Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 158848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 794(@200wpm)___ 635(@250wpm)___ 529(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 158848 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 794(@200wpm)___ 635(@250wpm)___ 529(@300wpm)
Fame wasn’t even my goal. I just needed to win the money. Improving my skills and getting trained by actual professionals was part of it too, but there are easier ways I could’ve done that. Ways that wouldn’t have included alienating everyone I care about.
And I still don’t even know what everyone saw. What Molly saw. Why everyone seems so convinced I’m a cheating asshole.
Remy stands and clears the table. “Go on.” He tilts his head toward the living room. “I recorded the Eli/Costa fight. You want to watch it?”
“Sure.” A fight’s the last thing I want to watch but I slowly make my way into the living room anyway. Fatigue pulls me onto the couch. How am I still so tired when I haven’t done anything all week? One visit to the doctor and a few conversations with Remy have me ready to pass out.
A few minutes later, Remy joins me in the living room. He sits in his recliner, and swivels around to face me. “You good?”
“Let me see it.” I nod to the television.
Remy frowns. “The fight? Yeah, you sure you can stay awake for it?”
“No, the show. Let me see it.”
Remy stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “The show? Your show?”
I nod quickly.
His slack-jawed expression shifts into anger. “What the fuck for?”
“I need to know…” I ball my hands into fists. “I need to see what she saw.”
“You really haven’t seen any of it?”
“No. The place was locked down tight. They took my phone almost immediately.” I hesitate, not sure if Molly ever told him I brought a burner phone. “I even had a burner phone hidden but after the day I talked to you, it disappeared.”
“What the fuck kind of insanity did you sign up for, bro?”
“I guess I thought it was going to be like one of those training camps.” I gesture toward the TV. “Remember that show we saw about how Eli went off and trained with all those kickboxing and muay tai experts and shit?”
“Yeah,” he answers slowly, “but that was for an official fight. Not a bunch of trailer park, wannabe Conor McGregors living in a house as some trashy social experiment.”
Thanks for that oddly specific, but highly accurate description that really drives home what an idiot I am. “I thought it was something simple like that. Each week, there’d be a match and one person would go home. At the end, the top four would all go home with some money and the winner a big prize. That’s how Diane explained it to me.” I gesture toward the television. “I didn’t know it would turn into a circus.”
“Yeah, it definitely wasn’t what you thought,” he says with an edge of you’re-an-idiot sarcasm. “I don’t know if I can sit through all of it again. Which one do you want to see?”
Now I give him the are-you-stupid stare. “The episode.”
“Christ, Griff.” He swipes the remote off the table next to his recliner and turns the TV on. “From the beginning?”
“Yeah.”
An opening montage introducing each of the fighters flashes across the screen, complete with cheesy background music and brief, stereotypical, bordering on insulting descriptions of each of us. Venom is the wise, old sage—who’s possibly too old to fight. The dude isn’t even thirty. What the fuck? Naptime’s described as having charisma as bright as the sun—hard disagree on that one. I supposedly have “classic movie star looks” but my reluctance to say much and blank expression points to not much going on behind my pretty face.
“Seriously?” I wave my hand at the television. “I don’t run my mouth like an idiot all the time, so I must be dumb?”
A picture of Molly fills the screen. Tears rolling down her cheeks as she says goodbye to me. Hollow pangs of regret thrum through my chest. If I could go back to that day, there are many things I’d do differently.
“Wait a second, did they call Molly jailbait?” I ask.
Remy glares at me. “That’s the nicest thing they said about her.”
The show starts with all the contestants prepping for a fight. “This was before they brought actual coaches to train us,” I explain.
A lot of time is spent on the girls. Their portions must’ve been filmed in a part of the house I never visited. Kiki’s front and center talking about goals for her future. The interviewer gets her to admit she likes me and thinks I’m “husband material.”
“Christ, that’s creepy,” I mutter. “I never knew they were asking them stuff like that.”
Remy grumbles an annoyed sound.
Then the footage flips to a day they took us out to get fitted for suits to wear to a dinner. “This was a whole different day.” I frown at the television. It’s been so long, all the days have blended together but I’m pretty sure the suits and dinner thing happened days before the fight we were getting ready for.