I stalk through the rowdy crowd followed by my best friend, Foster, who nominated himself to the role of my de facto trainer and coach. He raises his voice over the chants of the crowd to continue doling out advice about how to handle my amateur kickboxing opponent tonight, but I don’t register a thing. As I step through the open gate of the makeshift wrap around chain-link fence they call the ring, even the shouts from the crowd are already muted.

I’m in the zone.

All my senses are heightened to the extreme.

Nothing matters except for what happens after that bell rings.

That’s why I got into this sport during my early teens and stuck with it all the way through college and my twenties. I live for the intensity of my time in the ring, where minutes feel like years, and seconds like days. One wrong move can get you injured or worse. The fucked-up reality of my life ceases to exist. I can forget the dull ache in my chest in favor of the sharp pain that pummels the surface of my skin from each blow or kick my opponent manages to deliver. If he’s lucky enough to get one in at all. I can block out the world, everyone and everything. Usually everyone, but from time to time, there are exceptions. Everyone but her.

“Knox.” Foster’s firm grip on my shoulder is what helps his voice pierce through my laser-focused single-mindedness.

With my head still bent and my gaze fixed on my hands wrapped in fighter’s tape, I grunt out a nonverbal acknowledgment to let him know I’m listening, more or less. Foster knows better than to expect me to speak at a time like this, but sometimes the man can’t fucking help himself.

“Keep your chin down,” he tells me. “McCready favors his right, so be ready to attack him on the left when he’s open. Remember, the man’s fucking huge. He’s got half a foot and fifty pounds on you, but you can use his size to your advantage. Let him set the pace, conserve energy, and wear the fucker out. Then, when he’s got nothing left, take your shot.” I lift my gaze just in time to see his light gray eyes light up as he raises his left eyebrow for his usual one-sided smirk. “That’s when you take the bastard to the brink of death.”

As usual, I ignore his flair for the dramatic. The referee steps through the gate and nods over at us, signaling for Foster to leave the ring. The time for pre-game strategy is long past. Time to unleash the darkest, most primal part of my soul. Time to fight until it hurts so fucking good.

The adrenaline shoots through my veins as the referee makes some initial greetings and announcements to get the crowd excited. He then barks out the only rule of this underground fight club.

“No hits or kicks to the face. Everywhere else is fair game.”

The fingers on my right hand rolls into a tight, balled-up fist. Every time I hear that rule I want to punch the referee in his fucking face. It used to be ‘everything is fair game’. Until they changed it to this crap about a month after some pompous political staffer prick joined our club. The shithead must have a fuck ton of pull with the guys who run the place, to get them to agree. It’s an underground fight club, for fuck’s sake. We’re supposed to be able to fight as fucking hard as we want. A few of us longstanding members even offered to double up on our membership fees to convince the owners to go back to how it’s been for umpteen years before this pretty boy douchebag showed up and fucked things up for the rest of us. No dice.

“Introducing tonight’s first round fighters. On my left in the green shorts, weighing in at two hundred and sixty-eight pounds, here he is... Colin ‘Big Baby’ McCready.”

Deafening applause and cheers reverberate around the packed room and bounce off the walls. He’s got the crowd favored odds, so they’ve got to throw their support behind the guy who has the potential to double the cash they put down. I, on the other hand, have the outside odds, but anyone betting on me gets the shot at making seven times their money. High risk, high fucking reward. And I won’t let down anyone who took a chance on me. McCready’s backers are the sorry suckers who’ll flush all those wads of cash down the crapper.

“And on my right in the red shorts, tipping the scales at two hundred and twelve pounds of pure pain-inflicting muscle... Knox ‘The Beast Prince’ Steele.”

There’s not much difference in the roar of the blood-thirsty audience, but that has less to do with me and more to do with the fact that the fight’s about to start.

I’m a fighter. I may go down, but inside this ring, no matter how hard they hit me, I get back on my feet. Every. Single. Time.

The first-round gong rings out and I move in for the long game kill. A few bounces on my feet keep me moving just enough to avoid McCready as he charges toward me like a caged animal. Foster is dead right about this guy. At the rate he’s going, he’ll burn out before the bell sounds to signal the end of round one. Two minutes. If that’s all it’ll take to wear this fucker down, I can handle it.

