Deeply Destructive (Addicted To You, Book Four) Read online

  He shrugged again. “So what? I’m sure it’s good. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t believe in it.”

  “It is good.”

  For some reason, Justin’s voice echoed through my brain at that moment. I could hear him saying that no guy was nice to you just to be nice, that they always had an ulterior motive. But that was crazy. Not every guy was walking around like a sex-crazed maniac. And besides, something about Carter was soothing. He’d been in my position before, and he’d survived. Maybe it was because he was out of undergrad, but he made it seem like the things I was going through weren’t a big deal, that they could be fixed. It was reassuring, and I liked it.

  “You just, uh, might want to print out a fresh copy first,” he said tactfully.

  “Oh! Yes, definitely. Um, I’ll just go down to the computer lab. I have a copy on my email.”

  “You can do it here,” he said. “There’s a staff computer in the other room.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “You won’t get me in trouble,” he said. “I’ll be back in Dr. K’s office. Just bring it to me when you’re done, okay?”

  “Okay.” I headed through the door he pointed out to me, and sat down at the computer. I signed into my email and printed out a fresh copy of my paper. The printer in the corner whirred to life. I picked up the crisp papers and made sure they were all there and in the right order. And then I spent like five minutes checking and double-checking that I was signed out of my email account. The last thing I needed was Dr.

  Klaxton or his staff having access to my personal emails.

  I brought the paper back to Carter. “Here you go,” I said. He was in Dr.

  Klaxton’s office, typing something on the computer.

  “Cool,” he said, not looking up. “I’ll give it to Dr. K and put in a good word for you.”

  I liked how he kept calling him Dr. K. It made it seem like Dr. Klaxton was someone you could joke around with, the kind of person who had funny nicknames.

  “Thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  I started to walk to the door, feeling better. I’d taken a risk and it had paid off.

  “Lindsay?”

  I turned around. “Yeah?”

  Now he was looking at me. “I’ll see you in lab this week?”

  “Yup. See you in lab.”

  He smiled at me again and his eyes sparkled. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  JUSTIN

  Standing outside the door to “The Slaughterhouse,” I felt the first real stirrings of anxiety in my stomach. Sure, it had sounded good when I’d first thought about it, but now that I was actually here, it was starting to feel like a very dumb idea.

  The Slaughterhouse was the name of a gym that had a really strong team of guys who all trained together. It was perhaps one of the best training camps in the entire Northeast, and it was located only a few miles from my apartment.

  When their gym first opened, Quarry Davenport had actually gotten my cell number and tried to talk me into leaving Coach Jansen and coming to fight for them instead. Quarry was a big name in MMA. He’d been in the first sanctioned fights that had taken place in the eighties and everyone loved his go-for-broke style. Since then, he’d started training other fighters and he’d amassed a nice little crew.

  I’d been tempted to give The Slaughterhouse a shot on a few different occasions.

  Sometimes when Coach Jansen had really been giving me a hard time during training or pulling one of his mind games, I’d thought about just going down and checking the place out.

  Especially because they were quickly growing to become a real name among MMA insiders, and Quarry Davenport was supposedly close friends with Drew Ellis from the UFF.

  But my loyalty had always held me back.

  Now it had been a couple of years since Quarry had asked me to join his crew, and they were very much established. One of their current members was a belt holder in the heavyweight division, and they had two big-time contenders in the light heavyweight division. I wasn’t even in the UFF yet, so I was nothing compared to their top guys.

  Standing outside, trying to plan my next move, imagining how I’d sell myself to the guy who had once wanted me on his team—I could hear the sounds of cheering from inside the gym.

  The windows were blocked so you couldn’t see into the place, and the door was locked. It had the feel of an underground fight club, and the rumors said that in many ways that’s exactly what The Slaughterhouse was.

  I’d heard stories of their legendary training sessions; people fighting without headgear or protective equipment during practices. There were other stories about Quarry’s insane training methods, but whatever he was doing seemed to be working. His team included some of the best in the world, and he was just minutes away from where I lived.

