Dodging Trains (25 page)

KEYON

I
feel fucking amazing.
I’m out of bed,
whooping
with energy, and I stride to the bathroom for a good look at myself in the mirror. Shit yeah—today’s the day. Sanchez’s fucking going down!

I want an insane breakfast even though I ate until I fell asleep with a mouth full of smuggled-in biscuits and gravy. Dawson knows what I like, and Markeston made sure it happened. Dude’s become my fairy godfather.

There’s a VIP restaurant on our floor, and that’s where we’re headed next. I throw on a pair of sweatpants, pull an Alliance Cage Warriors shirt over my head, and rock my hips on the way to the door.

“Feeling good?” Robbie says, clamping down on my neck, bear-style. He slaps me once and lets go.

I bob my head. “Like a million bucks.” There’s some sort of upbeat song I don’t recall the name of in my head. It’s on repeat, reminding me that I need my pre-fight playlist in my ear. I scan the front lounge of the suite, and Robbie, guessing my thoughts, points.

I pop my earbuds in on the way to breakfast, scroll through “Welcome to Jamrock,” “Justice,” DMX’s “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and land on “Ratamahatta,” for my first tune of the morning.

In the car to the arena, all I do is flip through songs, turn the volume up, and allow my knees to jump freely with pent-up energy. Al Kapone’s “You Ain’t Stoppin’ Me” has me growling with impatience by the time we’re dropped off at the back entrance.

The last hour before showtime is grueling. We’ve got sparring gear in the back and a few heavy bags to take the brunt off my pent-up energy and let me warm up.

We’re given the heads-up. Ten minutes.

I plug “Onward to Victory” into my ears and bounce on my feet. Slam my hands together, waiting, and that’s all I can do right now.

“It’s Dark and Hell is Hot,” thunders through my earbuds when I’m given the go-ahead. I rip them out, throw my phone down, and stalk out to “Hail to the King” by Avenged Sevenfold booming from the speakers—roaring, dominating—for me!

I’m fierce to claim it all.

Kneel to the Crown.

I can taste victory already, and I haven’t even seen him yet. Hell yeah, I’ve never been in better shape, and I’m mentally so together nothing can rock me.

Until Sanchez does a half circle, turns from his audience, and presents me with his beady eyes, twisted grin, and… a fucking ponytail in the back.

The walls of the cage lose their wired mesh, take on the solidity of walls—train walls. Sanchez’s corner grows into a dirty restroom, complete with a steel toilet.

The cage door slams shut. It’s louder than it should be. The rhythm in the air isn’t “Hail to the King” anymore, no, it’s train tracks rolling under my feet and offering their monotonous
thu-thud, thu-thud, thu-thud
.

The music fades off. Faintly, I catch the audience
booing
my entry. The referee nods us toward the center of the cage. I’m still in control, but I’m angry—angrier than I should be.

Sanchez peers at me, black mouth guard reminding me of rotten teeth on trains. He grins wide, but I grin wider. I grin like a lunatic, and the stare-down I give him is so murderous he knows he’s losing.

I huff a kiss at him. The train creep tries for a blow to my head even before the fight starts. Ha, fat chance. I’m sending him to sleep ASAP.

We both get warnings. I think I bob my head that I’ve understood. I glare at him. Remind myself:
it’s Sanchez
. From what I know, this man doesn’t even speak English—he’d never fucking say, “You’re so pretty.”

I can’t hinder the transformation of his dark skin to the pale one of the train creep. That ponytail. I thought Sanchez had short hair. How old are the videos I’ve been watching? His hair is black though. It’s not a woolen shock of red that reaches his shoulder blades. It’s in my head. Just in my head.

He’s
not
the train creep.

I rush him. Rain punches at his head in a vicious fast-forward. I shouldn’t be pure instinct. This fight is too important for that, but I can’t stop. It feels too damn good.

For every time he’s too slow to block, every time my fists dig into his face, the blood throbs faster through my veins, and the red dots clouding my vision grow bigger.

Fuck. Yeah. Take. That.

He’s slow, strong, greedy—he doesn’t want to share his kingdom, but I’m greedy too. I’m the conqueror, and I’m taking it all.

I need his head in a lock. I want my standing fucking submission. The bell for the first round rings, but I can’t drop him now that I’ve got him squeezed under me on the ground. I want to break. His. Bones.

“Stop!” the referee yells. He’s in my face, and I do. I do.

“That’s it!”

