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I nod. My hands shake. I flex them until they stop.

In the third, I finally use the reach Dan keeps shouting about. I catch Micah at the end of the jab, step away from his lead foot, and make him come through a right cross to reach me. When he shoots, I sprawl and circle out. For five minutes, the cage feels familiar again.

The fourth takes it back. Micah feints low, draws my hands down, and lands a left hook that knocks me onto one knee. I get up against the fence, but he stays on me, ripping punches into my ribs. I spend the last minute covering up and fighting for an underhook.

The referee leans close enough that I can hear him over the crowd. “Show me something, Butler.” I turn off the fence and land a jab. Then another. Enough to keep him from stopping it. Not enough to win the round.

Back on the stool, I stare at the bucket between my feet. That could be a ten-eight. Dan grips my shoulders and makes me look at him. “Last round. You can’t give him another one.”

Round five, we both come out swinging.

Nothing left in the tank. Legs like wet sand. Micah’s left eye has swollen at the corner and his lip is split, and I can feel my own blood drying tight on my chin. We plant our feet in the center of the cage and trade.

Jab. Cross. Hook. His shots land like bricks, mine like knives. The crowd rises.

I throw a right elbow off a clinch break, short and vicious, and it catches the ridge above his eye. Skin splits. Blood pours down the side of his face, bright red against dark skin.

I flinch. I actually flinch at my own work.

Micah doesn’t. He grins through the red.

“That’s the best you’ve got?”

Then he steps in and buries his fist under my ribs.

The breath leaves me all at once. My knees buckle, and I fold over, clutching my stomach, stars swimming across my eyes. Somewhere far off, thousands of people are screaming. Dan is screaming louder.

Up. Get up.

I straighten. I don’t know how. I lunge and clamp an arm around his waist and we crash into each other again.

Forehead to forehead. His blood drips onto my cheek. Mine is smeared across his chin. We lean on each other like two drunks holding a wall up, panting, and there are maybe forty seconds left on the clock.

My arm slides around his back. His hand clamps behind my neck.

Nobody could tell from the outside. It looks like a clinch. It looks like tactics.

I say it before I can stop myself, so low the mic can’t catch it.

“I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Micah goes still.

Everything in him goes still. His breathing hitches, and the grip in my hair loosens, and for one second his eyes drop to my mouth exactly the way they did at the face-off.

The bell rings.

The ref wedges his arm between us, and we spring apart.

I stagger to my corner. Dan shoves a towel at my face, talking a mile a minute, but the words slide off me. Across the cage, Micah stands in the middle of the canvas with blood running down his cheek, not moving, not going to his corner, just looking.

Nobody warned me that I could say the worst possible thing out loud and feel lighter for it.

The ref collects us. We stand at center canvas, one on each side of him, his hands clamped around our wrists. I can’t feel my legs. I can barely feel my face. Micah’s shoulder brushes mine, and I stare hard at the lights so I won’t look at him.

The ring announcer strolls out with a card, taking his time.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a decision. Judge Harmon scores the bout forty-eight forty-seven.”