Page 54 of Jump

Fucking A! She’s onboard.

And suddenly, I can’t wait to see what she comes up with.

“What movie did you pick?”

“Well…” I glance toward the television and watch as Will Smith’s name pops on the screen. “Knowing you like the romance-y, kissy, I love you, you love me bullshit, and I like the Jason Bourne and political espionage stuff…” Chuckling, I study her again, far more interested in Vivian’s face than I am with Jeff Goldblum’s name. “I chose the nineteen-ninety-six version of Independence Day.”

“What?” She coughs out a laugh and sends her gaze sprinting back to the television. “No way is this a mix of what you and I both like. There’s no kissing at all!”

“No, but there’s a stripper in a thong, and I guess you’re gonna have to make do with that.”

“You’re impossible,” she grumbles. But she loves it. I know she does.

So I settle back against the cushions and rest my shoulder against hers, then exhaling my day, I finally allow myself to relax for the night. I’m here, warm, clean, fed, and rested. And she’s here, smiling and content, even after a shitty day.

I’ve lived through some really crappy shit. But this…? This is nice.

“Stop talking now,” I murmur, knowing full well she’s not speaking. “I get irrationally angry when I’m trying to watch a movie and people are talking at me.”

“Sure.” She rolls her eyes in my peripherals, but wiggles her butt and finds her own comfort. “I won’t say a word,” she whispers. “Not a single wor—”

“Shh!”

Her chest jumps with muted laughter. “Asshole.”

“SHH!”

* * *

The next afternoon, I’m still off-shift—though only until seven tomorrow morning—so I wander into a shed-like building I’ve never been inside. But it’s famous. Known across the world as the Rollin On Gym.

We may be in a small-ass town where everyone knows everyone, and no one outside of town knows we exist. But this gym has been home to more than a few world champion fighters. Heavyweight world champions, where millions of dollars were on the line.

I don’t belong here, and I had no intention, ever, of walking inside this building or joining a commercial gym. But it took only a small amount of asking around to find the answers I sought.

In his earlier years, Jack ‘the Jackhammer’ Reilly was a three—maybe four or five or six—time world champion mixed martial artist. He traveled the country, sweeping up trophies and titles, and in between, he was training inside this shed that has neither heating nor cooling. But in the midst of it all, bad shit went down for him, life-altering, grief-infused shit that led him into a pit of despair that cost him everything he’d ever worked for.

The money.

The championship belts.

His fame.

His dignity.

In the end, he damn near lost his mind.

But the years have passed. He’s healed. Grown. He met the woman he would eventually marry, earned back his titles… and put away a little money, just in case his vices sent him spiraling a second time.

He and the pretty little wife had some kids—in fact, they continue to actively have them—but when Jack isn’t with his family, he trains. And I have it on good authority that he’s inside the gym today and has a little time on his hands.

So I wander past the unmanned reception desk and into the hall, with a door that opens up to a massive room housing a competition-sized boxing ring. Two men occupy it. Fists collide, and feet move, somehow heavy and light at the same time. They wear shorts only, despite the snow drifting to the earth outside, but the thick sheen of sweat on their backs proves they’re not cold.

However, neither of them is Jack Reilly, so I drop my hand in my pocket and continue along the hall until the ground rumbles beneath my feet, and the thud of heavy bodies hitting the canvas draws me in the way a light attracts a moth.

The way a zapper brings a mosquito to its death.

I stop at the mouth of a room containing a regulation-sized octagon, the cage walls an easy eight feet tall, and the gate that holds it all, shut and locked so the animals inside have no choice but to kill or be killed.

---