I haven’t let go of the train creep. I’m—shit. I’ve got him in an anaconda on the ground, and he can’t move. How can I let him go when he doesn’t even tap out? Fuck, I—

“Arias! You’ve got
two seconds
or I’m deducting points.”

My body trembles with the effort of giving him up. I rise. I don’t look at the creep scrambling to his feet. Instead I lumber into my corner.

An icepack goes to my eye. Robbie holds it there. Adrenaline is a loud rush in my head.

Pep talk from Dawson. He tells me to not allow rage to take over, because—

“You have one enemy, Arias: yourself. If you can’t rule
you
, everything we’ve worked for is gonna shatter just like that.” He snaps his fingers in front of my eyes.

I meet his stare. Nod.

Then I’m up, out, we’re at it again. Sanchez’s face deforms in front of me. He’s a bloodied mess but still standing, still fierce, evil, the embodiment of my childhood’s worst memory.

It’s time I end it.

My uppercut rocks his head on his shoulders before he sinks against the cage wall. I follow him, slamming him against it before I lock him in a standing kimura.

It’s too slow—I want this over and done with. I’m tired of holding shit back and not murdering specters from trains. I don’t know how much longer I can hold back, so I let it rain over him. Blow after blow after blow after blow, until he’s on the floor, until I’ve got him in a full anaconda vise, head locked in my arm, neck ready to snap.

My mind struggles—I want to finish him hard, bad, now, but it’s not enough to see him like this. I don’t want him to tap out before I get dirty, so I drop my hold on him, making the audience gasp.

I give him a two-second break before I ground and pound him full force, unleashing a flurry of elbows and punches. He doesn’t retaliate, never strikes back.

“Fifteen unanswered!” an American voice screams from front row as the ref jumps in, hauling me off him. The creep is a red puddle heaving for air on the mat. It’s over. The fight is over, but I can’t enjoy my victory. My heart rate is out of control, and I want to fucking kill the bastard.

“Shake his hand,” Dawson says in my ear. I won’t, because it’s not right that the fucker is still breathing.

Hypersensitive, I feel eyes on me. I look up, and through the wire of the cage, deep green irises dissect me.

I sigh, anchoring into that gaze. I inhale and exhale in deep lungfuls. She watched the fight—I knew she would, but her eyes are knowing, like she saw more than the others. Does she know whom I
really
fought?

She’s serious. Fearless. So fucking beautiful. I feel a corner of my lip twitching upward. I crook my finger to her, nodding, and she lets go of her lock on the wire to shimmy carefully up the steps to the cage. My breath calms as Sanchez’s team hoists him to his feet. He’s swaying.

Now we’re done. Now the red film of murder has retreated from my eyes. I go and grab his hand,
Sanchez’s
hand.

“Good job,” he says in broken English. “
Impresionante
.”

“Thanks, man,” I say. “And thanks for having me—your fans love you.” He pats my back, grinning a blood-smeared grin and agreeing with me.

When I turn, my girl is there. Small, clean, still so serious as she watches me. I open my arms for her, and she’s not afraid of anything. I fold her in against sweat and blood. Robbie’s got an icepack lifted for my eye again, but I need to kiss her first, suck sugar in through salt and copper.

“It’s over,” she whispers. “You did it. And it looked like you beat more than one guy tonight.”

I huff out an overwhelmed laugh that she does understand. Tuck her under my arm while we wait for the referee to declare the winner.

During the official announcement and the photos, she remains out of the spotlight with Dawson. When I grab my girl again, I finally get to see her smile.

No moments can be better than this one. I just won the biggest match of my career, and my girl was there to watch it.

She’s right. I did fight two men tonight, and I won over them both. Perhaps I’ll never have to dodge trains again.

PAISLEE

“Vicious.”
That’s the only way to describe Keyon in that ring. His eyes turned black with undiluted violence as he rammed into the Mexican, special-delivering him to Death’s door. That’s what it looked like to me, anyway. I can’t believe he’s standing now, discussing his loss with his coaches.

We were invited out to dinner. The invitation had everyone slapping Keyon’s back and a small flame igniting in his eyes. The inviter wears an expensive suit among the informal fighters and coaches, and he’s American. Located in Vegas. Working with—

“The big league,” Markeston leans in to murmur over the glasses of champagne we’re both toting. “He’s very impressed with our man here.” He nods to Keyon who’s on my other side at the table.

