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  I spent most of the afternoon cleaning myself up in my bedroom. I had a supply of first aid gear in my closet because injuries and cuts were common for a boxer, but also because of days like this. I never bought any of it with these moments in mind because once they were gone I refused to think about them, but just because I ignored them didn't mean they didn't happen.

  I was lying on the floor icing my side when my phone began to ring. Groaning, I picked it up to check the number. I didn’t recognize it.

  I considered not answering. In fact, I thought about throwing the thing against the wall as hard as I could until it burst into a million plastic pieces over the stained, worn carpet. But I didn’t. I didn’t do it because I couldn’t afford another one and I didn’t do it because I couldn’t come unglued. If I fell apart, I’d never pull myself back together again.

  “Hello?” I answered roughly.

  “Coulter, you in jail? Where are you?”

  “Jesus,” I whispered to myself, closing my eyes in annoyance. I did not need this right now.

  “You there?”

  “Yeah, Callum, I’m here. How did you get my number?”

  “Will gave it to me,” he said as though it were obvious. “I called him to find out what happened to you and he said he didn’t know. So what’s the story? You still in the clink?”

  “No. I’m out. I’m home.”

  “Good. Good. That’s a relief. They do weird stuff to you jail. It’s not a good place to be.”

  “That’s very true,” I agreed unenthusiastically.

  “I thought you were still locked up, dude. Figured if Will hadn’t heard from you then you were dunzo.”

  “Nope. I’m not dunzo,” I mocked. “I’m good. Thanks for checking in.”

  “Yeah, man. No problem. We’re bros, you know? You gotta take care of your own. Hey, look, my old man is an entertainment lawyer.”

  “Cool. If I decide to sell the rights to my adventures in Shawshank, I’ll give you a ring, alright? For now, I need to get some sleep. It’s been a long night.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear you,” he rapid fired, not hearing me at all. If he heard me, I’d be off the phone by now. “What I was saying is that my dad is an entertainment lawyer and he can’t do jack shit for you, but he knows people, you know? People in other areas. I told him about you. Told him you were a stand up dude, the kind of bro you go to the mat for, you know?”

  I stared at the ceiling numbly. I wasn’t that guy. I was the guy who avoided Callum like the plague. The guy who ditched his drunk ass with Will to go have sex with his girl in the trees. I sure as hell wasn’t a ‘bro you go to the mat for’.”

  “Anyway,” Callum continued, unfazed by my silence, “I talked him into calling an old buddy of his. The guy has a huge firm here in town. I told him all about you and he’s looking into your shit, man. He’s going to assign someone to your case.”

  I cleared my throat patiently. “That’s really nice of you, but I can’t afford a lawyer. Definitely not one from a huge firm.”

  “Dude,” Callum responded heavily, “you need a lawyer. Jenner and Miner, they’re all over the place rantin’ about hitting you up with battery charges.”

  “Shit,” I spat, rubbing my hand over my face before I remembered it was jacked. I hissed sharply at the sudden sting from the open cut over my eyebrow. My nose ached as well and I worried it was broken again.

  “He said they’d do it for free.”

  My eyes shot open, my focus immediately back on Callum. “This guy agreed to help me for free?”

  “Yeah. Pro boner? That’s not right, but it sounds like that. You know what I mean. Yeah. He said someone in his firm would be looking into it and calling you. I gave him your number. That’s cool, right? I don’t give out my number a lot. I don’t want assholes callin’ me and buggin’ me all the time, but I thought this was important enough.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, dumbfounded. “It’s definitely worth the risk of talking to some assholes. Thank you, man. I mean it.”

  “No worries, bro! It’s like I said – we take care of our own, right?”

  “We should, yeah. I owe you one.”

  Callum laughed. “Dude, friends don’t keep score. They get your back when you need it.”

  Insanely insightful words from a guy I had once watched cannon ball into an empty pool. Fractured his ass. He was lucky to still have a spine.

