Page 101 of Never Kiss and Tell

“Jesus, there’s a lot of people out there,” Jason says, peeking through a crack in the door to the cage. I can hear people cheering as two guys I don’t know fight. “You sure you’re up for this?”

Fuck no. I can’t get my head in the game. I’ve been up since Bailey left yesterday, drinking, pissed off at everyone. I’m pissed at Bailey for prying — caring. I’m pissed at Mom for dying. Dad for being able to carry on like she didn’t exist.

“I’m fine,” I murmur, slipping on my gloves. Rodriguez and I are up next. I saw him get here. He’s taller than my 6’2, but I’m more built. It could be a fair fight if I wasn’t so fucking hung over.

“Charlie’s got this,” Sam says, stalking into the room with a towel and a bottle of water. He stops, slapping me on the back. “Right, bud?”

“Yeah, and what about the last guy that went up against Rodriguez?” Jason asks, his face marred with worry. Jason is Sam’s right-hand man and fellow owner of the gym. He’s a good man, but he’s tough. If he’s worried, I should be too.

“Martinez was a pussy and way too fucking small to be fighting him,” Sam says, sitting down on the locker room bench beside me. The fight is being held at an old school in Holy Cross. Not the best part of town, but a lot of the proceeds go to helping the kids in town get a better education by buying them books. So, if I get my ass kicked, maybe it will at least meansomething.

Jason and Sam dissolve into a conversation about the fight that just ended while they clean the cage. Don’t want to be slipping on the sweat and blood of another man.

I go to the bathroom, needing to get away from their noise. What happened to the switch in me that allowed me to turn off my emotions? Where the fuck did that go because it’s the only thing that’s going to get me through this fight.

I grip the edge of the sink, staring at the bags under my eyes in the fluorescents. I keep thinking about the night Mom died. How frail she was when the funeral home came and took her away. She only weighed close to a hundred pounds by the end.

Brain cancer’s a fucking bitch.

I knew the moment I got home and stepped into the silence that she was gone. It was all I could do to go back to her room in that old house on Dumaine Street and find her asleep in her bed, the phone she’d used to call me while I was at the party on her chest.

The oxygen machine blew a breaker and cut the power to her room. It was like walking into a tomb, seeing her lifeless body in the dim cast of the moon.

I don’t remember anything else until the funeral.

So, when Bailey asked me to tell her about my mother, I panicked because the only thing I could see was my mom, lying in her bed and gasping for her last couple breaths because her piece of shit son wanted to go out and have some fun.

Maybe if I wouldn’t have gone out, Mom would still be alive. Maybe if Mom hadn’t died, I wouldn’t be here, right now, about to fight this match.

Maybe I wouldn’t be afraid to get close to someone.

Fucking pathetic.

“Hey!” Sam’s voice cuts through my thoughts and he bangs on the door loud enough to wake the dead. I grit my teeth and take one last look in the mirror before I open the door on his next blow. “You ready?” he asks, surprised when I open the door.

No.

“Let’s go.”

People in the crowd cheer for Rodriguez when I emerge from the locker room. Everyone fucking loves this guy because of the damage he’s done to other people — weaker people.

The guys in my group cheer, though not nearly as loud. I’m too new in a lot of these people’s eyes. A sacrificial lamb. Rodriguez has been doing this for five years: I just started a year and a half ago.

Rodriguez holds up his arms, a cocky grin on his face while they cheer. He loves this shit, loves that people know him as the guy that puts people in a coma, breaks their bones, and then sleeps with their women after he’s done. At least, that’s what he did to the last guy.

I step into the ring as the announcer calls our names and asks us to step to the center.

“Bump gloves, gentleman,” the ref says. I hold my fist out, but Rodriguez steps up to me, putting his smug face in mine. So, I let my hand drop.

“Tell me what your bitch’s name is so I know who I’m fucking tonight after I beat your ass.”

He says it so low no one else but me hears him.

At the same moment, my eyes catch on a streak of blondehair, soft blue eyes and a look of worry on a face I never expected to see here.

Fucking hell. Bailey’s here? Beside her sits Jake and even more surprising, Andi and my dad.

Just what I fucking need. To croak in front of everyone I care about at the hands of Rodriguez.

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