83. Theo Fairview
Cal was enthusiastically reviewing Coach’s fight plan for me while we watched some last-minute tapes of drills I’d been working on in anticipation of this fight.
I was both anxious and excited for the main event.
On the one hand, I was genuinely excited to go up against the Russian. She truly would be a real challenge for me, and I’d been busting my ass for this for years.
But on the other hand… part of me wanted to just… not even bother. I’d brushed off Cassandra’s concerns about the state of my feet when she’d asked me about it that morning… but the closer we got to the fight, the more I hated the idea of going into this with any sort of handicap.
I knew how ruthless Svetlana was. She could smell weakness a mile away, and unlike me, she didn’t have any reservations about killing her opponents.
This was the most high-stakes fight of my life, and I knew if I fucked up, it might really be over for me.
And… I realized that morning that… I didn’t want to die.
Not anymore.
I wanted to go home to my hot wife and make vegan food and play Smash Bros and then fuck her till she cried.
I wanted to maybe find a way to use what skills I had to help other people who had been through something similar to me.
Maybe I could teach people how to defend themselves from people like Samwell… Maybe I could make a real difference in this world, instead of just letting myself fade away into nothing.
I just… wanted.
It was new for me, and I was having a hard time deciding what I was going to do with all these new, bright, optimistic dreams.
One thing I did know for sure was that if I wasn’t actually as good as I thought I was and I lost this fight, there was a very real chance none of these shiny new wants and dreams would ever come to fruition.
Was that a gamble I was really willing to take?
I was about to open my mouth to ask Jerry and Cal what they thought when there was a loud, aggressive knock on the door.
I frowned.
Who the fuck was that?
“I’ve got it,” I said, squirting some water into my mouth as I made my way over to the door to let whoever it was in.
They knocked again–loudly–and a warning bell started to sound in my head.
Something was wrong…
Swinging the door open, my heart skipped a beat when I found Svetlana Petrova standing on the other side.
My mouth dropped open in surprise as I took in the six-foot wall of pure, fucking muscle that was glaring at me like I owed her a pound of flesh.
“Theo,” she said, her voice heavy and thick with her Russian accent.
“Uhm. Yeah?” I asked, unsure why my heart was trying to punch a hole in my fucking chest. The way she was staring at me was so unnerving… Why was she here?
Her hair was braided down each side of her head, and her fists were wrapped in tape, even though we were still hours away from the fight. I swallowed as I realized the tape was already stained with blood.
“You have big enemies, Theo,” Svetlana said grimly before forcing her way aggressively into the room.