Shoot

Chapter 27: Blood.

I speed my way into the city, slamming my hands on the wheel at every red light. Finally, I make it to the building and park where Jack's car is. I run around back and text Jack that I'm here, but there's no respond and I already hear screaming from down below.

I sprint down the stairs and to the doors that Jack said would be locked, and guess what- they are. I pull on them a few times and knock as loud as possible, but I know he's already in the ring.

I walk as casually as I can back through the halls to the guys collecting tickets, and give them fifteen dollars.  Holy shit it is going to be a brutal fight.  They raised the price five bucks.

I push my way through the crowd and receive way too many unnecessarily hard shoves back.  Eventually I make it closer to Jack's corner, and try to catch his eyes.

His face is all bloody and swollen, worse than any of the other fights I've seen.  I try to see what's going wrong and immediately spot the issues.  This other guy is huge as fuck and Jack is deciding not to put his hands in front of his face.  Instead he's going for desperate punches and landing none of them.

A sign up front says it's the seventh round and- wait what? The seventh? I check my phone and see that it's already 11:40. That trip over here took a lot longer than I expected and I only wasted time by going to check the locked doors.

The round ends and Jack looks like he's about ready to pass out. One of his friends hits his bare shoulder and Jack shrugs. He spits bloody spit into a bucket and starts searching the crowd. I jump so he can see me but he doesn't even get to look in my direction because the bell rings.

"Cover your damn face!" I scream, and he hears that. He looks into the mass of people again and still can't see me.

Something switches inside of him from hearing my voice, and he no longer needs to cover his face because he's beating the shit out of this guy now.

"Yeah, Jack! Keep going!" I yell as loud as I can, bouncing on my toes.

"Who do you think you are?  Comin' in here and fuckin' goin' against my brother," some guy grabs my shoulder and yanks me so I look at him.

"That's my boyfriend," I say sharply, and the guy smacks me across the face so hard that I stumble backward. "What the-"

"That was for your fuckin' boyfriend. You better get the fuck out of here," he says,

"Look how it's going now," I nod my head toward the fight where Jack has this guys brother against the ropes. When I look back from the fight, he grabs my neck and tosses me to the ground.

I land on my hands and knees on the cold concrete, and the cracks in the ground only make it worse.  I look up toward the guy that threw me down, but he's not there.  Only when I stand up do I see Jack repeatedly slamming his fist into the guy on the floor.

One of the mans friends tried to pull Jack off, but Jack doesn't budge until his face is completely covered with blood and you can no longer make out his features.

Jack gets off of him and searches for me, and once his eyes find mine, he runs at me. He pulls me close to his body and tucks me carefully into his side, looking around the room. His friend in the ring- who I now know is Luke- is walking toward us when Jack smashes to the ground.

I turn to look at him and see blood collecting on the ground. Luke runs over and everyone scatters, knowing that this is bad and nobody wants to be around to be held accountable.

"Jack," I say, and he reaches for his back. When his hand comes out from under him, it's bloody.

I get on the ground next to him and pull my sweatshirt off. I slide it under him so it puts pressure on the wound from- I assume- a knife.