Chapter 31. Liam
Westlake Academy looks like a fucking real prison. The van rolls through gates that are taller, thicker, topped with coils of razor wire so dense they look fake. The buildings beyond are gray concrete, not brick, and the windows are really small. Guard towers everywhere.
Nobody in the van speaks. Even Santana, who spent the morning drive providing a detailed astrological breakdown of each opponent and telling me I'm fucked because I'm a Sagittarius, whatever the hell that means, has gone quiet.
"Jesus," Jack murmurs, pressing his face close to the window as we pass a yard enclosed by fencing so high it seems designed to discourage birds, not boys. "Is that a cage?"
"Exercise enclosure," Griff says from the front, his voice neutral, but I think he doesn't want to share what he really thinks. "Standard for maximum-security correctional facilities."
"Standard," Jack repeats. "And why the hell are we going into maximum security? What if they want to stab us?"
"Are you scared of criminals? Because… you know, we kinda qualify as criminals too," Cedric says.
"I'm not scared of them," Jack answers, but I think he is kinda scared.
We park and file out of the van and into the building, and the interior confirms what the exterior promised.
The corridors are bare concrete with painted lines on the floor, blue for visitors, red for residents, yellow for staff, and every door we pass is steel, with reinforced frames and electronic locks that beep as we're buzzed through. No posters. No bulletin boards.
A Westlake guard leads us through the facility toward the gym, and as we pass through a residential wing, I catch glimpses through doorways: rooms smaller than ours, bunks bolted to walls, no shelving, no personal items visible.
Jack falls into step beside me, and for once, he doesn't make a joke.
"We complain about Aspire," he says quietly.
"Yeah," I say.
"We should stop."
"Yeah."
"Not every cage is equal," Ethan murmurs, in his poetic way.
I nod. Yeah, it isn't. Ours has popsicles sometimes.
The gym is larger than ours, a converted warehouse with high ceilings crossed by exposed metal beams. Blue competition mats are laid out in two rings at the center, surrounded by stands already filling with staff and residents from the three competing facilities, mostly Westlake, though, since the other two facilities only brought their athletes.
A digital scoreboard dominates the far wall, currently dark.
Three banners hang from the beams: Westlake's, Ridgecrest Rehabilitation Center's, and Aspire Academy's, which looks modest and slightly crooked, like someone hung it in a hurry.
I didn't know we had a banner.
The Ridgecrest team occupies the far corner. They're bigger than us. Not all of them, but enough of them that the average is intimidating. I'm fucking tiny, and I'm not sure what the hell I was thinking when I chose MMA. Their warm-up gear is red, and they're trying to look very aggressive.
One fighter in particular catches my attention: broad-shouldered, neck like a tree trunk, hands wrapped in red tape that matches his uniform, his knuckles scarred. He's rolling his shoulders in slow circles.
I swallow hard.
"Don't look at him," Ethan says.
Of course he's watching me. He's always watching me.
"Look at me."
I look at him. His green eyes are steady, focused, and he has a reassuring smile. God, I love him so much. I want to tell him that, but I don't.
We go to our designated warm-up corner, and Ethan positions me facing away from the Ridgecrest fighters.
"Stretch. Start with your hips."
I stretch. He kneels beside me, adjusting my stance, pushing my knee to a better angle, pressing my shoulder down. His thumb finds the knot at the base of my neck and presses, and I exhale, feeling something unclench.
I start thinking I should have faked being sick—I'm a professional, after all—and stayed in the hotel. I regret not thinking of that sooner.
"When you're in there," Ethan says, bringing me back to reality, his voice low, meant only for me, "don't think about winning. Think about your footwork. Think about your guard. Think about moving, staying mobile, making him work for every shot. That's all. That's the whole job."
"And if he knocks me out?"
"You've been knocked out plenty of times before. You know how it feels, and you always get back on your feet. So you'll do that." He squeezes my hand. "You don't need to win, baby. You just need to fight. There's a difference."
I nod, swallowing against the tightness in my throat. My hands are shaking. He takes them briefly, hidden by the angle of our bodies, and presses them between his palms until the shaking quiets.
The scoreboard lights up. Names appear, paired, bracketed.
There it is.
First match. Top of the board.
MARSAL (Aspire) vs. DOMINGUEZ (Ridgecrest).
I look across the gym. The broad-shouldered fighter, Dominguez, is already looking at me, cracking his knuckles one by one.
Fuck my luck.