  “Alright. If you ever need me, I got your back,” I told him.

  “Sweet. Look, I gotta go. I’m hung over as balls and Taco Bell is about to explode out of both ends of me. Later, bro.”

  “Jesus,” I whispered again.

  This time I was laughing.

  Chapter Three

  Thanks to Callum and our recent leap into the sacred bonds of Brohood, I landed in the prestigious offices of Monroe, Falcon, Bryson, and Associates. It was a massive office in a gargantuan building tucked along the gold paved streets of Orange County, California. For a guy who had lived most of his life in the slums of Vegas and L.A., the dark gleaming wood and shining brass of that office was like being in a whole other world. Even after three years of being surrounded by it, I still wasn’t used to so much money in the air. It wasn’t even the money, it was what that money bought. It was the fact that it bought it so easily.

  When you have to worry if you’ll be able to afford notebook paper to do your homework on, the idea of being chauffeured to school and rolling around with a designer back pack is a little mind-blowing. What they were teaching me in the advanced classes I attended wasn’t half as interesting as what they were teaching me about life.

  Biggest lesson I was learning was this – money mattered.

  It mattered to girls, it mattered to other guys, it mattered to your teachers, to parents. Everyone. People noticed if you had it and they definitely noticed when you didn’t. And I didn’t. I never had. Not even before my mom died, and I definitely didn’t have it now constantly moving through the L.A. foster system.

  I was a paycheck, I didn’t get them.

  “Mr. Coulter?” a tall, older woman called softly from inside a large oak doorway.

  I stood up, smoothing my only button down shirt over my stomach and cringing at the feel of the too tight dress shoes I wore. They didn’t belong to me. They were on loan from one of the guys at my boxing gym. Apparently he had worn them to meet with his lawyer as well. He called them lucky, although nothing about any of this felt particularly fortunate to me.

  “Yes,” I answered, feeling stiff and overly formal. “Yeah, that’s me.”

  She smiled sweetly – a little too sweetly to be real – and gestured for me to follow her through the doorway. We walked down a long hallway with dark, heavy wood door after dark, heavy wood door lining each side. Occasionally one would be open and I could see small offices with cluttered desks and guys in ties, short haircuts, and serious faces hunched over paperwork or talking on the phone. There were no women. The only one I had seen since entering this building was the one leading me forward.

  Eventually she brought me to a closed door on the right. When she swung it open I expected to see another small office with a buried desk and a frantic guy not much older than me. I was getting legal counsel for free so I really didn’t hope for much. I was sure I was getting some first year, freshly graduated lackey trying to make his name in the firm doing pro bono work. But what I saw on the other side of that door shocked me.

  It was a huge, bright office with a wall of windows on one side, a comfortable looking couch with a couple book shelves on the other, and a large clean desk in nearly the dead center. Behind the desk was an older guy, probably late forties, with thick dark hair and a genuine smile. He showed it to me the second I walked in the door. He even rose from his desk and came around to offer me his hand.

  I shook it hesitantly.

  “Kellen, it’s good to meet you,” he said. “Daniel Monroe. But please, call me Dan.”

  “Monroe as in…”


  “As in Monroe, Falcon, Bryson and Associates, yeah. I helped found the firm.”

  His name was headlining on the marquis. He did more than ‘help found the firm’. Judging by the office, my guess was, this guy was the firm.

  “Thank you for seeing me, sir.” I clenched my clammy hands open and closed, trying to air them out. I worried he’d noticed how wet they were when he shook one.

  He waved my formality away. “Don’t call me sir. It’s Dan. Come sit down and we’ll talk. Marylyn, thank you.”

  The woman with the diabetic smile shot me some more artificial sweetener before exiting the office and closing the door noiselessly behind her.

  “Why don’t we sit down over here,” Dan suggested, gesturing to the couch.

  There was a large leather chair sitting at an angle across from the couch. It made it better somehow. Like the fact that he wouldn’t be staring straight at me made him less of a superior, as if his office didn’t drive that home enough already.

