"I promise that I won't punch anybody," I say over the phone on Tuesday. "Please, I need to get out of this apartment."

"No," He declines, continuing to be so stubborn about not letting me go to the fights tonight because of the fact that I had gotten into a fight with that other girl last week before we got arrested. "I don't want you to get hurt."

"I said that I promise," I repeat to him. "No fighting. I'll even apologize to that girl that I fought if that'll make you feel better."

"I'm not worried about her feelings. She won't try to fight you again or anything but if you try to piss off the wrong person in that place, you could really end up hurt," He tells me.

"I understand," I assure him. "I was just hoping that I could convince you to change your mind."

"It's not just that I'd feel responsible for you," He says. "I'm the underdog tonight, it's going to be a brutal fight and you'd be worrying about me too and it'd just be easier if you don't go."

"Well, now that you just told me that, I'll be worried anyway," I say. "Is it dangerous?"

"It's always dangerous, Wren," He says with a small laugh. "Look, I'll call you tonight and let you know how it goes, alright?"

"I want to go."

"Even if I win, it's going to be brutal," Shaw warns me again, but he sounds like he's letting up.

"I'll be ready in fifteen minutes. No punching and no freaking out too much," I assure him. 

I don't give Shaw the chance to respond to me, to tell me no again, and I hang up. I get dressed in leggings, a white spaghetti strapped tank, and a denim button up that I leave unbuttoned. I slip on some black combat boots and then use my over-the-shoulder bag to stuff it full of any first-aid stuff that I can find in the apartment.

The living area is empty, so I'm relieved to be free from dealing with Jesse. Until I hear arguing in the hallway from familiar voices.

"I begged you a million times to tell her." It's Jesse. "Because I knew this was going to happen."

I don't have to open the door to know that he's talking to Clayton, but I do anyway. They're standing down the hall in front of Clay's open apartment door, too busy in their own conversation to notice me. 

"I was trying to protect us," Clayton tells him. 

"We are not the only people that matter, Clay," Jesse snaps back at him. His blond hair is ragged on his head the way it is when he gets frustrated, because he keeps running his fingers through it. "I don't know how I let you convince me that this was normal."

"Jesse, I'm sorry. If I knew things would get this bad, I would have done things differently. But we can't-" He stops talking abruptly when he glances up and sees me eavesdropping.

When Jesse turns to face me, his eyes are red and wet. He looked back to Clay for a brief second before he's walking toward me. 

"Jess, wait," Clay tries to plead with him, but he doesn't stop walking. Doesn't even acknowledge my presence as he brushes past me into the apartment and slams the door shut behind him.

"Trouble in paradise?" I ask him.

He presses his thumbs into his eyes and lets out a deep sigh. "Yeah. You going out with that ass face again tonight? With medical supplies. Jesus Christ, when did everything get so fucked?"

"Probably around-"

"Yeah. I know," He interrupts me before I can give him the obvious answer that things got so fucked when he started fucking my brother. "That was a stupid question. Be safe tonight. Call if you need anything."

I just walk away, down the hallway toward the stairs that lead to the sidewalk. I don't know how to process the conversation I just overheard, so I won't. Not tonight, at least.

Exactly fifteen minutes after I ended my call with Shaw, I am waiting downstairs in front of my building. I don't have high hopes that Shaw will actually show up because I'm not convinced that I'm more stubborn than he is but I don't have anything else better to do. I already finished my paper and I'm caught up on the rest of my work so without hanging out with Shaw, I wouldn't have anything to do tonight.

I wait outside for seven more minutes, telling myself that I'll give up after twenty, when I see Shaw approaching from the sidewalk.

"I can't believe that I out-stubborned you," I say with a small laugh.

He gives me a confused frown. "Did you?"

"You're here, aren't you?"

"I didn't think of it like that," Shaw realizes before he stops walking and then turns around and starts walking away from me. "Never mind then, I'll go alone."

"Nope, too late," I catch up to him. "We're already doing this."

"Are you sure that you want to?"

"Yes," I confirm with a nod. "I'll be like a fly on the wall. What are the odds that you'll win tonight?"