He rolls his shoulders like he's done this many times before and won most of them.
No time to watch others compete. No time to settle my nerves by seeing how the matches flow, how the refs call things, what the mat feels like.
I'm the opening act.
The first blood.
I feel so fucking sick. A hundred times worse than anything before.
Ethan's hand finds my shoulder one last time. "Remember what I said. Footwork. Guard. Breathe. You got this, baby. I'm very proud of you."
I nod. My mouth is dry, and I can't swallow, and I think I'll die because I can't swallow and I can't breathe. My heart is a fist, pounding against my ribs.
"I'm right here," he says. "The whole time."
I believe him.
I'm terrified.
The mat is blue like the ones back home. Left foot forward, right foot back, weight balanced. I walk toward the center, mouthguard in, hands up.
Dominguez up close is worse. He's so fucking tall, and he looks like a bull. His shoulders are twice the width of mine, his neck a column, his forearms roped with muscle. He has pores and a slightly crooked nose and a bead of sweat on his upper lip. His hair is black, like his eyes.
Everything feels like a dream, like I'm very, very high. I can't register things properly, and my brain is in a fog.
We touch gloves.
The academy circuit uses modified safety rules, so a clean knockdown gets a count before the ref decides whether you can continue. Griff went over all of this yesterday. Right now, I barely remember my own name.
The ref says words and then steps back, and the signal comes.
I swallow hard.
I move first.
I circle left, the way Ethan taught me, keeping distance, testing. Dominguez watches, patient, his guard high, his footwork minimal because he doesn't need to chase me yet. He knows he's bigger. He knows time is on his side.
I throw a jab. It pops off his guard, clean, quick, and his eyebrow twitches. I throw another, follow it with a cross that his guard absorbs but that pushes him back half a step. My hips rotate the way Ethan showed me, the power coming from the floor through my legs, through my core, into my fist.
Circle right. Reset.
Jab again, and this time I feint the cross and throw a hook instead, and it catches him on the side of his head with a sound like a hand slapping a watermelon. His head turns. Not much. An inch, maybe two.
Not so fucking bad, is it?
He comes forward, and I slip his jab, duck his cross, and counter with a body shot that lands clean on his ribs.
He grunts.
Hell yeah!
For thirty seconds, I believe I can win, or at least not die. Not dying would be nice.
I land a jab-cross combination that snaps his head back, and hell yeah, at least this won't be as ridiculously humiliating as I thought.
Then Dominguez adjusts.
It happens very fast.
He drops his lead hand slightly, and when I throw the jab he's been letting me land, he slips it and fires a counter cross that I never see.
The fucking impact arrives behind my left eye and reorganizes my understanding of where the floor is.
My guard drops, and he follows with a hook that folds me sideways, then a straight right that catches the edge of my head and sends the gym spinning.
I'm backing up. I don't remember deciding to back up. My feet are doing survival things.
But he keeps going.
Feint low, strike high. Feint right, come left. A hook digs into my ribs hard enough to steal my breath. Each combination exploits a gap I didn't know I had, each punch arriving from an angle my training didn't cover.
Then the final hook.
The mat rushes up to meet me, and I barely feel the impact. The ceiling stares down at me, crisscrossed with metal beams, and the overhead lights are halos, and the referee's face appears, his mouth moving, counting.
One. Two. Three.
The count sounds like it's coming through water. My ears are ringing, and I think about the time I almost drowned in a pool while my grandmother crocheted and forgot me there.
Four. Five.
I roll to my side. The mat is cool against my cheek.
Somewhere far away, Ethan's voice.
"Get up. Liam. Get up."
Six. Seven.
I get up.
Not gracefully. I get to one knee first, then push, my legs arguing with my brain about whether standing is a reasonable request. I make it upright by eight, hands up, guard up, and the ref looks into my eyes, holds up fingers, and asks a question I answer correctly, even though I still barely register it.
Dominguez is already there.
He closes the distance, patient as ever, and I try to circle, try to move, but my body isn't answering.
He throws an uppercut that catches me under the chin, and my mouthguard shoots sideways, and the ceiling returns, and my body is horizontal, where it belongs.
The referee doesn't count this time.
He steps between us, arms waving in wide crosses.
Stop. Done. Over.
I don't know how I'm standing now, and the referee raises Dominguez's arm. He taps my back, and someone helps me to the bench. I don't even register who, just hands under my arms, the floor moving unreliably beneath me.
My ribs ache where his hook landed. My temple throbs.