Chapter 17: Her Own Name

Bea cried on me for most of a minute, exactly as promised.

Then she blew her nose on a gym towel and copied the lawyer's number off Cal's phone.

She went to hold a bag with her jaw set.

By seven the last kid had gone down the stairs.

Cal locked the street door and turned off every light but the one over the ring.

Neither of us mentioned the last time we had been alone in the gym with the lights off.

I sat on the apron.

He stood on the canvas with the ropes between us.

"Four weeks," he said. "You fight on that card, or he files and you're suspended for a year."

"Or I sign his paper."

"No."

"Cal."

"I would rather lose the gym than have you go back to him without a say." He said it plainly. "The roof was never worth that."

"A hundred kids."

"A hundred kids can train in a church basement. They can't learn anything from a man who handed you over."

I looked up at him.

"You kept me out of the ring," I said. "Why?"

"That's a question."

"Cal."

"I thought boxing was what you were running from."

He climbed over the ropes and crouched in front of me.

"You went white every time somebody said the word," he said. "You'd hit that bag at midnight and then tell me you didn't want to spar."

"I did."

"I thought if I kept you away from fighting, I was keeping you safe."

"And?"

"And you weren't running from the ring. You were running from the man who sold it." His jaw moved. "I kept you from the one thing you're best at."

I thought about the girl on the poster with the belt over her shoulder.

Nobody had ever asked her what she wanted.

"I want to fight him on his own card," I said. "In front of his people."

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