The Fighter Once More
Jason
“Help me get him inside.”
He could tell Amanda was waiting for him to take the lead. He put the safety back on the gun and set it carefully down on the porch steps.
Amanda let out a shaky breath that could be heard echoing through the still night. Finally she forced herself to move. She made it down the steps, her bare feet crunching on the gravel drive. She hadn’t bothered with shoes.
Her hair was in disarray, the rosy afterglow of their lovemaking still on her cheeks. She was so incredibly beautiful, illuminated in the car’s headlights, that Jason could have wept.
Amanda slowly picked her way to the car. The door was still open, the engine still running. She ducked inside, turned the keys and killed the ignition. The rattle and clink of metal on metal cut through Jason’s skull.
He felt sick. Bile churned in his stomach, rose up his chest and burned hot and acrid at the back of his throat. He knew who the man was. The man who burst from his past to end up face down in the gravel of his driveway.
Andrew Murphy. The Irish fighter. Jason’s old teammate, if what he was on could have been called a team.
No it can’t. It could never be called that. Slavery. That’s what it was. What he’d done was nothing short of a blood sport. Those trapped into it hardly ever got out alive. No, a team it was not.
“Do you know him?” Amanda asked frantically as she bent to inspect the man.
The headlights cut out then and they were left in total darkness. Jason blinked hard, trying to force words past a throat that refused to open. How could he tell Amanda, this woman that he loved so much, what he’d done? How could he tell her that she was going to have to leave him, take his son and flee, before the rest of his past arrived on their doorstep?
Grief like he’d never known choked the life out of his chest. His heart stopped, refused to beat. Blood rushed through his head, through his ears, despite the dead organ in the cage of his ribs.
He wasn’t a man who knew fear easily, but he knew it then. He somehow thought that he’d left it all behind. He’d wrongly dared to hope that Romano Ricci would never find him.
“Jason? Do you know him?” Amanda repeated roughly. She placed her fingers at the side of Murphy’s neck.
“Yah,” Jason finally forced out through the horrible cotton wadded in his throat. “I know him.”
“He’s still breathing.” Amanda was remarkably calm given the situation. She didn’t know the half of it, but she knew this wasn’t normal.
“I’ll get him inside.” Jason forced his leaden feet forward. Gravel crunched wickedly under the heavy soles of his boots. “I want you to take the car. Take it into the woods. Down the road we started to cut for your mom’s cabin. Hide it there.”
“What? Are you serious-”
“Yes. Go now.” He pointed towards the car, a deadly calm steeling over him.
Amanda’s brow wrinkled in confusion. He thought she would deny him his request or voice one of the thousand questions burning in her beautiful mossy green eyes. Instead she nodded once, a brief incline of her head. She moved, got into the car, started it up, backed down the drive and slowly turned towards the left, towards the road that they had started to plow through the woods. The site where Joan’s cabin would be located was just in the process of being cleared. There was plenty of room to hide a vehicle.
Jason steeled his resolve. The minute he brought Murphy into his cabin, it was like letting his past in through the front door. It would poison everything and everyone.
What choice do I have? He’s already here.
There and in dire need of medical attention, Jason realized, when he flipped the man over. Murphy wasn’t small. He towered well over six feet, had shoulders and a chest like a mountain and the legs to match. He looked every inch the raw fighter that he was.
The hard angles of Murphy’s face were covered in dried blood, welts and bruises. Jason would almost have believed that the damage had been inflicted in the ring. Almost. If it wasn’t for the fact that Murphy was here, his car probably stolen, lying face down in the dirt and gravel.
He had no choice. He had to get him inside. Blood slowly leaked out of Murphy’s crushed nose and torn, swollen lips. Bloody spittle formed at the corner of his mouth and trickled down his chin. It was clear that he was not in a good way. If he survived long enough to tell Jason why he’d come, it would be a mercy.
“Here we go,” Jason grunted. He bent, dug one hand under Murphy’s massive shoulders and, using all his strength, hoisted the prone form upright. He wrapped his other arm around the guy’s waist and half dragged, half carried him towards the porch steps.
Blood had already soaked its way through Murphy’s gray t-shirt and the movement opened up god knew how many wounds. Fresh, warm blood leached over Jason’s arms, soaking into his own shirt. His sweat combined with the metallic blood and in an instant he was transported back to the cage…
Concrete floors if they were lucky. Dirt if they weren’t. The metal bars surrounding them, the mesh that kept outsiders out and the fighters in. The screams, the yells, the cries of those gathered around, those who actually came to watch. The harsh rasp of broken breath and broken bone, the smell, always the smell of iron scented blood…
“Jason?”
Jason started so hard he nearly dropped his burden. He craned his neck around to find Amanda standing there, eyes wide at the sight of the prone man in Jason’s arms. She had that dazed look that victims who witnessed a violent crime often had. That deer in the headlights look. He realized that she hadn’t seen his face before he went down. She hadn’t seen the blood.”
“Go inside ahead of me,” Jason coached her gently, speaking to her like he would a frightened child. He hated himself in that moment. Hated that he’d ever been weak enough to allow himself to love her, to drag her into this and thus endanger her. His mind conjured up an image of his son, tender, smiling, so very beautiful and innocent.
No. I can’t go there. He’d go mad if he thought of losing Ross too.
“And do what?” Amanda asked shakily. She’d walked back the entire way barefoot. It was a miracle she wasn’t leaving bloody foot prints in her wake as well.
“Put some water on to boil. Get some clean towels, bandages, the peroxide, a needle and thread, and the whiskey.”
“A needle and thread? God, Jason.”
“I know. Please just do it. You know as well as I do that we can’t take him to a hospital and he needs immediate attention.”
Amanda crept closer. Her eyes swept over the limp man. “Good god, Jason, he looks like he needs surgery. He’s probably bleeding inside.”
“That might well be, but I know this man and he’s tough as fucking nails. Tougher. It would take a lot to kill Andy Murphy. He’s taken worse beatings than this and lived to tell the tale. There’s a good chance that his liver and lungs and whatever else might normally be damaged are built of steel.”
“I hope so.” She said nothing more, just turned and fled back inside the cabin.
Jason was left alone with his burden once more. His heavy, accelerated breathing punctuated the still night. He glanced up at the sky, the purple black blanket of shimmering stars, the treetops just behind him, the gentle hum of the wind, the buzz of an insect nearby… it was all so normal and so beautiful.
My home. My sanctuary.
He didn’t want to face losing it, but he knew that his peaceful way of life was at an end. If any of them wanted to get out of this alive, he knew he would have to become the fighter once more.