White damask covers my hand in Keyon’s lap, and his fingers curve mine over his thigh. He rubs absently, stirring goose bumps at the base of my neck. There’s talk of visiting Vegas, of starting out with a few fights “to get acclimatized.”

Markeston’s inputs don’t make sense to me. He’ll shoot in jovial but clear practical suggestions that seem to have nothing to do with the fights in Keyon’s future. Dawson sends him small approving glances in return, and the man in the suit responds with measured ease, as if knowing he could lose a deal if he hastens through his answers.

But then the dinner is over, and I realize how impatient I’ve been. We’re in Mexico, and my boyfriend is safe with only a few cuts and a swollen eye. I’ve wanted so badly to be alone with Keyon, and now we’re almost there.

“I have a reservation for us at a small hotel on the coast. I booked our flights for tonight, but shit, Paislee. I’m so exhausted,” he murmurs in the limo back to the hotel.

Dawson hears and reminds him of the strike he took to his head in the first round, hence the cut to his eye, and how he’d prefer him close to medical facilities for now.

“That’s fine with me. I don’t care where we are,” I say and watch his smile rise and his eyes travel low. I cross my arms over my chest, playfully blocking cleavage, and his smile grows into a grin.

“Okay, we’ll sleep here. But we won’t be sharing the suite with the guys, I promise you that much.” He jerks his head in the direction of Robbie and Dawson. “I’m about to make this trip worthwhile for you.”

A sting of lust warms my lower belly. “Oh? More expensive champagne waiting for me?” I ask.

“Mm, no. That’s not what I’m planning to watch you ingest,” he husks.

“Guys. Please,” Robbie mutters.

“They’re affectionate,” Markeston says obliviously from his seat at the front. “Very affectionate couple.”

“No shit.”

PAISLEE

O
ur night starts out so beautifully.
Keyon kisses me in through the door, frames my face in his palms the way he does, controlling me how he’s happiest doing. I’m relaxed and warm in his arms as he sheds piece after piece of my clothing to the floor and adding his own.

I titter at a shoe that ends up precariously balanced on the threshold to the bathroom, but then he’s got my breasts in his hands, and this big, muscular, hard man that could break me the way he broke the hulk in the ring today, bends to suckle on a nipple and make currents of pleasure drift through me.

It’s wild to see him like this, dedicated, feeding from me, and groaning under the spell of my body. “You do things to me,” he whispers, easing me down on his thighs. “Things no other girl has ever done.”

We make out like this, naked, with his hardness beneath me in his lap. He released a lot of frustration and energy in the ring tonight, and now he savors me in slow ways he hasn’t before.

He needed to get the fight over with. I’m glad it’s done, because that guy, Sanchez, had an air about him I couldn’t stand. After the fight, he seemed nice enough, very sportsmanlike with Keyon, but his eyes seemed familiar, and the way he hunched his shoulders into the violence made me shudder.

Our bed is too big, a waste on fused bodies that move as one. You don’t need space for kisses that tangle and never let up.

An air diffuser spices the air with musk-tinted flowers, but Keyon’s scent fills my nostrils as he pushes into me with the gentle rhythm I taught him in Florida.

He speeds up when I start to pant, eyes heated and fixed on mine. My love pumps fast strokes, going deeper, deeper. His hold tightens, limbs vise-gripping me and squeezing air from my lungs.

Keyon could squash the life out of grown men with the same hands that give me pleasure. His strength is tethered. For now—

What if he loses control?

“Keyon…” I start, heart palpitating. Fear and excitement mingle in my veins, shooting adrenaline through my body as he engorges inside of me. I sting with the sweetest pain.

“Shit, I’d live in you,” he groans. “You feel so fucking good around me.”

Instinctively, I press my thighs together. I can’t fend him off. He’s too big, too strong, so perfect—so freaking…
much.
I moan from him, tightening and struggling against an orgasm, but then I can’t hold back anymore. I let out a pained sigh, drop my legs open for him and hug him closer, dearer than my life. We both rush on, sighing our release into pillows and skin.

He doesn’t object when I pry free of his grip, when I pull him back in a gentler embrace and allow lazier fingers to settle around my breast. The pulse thudding in his exhale quiets, and to me he
is
the king from his song.

“Hail to the king,” I whisper against his ear.

Relaxing into heavy, sleep-soaked man, he slurs out his appreciation for me. His presence inside me has diminished but not enough to stop the aftershocks drumming in my abdomen.

“Hail to my queen,” he whispers back, his groin jutting halfheartedly, feeding my tiny contractions. “I’ll kneel to your crown. You make it all better. You make it all worthwhile.”

