Kyle David Watson was 34 years old and a paradox. A college dropout shouldn't have had his business savvy. Someone of his intellect should never have had such trouble remaining focused in college. His calm, quiet demeanor didn't match his muscled, 6'2" frame. His nerd-like fascination with gadgets and technology didn't match his athletic ability. His apathy toward team sports of any kind didn't match his broad shoulders, bear like arms or massive hands. His boyish good looks and casual dress didn't match his age. His catatonic shyness with women didn't match their desire for him. His normal peaceful, easygoing manner did not match his cold, calculated rage as he sat at the bar, facing away from his tormentor.
"It doesn't have to be like this. You don't have to fight for her. You can have the bitch and still walk away."
"Fuck you, asshole. I am not here to fight for her. She already picked me. I am here to teach you a lesson."
The arrogance of youth. It is what Kyle hated the most about the man standing behind him. It was as palpable as his douche bag body spray that seemed to fill the room with a foul stench. Still, Kyle wasn't about to risk going to jail for a fight. Not even a fight against the man who was fucking his wife. He swallowed the remainder of his bourbon in one gulp then stood abruptly.
When he turned he saw exactly what he expected. The young man was flanked by four of his friends and was at least four inches taller and 30 pounds heavier than Kyle. But it was his smirk that sealed his fate.
"Not here. I'll be at Manny's in an hour. If you show up, and Manny lets you into the ring, you can have your shot."
"Oh, I'll be there, asshole. You can count on it. But you'd better be there or I will skip all the intros at our next meeting and get straight to kicking your ass!"
"Don't worry. I'll be there."
***
October 6, 2011 was the day Kyle Watson lost his wife. He just didn't know it at the time. There were at a holiday office party, a boring one at that. He had seen her kiss another man, a business associate several years her senior. It was a kiss with potential. And she knew he had seen her. The look of panic mixed with embarrassment on her face told him she knew she was caught. The look of fear in the man's eyes was proof that he knew he was caught, too. At home later that evening, when she knelt by his side crying her eyes out and gasping for breath, while he was sitting on the couch, she apologized. Kyle thought it was enough. They never spoke of it again. That may have been a mistake, but it didn't feel like it at the time.
October 6, 2011 didn't feel like such a bad day. Seeing his wife kiss another man made Kyle feel jealous and angry and sick to his stomach. He welcomed those feelings. Being able to feel anything at all was a welcome change. It had been nine months of empty. Nine months of being lost in his own life, his own house, his own skin. Nine months since he had lost his little girl.
Emily was nine years old at the time of the accident. She had a winning smile, impossible brunette curls, and the voice of a miniature princess. She was also stubborn as a mule, unashamedly curious about everything and had the ability to melt her father with one look from her glacially blue eyes. Kyle only missed her when his heart was beating.
The child who had taken her life wasn't speeding, drinking or texting. He was in his first year of driving his first car, a meticulously clean, piece of shit, clunker. There was no way he could have stopped his car in time. No one could have. Definitely not a sixteen year old.
Emily had been sledding with Dana's parents. It was the first big snowfall of the year. Seven inches of pristine powder had paved the way towards his daughter's death. Dana's parents weren't at fault either. The hill had been prime real estate for winter fun since Kyle had been a child. There was almost twenty feet of flat land between the bottom of the hill and the street, five more feet of sidewalk and a bank of snow that was capable of stopping the largest of runaway inner tubes. Emily's should have stopped in plenty of time. But it didn't.
Dana's father, Charles Whitmore, III, had recounted the morbid tale to Kyle dozens of times. Apologizing every time. He would cry as he remembered Emily barreling down the hill over and over, climbing a little bit higher every time, getting braver and braver with each climb. It was only a few seconds. He and his wife were preparing to leave and trying to decide on the best place for lunch. In that small amount of time Emily chose to race to the very top of the hill and take a running dive on to her tube, head first.
Then came the series of what ifs. What if Charles Whitmore hadn't tripped in the deep snow as he tried in vain to stop the young? What if Emily was a year older and 5 pounds heavier or had placed her hand out to touch the snow? Would her momentum have been stopped? No one would know for sure. But what followed was a perfect cacophony of screams and screeching brakes and sirens and wailing that ended only when Emily Christine Watson was pronounced dead at 11:46 in the morning on January 6, 2011, with barely a month left until what would have been her tenth birthday.
What would have been almost never was. That thought placated Kyle's anger at the world when he would let himself be angry. Emily was born six weeks premature. The doctors had waited only long enough for a single test to indicate that Emily's under developed lungs would function at all outside of the womb before they wheeled his severely ill wife to the operating room. Kyle's vocabulary grew every minute he was at the hospital. Preeclampsia. Severe hypertension. Cesarean section. Hemorrhage. Hysterectomy. Neonatal intensive care. But, after just a few weeks in the hospital, both mother and daughter were safely at home.
