I stare into his eyes. Penny’s watching, and this fucker isn’t going to beat me.

I pull the leg, twist the leg, and I feel the stress in his knee. It’s going to pop at any moment. I’m going to tear his anterior cruciate ligament, his medial cruciate ligament.

I’m going to dislocate his fucking knee cap.

Tap out, I think to myself. The ref is circling us, waiting for that moment.

But Anton’s got a reserve of strength. The fucking bear of a man screams, sits up, and lands a hit square on my thigh, sending it immediately limp and numb. Dull, blunted pins and needles shoot through it. He wriggles his leg out from me, gets up, but I get up faster.

I hit him hard in the jaw. He stumbles backward.

I jump toward him, hit him again, and again, and again. Each crack seems to echo. I’m sure I’ve broken a knuckle. He falls backward, failing to block every hit.

I hit him again in the temple, again in the neck, again in the jaw. My fist hurts to hell, but I have to keep hitting.

He’s still standing, but he won’t be soon. This fucker is tough, but soon it’ll be lights-out, the body’s automatic reaction to head trauma.

Just one more hit. I feint, he moves to block, and I wind up an upper-cut.

Time slows. The crowd is now exploding. The sound is now deafening. I’m going to win. He’s mistimed his block; I’ll get him in the gap between his two closing, protective forearms.

I glance up at the last moment, go to meet Penny’s eyes. I’m going to fucking win, and she’s going to see me do it.

But she’s not there.

I don’t hit Anton. My fist stops inches from his jaw. I back up, scanning the crowd. I look toward the exits, see a fire-escape door shutting.

Anton charges for me, but I duck him, run for the door to the cage and kick it open. The metal hook-latch breaks easily.

“Where you going?” Anton bellows behind me, arms spread. I ignore him, and head straight for the fire door.

“Pierce!” Fallon calls to me as I pass him. “You can’t leave. You haven’t won.”

“Fuck you,” I shout back.

I’m going to get my girl.

Chapter Thirty One

“Wait!”

I turn around, and see Pierce jogging out of the building. He’s in nothing but his fighting shorts. There’s a trickle of blood running down the side of his face, and as he approaches me, passing beneath a street lamp, I see that the stitches above his eye have split.

“What, Pierce?”

“Why are you leaving?”

I put my hands on my hips. “I told you not to do this fight.”

“I had to.”

“I knew you would,” I say, venom in my voice. “I knew you wouldn’t fucking listen to me.”

“Then why did you come? If you knew I’d be here, but you didn’t want to be here?”

“I don’t know!”

We stand in silence for a moment.

“Well, you sure got fucked up tonight,” I say.

“I couldn’t concentrate.”

“Why?”

“I’m falling for you, Pen.”

He just says it, and it catches me off-guard. I can’t say that it’s not what I wanted to hear. But still…

Sensing that I’m on higher ground, I ask him, “Why didn’t you listen to me?”

“Pen,” he says, and he steps toward me, grabs my arm.

“Hey! Don’t hold me like that.”

“Come with me,” he growls, yanking me with him. There’s a plane taking off nearby; the fight was held in a private hangar at the airport.

Pierce walks me quickly toward the gate in the fencing that lines the hangar. I can see him shivering.

“Damn it, Pierce,” I say, taking off my cardigan. I go to wrap it around his neck but he holds his hand out.

“I’m not cold. It’s just the adrenaline wearing off.”

“Where are we going?”

“Where’s your car?”

“I came here by taxi.”

“Fuck, I’m parked a mile from here. Can you run?”

I blink. “What the hell do you mean?”

“Can you run?”

“Yes, of course I can fucking run!” I cry, exasperated.

“Run with me,” he says.

We begin jogging toward the fence in the distance. Red lights blink intermittently on top of it. The access gate is unlocked.

“Fuck,” he says, and I follow his eyes. There’s somebody walking toward the gate. It’s hard to tell if he’s airport security or not.

We duck into the shadow between two hangars, and he turns me to face him. “We need to get out of here, Pen.”

“What the hell is going on?”

He puts his finger to his lips, and cranes his neck behind us. Blood is dripping down his face, mixed with sweat, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

“What are you looking for?”

“Fallon’s goons.”

That’s when it clicks for me. Fuck. He ducked out of the fight, didn’t complete his end of the deal. They’re going to be after him now.

“You idiot!” I hiss. “Why didn’t you finish the fight?”

“Because you left!” he whispers angrily. Then his expression softens. “I wasn’t going to let you get away.”

I shake my head, wondering just what the hell we’ve gotten ourselves into. But something feels off. He’s acting too skittish.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

He looks me dead in the eye. “They didn’t threaten me. They threatened you.”

The sound of that plane taking off fades into nothingness. All I hear is a dull metallic sound, like a bomb has just gone off. I struggle to wrap my mind around it.

“They said they’d hurt me?”

“They implied it.”

“If you didn’t fight.”

“Yes.”

“You fucking idiot!” I say again, slapping his arm. “I can’t believe you left the fight!”

He puts a finger in front of his lips. “Come on, we have to get out of here.”

“They’re looking for you,” I say. I point to the man now standing guard by the gate. “Is there another way out of here?”

“No.” He takes a deep breath. “Just stay behind me.”

He goes running off into the night, and I struggle to keep up. He’s keeping low, sticking to shadows formed by the enormous hanger, by parked airport vehicles.

In his tiny fighting shorts, he looks a bit ridiculous.

Without any warning to me he speeds up into a sprint, charges at the man by the gate and lands a punch so hard I swear I hear bone break. The man’s body goes limp immediately. He’s out cold.