They Threw Me Away at Twelve, So I Came Home Undefeated novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Rest

We went to the warehouse, because it was the only place I wanted to hear it.

The cage stood empty under the bare bulbs.

Dutch had gone to the back office to find a first-aid kit, and he left the door open so he could hear.

I sat on the bottom step of the cage with my taped ribs and my elbows on my knees.

Perry stood three feet away.

He did not sit down.

"Go," I said.

"I found you when you were fourteen."

I looked at him.

"I'd been looking for two years. Every bus depot north of Route 9, every shelter. I even hired a man, and Dad found out and fired him." His voice was low and tired. "Then a boy at my college showed me a video of a girl in a mask who had won her first cage fight."

"My first fight was the only one I was ever scared in," I said.

"The man you fought was supposed to lose, Thora. I'd paid Dutch the night before."

He said it plainly, and then waited.

"That was the first one," I said slowly.

"The first one I fixed. I stood at the back of the crowd with a hood on. You were fourteen, and you had a split lip from the weigh-in, and your braid was down to here. You didn't look scared. You looked like you had decided never to be scared again."

"I had."

"I know." His mouth twisted. "And a man twice your size was walking toward you. I couldn't breathe. I thought, I'll do anything, anything, so he doesn't hurt her."

"So you paid."

"Every cent I had. Five hundred dollars I'd saved from a summer job. Dutch laughed at me, and then he looked at me for a while, and then he said all right."

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