A Fighting Chance (9 page)

Calling
Tickles
rundown would be an insult to rickety shacks. It’s dark and my sneakers stick to the floor with every step. Drew shakes down her ponytail and undoes two buttons on her top so that a hint of cleavage is showing. I discover then that there are things I’m more interested in than tits—like the ring on her finger and who put it there. Now that I know about it, I can’t stop staring. I have no claim over her, but I do feel nostalgic all of a sudden as my heart squeezes. Drew was my first love, so knowing that someone else is going to make her their last, shows how much things have really changed.

“You’re done with school already?”

“Yup. All those AP courses I took in high school. Anyway, I gotta work.” She points at the stage, where a brunette woman is twirling upside down on the pole for a group of bored-looking men. “Henry’s up front, probably. Let’s talk later. I’m here till two a.m.”

“Wait…I want to ask you something…” My mind is still on her ring
, but I can’t bring myself to raise that topic just yet. “Are you still following the fights?”

Drew
frowns. “Why? You didn’t come all the way here for the excitement of Southern barn fights, did you?”

I smirk
, then tick up a corner of my mouth, trying hard not to break out into a full smile. “That’s not a no.
You do.
”

“It wasn’t a yes, either. It was just a
why
. Is that why you’re here?” She puts her hands on her hips.

“Sort of,” I admit.

She turns a dark look to the stage. “I don’t know anything about the fights anymore.”

“What about Perry and Bucky?”

“Perry died a year ago…and I made Buck stop having them once he and his brothers took over the farm. Barn fights are done here…”

What? Pause. Rewind.
“You
made
him? Is that who…you and Bucky? You and
Bucky Webber?
” My voice goes up really high at the end. Some of it is amusement but most of it is shock. And when I say shock, it really feels like the finger in a socket, insides-frying shit.

She bites her lip to
control a growing smile. “
Buck.
”

I can’t even process that info right now.
“And you said Perry
died?
Damn. Good guy. Sorry for your loss.” I feel obligated to say so because he is her deceased almost father-in-law.
Father-in-law.
A nervous chuckle is bubbling in my stomach.
Because she’s engaged to Bucky Webber.
Laughter pushes up into my throat. It’s inappropriate and I suppress it, but maybe it won’t be so offensive in this nightmarish version of Glory I ended up in. “I’m sure he would’ve loved having you in the family.” I mean it—I really did like Perry—but the shit is still not clicking upstairs; my brain is completely rejecting it as truth.
Bucky Webber is banging your ex.
I can’t even sympathize properly. On a scale of aliens to government chip implantations, a Buck and Drew relationship is coming in pretty high on the scale of really un-fucking-believable shit.

“Thanks. Now go talk to Henry. I gotta work.”
She shoves me away, but my eyes stay on her until she disappears behind a door on the other side of the room. My disbelief keeps me standing right where she, Bucky Webber’s future wife, left me. Ha, ha. The shit is still funny to me.

Eventually
, I go find Henry, and he’s sitting with two other men I don’t recognize. “Jesse…you’re here…” he says, standing to embrace me, and I stiffen in his arms. The man has never hugged me before. Things are really bad for him.

“I’ve been trying to reach you
.” There’s a bluish ring around his eye and a bruise at his jawline. Henry’s starring as a punching bag in a very angry person’s life.

“Concrete walls. Spotty signal and
management
gets antsy when they see you with your phone out. The girls don’t want photos of them out there.” He doesn’t introduce me to the men but whisks me to a dark corner for us to speak alone. There is a limp in his steps. “You want a drink or something?” he asks.

Henry’s in such bad shape
that I feel sorry for him. In the few days he’s been back in my life, I’ve experienced a smorgasbord of emotions over him, more than ever before. “No drink, thanks,” I say, shaking my head. “What happened to your face and your leg? They did that to you, too? I thought you said—”

“It’s nothing.”

“Did they come after you again?”

“
My boy’s safe and that’s all that matters.”

“Where is he?”

“We sent him to my in-laws in Fort Worth. He’s safe…for now.” I’ve spoken to both Barbara and HJ, who verified that someone went to HJ’s school and threatened him. Barbara said he won’t sleep alone anymore and he has been wetting the bed occasionally. Henry wrings his hands. “I’m sorry for all this, Jess…is it interfering with school?”

No shit, Sherlock.
“There’s not much left for me to do to graduate.”

“You’re going to be the first one in the family with a college degree, you know. People around here think you’re just out there doing
God knows what.”
He loses fingers…I gain a father and a family.
Shit is
really
bad. “You got big plans afterward?”

“A
labama with Lydia and her brother. Got a job and an apartment.”

“Good for you. Carla would
have been proud,” he says. This is the most I’ve talked to my father about anything substantial my entire life; I don’t like it but, admittedly, I don’t hate it, either.

I tick my head
at the men in dark suits Henry’s with. “Are those guys part of it?” They aren’t even trying to pretend they’re not watching us.

“They’re keeping an eye on me,” he says with a bitter smile, and I stare at them
just as blatantly in return. I doubt they’re just here to make sure Henry doesn’t run. They seem more like guys who
gouge
eyes and keep them as trophies.

“How much time do you have to pay the
money back?” I ask.

“If I put down a good faith payment, I might be able
to hold them off for a while. At least satisfy them enough to not sniff out HJ. Before I got locked up, I started putting some money aside for a rainy day—”

“I think this
more
than qualifies. As a hurricane, Henry.”

He nods. “Yeah…
Barbara’s dad might let me borrow a couple hundred, if I get on her good side. Total, I can raise a couple thousand.” I want to tell him that’s a laughable dent in what he owes, but the situation is distressing enough without my grim commentary.

