wasn’t even his fault, and—”
“Right,” Dimon interjected. “That was your fault, wasn’t it Jake?”
Thus prompted, my mind wound back to that moment as if it were happening right now.
The grab, the lift, the spike—then the limpness, the seizure, the way Carson wouldn’t wake up.
I’d spent the next two weeks eating next to nothing and living in the dark in my apartment until my sister finally forced me to get help.
I was in a better place now, I had guardrails and a great therapist and people who could help me with my shit, but the last thing I needed was to be reminded of one of the worst times in my life by this cretin.
“Get out,” I said through gritted teeth. “Get the fuck out, you—”
“I’ll include a healthcare stipend for my fighters with the next contract negotiation.”
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
He shrugged. “Vegas is getting to be a tough crowd. Not as easy to fill seats as it was a year ago, and that makes my people nervous. They start to wonder if they’re better off finding a different audience, despite the fact that nobody gets media coverage like we do.
It’s more expensive to live here, too, and I see that.
So. A healthcare stipend, and guaranteed coverage for any incidents that happen outside the ring while they’re under contract. ”
I was stunned. This was… “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you don’t need my money,” he replied with surprising honesty.
“I looked into you when I decided to offer you a contract, Jake. You come from money—not a ton, but decent—and you have no debt. You donate to a dozen fucking charities every month. You work for peanuts here because you don’t need to be paid well to survive.
So how else can I convince you to work with me? ”
He reached into the alligator-hide bag at his feet—dyed yellow, of course, because classy was dead—and tossed a folder onto the table.
“It’s all in there. A two-year contract with a shot at the title fight if you win two, plus the usual endorsement deals, plus the healthcare upgrade.
Get an agent to look over it, they’ll tell you it’s legit. ”
You… what…
“You’ve been trending for forty-eight hours,” Dimon said, getting to his feet and straightening his jacket. “So I’ll give you that long to sign. If you say no after that, we’re done. No hard feelings, but this is your shot to do some real good, Jake.”
“I thought… ” I cleared my throat and tried again. “I thought you didn’t want someone like me in the locker room.”
“Oh, that’s covered too. Page four, fifth paragraph. But don’t let your sense of self-righteousness interfere with your future, Jake.” With that, he turned and left the office. I heard him engage with Beth, but I wasn’t listening. I was picking up the folder and flipping through the contract.
Two years… per-fight pay, performance bonuses, endorsement deals… there was the potential for me to make anywhere from two hundred thousand dollars to—fuck, over two million dollars according to the terms of this contract.
And there it was, in stark print, the healthcare stipend, guaranteed coverage at eighty percent for incidents happening outside the ring, and if I was reading this right, space for a collective bargaining agreement to be reached if I could get the other fighters to agree.
That was a big offer. I turned to page four, paragraph five.
Ah. The no disclosures clause. Specifically, one saying I couldn’t be publicly out during my tenure at the EFC.
No PDA at events, no social media posts either generally or specifically mentioning my sexuality, and no confirmation of anyone else’s questions about it.
Deny, obfuscate, enshroud. Dimon wanted me back in the closet if I was going to fight with him.
Fuck that. And yet…
I could make things better for a lot of fighters with this contract.
But Carson would never forgive me.
What was I saying? Carson would forgive anything. Especially if it meant fixing the problem that had nearly bankrupted him.
But I was dating Ethan, and I wasn’t about to give that up.
Dimon wasn’t asking me to, though. He just said I couldn’t confirm anything and couldn’t make out with Ethan in the stands for two years. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell for the EFC.
Shit. I needed to talk to Ethan.
Beth had the patience of a saint. She didn’t ask me anything, just made sure I could still teach and then took her office back, leaving the door open to air out the lingering smell of Dimon’s overly strong cologne.
I taught class and did my best not to be distracted, and when it was finally time to get Ethan I maybe broke a couple of traffic laws on my way to the practice center.
I waited impatiently for him at the door, pacing back and forth and holding that fucking contract in my hands until it was a crumpled mess.
“Hey!” He came out five minutes later—right on time, given that I had showed up early—with a huge smile on his face. “It went really well, and Jimmy said that—oh shit.” His tone changed as soon as he saw my face. “What’s wrong?”
“I… ” I was feeling so many things, it was hard to articulate what to tell him first. “It’s… ”
“Jake.” Ethan put his good hand on my shoulder. “Are you okay?”
Good question. Am I okay? “I don’t know.”
“What’s wrong, what happened? Hang on.” He opened the training center door and pulled me inside out of the heat, then sat me down in the first sitting area he could find. “There’s nobody else around,” he promised me. “They’re going to be on the ice for another hour. Talk to me.”
I still couldn’t quite figure out how to talk about this, so I handed him the contract instead. Ethan took it with a confused look and started to read. The further he read, the wider his eyes got.
“Holy shit,” he said once he reached the last page. “You’re being called up?”
“It’s not a perfect analogue,” I said, my tongue finally unsticking. “But… it’s a little like that, yeah.”
“But you hate these guys, right?”
“I do.”
“But they’re offering you a lot of money.”
“It’s not the money,” I sighed. “Look at page three again.”
He reread more slowly. “Oh, wow. Wow. That’s big.”
“I know.”
“That’s really big.”
“Yeah.”
“Carson would love that.”
“I know,” I said guiltily. “But look at page four.”
Ethan glanced at it, then frowned. “Ah, yeah. That’s bullshit.”
“It is.”
“But… this would be a really big deal for you,” he continued after a moment. When he glanced up at me, he looked conflicted. “I don’t want to be the reason you don’t get called up, Jake.”
“I don’t want to be told I have to hide the man I love just so I can punch people in the face,” I replied. The inkling I’d had in my gut was coalescing into a certainty. “I won’t. I’m not going to sign this. I don’t care how much money is on the line.”
He relaxed a little. “Okay. Then why… ”
“I was hoping you know somebody who could help me use this as leverage with one of the other fight organizations. One where I could be out and fight for them at the same time.” Not the Russian one, that was for sure, but there were other options.
“I could ask one of our lawyers to take a look, sure. But… ”
I found the will to grin. “Why would another org bother?”
“Well, it sounds rude when you say it like that,” he muttered, but he was smiling too.
“Check your phone.”
Ethan brightened. “I can look at the videos?”
“And social media.” I sat back and waited for him to look me up.
“Holy shit.” Ethan flipped from video to video, then started to laugh. “You’re trending! Holy shit, my badass boyfriend is trending, this is awesome!”
“And it’s why someone else might be interested in signing me right now.”
“For sure. But, oh my God.” He put a hand over his face. “I look like I’m swooning in this video, goddammit. No wonder Kells called me ‘princess’ when he saw me. Why can’t I be badass too?”
I reached for him, and he came over to me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders. “You are a badass,” I told him.
“Sure,” he agreed. “Just not as much as you.” He leaned in and kissed me, slow and sweet, as if to tell me there were no hard feelings. “Let’s get you a meeting with legal,” he said when we parted. “Then you can tell Dimon to shove his offer up his ass.”
“Sounds perfect.”