Fierce (3 page)

The throbbing pulse in Avery’s ears distracted him from the half-baked rock song playing on his iPod. More than distracted him; it made him stop running altogether, not out of fatigue or injury or anything physical, but because he was so…distractible. Had been every day for months now. And for an unbeaten world champion MMA fighter, whose winning edge depended on his razor-like focus, distractible was another word for destructible.

Self-destruct.

He pulled the earphones out of his ears and slammed them and the iPod down onto the center line of the two-lane blacktop his feet had pounded five times a week for going on three years now. Up until recently, he’d enjoyed the hell out of running. It was his church. His space. A time and a place between those times and places he couldn’t avoid. This had always been where he’d sharpened the edges of his focus, when he’d talked himself into being the best at what he did. Up until recently, Avery Wright could have talked himself into anything.

So what had changed? Where had the focus gone? The hunger?
He still trained as hard as he’d ever trained in the gym—when the others were watching for him to lead by example—but, out here, where he had no one to prove anything to but himself, he just couldn’t keep it up. He couldn’t pound the road like he knew he had to. And it was driving him nuts.

If I’m like this out here, I’m fucking
dead
in the ring.

He sat with his back against a tree, listening to the sound of crickets and the distant hum of traffic. It was a crisp, cloudy morning. His heart motored like he’d just endured a hard-fought final round, but he wasn’t tired in the least. It was mile three out of eleven. For Christ’s sake, he could sleep-walk further than this.

Using an iPod had been Luca’s idea—something to stimulate him, to get his juices flowing and his mind in gear. But it just hadn’t worked. Nothing had. Maybe it was time to face the real music, and admit it: he’d lost the will to compete. He’d lost his edge.

He was only 25, but—try as he might—Avery couldn’t think of a compelling reason to get back in the ring.
Something
had changed in him, but what? And if he wasn’t a fighter any more, what the hell was he? It was all he’d ever known, all he’d ever wanted.

Being distractible suddenly scared the living shit out of him, and he found he couldn’t breathe. Instead of taking in air, his body felt like the hydraulic compactor in a garbage truck, squeezing what little he had left into a toxic pocket and then expelling it slowly, excruciatingly, with a force he couldn’t resist. It was his first panic attack since leaving the streets of Michigan. He was so sure he’d conquered those streets, those nightmares. But as the toxic pocket squeezed inside him, releasing its venomous juices, the nightmares flooded the gasping part of his brain.

He closed his eyes and put his head between his knees. It took a while, but the pressure eventually lifted and his face and chest stopped burning. He took generous, measured breaths.

If Luca could see him now, he’d think the world was ending.
And he’d be right.
Unless Avery could get a handle on what was doing this to him, his world would end. If he couldn’t fight any more, he’d be like everyone else. Citizen Sap of Nowheresville, completely unexceptional. On a one-way trip back to the wintry streets of Michigan. And that just wasn’t Avery Wright.

No, he’d rather die than let that happen.

Some way or other he’d figure out how to switch off this self-destruct. And it was going to take more than a fucking iPod.

***

The first thing he did when he got back to his apartment was call Ashley, his on-off girlfriend for more than eight months now. Ash was fun to be around until she wasn’t, and when she wasn’t, she made that fact known with the tenacity of a jackhammer. And she’d been especially capricious lately, jealousy piled upon jealousy until she’d outright accused him of sleeping with Ronda Rousey, the female MMA star turned Hollywood action icon, all because they had a PR friend in common and had stayed at the same hotel at the same time during a tournament in Vegas last year.

“By that rationale,” he’d said, “I must have screwed Taylor Swift and Shakira, too, because they were at the same hotel.” A full-on Ash attack later and he’d sworn never to mention another famous woman to her as long as he lived.

And now it was time to ensure that promise. Yep, it was finally time to call it quits. Even if she wasn’t the sole architect of his distractibility, she wasn’t exactly a stable element in his life. And right now he wanted stability. If he was going to turn things around, get his mind back into fighting shape, he
needed
some stability.

“Hey, Ash. How are you?”

“I’m good, Avery. So good I can’t even tell you.”

Um, whatever that means.
Probably not the kind of good I have in mind.

“Listen, we need to talk. Can I come round later? That’s if your sister—”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she interrupted. “You see, here’s the thing…” The way she cleared her throat—and the timing of it—made him quirk an eyebrow. This sounded more promising. “We’ve been having problems lately, haven’t we, you and me?”

“I guess.” Great big, fat, irrevocable ones.

“And we’ve argued a lot
.
I mean a
lot
a lot.”

You go girl!

“True,” he said as solemnly as his grin permitted. “It’s been rough.”

“So I’ve been thinking…”
That must have been painful!
“Maybe we should break up.”

Avery held his silence for several glorious seconds, then answered, “I think so, too.”

“You do? Why?”

A typical Ash question. Controlling to the point of hypocrisy.

“For all the reasons you’ve just given.”

“You’re not seeing anyone else, then?” she asked.

“No. Are you?”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean we might be sort of dating, but I don’t know how serious it is. We’ve only slept together twice.”

