By the time the bell sounds at the end of the round, Nico is a bloody mess and I want to die. I feel helpless and I want to run into the cage and grab him and hold him tight against me and tell him everything is going to be okay. Only I can’t.

The crowd doesn’t know what to make of things either. The once frenzied chant of Nico! Nico! has died out and even Vinny and Max are eerily silent in their seats. It’s as if they’ve all accepted the path that Nico has chosen…but I can’t. I won’t. I refuse.

The final round starts off almost the same as the last one ended, with Nico getting his face pummeled and him doing little to change things. I don’t understand why everyone is so quiet. His brothers are all sitting and his mother sits silently on the edge of her chair, looking pale, her face turned away from the fight. She can’t even bear to watch.

I just can’t sit and quietly watch him go down without a fight. So I don’t. I get up on my chair and start screaming. Like a loon. The people around me are staring, but I don’t care. Screw them, they were all chanting his name when he was winning, but where are they now? After a few more punches that few men would be able to endure, let alone stand after, Trevor lunges and takes Nico down to the mat. The two men wrestle around for a few seconds, and then Trevor emerges on top, Nico’s arm pinned behind his back, his head to the ground.

“Get up Nico! God damn it, Get up!” My screams are torn from my lungs, each word burning as it bleeds from me. I don’t know if he hears me yelling, but somehow I doubt it since Preach is closer and can’t seem to get his attention. But then something happens. Nico lifts his head from the mat, his arm still pinned behind his back, and I could swear, for just a split second, he looks right at me.

There’s less than a minute left in the match, but we both know that so much can change in a single minute. The course of an entire life can be redirected, a man can choose to live, a man can die unexpectedly. Nothing is over until you call it quits or you take your last breath.

I have no idea how Nico gets himself out of the hold that Trevor had him in without breaking his own arm, but less than two seconds have ticked from the clock and Nico is back on his feet and there’s a fire in his eyes. Trevor gets back up and readies himself, expecting to continue the fight, but it’s no longer a continuation, it’s suddenly a whole new fight. Nico lands a blow to the ribs and his opponent staggers back three steps. There’s no time for Trevor to recover, to regain his footing, before Nico lunges, taking him down to the mat. And then Nico’s on top, landing blow after blow, each more heartbreaking than the next, even though it’s Nico I want to come out unscathed.

There’s less than ten seconds on the clock when Nico backs off slightly, but his stubborn opponent lifts his head, trying desperately to get back on his weary feet. And then Nico winds up and strikes. Hard. The man’s head wobbles, seemingly unhinged from side to side, his eyes rolling back into his head before they both close. I watch in slow motion as his head bounces up and down twice more before finally coming to rest lifelessly on the mat.

The arena goes silent. There are twenty thousand people in one room, yet I can hear the paramedic who rushed into the cage bark out orders and the ref instructs the men in suits watching from the sidelines that he’s calling the fight. KO.

They wave something under the unconscious fighter’s nose and I see his head shake from side to side. He’s awake and alive and there’s a collective sigh heard around the arena. After a few minutes, Trevor gets up with assistance from his trainer and walks out of the cage. But Nico is still standing there, staring at the place where Trevor once laid, even as the ref raises his arm in victory. The crowd goes wild, but I see it in Nico’s face, there’s no cause for celebration.

***

The whole way down to find Nico, I fret he may chase me away when I arrive at the locker room. I’m surprised to find a dozen people waiting in line outside his door. Even more surprised to find as many already inside. Photographers vie for photos of the new champion, but I can see he’s in no mood. Two of the bikini bimbo’s from the entrance parade are trying to snuggle up on either side of him as pictures are snapped excitedly. I know it’s all part of marketing, but my nerves are shot and I have no patience left.

“Don’t touch him.” I warn as one of them goes to lift her leg and wrap it around Nico’s side. She stops and looks me up and down, smirking at my t-shirt, she probably thinks I’m some lonesome groupie, hoping to get lucky tonight. That I’m no match for her open invitation to a sure thing. But I have no time or patience to pretend I care what she thinks. Nico watches me closely as I take the few steps to close the distance between us.

“Let’s get out of here.” I’m relieved at Nico’s words. If he hadn’t suggested leaving, I probably would have demanded it.

There are too many people to count yelling at Nico that he can’t leave when we walk out the door. But neither one of us cares.

Chapter 48

Elle

It’s been almost two days now. Nico hasn’t pushed me away like last time, but he may as well have, because he’s closed me out all the same…along with everyone else. I’ve tried everything…just holding him, quietly talking, even cuddling up to him bare ass, still I get no response. I’m starting to think Preach is right, he needs a doctor.

It broke my heart the first night when he stared blankly at the ceiling. He didn’t say it, but I knew why he couldn’t close his eyes. I went through the same thing for years. Instead of seeing black and calm, allowing yourself to drift into dreamland, you see that moment, the one frozen in time in your head. And then you’re afraid to close your eyes. Afraid to sleep, afraid of the nightmares that you know will come. Terrified to be forced to relive it all again in your head, because it will all seem so real.

Yesterday I finally took the pills that Preach had been trying to give me to push on him since the first night. His body needs to rest, the physical injuries demand time to heal. Nico may have been the victor, but his body took a relentless beating in those short minutes that he surrendered. He’s swollen and cut and black and blue. Everywhere. I held ice to his injuries when he finally slept, rotating different places on his body every fifteen minutes for more than ten hours, until there was nothing cold left in the freezer to hold against him. Those pills work, he didn’t once move…not from the ice held against him or from my touch.