Entwined, we fall asleep, my knee safe between enormous thighs. Nothing can rock my happiness. Nothing can rock us. Now, the future is bright, now, now my life is moving on.

I wake up to darkness. I listen for the even breaths of my love, but in their place is a tense silence I don’t want to interpret. Keyon is beneath me, arm stiff and strange around my body.

We’d drifted off sated and heavy-lidded. I remember bliss in my tired warrior’s eyes. I topped his victory with icing and red cherries last night, and I fell asleep blissed out that I had caused that bliss. Just, life speaks of lessons that remain the same even when a girl becomes brave. I prepare for the worst, reminding myself:
you got too comfortable.

Keyon hides behind inscrutable masks and dilated pupils, but I’m so tuned in to him, I notice his change. This man, he has dimmed the happy-air in the room. Is it wrong that I take my time now, not wanting to absorb his tension? I’d rather not know. I could remain in my fragile bubble of
beautiful
.

Though I have my back to him, I’m sure his eyes are open. I’m afraid of what I’ll find when I meet his gaze. My heart hammers, fast, fast, like it does at the prospect of doom. Survival instinct demands that I bounce from his arm and run, just—

I won’t run away from Keyon.

Often, the trepidation of not knowing what he’s got planned for me makes me burn in ways I do with no one else. For so long, I’ve repaired violence with faceless men and gentle hands. But with Keyon, it’s brazenly personal. He spoons out unpredictable ferocity spiced with heat that makes me feel alive.

For me, there’s no one like him.

Maybe I’m wrong,
I think. Maybe everything is fine. Heck, he often jump-starts my system with an adrenaline rush.

Cautious, inconspicuous, I turn on my side.

He’s watching me. In the darkness, his eyes are black orbs of confusion. On instinct, I reach for his face, but he inhales a sharp breath and blocks my hand before it meets skin.

My heart’s rebelling. It wants to leap from my chest, knowing before I do that I’m losing him. I need to fight, find out what I can do. Oh God, oh God, I can’t lose him.

“Keyon?” My voice is a midnight whisper, low, so I don’t interrupt the darkness. He doesn’t object when I hike up on my elbow and steady a palm over his thigh. “Please, baby. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Nothing!” he lashes, whip-like. I want to tell him that no, there
is
something, but then he flips the switch on the night lamp and pierces me with his stare. “Did you see your attacker?”

He throws the train station at me?

My heart skips, but I answer because it’s Keyon and he needs it. “I didn’t. He took everything he wanted from behind.”

“Not even when he entered your stall?”

I recall a pale face and obsessed, peering eyes. Woolen red in a ponytail. I tell Keyon. “But most of all I remember how roughly he turned me and the way he loomed over me while he did his thing.”
Until I was nothing but pained flesh.

I don’t have room for the film clip winding at the back of my brain. I push, wanting it gone, but it plays in weak sepia colors while I focus on my man, who’s barely holding it together. “Why do you ask?” I say.

He shifts out of our covers. Kneeling, he crouches his body, an anxious predator with his fists around wadded-up sheets between us. “I’ve watched Sanchez’s videos for months, ever since I began preparing for the fight.”

He inhales air and wheezes it out through his nose, and I recognize his effort to relax. Bright with unease, his eyes flick back to me. “It was hell, Paislee. I’d never been in a situation like that before. I couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t stay objective or focus on strategy. All I wanted was to kill the guy. All because he reminded me of the creep on the train.”

“Which is why you beat two men instead of one yesterday,” I tell him, wanting him to bask in his accomplishment. “You did it. You’re done.” I’m completely unprepared for his reaction.

“It’s not fucking over!” He lunges off the bed, his first target an open water bottle, which shoots through the room and hits the wall so hard it explodes.

“Keyon!” I scream and clamber out of bed. My desperate man grabs plates, shoes, whatever he gets a hold of, muscles twitching and on autopilot.

I cup my mouth, stifling my cry while whatever’s in sight flies at paintings, the mirror, the TV. “Baby, please—I don’t understand.”

A rumble chokes in his throat as his rage works its way through the room. The wooden curtain rod splinters with a squeal that sounds like dying prey.

“What do I do?” he roars, shredding the drapes with bare hands. “I can do nothing!”

“Baby,” I whisper, too quiet for such a loud room. Will security come? It’s not my worry.
He
is. “Let me help you. Just—
talk.”