"Not great. Terrible, actually," He admits. "But I'm not as worried as I should be. I haven't lost a fight in a long time but the last time that I did lose, it was with this guy. He's huge."

"Can't you say no?" I ask him. "Ask them to choose a different opponent for you?"

"I asked for this fight," Shaw says. "It's not likely but if I do win, because my odds are so terrible, the payout will be insane and I'm getting low on rent money."

The building is different than the one that we went to for the past two times that I've come and when I ask Shaw, it's because of the cops showing up to the last building so they send out a new location. This building is farther away but the walk is still only about twenty-minutes.

The scene is still pretty much the same. Shaw gets us passed the bouncer and then we go through the crowd to the man with the money hat so that Shaw can tell him that he's ready to fight or whatever it is that he tells that man when we arrive.

Before we leave that man, I tap on Shaw's shoulder before I pull out a twenty from my bag. "I want to bet on you," I say to him as he takes the money.

"Seriously?" He raises his eyebrows at me.

I nod. "Yeah, sure. Why not? You've got this."

He smiles at me and then turns around and hands the man the twenty before we walk away from him and watch the fights going on right now. I don't see anybody in the crowd that looks that much larger than Shaw so maybe the guy who he's fighting isn't here yet but as the time goes by, I'm starting to get worried about this fight. Shaw doesn't look as confident as he usually does.

He's trying to hide it, I can tell, but he's looking less pumped and I've noticed that he reeks of cigarette smoke, he had to of smoked more than one cigarette before he picked me up.

When it's time for him to finally step into the circle, I step onto my toes and kiss his cheek. "Good luck," I say.

He gives me a forced smirk. "Won't need it."

And then he's stepping into the circle and I'm really nervous. The guy stepping into the circle with Shaw is pretty huge. Not as big as The Boulder but he's taller than Shaw, his biceps are probably bigger than my head and he looks very upset and ready to murder somebody. And right now, he's looking at Shaw.

I feel like I'm more afraid than Shaw is because although he doesn't look as confident as he usually does, he still doesn't look scared.

They announce the fight and then it starts.

For the first few moments, I watch but after Shaw starts spitting blood, I can't look anymore. I am standing pretty close to the ring and I can hear the fists and grunts but I look down at my feet and focus on not flinching at the sounds. That guy is really hurting Shaw and I wish that I could help Shaw but I know that there's nothing that I can do. And he's tough, he knew that this would happen and he was ready for it.

Eventually, after what feels like hours, the crowd starts going wild as the winner has been realized. "And the winner is..." The announcer is saying. I can't look. "Shaw!"

Surprised, I look up at the circle and I see the large knot of muscle laying on the ground. He's conscious but laying pretty still and Shaw is standing above him, covered in blood (I don't know if it's his or the other guy's) and he doesn't look very happy about his win—probably because of how much pain he's in.

Before coming over to me, he gets his money from the hat guy and he is stopped by a lot of people on his way over to me, congratulating him.

When he finally gets to me, the first thing that he says is, "It's not as bad as it looks."

"You look like you just dove into a mulcher," I inform him, trying not to look grossed out but he does look really gross. "Is anything broken?"

"I told you that you shouldn't have come," He mutters before he starts leading me toward the door to leave.

"At least I didn't punch anybody this time," I suggest in hopes of lightening the mood. Once we're outside of the building, he stops walking and leans against the brick wall to catch his breath. "Let me help you get cleaned up."

"No," He sighs. "I'm just going to head back to my place. I'll see you later, Wren."

"I brought the goods," I add, opening my purse to show him all of the first-aid stuff that I had shoved into my bag before I met him to come here.

It makes him laugh and then groan with the pain that the laughter caused. "Usually, I'd say no but I'm thinking that if I go alone, I might drown in my own blood."

"That's the best way to spend my nights, preventing blood-drowning after you getting your ass kicked," I say jokingly.

"No, I didn't get my ass kicked," He argues and I remember having about this exact same debate on the night that we met. "I won the fight, you saw me. I kicked his ass."

