Released (Caged #3)(74)

What I really needed was at the gym.

As soon as I was through the door, I quickly changed into sweats and went to the closest thing I could punch. The heavy bag just outside the lockers wasn’t in use, so I started pounding on it. I didn’t even bother to tape up my hands first, and my knuckles became raw almost immediately.

One of the workers came over and yelled at me, then helped me get taped up before I resumed punching. Punching felt good. Really good. I wished there were someone to hit instead of the heavy bag, but this was a lot better than nothing.

“I heard you were a great fighter.”

I didn’t recognize the voice or the face of the kid who leaned against the wall nearby and watched me hit the bag. I didn’t respond to him, either. Punching was far more important.

“They said you fought in a cage in a bar,” the kid said with a bit of a laugh. “That didn’t sound like real fighting to me. I’ve been training since I was seven, and I’ll be getting a UFC contract as soon as I graduate from high school this year.”

I looked him over, noticed the clear look of a challenge on his face, but shook my head.

“You can’t weight more than one-seventy,” I said.

“One seventy-four,” he said. “I’m close enough. Or are you worried a kid is going to smack you down?”

I glared at him.

“You eighteen?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“How about we get in that ring and I kick your ass?”

He laughed.

“I was hoping you’d say that!”

He came at me quickly—almost before I was completely over the ropes. I dodged, ducked, and danced to the other side of the ring to watch him move. His footwork was good, and he shuffled elegantly around me—first a crossing step with his left foot and then a dragging step with his right foot moving along behind it.

Rushing forward, he jabbed out at me with his foot, which I neatly batted aside. I could tell in the first sixty seconds that this was not a fight I was going to lose. The kid knew his moves, no doubt about it, but he obviously hadn’t been in too many real fights. Sparring, sure. Training, definitely. Not fighting though. He was making too many mistakes. Like people who had learned to speak a foreign language at a university or from a textbook—grammatically correct, but the linguistics of slang was completely lost on them. You could have a whole conversation, and they wouldn’t understand a word of it.

The next time he moved forward, I kidney punched him and then parried away. I wasn’t gentle about it, either. I followed it with a blow to the back of his head, which left him stunned against the ropes.

“That’s all you got?” I taunted. “My girl has a better chance up here, and she’s eight months pregnant.”

The kid growled and came at me again with similar results.

“We’re having a daughter,” I said easily as he panted for breath a few feet from me. “Maybe in a few years, you can challenge her.”

With two long strides, I grabbed him by the arm, twisted it around, and then wrapped my arm around his neck. I could have compressed his carotid and made him pass out, but I slammed my other fist into his face a couple of times instead and then let him go.

He staggered. There was a cut above his eye now, and the blood was getting in the way of his vision. He tried to keep up with his own footwork, but I was much too quick for him.

With a quick swing of my right leg, my foot slammed against the side of his head, and he dropped to the mat. A moment later, I was beside him. I tossed one leg across his neck and the other across his midsection as I grabbed hold of his arm and pulled it toward me. Twisting his wrist so his thumb pointed toward the ceiling, I lifted with my hips and pulled hard on his arm.

The kid screamed and started slamming his hand on the mat over and over again.

I released him and jumped back up. He rolled over to his side, grabbed his shoulder, and moaned.

“Maybe next time, you’ll think about weight class,” I suggested. “It exists for a reason.”

I swung a leg over the ropes and dropped to the floor of the gym. I looked back to make sure the kid really was all right. He was sitting up, holding his shoulder and calling for Al to get him some first aid. There wasn’t enough blood for stitches, so I snickered and walked away.

“You feel better now?”

I turned around and saw Dr. Baynor sitting on a bench near the ring. I hadn’t seen the guy in months, and I wasn’t sure what to think of his sudden appearance except to be glad it wasn’t Yolanda showing up again.

“Yeah, I do.”

“Does that kid remind you of anyone?” He stood and walked toward me.

“Only the other *s who thought they were better than me,” I replied.

I grabbed a towel and ran it over the back of my neck and chest before tossing it into the bin. Baynor continued to eye me, and as much as I wanted to ignore him, the man had a way of getting under my skin.

“You have an interesting way of not seeing the obvious, Liam,” Baynor said. “What’s that saying? Something about the only people who are truly blind are those who refuse to see?”

“I don’t think that’s the saying.”

“It’s still the same point.”

“Fuck you.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that before when I was right,” he replied. “You going to keep saying it? Do you say it to Tria? You going to say it to your baby when it’s hungry at night and won’t let you sleep?”