  When I sat down on the couch, Dan sat forward in his seat casually, clasping his hands together in front of him.

  “Why don’t I tell you what I know about you and you can correct anything I’ve gotten wrong,” he said.

  I shifted uncomfortably. “Alright.”

  “Good. You were born in Las Vegas, Nevada where you lived with your mother,” he began, not consulting any notes, telling me he knew all of my information off the top of his head. “She chose not to list a name on your birth certificate for your father and it’s my understanding that you don’t know him?”

  “I have no idea who he is.”

  And I don’t care.

  “So, son to a single mother who worked full time. Then unfortunately she developed lung cancer and the two of you moved to California. Was it for medical treatment or do you have family here?”

  “Neither. She knew she was dying and she wanted to be near the ocean. I don’t have family anywhere.”

  “You were pretty young when she died.”

  “I was nine.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I wasn’t young,” I argued steadily.

  “Okay,” he said, allowing my amendment. “When she passed, you went into the foster system. How many homes have you lived in?”

  I didn’t answers him. I stared straight forward, seeing through him to the wall behind him. To the city beyond the building. The ocean was roaring somewhere out of sight, but it didn’t stop me from finding it. From hiding in its depths where only the greatest of secrets could be held. Buried. Forgotten.

  Dan nodded, moving on. “You’re a senior this year at Weston. You’re there on a scholarship in the Higher Focus program. Very impressive, by the way. I have a daughter at Weston. I know it’s not an easy program to get into, which tells me you’re very intelligent. Probably very driven. Do you know what you want to do with your life? Do you have plans for college?”

  I looked around the room, uselessly searching for answers about myself in this unfamiliar space. “I planned to go, but now I don't know.

  “You have the grades, you have the brains, so I’m assuming you don’t have the money.”

  It stung to hear the truth spoken so bluntly but I nodded tightly in agreement. “And now I’m in trouble with the law. Strike three.”

  “You’re not the only poor kid to go to college, Kellen,” he told me candidly. “There are scholarships. Financial aid. I understand you’re very good at sports too. Football and especially boxing. Those could work to your advantage in pursuing a college career.”

  “I played football to try to get a scholarship, but I don't think it'll happen."

  “What about the boxing? From what I understand you could go pro. Olympic team even. You don’t plan to pursue that?”

  “No.”

  Silence filled the room. He stared at me, his open, understanding face starting to get under my skin. Just like the silence.

  “I don’t box for the competitions,” I admitted finally. “Not exactly.”

  “You like winning but that’s not why you do it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why do you do it?”

  I met his question with silence again. This time I wasn’t budging no matter how long he sat there staring at me. I didn’t think it was smart to tell an attorney about to face battery charges with me that I boxed because I liked the feel of hitting people. That it helped to release the anger that built in my body, begging for release and dying to get out of every pore. That there were times where I swear I sweated rage. I pissed wrath. It all had to go somewhere and putting on gloves, slipping out of my own mind, and letting the animal inside take the reins for three rounds was the best way I’d found to deal with it. To work the kinks out. It had kept me out of trouble.

  Until now.

  “Have you stared applying to any colleges? Researched their financial aid system?” Dan asked, acting like I hadn’t just stonewalled him.

  “I was, but my foster father doesn’t like seeing any of it. Anytime anything shows up in the mail from a university he tears it up. Throws it out.”

  Beats the shit out of me.

  “He’s not a fan of you going?” Dan asked.

  “No.”

  The truth was this – the Asshole hated the idea of me being anything other than his slave and punching bag. I didn’t talk about moving out when I turned eighteen. I’d taken a hell of a hit for mentioning it just a few months ago. I wouldn’t earn him that paycheck anymore once I was a legal adult, but he figured I could go to work full time and bring home another one to him. Maybe a bigger one. That would never happen if I went away to college.