“I can’t promise anything, but I might be able to lend you
some. I’ll pay myself back from my winnings.” I wasn’t exactly truthful with Lydia when I said our trip wouldn’t be affected. We’ve paid for it in full, but I have been saving money for several months to spend while we’re there, and now that’ll have to serve as spending money to get me through the next few weeks. “But HJ will stay off their radar if you pay something? You’re sure about that?”

“I’m not sure…I’ll just have to try.”

“And can you put me in contact with Francisco Acevedo? Do you still know him?” I ask, even though my suspicion is that he’s the one who did this to Henry.

“The fighter sponsor? Yeah. Maybe. I haven’t talked to him in ages. So, you’ll really get back in the ring?”

“Is there some other option now?” I ask with a shitload of sarcasm.

“No
, but for what it’s worth, you were really good in there. Strong. Capable. I was…I was always proud of you.” He grips my shoulder and unleashes a torrent of conflicting feelings in me, leaving me unsure of which one I want to feel the most. “Gonna head home and get a few hours of sleep in. Thank you again, Jesse. I don’t know what I’d do if you hadn’t agreed.”

“This isn’t about you.” I can’t reiterate it enough, even if it means Henry’s face falls every time I do. When
he and his friends leave, I step outside and call Duke on my burner cell to let him know I’m okay. After that, I try to convince myself that I’m not in over my head. Is there still time to turn back? But who will help HJ if I leave? My hope is that once this is over, Barbara will realize her son’s safety and future outweigh being Henry Chance’s wife, and she gets Henry the fuck out of her life. I can’t say that it hasn’t screwed me up in a lot of ways, but it’s possible to get through life without a father.

I still think Drew knows more than she’s letting on about fighting, so when the crowd thins around one a.m., I walk through the Employees Only door and find her in an office
, with her feet up on the desk, strumming her guitar.

“You’re not allowed back here!” she says.

“Who’s gonna stop me? The manager
hard
at work?” I take the chair across from her. “Since you won’t help me, Henry’s gonna put me in contact with Francisco Acevedo. You remember him.”

“What?” Drew
’s guitar plays an ugly chord as she slams it on the desk. Maybe now she will come clean about what she knows. “Are you fucking kidding me? I Googled that guy after we met him, you know. Incredibly wealthy. Owns several
legit
businesses. Yet the heads of a slew of people he knew kept littering the streets of Juárez. Oh yeah. Definitely sounds like someone you should ring up.” Once I get her to calm down, I explain why I’m
really
back in Glory and what I plan to do. As she listens, her only reaction is the various phases of expression her face goes through during the story.

“
Wow. Henry was pretty vague about his injury when he got back from
wherever
he was when it happened, and then all these people started showing up in town who weren’t here before. Like that crazy bitch, Alejandra. They hang out here, they’re at Murphy’s…they’re all over the place. Henry’s always having
meetings
in here
.
For a guy who doesn’t have an office he’s been having a lot of meetings.” Drew shakes her head, looking tired all of a sudden, and I feel bad for making my burdens hers. “Poor HJ. Your dad certainly won’t be winning father of the year awards anytime soon.”

“
Hey, why didn’t you just tell Alejandra he was here? Wouldn’t it have been easier?”

“No,
I want her gone. I’m trying to outlast her
crazy
, hoping she’ll just leave when she gets sick of me. She’s nuttier than squirrel shit. She chased him through town once in her car. With her gun out.”

“I thought you said she was harmless?”

“To the rest of us…not to him. But at the end of the day, as much as I can’t stand your dad, no offense, I hate what he’s bringing here much more. Now that you’ve explained some things, I’m even more worried about what’s happening.”

“
Well, when I help him, hopefully, they’ll all go away. So, what do you know about the fights, particularly in Mexico?”

She holds out for a few seconds as she leans back in her chair and closes her eyes. Her reluctance remains when she reopens them but her face slowly softens. “When was the last time you fought?”

“A real one? It’s been years. A guy grabbed Lyds’s ass once at a party. I pushed him, he swung at me—”

“Is th
at how you got this bump?” She leans forward, her thumb skimming the bridge of my nose, and my heart rate picks up speed. “I don’t remember it…”

“Yeah…he blindsided me, but I put him down with a few hits.”

Her brow furrows. “Who’s
Lids
?”

“
Lydia. My…girlfriend.”

The creases in her forehead deepen
, but Drew doesn’t speak her thoughts. This is the side of her I don’t know anymore, the side that stays quiet sometimes now. “That’s not really fighting. The ones in Mexico are much more organized than what you know. If you want to make the kind of money you’re after, you’ll need to get into something I’ve heard about called The Cull. They’re cartel-sponsored, though. So you might end up talking to Acevedo, anyway. Lots more money at stake, so they get the most vicious fighters they can find. It’s barbaric. ‘Cull’ is short for coliseo, you know, coliseum in English, where the gladiators fought and…” She trails off and shakes her head.

“And?”

“And these fans come purely for the blood, so no one is tapping out anymore. You go until one of you stops moving.”

My mind
races back to Kerr and the bloodstains on my chest. I stand up, heart raging. “Whoa, I have to
kill
my opponent?”

Fear clouds her eyes.
“Not necessarily kill. No. One of you just doesn’t get up right away, but I’ve heard of guys not getting up at all and about bodies being left behind buildings. It’s probably rare, though. Or made up to entice people.” She doesn’t sound convinced as she squeezes her hands into fists. “So, you haven’t fought in years, and you want to go to Mexico for cartel fights. And where would you even train? You’ll have to train. Fuck. This is a bad idea.”