The TV is massive. He slams his suitcase over it but isn’t satisfied until it crashes to the floor, a purposeless, fruitless act. Someone bangs on the wall. He heaves the cracked box of plastic and metal up in the air and hurls it to the ground again in a groaning, breaking mess.

I know his despair. When he’s grunting with misery, his size and power can’t intimidate. To me, he’s suddenly little and fragile, my beautiful, sad boy of back when.

“I can do nothing!” he repeats, not making sense to me. He’s loud and bending for the TV again. Muscle memory makes me fling myself over his back and clamp around his torso. I’m the girl of before too, the tentacle friend he couldn’t hurt as he threw punch after punch into his bullies long after they’d surrendered.

He feels me, my lungs heaving with exertion and adrenaline while I cling to his back on the floor. He stills around the TV, locking it against the carpet like he’s trying to hold back, like he doesn’t want me in the crossfire.

My hurricane.
What is happening to you, my love?

The knocks are on the door now. They’re loud, insistent, broken English asking for reassurance and for us to open.

“Let go of me,” he says, tears in his voice. “Let. Go.”

“Not until you’re under control,” I say, as brave as I feel. “I can’t help you unless you talk.” He hears the tears in my voice too, because tense muscles give and shoulders relax, the hardness of his back pliable in my hold.

“Don’t be sad,” he whispers. To
me
.

Even now he cares for me.

“Everything okay in there?” It’s an American voice, not one of ours. Keyon’s body inflates with shuddering oxygen beneath me. I’m still holding on, limbs of never-letting-go tight around him, the way we used to be.

“S’all good, man,” he manages, voice gruff but loud enough to be heard. I see his fingers clench around the corners of the television set.

“Ma’am? Are you okay?” the unfamiliar voice insists. It’s eerie that he knows I’m here too.

“Yes, no worries. Just… something fell.” I sound too awake for the hour, but calm. I say it loudly, and all air expels from Keyon.

I lessen my weight over my boy. Use my chin to caress the nape of his neck. It elicits a sob from him, a small one that’s almost not there.

“Please, Keyon, baby. Come back to bed?”

I want to say that everything will be all right, only it might trigger another breakdown. I wouldn’t know, now, would I—who am I to predict the future? I slide off his back, down to his side. He doesn’t object when I stroke hair from his cheek and use two fingers to tilt his face up from the TV.

Encouraged by his docility, I kiss the corner of his lip, then lift enough to kiss a puffy, discolored eye. “I love you,” I whisper, my declaration causing his shoulders to tense, his only response. “Come. Tell me all. It is a good thing to share stuff with people you trust. If you trust me, then tell me. I promise; you’ll feel better.”

He comes to bed with me then, but it doesn’t feel like a victory. A gaze has never been more broken, irises more shattered, with those green shards of agony gleaming in erratic spheres.

I haven’t seen an invincible mouth quiver the way his does now. All I want is to branch around him again, not to stop him from demolishing his surroundings but to keep him safe from self-destruction.

I open the comforter for him to join me. I’m not surprised when he doesn’t accept. From atop the sheets, he stares at me and whispers, “He broke into the bathroom while I was peeing.”

“The train creep?”

“Yeah.” Keyon gasps the word out, a thick fist wiping his healthy eye. The move is so awkward. He isn’t used to drying tears.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” I whisper, my thumb making circles on his calf.

“He said I was pretty. That he’d watched me in the train corridor, that he couldn’t believe his luck when I left the door unlocked. He peeled my pants down all the way, Paislee. I wanted to scream for help, but he slapped a hand over my mouth and forced me up against the door. But I wasn’t forced to touch his dick, see? That didn’t happen.”

I’m glad that didn’t happen
, I think, but his expression tells me I shouldn’t be.

I swallow compulsively, because what good would it do if compassion stole my composure? My Keyon needs me strong.

“I thought it happened!” His words mesh together in a hiss. “Oh God, I wish that was it, me touching his damn junk. My messed-up brain had the size of it right though, because when he forced himself in, the pain ripped through me like a thousand needles.”

Shocked air inflates my lungs. “Oh baby…”

“I tried to scream, but he had me gagged and I couldn’t produce the smallest sound.” His face disappears into the crook of his elbow. “I didn’t shout insults at the train creep, Paislee. I didn’t kick him in the nuts and run off.

“I never fucking broke free!”

My strong man is falling apart. His pain is so big it slices me open. I’m bleeding for him like it was me.

It
was
me.