Mason nods in front of me.
“He’s trying to hide it, but he’s favoring that side,” I tell him.
It’s a good thing Tom’s standing a little to one side, because I can see the little drops of red coming out with Mason’s words, “You sure? I didn’t see it.”
“He went to grab for it when you were getting to your feet the first time, but he moved his hand away like he didn’t want anyone to know,” I tell him.
“You sure you’re training to be a nurse?” Mason teases. “Why not come to the dark side? You can be my carnage coach.”
“Can you go after him there?” I ask.
“You bet your ass he can,” Logan says. “You know what you gotta do. Do it.”
Mason nods and the ref is getting the fighters’ attention.
That’s when it hits me.
I turn toward Logan. “If all the championship fights are happening right now, why are you here?” I ask. “Mason says you could handle yourself well against the pros? What happened?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Logan answers, his eyes focused somewhere behind me.
“We’re both going to be a part of Mason’s life for a while,” I tell him. “We may as well get to know each other.”
It feels awkward the way I say it, but I don’t really know how to approach Logan about anything yet.
“I didn’t enter,” he says. “I told Mason I was winning matches so he’d keep his head in the game, but tournaments aren’t my thing. I’d rather support my boy.”
I can feel Logan’s body tense a little as I give him a quick hug, but he gives me a pat on the back before I’ve pulled away. “You’re a good friend,” I tell him. “Maybe we’ll have to have you over for dinner sometime.”
Logan shushes me.
I turn back around when I hear the announcer yelling, “Round four!”
Mason looks tired, but determined as he steps toward his opponent again. He waits until Jones comes at him with a hook before dodging and throwing his first hard punch into the weak area of Jones’s ribcage.
Jones winces and I can’t help but feel a little bad. Then again, he’s trying to beat up my boyfriend. Screw that guy.
“Take him out, Mason!” I shout.
Jones is a little slower with his next punch, but it connects, rocking Mason backward a little, but my man comes hard with a hard kick to what could seriously be the exact spot he’d landed the punch.
Jones staggers back, clutching his side a moment and everyone in the crowd who didn’t know what was going on knows now.
“Right side! Right side!” people all around me are yelling and I’m pretty proud of myself as Jones’s eyes go wide.
Mason doesn’t let up, either. Not all of his strikes go toward Jones’s right side, but enough of him do that the latter is really starting to slow down.
For the first time in the match, Mason is out-striking his opponent.
Jones lunges forward desperately, trying to take Mason down the way he had so easily in the previous round, but Mason chastises him with a hard knee to the right side and then another.
Mason’s got Jones in a grapple now and he’s just pummeling his now-frequently-blinking opponent with knees and fists.
Jones finally gets a leg between Mason’s and uses it as a fulcrum to take Mason to the ground, only this time, Mason has every advantage.
“Arm bar! Arm bar!” Logan is shouting behind me.
I don’t even know what words are coming out of my mouth, but I’m shouting, my blood pumping. Honestly, I could probably do pretty well in a fight, myself, right about now.
Mason gets Jones’s arm between his legs when the announcer shouts, “Round!”
Seemingly every voice in the room—Jones’s excepted, naturally—seems to say, “Aww,” at the exact same moment.
Mason lets his opponent go and the two get to their feet.
Tom does his thing and Logan and I just stand behind Mason, silent. As far as I can tell, he knows what he has to do and he’s doing it.
When the ref signals to the fighters, Mason glances back at me and we share a look that may as well be a conversation. His eyes are fixed on mine as mine are on his and without even consciously thinking about it, my head starts nodding on its own.
Mason nods once and then turns back toward the ring as the announcer shouts, “Round five!”
Both Mason and Jones almost run toward each other, coming into a grapple. Mason tries to get a knee into Jones’s ribs again, but the latter’s wised up since the last round.
Still, Jones is hurting and when Mason takes him down, the fight is all but over.
“Arm bar!” Logan shouts again, and I’ve just decided that I’ve really got to learn some of these terms.
Mason has Jones’s arm held with both hands and one leg. He swings his other leg up, trying to close it around Jones’s arm, but Jones pulls away so hard I’m worried the guy’s going to dislocate his shoulder.
The move works and Jones slips out of Mason’s grip and both of them get to their feet. It would have been nice if Mason could have ended it there, but he’s got the advantage now. It’s just a matter of time.
Mason takes a step forward the same time Jones does, the latter throwing an uppercut and just like that, Mason’s off his feet, landing limply on the ground.
I lunge forward the same time Jones does, only Logan holds me back as the ref basically throws himself on top of Mason, waving his hands and calling out, “It’s over!”
Logan releases me and I beat Tom to Mason’s side.
Epilogue
The Falling In
Ash
“How are you doing?” I ask Mason as we sit in the parking lot. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
“Probably not,” Mason answers, “but there’s not a lot I can do about that.”
That championship fight against Ben Jones was the last match Mason ever fought. Maybe someday that’ll change, but for now, he’s much too busy focusing on school.
After that fight, I thought he was going to be devastated, but to him, it just seemed like the way that part of his life had to end.
Now, we’re sitting outside the county jail, waiting.
Testifying against mom and dad turned out not to be necessary. When the police started going through all the paperwork mom and dad were fortunately too dumb to throw away, the real villain became clear: Johnson B. Witherton VI, Esq.
My parents are certainly not innocent, but when their former lawyer was confronted with the pages of handwritten notes my father had taken about every topic he wasn’t actually supposed to write down, he confessed to everything. The fraud had been his idea, as had every single one of my parents other schemes over the years.
They tried to tell the press they didn’t know what they were doing was illegal because it came from their lawyer, but nobody, least of all me, bought it.
On the bright side, though, the two of them did get a reduced sentence when it was explained to them at great length that these crimes weren’t actually their own idea.
“Here we go,” Mason says, and we get out of the car.
“What up, Brossels?” Chris calls when he spots us as he’s coming out of the jail.