Page 43 of Knockout Queen

“Merry Christmas. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

I hang up the phone, and Brawler smiles at me. “That sounded like it went well.”

“Really well,” I say.

He reaches his hand out, and I place mine in his. Today was definitely a good day.

18

Ihold Brawler’s hand tightly as he stares down at the simple gravestone. My own heart breaks because I get this feeling. Helplessness. Yearning.

Why?

There’s never been a word that plagued me more than that. Even more than unfair, unjust, wrong or any other adjective I could use to describe what happened. No, it’s definitelywhy.

Some things can’t be made to make sense. When Big Daddy K’s name was spoken all those years ago, I knew he was my why. The reason my parents were taken from me. The reason why I wasn’t whole. The reason I now had a goal to work toward, and the reason why I trained so hard. He was the hate in my heart that fueled everything I did.

I’m starting to become whole again. Little by little, things in my life are changing from abnormal back to my new normal. That doesn’t mean my why is different. It’s still Big Daddy K. It’s still making him pay for the sins he committed against me and countless others. Yes, I walked into a huge pile of shit when I came to the Heights, but it’s what I wanted. I’ll take all that bad as long as I come out with the dream intact in the end: Me looming over Big Daddy K. Grinning. Telling him why it’s me. Why I’m the one who finally got to take him out. Just for a split second, I want the clouds to clear in his mind and realize what he did was wrong. That what he did set off a chain reaction neither one of us could stop.

He thinks he’s untouchable. He thinks he’s the motherfucking queen of England. He certainly thinks he’s the king of the Heights, but even he’s getting a taste of his own misery right now.

The subjects are starting to revolt.

I don’t like Gregory. I’d wager I wouldn’t like many members of the Dragons either, but they’re helping me get to BDK, even if they’re nothing but a distraction for him to focus on while I come up from behind.

Not for the first time, I wonder if I’m as bad as him. I don’t think so though. He kills for inexplicable reasons. Reasons that in his own deranged mind mean something, but not in reality. Me? I should think about the countless lives I’ll save by taking him out. By putting him away far earlier than anyone could imagine, so much death and destruction will be avoided.

After minutes of standing there silently, Brawler shifts on his feet, taking me out of the revenge spiral in my head. I’ve been going there more and more lately, almost as if I can feel K’s demise nearing. It makes butterflies flap in my stomach like crazed insects thirsting for blood. “You okay?” Brawler finally asks, breaking into my thoughts.

I gaze over at him and give him a half smile. It’s been a long time since I had the luxury of thoughts that weren’t plagued with how the guys and I were going to get out of the shit we got ourselves in. “I’m fine,” I say. “Are you? You’re not saying much.”

He stares back down at the gray stone. His broad shoulders slump forward. The wings of his angel tattoos are even more stark in this place of death and loss than they are at any other time. “I guess it’s easy to forget about Manning,” he starts. He lets out a breath that says so much without saying anything at all. “But when it’s right here in my face, it’s difficult not to think about us...as kids...as friends.”

I give him a slight tug until he faces me. Then, I wrap my arms around his waist and lay my head on his chest. He encapsulates me in his python grip. While I listen to his heart beat beneath his skin, I tell him, “Have you ever thought about trying to forgive him?”

He stills.

“Manning brought the Crew to your house, but he was also a victim, Brawler. A victim of hate. Of senseless death.”

His fingers dig into my sides. “I think I’ve been trying to forgive him since he died, but it’s so damn hard.”

I tighten my grip around him until I can’t tell where he ends and I begin. We’re a mesh of bodies and doubts, of fears and limbs. I don’t know much about life, but I know about death. I know about the tragedy of loss. About the ripping anger that threatens to tear at your seams. Thewhy, why, whycry of not wanting to believe what happened.

Maybe I’m just searching for the easy target, but it’s the guys like Big Daddy K who should reap all the blame. Like Mayhem before him, he promised these guys...theseboys...a life of brotherhood and prosperity. He promised them things with a double-edged sword of death and fear. Of conditional kinship. He promised them a life that none of them had while the devil sat on the welcome mat to his tower.

“I’ll keep trying,” Brawler says.

I shake my head into his warmth. “I’m not forcing you into anything. Healing is on you. It’s whatever you’re comfortable with. I don’t care if you hate Manning for the rest of your life, I’m just...talking,” I say lamely.

“I guess—to me—Manning is like my K. He brought the Crew into our lives. Yes, he got killed because of them, but he also killed my sister. He didn’t pull the trigger. He didn’t plan the drive-by, but if we were just the regular people we were supposed to be, none of that would’ve happened. They wouldn’t be here,” he says, gesturing toward the earth at our feet.

“But you can’t reconcile it with the brother you used to know.”

His chest deflates. “Exactly.”

“Then mourn him,” I say. “Mourn the brother he was before he got into the Crew. Mourn the friend you had before he got into the gang. Mourn that guy.”

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