  “So what I find surprising about this fight,” Dan said thoughtfully, changing the subject for me, “is that the boy who is pressing charges against you is the one you did the least damage to. You only hit him, what? Once? So why is he the one pressing charges and not David Jenner? David went to the hospital for stitches. I saw pictures of his face. It’s a mess.”

  “Maybe that’s why he’s not pressing charges.”

  “Because he’s afraid of you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Should he be?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Are you?”

  I blinked, surprised. “Am I what?”

  “Are you afraid of you?”

  My heart slammed in my chest for two quick beats before settling down, but the damage was done. I’d hesitated, my blood had rushed through my veins too quickly, and I felt heat rising up my neck toward my face.

  Dan pinched his lips together briefly, his face full of understanding and concern as he read my reaction. “Is there anything you want to tell me that we haven’t touched on yet?”

  “I’d do it again,” I blurted out. It was stupid. It was honest, but it was a rash thing to tell him. I hoped there was a lawyer-client confidentiality clause in effect because this could screw me in court. “I’d try to hold back. I wish I hadn’t gone off on that guy like I did, but I would still step in.”

  “It was for a young woman, wasn’t it?”

  “They made it physical. I couldn’t let it go on.”

  Dan sighed, his eyes watching me closely. “Can I tell you something, Kellen? Something I’d like you to keep just between you and me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have two daughters. Two strong, independent girls who I’d like to think could handle themselves in any situation. I have to think that. It’s the only way a father can sleep at night. But the reality is that life will probably throw things at them that they can’t handle on their own. At a time like that, I hope there’s a man like you around.” He sat forward again, his mouth stretched in a grim line. “And I hope to hell you don’t hold back.”

  ***

  Late that night, almost a week after the fight and my arrest, I got a text from Will.

  You doing okay, man?

  I’m good.

  Cool.

  I deleted his number out of my phone. He never called or messaged me
again.

  ***

  The smell of the gym was like lavender to me. Like the smell you got off the aisles in the store that were lined with candle after candle with crazy names that made no sense.

  Juniper Sunrise.

  Forest Frolic.

  Chocolate Tapestries.

  I didn’t get the names or the scents. In fact, I hated them. The entire aisle made me sick to my stomach and my head ached from the saccharine fog, but for some reason every girl I ever dated loved them.

  I’m sure had I ever brought them to the gym, the girls would have hated the smell of it. It smelled like sweat and old leather. Like disinfectant and aggression. It wasn’t pretty and it wasn’t sorry for it either, something I loved about it. It was what it was and if you didn’t like it, you could fuck off to Gold’s and leave it alone.

  Tim’s Gym was as basic and straightforward as its name. Tim himself owned and operated it, and if you were lucky and good enough, he’d take you on as a student. Most people paid because they had money, but the Asshole never let me keep a dime in hand if he could help it, so my disposable income was limited. That’s why I worked there. I paid for my lessons and my time by washing towels, mopping the locker rooms, wiping down the mats covered in sweat, spit, and blood. It wasn’t pretty work, but it was honest and it got me what I needed – in the door.

  I was Tim’s prize student, but that didn’t get me any kind of special treatment or discount. I learned the same as everyone else and for the same price, something I appreciated more than he’d ever know.

  I’ve always favored a level playing field.

  I’d started boxing when I was eight – the same year I became eligible. I was good but it was no surprise. It was in my genes. In my blood. My grandpa had been a boxer in Ireland who cheated on his faithful wife and three children with a French woman who eventually gave birth to my mom. After seven years of putting both his family and his mistress through the hell of wondering who he would choose, he chose himself. He took my mom and his mistress with him to America when the opportunity came to become a semi-pro boxer in Las Vegas. There he neglected both of them until finally his mistress left, leaving my mom alone to watch him smoke, gamble, and lose for most of her life until he died bitter and used up. He’d left her his debts and a ticking time bomb in her lungs compliments of his years of chain smoking in the apartment with her. A bomb that dropped when I was nine and killed her right in front of my eyes.