Raw Deal (Larson Brothers #1)(83)
Music thundered through the arena, a heavy rock song she recognized as one of Zane’s called “Incensed.” She had nodded along to it the night of the August on Fire concert, but now she stood frozen as a lightshow erupted around the cage and spotlights roamed restlessly over the heated crowd. Huge screens suspended above the cage showed Mike, the challenger, walking the hallway to enter the arena.
The hood of his black sweatshirt was pulled so low over his eyes she could barely see anything but a shadow underneath, but grim determination set his full lips in a tight line and his jaw could have been chiseled from granite. He moved with the grace she remembered, rolling his head first to one shoulder then around to the other, loosening his arms out to both sides. His team walked on either side of him, their faces like stone, with security on the outskirts of the group. They made the turn to enter the arena, and the spotlight hit them a few sections off to her left.
She caught a glimpse of him—it wasn’t hard with the way he towered over everyone else—amid the fans trying to get in closer to touch him or get a high-five, but mostly she watched him oblige them on the overhead screens. For the most part, the security officers kept people away, but if a hand reached out for him, Mike made every effort to shake it, bump it or slap it. Over the loudspeakers, Zane sang on—it must give him a thrill for his big brother to use his music for his walkout to face the champion. Of course Mike would do that for him, she thought, feeling a surge of emotion she didn’t need on top of the panic roiling in her stomach.
All too soon he was at cage side, stripping to his shorts for the pat down. She remembered once asking Tommy why they had to get patted down when they were already shirtless; he’d long-sufferingly explained it was to make sure they had nothing on their bodies to make them slick or to irritate their opponent’s eyes in a grapple. Made sense.
Done with all of the precautionary checks, Mike bolted up the steps into the cage, into his domain. Camera flashes erupted all over the arena as he waved, and Savannah had the almost uncontrollable urge to dash from her seat, run to him, and drag him out of there. Mine, he’s mine; he doesn’t belong to you people! He was in there to get pummeled to prove something to all of them, but he didn’t need to prove a damn thing to her for her to love him. Why had he chosen them over her?
Once his adulation died down, the process began afresh, this time with the heavyweight champ. He didn’t look stony faced with concentration. He looked like a bastard come to destroy something precious to her, and she hated him right then. It ran deeper than his being Mike’s opponent tonight—she hated him for using Tommy to bolster his image, to break Mike down and make himself look like a hero. Michael was the only hero here.
And the crowd knew it. Meyers had his cheering section, but a good portion of the crowd, including several people surrounding Savannah, was undeniably hostile. It warmed her heart.
The two fighters were introduced. They were brought to the center of the ring, where the referee went over the instructions. Twin pillars of muscle stared each other down, Mike looking almost passive from what she could see on the screens, Meyers openly glaring. When the ref told them to touch gloves, Mike put his up. Meyers knocked them away, garnering a barrage of boos and catcalls from the audience.
“I’d damn sure hate to be that guy,” Damien commented almost happily. Savannah had been so engrossed she’d almost forgotten he was there.
“You think he’s going to win?” she asked him, feeling hopeful.
“He’d better, or else I’m going to lose a metric f*ck ton of money.”
Well. “I can’t believe I’m here.”
“It’ll be all right,” Damien assured her. Yeah, she could remember walking into another arena much like this one a few months back, telling herself the same thing. She didn’t have time to ponder it. The bell sounded and the guys came out of their corners, fists cocked and ready to fire as they circled each other.
They were well matched, of a similar height and weight. Michael had the advantage on reach, as she knew from watching their past fight on YouTube. The two traded jabs while Savannah held her breath, wincing with each one. Mike took a vicious kick to the leg she heard from her seat, and she almost whipped her head away, but Rowan’s words rang in her mind, stopping her short. He was fine; he’d barely reacted, simply keeping up his cool, calculating, circling around Meyers. Looking for his shot. More jabs were thrown, some connecting, warming them up, pissing them off. She could see the animosity rising, the aggression.
Then Meyers went for the takedown. They slammed to the mat, each scrambling for a hold on the other, until Mike suddenly broke free and leapt back to his feet with the lithe elegance of a cat. But he didn’t give his opponent the chance to straighten, attacking with a series of blows that had to rattle the champ hard. The next time she was able to glimpse Meyers’s face, blood trickled from a cut over his eye. It only made him look more feral. He lit into Mike with a flurry of punches that backed him up to the fence. Mike blocked and slipped his way past; almost before she realized he’d even moved, he delivered a kick to the head that sent Meyers to the mat. The crowd went bananas as he went in for the ground and pound, and Savannah hoped to God it was already about to be over. But no, Meyers could be slippery too. He got a well-placed elbow in on Mike’s jaw and, after a sudden scramble, he was on top.
Savannah didn’t know the jiu-jitsu moves or what they were called, but whatever was happening there, it didn’t look good . . . a painful tangle of limbs that made even her own muscles hurt. She heard Damien curse beside her. Meyers pounded Mike in the face—one, two, three, four, oh God, I can’t look—but she stared on with bottom lip trembling. Mike was trying to make something happen, she could tell . . . a series of slow maneuvers to escape whatever hold Frank had put him in. But Frank was pushing to complete the hold too, to eventually make Mike submit, so it was a battle of sheer strength and endurance. Patience, hang in there, baby, she thought, bringing her tightly laced fingers to her lips. The clock was running down on the first round; he was almost home.