Page 2 of Finding Hope

I train too damn hard, and I train with the best of the best.

We. Can’t. Lose.

But my strength and the hours I spend in the gym day after day don’t mean a damn thing as I sit on the road with Steph’s rapidly wilting body against my chest.

My speed and precision didn’t mean shit when the drunk driverslammed into my car, folding us in half and flipping us in to the freeway center barrier.

My success in the octagon and on magazine covers won’t buy Steph’s light back again.

Money can’t fix everything.

The noise around us is like steel on steel, crashing waves on drowning ears, flashing lights on pained eyes.

It hurts. It all hurts, but none of it makes sense.

It’s just chaos.

One second, it’s a muffled roar in my ears, a single blended noise buzzing in my head, then clarity slams through and it’s people screaming and cars screeching, glass breaking and people crying.

Mecrying.

“Stay with me, baby! Wake up. Please wake up.” I grope Steph’s small body in a desperate search foranymuscle or bone that remains intact.

Her beautiful eyes flutter open and have my heart racing. The broken glass bites into my legs. The sounds of honking horns and do-gooders rushing around scream inside my head.

Shut up! Everybody, shut up.

She opens her mouth to speak, but blood spills out instead. Her broken chest heaves as she seizes and chokes, then her eyes close with fatigue and have my failing heart revving with panic.

“No!” I shake her fragile body. “No! Wake up, Steph. Wake up, baby. Help’s coming.”

“I called 9-1-1!”

My eyes snap up to a random balding man. Spare tire around his waist. Jowls. Red eyes. Doesn’t take care of himself.

Bringing my eyes back to Steph, I watch her laboriously drag in air. “Steph, baby, hold on to me.” I hold her as gently as I can, though the adrenaline slamming around my body fogs up my perception. I don’t want to crush her, but I can’t let go.

She’s so tiny.

She still looks the same as she did back in high school, with the adorable freckles, and the tiny overbite in her teeth. Her curly hair that she’s never been able to tame, brown with a slight tinge of red, flies free in the gentle breeze and reminds me of the million times I’ve run my fingers through it over the years.

I’ve known her foronlyseven years, but it feels like a lifetime. We were just kids when she first stumbled through the school halls, ducking her head low and avoiding eye contact as much as humanly possible.

I watched her for weeks. Months! I watched, because she was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen in my life.

And I knew beautiful girls.

By the time I met her in high school, I was the youngest brother in a giant family of fighters, and all of those fighters were married to beautiful women.

Some of those beautiful women, including my sister, were also fighters.

I was surrounded by fit, young, beautiful people, and I was ringside for years watching my sisters fight, then at the world championships with all the celebrities and Botox injected wannabes watching my brothers.

I was never without beautiful people, yet Steph’s shy smile and darting eyes dragged me in and tied me down.

I tried to talk to her at school, I tried to catch her eye, but every time my six and a half feet approached her tiny five and a half, she’d let out a squeak and duck into the closest bathroom.

I didn’t give up.

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