“I see.” And he hated how much it stung him. He was over her, but she’d still screwed around behind his back, and
she’d
been the outraged one, accusing
him
of having some sort of celebrity harem in Vegas. “That’s that, then.”

“Please don’t hate me,” she said in that sweet, damsel-in-distress voice he’d fallen for back when they’d first met. Well, that and her smoking hot body—sports bra and yoga pants always did it for him. Like her sister, Lena, she was a pretty decent MMA fighter. Their dad, Tyler Culver, ran Mitre’s other gym, Springbok, and he’d trained them both since they’d been little girls. Springbok was more modern, more progressive than Wright Hook’s. For one thing, Tyler encouraged women to join his gym—but its fighters lacked that killer instinct, that willingness to stay around to the bitter end. Case in point: Ashley’s mercurial temperament. She was strong and focused in the ring until something threw her off her stride, then she was all over the place and, sooner or later, would mentally throw in the towel.

Kind of like what she’d done here with Avery. Only he couldn’t hate her for it. It was just who she was.

“I don’t hate you, Ash. We had some good times. You keep in touch, okay?”

She started sobbing. “I-I will, but now I feel like a total jerk.”

“Don’t. It was never gonna work out. We both knew that. Just do me a favor, okay?”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t let your new guy go to Vegas on his own.”

She didn’t reply right away. Avery had expected either a giggle or a tongue-lashing. He gave it a fifty-fifty chance.

“Avery?”

“Uh-huh?”

“
Screw you
!” She hung up on him, and he snorted a laugh. It was somehow a fitting end to the most up-and-down relationship he’d ever endured. All women were a distraction, he decided. Some were more harmful than others, but all of them, in one way or another, got in the way of a man following his dreams.

They didn’t just distract him, they rendered him distractible. In other words, they made him
want
to be distracted. And that was no way for a fighter to be.

So from now on, women were off-limits.

The rest would take care of itself, he reckoned. He’d be focused and pounding the road and he’d be back in fighting shape in no time.

***

Bad news bro! Gunny Maxwell threw his fight last night. Automatic suspension. Don’t know what the fuck’s happening with our guys. That’s three in twelve months. Somebody must be getting to them. We need to have a serious talk later! Luca

And with that text went Avery’s new positive outlook. Poof, gone, like a gum shield knocked out of his mouth and into the third row of ringside spectators. All the gym members stopped what they were doing and stared at him. As entrances went, this one was up there with the time he’d walked into the steel barrier separating the aisle from the crowd at his first professional tournament. He’d banged his knee so hard it had given him a limp. Luckily he’d won the fight—and the tournament—but he knew all about feeling stupid. And right now he felt plenty stupid.

Gunny Maxwell was one of Wright Hook’s brightest prospects. He had that rare combination of talents any budding MMA fighter would kill to have: he was equally good at punching and kicking, takedowns, and submission holds. Avery had worked him hard on the latter because it was the most technically challenging, and the kid had learned fast. He could slap a straight armbar on an opponent from just about any position.

For him to take a dive like this, after all that time and effort and hope they’d invested in him, was enough to make any coach or manager think twice about staying in the game. But Gunny was the
third one
in the past year. People would be asking questions about Wright Hook’s, about the veracity of its management.

Avery and Luca’s reputations were at stake. And they were helpless to fight back. Whoever was getting to their fighters was doing it outside the gym. For Christ’s sake, they couldn’t keep an eye on the talent twenty-four seven. And it was bound to happen again unless they thought of something,
some way
to find out who was behind it.

“You’ve all heard?”

Gino Rossi stepped forward as he unwound his handwraps. “We’ve heard, boss. And we don’t like it. It’s like there’s someone working against us. Which one of us is gonna be next?”

“I hear what you’re saying, Gino. I wish I had the answer. Luca and I are gonna figure something out. This has to stop.”

“You need to get hold of Gunny,” someone shouted from the back. “Get hold of him and make him tell you who got to him.”

“You should go to the cops,” suggested Marlon Washington, another promising, if cocky, young hopeful. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but the brothers in blue might be our only shot. This thing’s organized; we all know that. Big-time bling-ass white boys making moves. I can tell you, it ain’t the carrot getting our guys to throw in; it’s the motherfuckin’ stick. And believe me, these people wave a big-ass stick. So how are we gonna fight that? They’d put a gun to your head and pull the trigger soon as look at you. I ain’t blamin’ Gunny or Rico or that other dude who took a dive before I got here. And we ain’t blamin’ you, boss. We just don’t like where it leaves us. I mean the more fights we win, the bigger the stakes get, the more chance we’re gonna get that big-ass stick waved in our faces.”

“Right on, bro,” said Gino. “We need to say no more fights till this thing gets sorted.” The vocal opposition to that idea erupted like a chain reaction around the gym. “I know that’s a shitty deal,” he went on, “especially for those of us who don’t got no other income, but at least we’d hang on to our licenses. Gunny’s career’s over. He’ll never fight UFC again. Think about that before y’all follow in his footsteps.”