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"The paper says a night you've fought."

"I didn't fight him. I stopped him."

She studies my face for a while. "Then you kept it. Good. You also told me that when the last truck was gone, you could put your hands on me."

I've been angry since Dutch coughed out his name at my gate, and I don't touch her when I'm angry.

"Give me a minute."

I sit on the edge of the ring with my forearms on my knees. She doesn't argue. She settles on her old hay bale by the chained back door and waits.

The rage is gone. It drained out of me while she told Torres about her own hair in a steady voice.

I ran the card all night knowing she was on the other side of that wall, and I wanted her through every fight of it. I want to run her down and put her on my canvas.

I stand up. She sees me do it and comes across the dirt to me.

She was pale when Beckett brought her in. Her color's back now, and her hands hang easy at her sides.

She isn't looking at the back wall where she stood listening to Dutch. She's looking at me, and I know that look from a hay bale years ago.

"I'm not angry," I tell her. "Before you say yes to anything, you ought to know what I am instead."

"Tell me."

"This isn't about him. I'm not taking you down because I couldn't hit him. I've wanted to run you down since you sat on that bale at nineteen and looked at me like that."

Color climbs her throat.

"Here's what I want," I say. "You run. I come after you. When I catch you, you fight me for real, as hard as you've got. Hit me if you want to."

I tip my head toward the old school bell.

"You keep fighting till I ring that bell. When it rings, you quit, and you hold still for whatever I do to you next."

"And where do I end up?"

"Once you're on my canvas, you're on your back every second. I don't put you facedown, and I don't put my weight on your back or your neck. I don't touch your wrists. Your ribs aren't healed, so I don't tackle you. When I take you down, you land on me first."

"And if I want it to stop?"

"Bandera stops it, wherever I am and whatever I'm doing. Now you say yes, or you say no and I walk you home."

"They ran me down once," she says. "Dutch caught me in a ditch, and nobody was ever going to stop him. You'll catch me, and you'll stop the second I say that word. That's why I want it to be you."

"Say yes, then."

"Yes."

"Take off your shoes."

She toes off her sneakers, leaves them by the ring, and stands barefoot on the packed dirt.

I unbuckle my gun belt and lay it on the apron by my corner post, with the radio beside it.

"Go."

She's gone before I finish the word. She doesn't run for the side door, the first place I'd look. She darts along the back wall and disappears between the stacked bales under the loft, where the work lights don't reach.