  So what was I waiting for?

  I knocked on the door, but perhaps too softly, because nobody answered. And then a little voice inside my head told me to leave—leave and go back to Coach Jansen and tell him that I was wrong. Tell him that I would accept his decision to wait another year, if that’s what he truly believed was best.

  But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to swallow my pride and run back to him with my tail between my legs.

  Instead I pounded on the door to The Slaughterhouse gym even harder than before. For some reason, just before the door opened, I had a vivid image of greyhounds racing around a track, chasing that little white rabbit they could never hope to catch.

  The door swung open and standing there was one of the biggest human beings I’d ever seen. He was over seven feet tall, black, with a shaved head and biceps bigger than my leg. “Who the fuck are you?” he said, looking me up and down with disgust.

  “I’m a fighter. I’m here to talk to Quarry.”

  The big guy grinned. “Oh, yeah?”

  Behind him, I could see a crowd of guys in shorts and t-shirts watching two men in a cage. The two men were clearly fighting and every so often the crowd around them would erupt with cheers or instruction.

  “I can come back tomorrow.”

  “What’s your name, son?”

  “Justin Brown.”

  “Oh, yeah? I heard of you.” He smiled and reached out his hand. “Come on in, Quarry’s just reffing this fight right here.”

  I walked inside and the guy shut the door behind us with a solid thunk.

  “What’s your name?” I asked him.

  “Everybody just calls me Z.”

  “Hey, Z. Good to meet you, man. You a fighter?”

  “Retired. I used to fight overseas, did a lot of stuff. Broke my neck during a kickboxing match in the Netherlands and then I came back home and started helping Quarry out at the gym.”

  “Shit, that’s intense,” I said, studying him as he towered over me.

  “Yeah, man. This life isn’t for the faint of heart, but you know that already, don’t you?” Just as he said that, both of us looked up at the cage in time to see one of the fighters knock the other one out with a vicious left hook.

  “Oh, shit,” Z said, grimacing.

  The audience outside the cage applauded and cheered. Not long after, Quarry emerged and came toward us, as if knowing in advance that I’d be coming to see him tonight.

  Quarry was taller than me, but thin, with cheekbones that protruded from his face like rocks from a mountainside. He had a thin beard and penetrating eyes that said he would just as soon kill you as put up with any bullshit or weakness. “I thought I recognized a new face,” he said, walking over. He smiled but it didn’t touch his eyes.

  “Justin Brown, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m not sir, Justin. This isn’t your daddy’s gym. Everyone here calls me Quarry.”

  “Got it.” I smiled, feeling silly.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  He seemed like a man who didn’t appreciate any bullshit, so I got right to the point. “I parted ways
with Coach Jansen and thought maybe I could come train with your team.”

  Quarry didn’t change his expression. “Parted ways? What does that mean?”

  “It means that he told me he doesn’t think I’m ready to go pro. Drew Ellis told me the other day that he was going to sign me if I won my next fight. But my coach said he didn’t think I was emotionally ready, so I decided to move on.”

  Quarry smiled a little. “Emotionally ready?” He looked at Z. “You hear that shit?”

  “I heard it.” Z laughed softly.

  “Well, I don’t even know what the fuck that means. I train fighters here, not therapists.”

  “That’s what I heard, and that’s why I came.”

  “So, can you start right away?” Quarry demanded.

  Relieved, I nodded. “Absolutely. I could start tomorrow.” Then I remembered my cut. “I do have to wait a few more days to let these stitches heal,” I said, gesturing to my eye. “But then I can go full contact, no problem.”

  Quarry’s expression transformed to one of annoyance. “I thought you said you were ready to go.” He sighed. “Look, Justin. Why don’t you go back to your coach, or…I don’t know. Do whatever you need to do. I’m not interested in any special cases.”

