Page 106 of Mean Machine

“All right.” Brooklyn studied the cold sandwich and the small puddle of coagulated cheese clinging to it. He shook his head and focused on his iced tea.

“I know you’re close with them. You think that’s going to be a problem?” Joseph finally asked.

“They helped me get ready for the fights against Odysseus and Thorne, the first one, back when. Rose is dangerous as hell—much more than Thorne.” Because Rose couldmove. With hundreds of fights under his belt, versus a couple dozen for an average seasoned fighter, Rose out-thought even self-styled veterans of the ring. There were no tricks he hadn’t seen, no factors he hadn’t considered, and his combinations were as clean as they were devastating. So far, Rose had never been reduced to just slugging it out—he was a cold, tough son of a bitch in the ring, meticulously dismantling whatever fool stepped in there with him.

While it was true that amateur boxing had very little to do with the much rougher, much dirtier world of fighting for money, and a lot of brilliant amateurs hit a cliff when they stumbled from one world into the other, Rose hadn’t. He’d always been truly exceptional, a great boxer from one of the greatest boxing nations on earth.

See, in Cuba, boxers are folk heroes.

“Yes, and you’re friends.” Joseph lifted his eyebrows.

“He gets what, ten million to fight me? And a shot at my titles? I’m not worried about him.”

That slight hesitation told Brooklyn that Joseph was tempted to call his bullshit, but uncharacteristically, he didn’t. Maybe it was because they both knew that Brooklyn would fight whoever won the right to face him in the ring. Friend, foe, nemesis, it really didn’t make a difference. Rumour had it that Les was building up another talented heavyweight over in London, no doubt with the hope to eventually cut Brooklyn back down to size. But that was years away, and his new protégé would have to fight his way through Reid, and yes, Rose, and it amused Brooklyn that, by all accounts, Les was making a fighter who could win against Thorne, except Thorne had been the last of the dinosaurs. This was a new age of mammals—fitter, faster, and more technically accomplished creatures.

THE BUZZduring the weigh-in was fantastic—the electricity striking sparks off all attendants, and people glowed with an excitement that Brooklyn had never really felt before. Or maybe it was the fact that it felt stronger now because he didn’t manage to sink into it and enjoy it.

He’d been happy to play along every time up to now, but that eagerness for bad blood, to see antagonism, to hear the dissing, to wait for that quote they could splash across the blogs and websites and newspapers, felt much more predatory now. It didn’t seem so much a celebration of boxing to him as being one of a matching pair of dishes served up for consumption—for the first time, that hungry, deranged gleam in people’s eyes seemed nasty and awful, and Brooklyn found it hard to meet people’s gazes.

Rose, of course, was perfect. His playful machismo was really good in front of the audience, and maybe the only thing Brooklyn liked about the press conference was to see journalists warm to him. He was also extremely relaxed, and Brooklyn admired how he answered difficult questions with another question that implied he cared very much what the journalist thought about it.

He laughed often and freely, played to Em, who sat in the audience, looking somewhat less at ease, sharper and more watchful, but Brooklyn noted Em had brought his own posse of friends from MMA—rough-looking guys with beards and neck tattoos, whose well-behaved gentleness belied the fact that these guys could as easily choke people out and twist them into pretzels as sit there and joke with Em.

And there were the women, Cuquina, aka “Cookie,” and Soledad, who’d somehow appeared around Em and Rose a few months ago. Had Santos brought them in after the brothers had returned from their quick dash to Brooklyn’s victory party?

In any case, they were now in all the photos, and press had begun referring to them as mutual “best friends,” and Em’s and Rose’s “girlfriends,” though there had never been a statement except for Instagram photos, and sometimes it was photos of both of them with Em or both of them with Rose, and any kind of mix, as if they hadn’t quite decided who was whose girlfriend.