With my strategy in place, I take a few hits to let this big motherfucker think he’s coming in ahead. Two minutes come and go, and after the short rest break, the round two bell blares out.

He’s got his second wind, so I give him another couple of minutes at me. Maybe I’m enjoying it a little too much. With his size, every punch is sweet torture. Every kick is like I’m being mauled. But I take it, relishing the sting of aching, burning, bleeding solace from the shit I’d like to forget but never can.

After another break, McCready steps to the center of the ring for round three. He’s heavier on his feet, barely bouncing around. Probably because he’s expecting more of the same from me. This time, I’ve got him. He takes a glimpse over his shoulder to nod back at his coach, and in that distracted sliver of time, I do what I came here to do. Win. Saving my hands from this guy’s hard as fuck face, I whip around, tuck my body down and to the right, and smash the ball of my left foot into McCready’s right shoulder. The crunch of bone on bone makes its own special vibration that travels through my nervous system.

I hit the fucker hard, so I’m not surprised when he staggers, momentarily losing his balance. Taking advantage of his disorientation, I pivot around to his side that’s close to the chain-link ring, gain some height by taking a swift, sharp run at the fencing, pushing off of it for extra torque. Then I crash down on his left shoulder with my elbow and the force of my entire weight.

McCready goes down, triggering the eight second count by the referee. I can tell McCready has some fight left in him, but the fucker stumbles to get back on his feet and narrowly misses the count, ending the fight in what the crowd no doubt thinks is anti-fucking-climactic.

As the cheers turn to boos, I let the referee call the fight in my favor. I start to walk out of the ring, squeezing through the tide of the crowd. A sudden tightness grips me deep in my chest and I almost stop, but the push of people and the noise keeps me moving. Was it her? Did she show up to watch me in secret? She’d never come before, and that was okay with me, considering she detests violence in sports and hates the sight of blood. But why now? The last time I saw her she said she couldn’t stand to look at me, let alone talk. I try to look around, to see if I can catch a glimpse of her, but it’s hopeless. There are too many faces to decipher. I have crowds too, so the feel of fans putting their hands all over my shoulders to congratulate me is enough to compel me to keep moving. I ignore the intermittent praise from Foster at my side and a few people from the team behind him while we make our way to the lockers.

Foster doesn’t pull out of his excited thrill-filled verbal recap of my victory until I’m back in my street clothes and headed for his yellow Maserati GranTurismo convertible parked outside.

“I wonder if that was her,” I muse to myself out loud, and he stops with his mouth ajar. It’s not my intention to direct the question at Foster, but now that he’s shut up about my win, I figure it can’t hurt to ask. “Did you see her?”

“What?” he asks. “See who?”

“Isabelle.”

“See her where?”

“In the crowd just now.”

He shakes his head and slaps my shoulder. “Are you outta your mind? Actually, don’t answer that. I’ll chalk up the question to winner’s blur. Isabelle? Hell no. You’d never find a woman like that in a place like this.”

“I thought I saw her.”

“Take my advice, dude. Forget about her. You’re better off without the drama.”

“What?” I look across the top of the car as he throws my gear in the trunk.

“Never mind. I’m not getting into your woman problems after a win like that. Anyway, did you see Big Baby drop to the ground like a fucking felled tree? Jesus, man! I don’t know where you found all that fucking power. It was a fucking honor to witness.”

“Drive me back to the Hamptons.”

Without another word, Foster runs a satisfied hand through his wavy black hair, turns the engine and gets moving. I decide I’m not interested in changing the subject back to Isabelle. Not with him. How Isabelle and I fell apart so fast is the last thing I want to think about right after winning a fight against such a vicious opponent.

Foster goes quiet as well, and after a ninety-minute drive in perfect reverent silence, he drops me off outside the main house in the Hamptons.

“Later,” he says as I open the car door.

“Yeah.” I head across the driveway, giving a polite nod to one of the cleaners leaving through the front door. As I walk to the pool house, all I want is for this throbbing ache to last as long as it takes for my head to hit the pillow and sleep to come. I don’t want my last coherent thought to be of her, or the fact that the last time I was here, in my bedroom, under the sheets, it was with her, and now, she’s never coming back.