Emily was so small that she couldn't nurse properly. So while his wife dutifully pumped her breast milk for their child, it was Kyle who prepared the syringe and fed Emily by allowing her to suck on the tip of his pinkie finger while painstakingly slowly dosing her food through the attached plastic tubing. The process sealed their bond as a family. Mother and father and daughter. Wife and husband and child.
The next nine years flew by in the blink of an eye. Kyle cherished those years and the love he felt from both Emily and Dana. It made him feel safe and whole and grounded. He missed the fact that Emily could never call for him once. It was always, "Daddy! Daddy!" He missed turning around from his playtime with Emily to see his wife leaning against the door frame with a contended smile brightening her face. He missed those things and feelings so much.
***
The counseling sessions weren't going well. Kyle knew that. He had hoped Dana would open up to anyone about what she was feeling. The counselor was his last hope.
He had tried to talk about adoption, or foster parenting, or just living with the fact that he and Dana had loved a precious little girl and now that part of their lives was over. They had grieved. Maybe it hadn't been enough but Dana remained hidden behind her job, and her work friends and their drinking, and other strange behavior. Kyle couldn't put his feeling into words, but he knew something wasn't right. That kiss was just one of the signs that had left him feeling uneasy.
***
Miguel 'Manny' Martinez was a former gang member turned good guy. By day, he ran a community center for troubled youth. By night, he ran the area's only boxing and mixed martial arts training center. He was also a beast of a man. Six feet five inches, two-hundred thirty pounds of solid, chiseled muscle. He mostly hid the tattoos that told the story of his former life, but the tigers paw and claws that curved around the base of his neck were always visible and a constant reminder of where he had come from. He was also the best trainer in the tri-state area with golden gloves champions and MMA up and comers seeking his services in droves. Kyle was not going to be his latest and greatest.
Manny sought out Kyle after the dedication ceremony for the new safety features, like the 10-foot high safety fence, at Hide Memorial Park. The man seemed lost while giving his speech. Manny recognized the pain having been witness to too many families that had lost a child to violence. He felt he could help this man. And felt a calling to do just that.
Their conversations had been brief at first, nothing more than introductions and condolences. But a strange fellowship formed between the man who lost his child in an accident and the man who had seen too many children lost to the streets.
It was Manny who suggested Kyle come to train at his gym as a form of stress relief.
"The sweat will do you good. Trust me," he had told Kyle.
And it did.
His first session in the gym was designed for a single purpose, to work Kyle to exhaustion. Manny punished Kyle's body with aerobic activities and strength training and when Kyle felt he couldn't move another inch, Manny pushed him harder. Then Manny drove Kyle home and helped him into his house and put him in bed, where Kyle fell into his first night of real sleep in almost a year.
A sore but refreshed Kyle showed up at the gym the next night and nearly every night thereafter. Training, sparring, learning and talking. It brought him a sense of focus and clarity and connection to his body and spirit. Unfortunately, he just wasn't a very good fighter. Manny knew why. Kyle didn't have a mean bone in his body. The word arrogant wasn't even in his dictionary. The body of a titan, the killer instinct of a mouse. Those thoughts actually made Manny smile. He had not known very many genuinely nice people in his life. It was a nice change of pace.
***
She broke up with him over the phone. It was so pathetic and cliché, all Kyle could do was laugh at the drudgery that had become his life. But it also made him take a good hard look at himself. It was true, he wasn't happy. At least she had been right about that.
"It's just that with me being out here and you being back there, I am just not having any fun and I should at least be enjoying myself. But, I'm not. You can't be happy, either. It's nothing permanent. If we are meant to be together, we will be, just not while we are so far apart."
"You're breaking up with me? Over the phone? You just broke up with me."
Kyle said, or rather whispered, the words out loud mostly so that he could hear them, to make sure that what he heard was actually real.
"Kyle, honey, it's not like that."
"No. It's ok, Dana. Sew your wild oats, and all that. I get it. Listen, I've got to run. I'll talk to you later."
Dana Whitmore had been Kyle's only girlfriend. To be frank, though Kyle had an exceptionally large group of friends, from both sexes, Dana was one of the few people he actually felt comfortable with. She was just so nice and had always been from their very first meeting on their very first day in middle school home room. It didn't hurt that she was cute as a button back then and aged into an absolute knockout. Kyle decided it didn't matter how nice or beautiful she was. She didn't want him anymore and that was that. He did wonder briefly, however irrational it may have sounded to anyone who had ever laid eyes on him, if he would ever have sex again, having lost his virginity to a girl who no longer loved him.
Kyle was twenty years old and just starting his junior year, when he dropped out of college. Everyone told him he was crazy, and even though he thought they were probably right, he just couldn't drag himself out of bed to go to class. He hated his classes, he wasn't very fond of the professors and he couldn't believe that some of his classmates had even graduated high school. He just knew he didn't feel comfortable, or that he was learning anything that was relevant to the real world, and he felt that the worst case scenario was that he would take a semester break, lose half of his tuition, and try again later.
He never had to worry about it.