  His dismissive attitude pissed me off. “I said I’m ready to go.”

  He looked at me again, his eyes focused in on mine. “You want in with my team, that means you’ve got to pass a fitness challenge. Tonight.”

  I shrugged. “Let’s do it. I’m ready for anything.”

  Quarry got a huge, excited smile on his face as he clapped me on the shoulder and squeezed. He turned me to face the room. There were about fifteen people there who were now looking at us.

  “We’ve got a live one, boys!” he shouted.

  Everyone must have known what that meant, because people began cheering and whooping and hollering, even more excitedly than they’d been for the fight in the cage a couple of minutes ago.

  That got my adrenaline flowing.

  Z bent down and whispered softly to me in his deep voice. “Just stay composed and keep your mind strong,” he said. “You got this, I know it.”

  “Thanks,” I said to him.

  “Okay, my man,” Quarry said, shepherding me forward. “Our friend Justin Brown, also known as JB—”

  “Does that stand for Jail Bait?” A short guy with a goatee shouted.

  “Maybe so,” Quarry replied. “Maybe so. In any case, JB, you have to get down and give us as many pushups as you can in five minutes. When you’re done, you do as many sit-ups as you can do in five minutes. After that, you go over to the heavy bag and work that over with kicks and punches for five. Got it?”

  “Got it.” It didn’t sound that bad—but I knew it couldn’t be that simple.

  “Then go!” Quarry shouted in my face.

  A moment later, the group of people in the gym had swarmed around me in a rough circle, yelling and screaming insults, as I got down and started to do my five minutes of pushups.

  I remembered what Z had told me and just focused on keeping my cool and pacing myself. I knew I could do pushups for a long time. I’d been busting out a few hundred a day with ease when I wrestled in high school and I’d only gotten in better shape over the last few years.

  Still, five minutes of anything without a break is very difficult, and at about four minutes in, my arms were shaking.

  “We got noodle arms, I repeat we got noodle arms!” Someone laughed.

  I kept going. Finally, Quarry called time. “Five minutes are up, JB, now you have five minutes of sit-ups.”

  I breathed deeply for a few seconds, but the yelling grew positively deafening.

  “He’s stalling!”

  “Come on, you fucking pussy!”

  “Do it! Get going!”

  I was getting angry. These guys were a bunch of idiots. What the hell was I doing here, when I could have been back at my old gym with my normal training partners instead of undergoing hazing with the MMA team from hell?

  But then I thought about Coach Jansen telling me I was stupid, telling me I wasn’t

  “emotionally ready” to fight professionally. Taking my dream away from me just because he could. I’d make him regret that decision.

  My motivation came back in a burst of rage, and I started on my sit-ups with a fury. The five minutes passed by in a flash, and the crowd around me was quieting a little bit. I’d shut them up by doing what I needed to do.

  “Time,” Quarry said, almost sounding disappointed when I hadn’t been broken.

  “Great,” I said, hopping to my feet to show my energy was high. I was tired, very tired, but I wasn’t about to show it.

  “Now you do the heavy bag, and I want you to really go after it. No taking it easy.”

  Someone threw me a pair of gloves and I quickly put them on. The crowd headed over to the bag to watch me punch and kick for five minutes. I paced myself, but threw hard combinations, making sure these idiots knew what I was capable of. If they wanted to keep messing with me, I’d make sure they understood that I could make them pay for it somewhere down the line.

  Finally, the five minutes were over. I was breathing heavily and covered in sweat. “So, are we good?” I asked Quarry.

  He looked at Z, who just made a face like he felt bad for me.

  “Are we good?” Quarry repeated, feigning surprise. “JB, that was just the warm up. Now it’s time to see what you’re made of.”

  I looked at him, sure he was joking. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  Quarry pointed to the cage. “Get in there.”

  “Get in the cage? Now?”

  Quarry nodded his head. “This isn’t your momma’s training camp, son. You come into my house, you better come correct. Everyone who gets on my team has to fight his way in.”

