Kya disappeared into a waiting cab and refused to turn around. The driver shut the door and blocked me from knocking on the window.
"How could you do this to a beautiful woman? I hate men like you, don't know what they've got until it’s gone. Or is it that you think now that the challenge is gone, the excitement, that there is nothing left?" the cabbie asked. "You don't know a single thing about what it takes to make a commitment, what it takes to make a woman happy. And, you're going to lose her. You deserve to."
#
I woke up the next morning hungover and sore. Still, before I could assess the damage to myself, I thought of Kya. The look on her face was raw, and it rubbed my memory hard – disappointment, disgust, and a bone-deep sadness I recognized too well. Kya found out she was wrong about someone she cared for and it hurt more because she had cared.
Kya had cared for me. Enough to come find me after our argument. Enough to stick around even after I teased and pushed her. Enough to look for me after I made her uncomfortable.
I heaved myself out of bed and got dressed. I needed to find her. I knew I was the last person she probably wanted to see, but I had to face her. Kya had to know why I had gone to the strip club. It would be a painfully intimate thing to tell her, but that seemed a small sacrifice to see her green eyes again.
I pried open the door of my suite bedroom and my manager slumped into the room.
"What? Oh great, Aldous was right. At least, there was a reason I slept on the floor all night," Kev said.
"There are things called locks," I said.
"Yeah, but not on the outside. I'm trying to keep you from running off and burning any more energy. You remember you've got a match tonight, right?" Kev asked.
I felt sick and hoped it was just the tequila. "I have to do something first."
"Nope, no way, not happening," Aldous said. He appeared from my suite's kitchen with a specially blended drink. "You're going to finish this and then do everything else I say."
Hours later I was detoxed, primed, and ready to fight. I shadowboxed against the green room wall and waited for my music to come on. I had to pump myself up.
No one tells you what to do, you do it alone, you're going to take this Peretti guy, no one else in the ring can do it. Once you've finished him, it’s on to the big title, then you're a champion, then you can get the big bucks, I told myself.
I stopped and stared at my shadow. I should have signed endorsement deals all along. It hurt my career and especially my bank account to resist them. Besides, it did not matter. I had branded myself, sold myself into a hollow replica of my father – the lone wolf, the man that goes it alone, the fighter that doesn't need any endorsements paying his way.
I got in the ring, but I already felt a step off. Mario Peretti was fast, wings of the hummingbird fast, and I took a few hits right after the first bell. I shook it off, but could not rid myself of the feeling I had gotten into the ring on the wrong foot.
His leg snaked out and I just barely jumped back in time. Another inch and he could have gotten my knee. There were some injuries I could not come back from. We danced around each other again, but instead of thinking about his close and hard attacks, I wondered if last night's injured look was ever something Kya would come back from.
Mario Peretti lunged in, his feet fast across the ring. I heard a chop whistle past my ear and lifted my leg for a kick. The move did not land, but it swung my leg out of the way of his roundhouse kick. My rival smiled at me, his eyes flat, as we circled around again.
Kya had to know what she was getting into when we started spending time together. Even as I thought it, I knew it was not true. I remembered Kya in the nightclub, the first time we met. She had drunk too much, left herself too open. Then, she came back for more. I used her, she entertained me, and then I finally shocked her and she dropped me. I would never see her again.
I got in a fast and hard combination, but Peretti was still standing. When he circled around the opposite way, my eyes traveled past him and into the crowd. Kya's green eyes looked up at me.
I stumbled and heard the arena crowd gasp. It was something I had never done before. I was the unstoppable fighter, the angry fighter, the one that came back from a hit harder and fiercer every time. I did not lose my footing; I did not lose my way.
Fenton Morris did not get distracted by a pretty face. A face that wanted me to be different, to be more or better. I was what I was, and I was good.
Still, I looked at Kya for one second too long and Peretti struck. The arena tipped sideways and blackness swallowed me before I hit the mats. It was a total knock out.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kya
I let the crowd push me along out of the arena and into the casino. I did not put up a fight we moved towards the slot machines and bars, instead of the door that lead to my hotel. Instead, I drifted along and eavesdropped on the fans as they discussed the fight.
"Peretti fights dirty, that's the only explanation," a short man said.
"I've never seen Fenton Morris slip. How could he not see that hit coming?" The short man's bald friend threw his hands up in the air. "Something had to be wrong."
"It's all over already, they’re calling it the surprise upset of the year," an older woman with bottle red hair announced as she studied her phone.
"Bet Morris is the most surprised," her husband said, "he's never lost yet."
"Best he did it now so he won't in the title fight," the man next to them in the crowd said.
Upset, I thought, is the right word for it. My stomach heaved as the image of Fenton falling to the mats flashed through my head again. I was just as surprised as everyone else, more so since I had been close to Fenton and felt his strength. He had seemed invincible until tonight.
And, it was all my fault.
"I heard he was out at the strip clubs last night, probably why he wasn't up to the fight tonight," the short man continued.
"I believe it. He looks like the kind of man that comes to Vegas for the strippers," the young man closest to me said.
"I saw him there," an older man in a garish cowboy shirt said. "Me and my buddies were down near Fremont Street and saw him head into one of them gentleman's clubs."
"A night out drinking at the strip clubs could be enough to throw anyone off their game, eh, Ed?" his friend said.
"Yeah, but it was worth it," Ed agreed.
I swallowed hard and slipped out of the crowd. I took refuge from the wave of people in a small gift shop and tried to stop my spinning thoughts.
The look on Fenton's face when I walked into that strip club was the same he gave me seconds before Mario Peretti knocked him out. I was interfering and it was wrong. Fenton Morris did not need anyone's help, much less mine. He did not want me. I was just getting in his way.
My phone rang and in the relative quiet of the gift shop, I had no reason not to answer it. "It's not a good time, James," I said.
"Just tell me if you found him last night or not," my boss said.
"I did, but we didn't talk, it was a huge mess. He was at a strip club, all surrounded by women. I kinda just turned around and ran," I said.
"So, you kicked him out, slammed the door in his face, then found him with a bunch of strippers but didn't say anything? No wonder he was shocked to see you at the fight," James said.