"I think that there was a mutual ass kicking, you just got your ass kicked less," I inform him as we walk. I know that he said that his place is a dump so I don't know if he's actually going to take me there or if we're going somewhere else but I just follow him down the sidewalk to wherever it is that he's decided to take me.

"Yeah, sure," He concedes. "That guy's a fucking monster."

"You still beat him though," I remind him. "So that's pretty impressive."

"Right," He sighs and then stops walking for a minute. He rubs his side over his bloody t-shirt and then takes a deep breath before we keep walking. "We should go out to celebrate this weekend."

"I'm going home," I say. "My parents' anniversary, it's a big family gathering."

"And you didn't invite me?" He wonders sarcastically.

"You know, after my brother tells them that he's gay, I'll probably be able to do just about whatever I want, they won't even notice," I realize with a small shrug.

"It'll really be that bad?"

"Oh yeah," I confirm with a nod. "They're total puritanical bible-thumping prudes. I mean, I love them, but I'm honestly really terrified for Jesse. I can't imagine how they're going to take that."

"And how they're going to take it when you tell them that you're not going to be a lawyer," He adds.

"What? Yes, I am," I say with a confused frown.

"I don't believe you," He says. "You obviously don't like it and eventually, you'll realize that you could be so much happier doing something else and you'll get the guts to tell them where to shove it."

"I don't think so," I shake my head at that. I've never had the guts to stand up to my parents, I highly doubt that'll ever happen. Maybe I'll be a lawyer, get enough money to go back to school by myself, and then do something that I actually enjoy. "Are you sure that you didn't break anything? Your shoulder looks bad."

"Dislocated," Shaw mumbles with a wince.

"You know, Jesse is pre-med," I offer when I think about another solution. "I know that he doesn't like you but he'd probably be willing to help if I ask."

"No, it's fine," He assures me. "I've got this."

"How did you get into all of this?" I ask him curiously. "You couldn't have planned that you'd be a street fighter growing up, I'm assuming."

"No, when I turned eighteen and got thrown out, I got a real job," He explains with another breathy groan. "At a gas station. One of the guys that worked there with me was in this lifestyle and when he could tell how miserable I was with a dead-end job and nowhere else to go, he brought me to the fights and helped me train so that I could fight too."

"Have you ever thought about saving money to go to school or something?" I continue to ask questions because he doesn't seem to mind answering them.

"No. I charge the lazy idiots of this university to take their classes for them," He admits. "I'll go to lectures, write papers, take tests. So I basically do have a degree, I just didn't pay for it."

"So you could get a real job," I realize. "Something that doesn't cause you to dislocate your shoulder or lose rivers of blood."

"I probably could," He agrees. "But this is easy for me and I'm good at it. It's therapeutic and exciting. I obviously won't do this forever but for right now, I'm okay."

We get to an old brick building that's probably about half of a mile from campus and it looks pretty rundown in a dark back alley. We walk inside and then I have to help Shaw up a flight of stairs to the second floor. He uses his keys to unlock one of the doors down a dark hallway that smells of liquor and urine.

The door that we walk through leads to a dirty studio apartment. The stench from the hallway is gone but replaced with the smell of sweat and cinnamon which is a very strange combination. It's not very pleasant but it sure does beat the pee smell from outside.

The right side of the room is the living room space with a futon and an old TV in the corner with a plastic crate acting as a coffee table. The floor is scattered with empty beer cans and some food wrappers. The bed is behind the futon but the bed is just a full sized mattress on the ground with only a blanket and two pillows, no sheets.

The kitchen to the left is small and dirty, the appliances look like they were put in during the 70s and the dishes are piling up in the sink. Again, beer cans are all over the place.

"I warned you," Is all that Shaw says before he limps his way into the kitchen and he opens up one of the above-head cabinets. I almost expect a dead rat to fall out or something but instead, it's just a box of over-the-counter pain killers that Shaw pulls out.

"It's not that bad," I assure him but I think that my voice jumps up a few octaves, making it obvious that I'm lying.