  “I told you, I can’t go full contact with this cut—”

  “Get in the cage, or get the fuck out of my gym.” Quarry glared at me.

  Everyone was watching me. I looked at the unfriendly faces, their eyes judging me, their expressions mocking me. The truth was, I wanted to put a hurting on somebody now.

  “Fine. Why not?” I said, shrugging, as the group of thugs roared their approval.

  I made my way to the cage.

  “Good choice,” Quarry said, as I walked.

  “So who am I fighting?”

  “Everybody.”

  I turned and looked at him again, certain he must be joking this time. “What does that mean?”

  Quarry’s grin looked like a shark’s grin. “It means, you go two minutes with one guy, and then the next comes in. No breaks for you. You go until somebody knocks you out, chokes you out or submits you. Or until you beg for mercy.”

  I stared at him, realizing he was dead serious. But then I smiled back at him. “I hope you don’t mind if I put your entire team in the hospital.”

  His smile faded as I climbed into the cage.

  “We’ll see about that, JB,” Quarry called, following me in. “I’ll be reffing this fight, but all that means is I make sure nobody’s arm gets broken and I’ll stand you up and make you fight if you try and stall. Got it?”

  “Got it,” I replied. I was wearing the small MMA gloves that were customary in fights. I bent down and removed my sneakers, threw them out of the cage. Other than that, I was in jeans and a t-shirt. Not exactly the best outfit to be fighting in, but I wasn’t going to complain now.

  Quarry called the first person into the cage. It was the little guy with the goatee, the one who’d said my initials stood for “Jail Bait.” I was more than happy to get a chance at him.

  “Here’s how it works,” Quarry said, as the little dude got in the ring and threw a few practice punches at the air. “We go by weight class. Jimbo here is our smallest guy at only one hundred and twenty-five pounds. Each guy that comes in will get bigger and stronger. If you somehow manage not to get knocked out or submitted, eventually you work your way up to our
heavyweights. I think maybe it would be better for you if that didn’t happen.” He chuckled, pleased with his own joke.

  “Whatever,” I said. “Let’s get it over with.”

  “Have it your way,” Quarry told me. He chopped the air with his fist. “Fight!”

  Jimbo came at me with a surprising speed that caught me off guard. He was throwing wild punches. I stepped back, catching most of his shots on my forearms and elbows, ducking my head to avoid a few hard punches. I saw an opening and popped him with a hard jab. He smiled at me. I popped him again and wiped the smile off his face.

  He got mad, started swinging for the knockout, trying to catch me with a lucky punch. I got him first. I landed a perfect right cross on his jaw and he went down.

  Quarry stepped in before I could finish him off. “Okay, okay.” He got in between us.

  “Next!”

  I stood there and watched as the next guy came into the cage.

  He was just slightly bigger than Jimbo, with tons of tattoos and big holes in his ears that dudes get when they wear earrings that are like saucers. He was more of a grappler, tried to bring me to the ground. I didn’t let him. I started pinning him up against the cage and hitting him with thudding shots to his ribcage. He groaned and eventually slid to the mat, upon which Quarry once again got between us.

  Was it my imagination or did Quarry seem a little annoyed that I was making such quick work of his team?

  “Next!” he shouted.

  It started to all blur together. I was getting truly tired now. Everyone else was relatively fresh, whereas I had already done an intense workout and had now been fighting straight through, without a break. But each new person he sent in, I was able to last the full two minutes.

  The crowd was starting to get quieter and quieter as I continued my run through their team.

  I’d gone into a zone. It had happened to me only a few times in my entire career thus far, usually during a big fight. Everything would sort of go quiet and I wouldn’t feel tired anymore. I would just be in this very calm place where the world seemed to slow down and become serene.

  It was like I could anticipate the punches and kicks that were coming and move easily out of the way. My own punches were rapid, fluid and accurate. I danced around the cage like Muhammad Ali.