I locked eyes with Johnson, and just gave him a tilt of my head. That was enough. Johnson knew what I wanted. Understanding flashed between our eyes and he nodded before turning and leaving the gym without another word.
Maybe I could win this fight, maybe I couldn’t. Walter was a hell of a lot more prepared than me, but I had one advantage. I’d lost the only person that made me give a damn about myself.
I had nothing to lose.
Chapter Twenty-nine
DAMAGED
Lorrie
It was Hunter.
A sharp pain knifed through my chest. He looked beyond exhausted. His chest heaved and his mouth hung wide open, gasping for breath. There was blood dripping down his face from one of the cuts on his right cheek and the bruise on his left eye was a stormy mix of gray and purple. It seemed to be getting darker and swelling bigger by the second.
A violent shiver ran through my body, and my mouth opened in horror. I’d never seen Hunter like this before. I’d never seen someone so broken.
Finally, the other fighter managed to push Hunter away. The two began circling each other again. Hunter’s hands were down by his stomach and his legs wobbled with the effort to remain standing. My heart squeezed in my throat as I watched him struggle.
Something was horribly wrong.
I watched Hunter stumble around the cage. My heart raced, almost ready to explode. There was no way he should be out there. This wasn’t the lightning quick Hunter that I first saw in the ring. Maybe he didn’t look like he was dying, but it was close.
“Hunter!” I screamed, desperate to do something but unsure what I could even do.
Tension knotting my muscles, I held my breath as Hunter’s opponent came forward and took a wild swing. Hunter narrowly ducked the punch and stumbled away without even trying to throw one himself.
Maybe he was just trying to make it to the end of this final round without getting knocked out. If he could just last that long, the fight would be over and he could get some badly needed medical attention. Maybe there was hope after all.
He dodged another punch, but this time tried to throw one himself. It missed, and his opponent countered with a punch to his ribs that landed with a loud thud. Hunter winced and backed away, circling around. I clenched my jaw nervously. Hunter moved in and out, but didn’t try to punch the other guy.
The crowd booed at his refusal to engage. Hunter responded by coming forward and trying another wild punch. It missed. His opponent tried to knock him out with a high kick and Hunter just barely got away. This time the crowd cheered. My head swam, dizzy with images of Hunter hurt or worse.
I couldn’t let this keep going on. Maybe if Hunter saw me he would stop trying to be a hero and just stay away from his opponent until this last round was over. It was clear Hunter was going to lose the fight. He didn’t need to keep trying for a lucky knockout and risk getting hurt himself. People might boo, but at least he wouldn’t get injured any worse than he already had. My pulse thundered in my head as I thought of what to do.
“Hunter! Just make it through the round!” I yelled. He gave no sign of hearing me.
I began to swim my way to the front of the crowd, squeezing myself into every opening I could find. There was some grumbling, but I kept pushing forward. I had to get him to see me. He needed to stop fighting.
There was a roar as I got to the front, just feet from the cage. I looked up at the action. Hunter was covering up his face as his opponent hit him with several punches. His opponent was so fast that Hunter could barely defend himself. A shiver of dread crept up my spine, suffocating me and rooting me to the spot. No, this couldn’t be happening!
“Hunter, no!” I cried. “It’s me, Lorrie! Stop fighting! Please, stop!”
His arms blocked most of the impact, then he hit his opponent with a left jab. The punch stunned his opponent momentarily, giving Hunter enough time to back away.
“You don’t have to do this!” I yelled.
Hunter let his hands fall and he looked around with his mostly open right eye. His gaze came to meet mine. Dim recognition flickered across his face as his opponent approached and wound up a right hook.
Hunter tried to dodge at the last second, but the punch landed right on his nose, crushing his face grotesquely with a sickening snap. His body went limp as the blow reverberated through his body. There was a half-second of silence as everyone in the room gasped at once.
My stomach dropped and I felt an intense pain in my chest. “NO!” I screamed, my hands in my hair.
Then the crowd exploded in screams and cheers. I stood stunned, watching Hunter hit the mat stiff as a board. The referee crouched over him and waved his hand over his head. Hunter continued to lay there motionless. His nose was bleeding badly and looked crooked. I couldn’t tell, but I was pretty sure it was broken.
I stared at the cage numbly, overwhelmed. My head seemed to float away. This didn’t feel real, but I couldn’t wake up. The bell was ringing and the other fighter was running around the cage with his arms raised. Hunter didn’t move except for the rise and fall of his chest. The referee hovered over him, concern etched on his goateed face.
I tore my eyes away from the scene in the cage, flooded with emotion. Hunter looked badly hurt. Could I have done something different? People were clapping around me, ecstatic at the knockout. They didn’t care at all about Hunter’s well-being. One figure stood out, stone-faced. He was the only one who looked the way I felt. It was Gary.
He stood by the cage’s entrance about ten feet away, looking in. Two medics rushed past him and into the cage with a stretcher. I watched them begin attending to Hunter and was gripped by sadness.
Time passed as I kept my eyes locked on his prone body, trying to grab ahold of reality. He still wouldn’t move.
“. . . fault,” a voice said.
I turned and saw it had come from Gary. He’d apparently walked over to me. His brows were angled sharply downward and his eyes were burning with anger. “What?” I asked.
“This is your f**king fault,” he spat.
“My fault?” I said, shocked by his accusation. “Are you nuts? How are you thinking about fault right now? Hunter’s hurt!”
He scoffed bitterly. “Trust me, I know. I’ve been playing this scene over and over in my head since I heard he took the fight. I rushed here to try and stop him but it was too late. I know what a wreck you made of him. For that and a ton of other reasons, there’s no way he should’ve been in there just now. This is your fault!”
I shook my head, confused over why he would think I was the one who made Hunter a wreck. “I sat at his apartment for hours last night waiting to talk to him. It’s not my fault he never showed up. What’s wrong with Hunter, anyway? He didn’t look right in there at all.”