He walks over to the bed and carefully lays down and closes his eyes, just like he did in the grass when I had run into him on my jog three weeks ago. I take off my button up shirt just so that I don't get blood on it and then I walk over to him.

"I have no medical training so I have no idea what I'm doing," I warn him. "But I'm going to try to do my best to fix you."

"It's going to take more than a few band-aids for that," He adds and I'm suddenly wondering if there's a hidden meaning behind what we're saying right now, not just the cuts and bruises that cover his body.

"That's okay," I assure him. "I've got more than just band-aids."

"I have a kit in the bathroom," He tells me.

I take that as him asking me to go get it so I find the one door in the apartment and open it. Sure enough, it's a bathroom. It's dirty and tiny but I was expecting that, so I just walk in and look for a medical kit until I find a white plastic container under the sink and I take it out to Shaw, who now has his shirt off.

"Oh my god," I mutter when I see all of the bruises and welts that cover his torso. "I mean... it's not that bad."

"You're very reassuring," He says with a laugh.

I take everything that I have in my purse and the white container of supplies that he has and I kneel down on the mattress beside him to try and clean up the blood that is covering his body. I start with his face, using a damp cloth to wipe away the blood before I clean the cuts per Shaw's directions. He's been through this a lot so he knows what to do, his arms just aren't working well so he's telling me how to do it.

"You must have a really high pain tolerance," I say to him as I finish fixing his face as much as I can fix it. "I don't know how you do this to yourself every week."

"The money," He explains. "I paid at least three months' rent tonight."

"You're killing yourself," I add but then I realize that I'm talking too much like a mother or a girlfriend, so I stop. "Sorry, it's none of my business. You know what you're doing."

"I do," He agrees with me. "You don't have to worry."

"I'm going to worry anyway," I assure him without really thinking. I don't want him to think that this is anything more than what it is because that might freak him out. I quickly change the subject to distract him. "I'm going to go get this wet again," I say, holding up the washcloth I've been using to clean his face.

I get up from the mattress and go into the bathroom again because the kitchen sink is so full of dishes that I can't really use it. In the bathroom, as I'm running the water to wait for the water to get hot, I hear Shaw shout a few curse words that makes me jump.

I hurry back into the open space and look at him. "What happened?"

He is laying back down on the mattress and he takes a few deep breaths before he says, "My shoulder has been relocated and I need more pain meds."

"Okay, just give me a sec," I say, going back into the bathroom to get the cloth that I left in there.

"Wren, you don't have to wait on me," Shaw says to me when I return and I grab the box of painkillers that he had grabbed a little bit ago.

"I know that you're not used to having somebody there to help you," I say as I hand him two more pills and then I start clearing a blood from his shirtless torso. "But you can ask for help sometimes. And even if it's just for a little bit, I'm here, and I don't mind helping. So just let me."

He doesn't say anything in response to that, I just keep using the wash cloth until there's no more blood.

"Do you have ice?" I ask him when I realize that maybe a few ice packs could be of use.

He nods, keeping his eyes closed as he deals with the pain.

I go to the freezer and when I open it, I see that the entire thing is full of ice packs. There's no food or anything, just the ice packs.

I take two of them and more rags from the kitchen counter to wrap around the ice packs so that they aren't painfully cold. I go back to Shaw and ask him where he wants them. He uses one of them on his shoulder and another one on a bruised part of his ribs.

I don't know what else I can do to help him right now and so I just act on impulse and I lean down so that I can kiss him. Not his lips, because they're cracked and bloody so I don't want them to split again. I kiss his neck first and then his bruises, lightly.

"Wren," He breathes out my name. "I appreciate that you're trying to make me feel better but I feel like I would literally break a rib right now if we did that."

"Did what?" I kiss the familiar rose tattoo on his chest and feel him twitch at the touch.

"Wren." He says my name again in a 'don't play dumb' kind of tone.

"I have something else in mind," I inform him, kissing lower on his body as my fingers start playing with the drawstring of his pants. Maybe I can't take his pain away but I think that I can take his mind off of it for a little while. "With what I'm thinking of, you won't have to move at all."

And that shut him up.