Meanwhile, Soledad was a seasoned MMA fighter herself—which led to people speculating that she was Em’s girlfriend. She’d just launched her own “athleisure” brand and had designed both her own kit and that of the brothers, while Cookie fronted an independent Spanish metal band, and Rose had appeared in the video of her new single, “Sicario,” featuring some of his very best counterpunches and knockouts set to absolutely blazing power metal beats.

Since they all lived together, and never commented on their exact relationships to each other, there were rumours of a “polyamorous arrangement.” One lifestyle magazine then added to the speculation by photographing all four of them in a large bed—the women wearing pyjamas, the men in matching and pretty skimpy boxers, and they’d arranged Rose and Em next to each other with the women flanking them. All of them faced the camera with a “What are you going to do about it?” expression.

What the media was doing was eating it up. Figured that the best way to avoid speculation about why Rose was living with his brother and generally inseparable from him was to make the situation too complicated to understand, and just a bit scandalous. It was a risky, smart move, with the implied sexual pairings enough of a turn-on for the dirty old men in the sport, while also appealing to those who wanted to see a relationship involving four people.

Brooklyn shook himself awake when it came to stripping off and stepping onto the scales. His weight was exactly on point, as expected, because Joseph kept him within a pretty narrow range of about five pounds, which barely allowed for a stray kebab or piece of cake, but Joseph also had stories of boxers passing out inside their boiler suits because they’d gone off the rails.

Rose stripped off and was two pounds under his usual fighting weight.

Then everybody shifted around for the face-off, and Brooklyn found himself staring at Rose, who sobered somewhat from his grin and looked him straight in the eyes, the warm dark amber of his irises giving very little away, though half a smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth.

Simply staring at a man like this, Brooklyn found, was a lot harder than it seemed. It was important that every person with a camera got a shot, but people were also watching to see who flinched, who’d blink first—with dozens of journalists and hangers-on reading every minute shift in their expressions, it forced them into a crucible where none could easily break away, while the heat and pressure between them dialled up.

Then Rose moved, and maybe Brooklyn should have flinched or defended himself, or donesomethingother than just stand there, surprised, when Rose took his neck with one hand and kissed him squarely on the lips. It was no more than a peck, really, closed lips touching closed lips, but Brooklyn damn near forgot to react appropriately, which was to shove Rose away. No point—before he could even touch Rose, the man danced away like any decent boxer would and grinned at him.

The audience’s surprised whoops and cheers were more mocking than scandalised. Rose wasn’t the first boxer who’d kissed an opponent as a way to rile the other man up or imply the opponent was queer, but in Brooklyn’s case, that fact was well-known, and what people saw was a display of machismo and all-out balls to step over the line of a man who’d earned his moniker Mean Machine over and over.

Brooklyn stood, dumbstruck, actually rattled, though Rose’s wink told him this was a game, an insider joke rather than public humiliation. He knew people were waiting for a response, some kind of put-down, a scathing challenge to regain his standing, but Brooklyn had nothing.

Joseph and the rest of his crew saved him by forming a wall between him and Rose and leading Brooklyn off the stage and into the background.

“Don’t let that guy get into your head,” Joseph told him sternly.

Too late. Way too late for that, Coach.

ROSE WALKEDinto the ring with “Sicario”—Cookie was up on the stage personally and sang her heart out while Rose took a leisurely stroll towards the ring, pausing to touch hands reaching for him.

Brooklyn noted that Cookie had taken to clutching a bloodred rosary that dangled from her hand while she shouted into the mike. “Rosary” was apparently the meaning of Rose’s name in Spanish, and his team certainly used all that to their advantage. Rose went as “Steel Rose,” which dominated all of his branding. Brooklyn followed Rose’s progress on the screen just inside the tunnel while bouncing on his feet under Joseph’s watchful eyes. Rose arrived in the ring with his crew and received the applause and shouts from the audience, waving at them, but he seemed uncharacteristically sombre.

“What do the bookies say, Coach?”

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