“You looked at me as a hobby.”

“Do you expect me to go all bromance on you right now and tell you I changed my mind along the way? Wait here and I’ll ask a guard to pick up a pink flower for you.” He let go of his sarcasm then and pointed his finger at my chest. “Once you do this, you’ll be thanking me for not protecting you a long time ago. The second you start standing up for yourself, you won’t have to depend on anybody but you.”

I sighed. He was right. I needed to grow a backbone. I’d been going on and on all my life about being a man, yet I shrunk away in every difficult situation.

It was time to stop.

“Remember,” Reaper then said in a low voice, “hit him first. Do it when he’s least expecting it. I suggest right after he’s grabbed his food and is on his way to a table. Hit him hard, Ryker, really fucking hard. It’ll jumble him up for a bit and he’ll lose his edge. And after he’s beaten the shit out of you, if you still have it in you, go for an uppercut. That shit’ll knock him out good.”

My mouth dropped open. “After he’s beaten the shit out of me, did you say?”

Reaper nodded, like water off a duck’s back. “Yeah. Good luck.”

Stunned, I went to leave when he grabbed me by the arm.

“By the way,” he added, “I forgot to give you this.”

I turned my head to look at him when –

THWACK!

White, hot searing pain shot through the side of my face. I let out a breath of air as my vision scrambled to right itself.

Fucker just slapped me!

“You need to be a little more aggressive,” I heard him say through the whooshing of blood in my ears. “You need that adrenaline firing through your body. You can feel it now, can’t you? That anger? Yeah, fucker, feel it. A good hit to the face where the nerve endings are close to the brain is a sure fucking way to get you going. Now jump the bastard while I eat my apple.”

He was right. I felt angry. My body shook from the sudden adrenaline coursing through my system. I needed to move while it lasted. Needed to get this done and pray I didn’t end up in a body bag on the other end. Half of my face was numb by the time I hurried to Animal just as he left the line-up.

He didn’t see it coming. Why should he? I wasn’t anyone here. And for that brief second before I raised my fist the way Reaper trained me and sent it flying to his face as we passed each other, I thought of what Allie said to me once after I’d talked about trying to fight like Heath.

“You don’t need to be like your brother, Ryker. Being tough doesn’t mean bashing someone’s face in and getting money for it at the end. Being tough can come from inside of you too.”

I never really understand that until now. I didn’t have to be physically big to be strong. Allie was right. I had to show people I was strong from within.

My fist connected to the side of his face with a sickening crack. Completely unprepared, he stumbled to his right and the tray slipped from his clasp and crashed to the floor. The cafeteria immediately went quiet and all eyes fell on us. Animal balanced himself as what I did began to dawn on his face. The rage surfaced in him and I realized all hell was about to break loose.

I glanced quickly behind me and at Reaper. He had his hand up at the guards that had come to step in, stopping them from intruding. They obeyed him and watched us, and it was then I knew I was completely alone.

Animal lunged at me and I fell back to the ground, my head slamming against the hard floor. He straddled my hips and sent fist after fist to my face. I struggled against his iron grip, fumbling with my arms as I covered my head with them. Panic gnawed at me from within, and in the chaos, I shut my eyes for a brief moment and tapped into the worst thing that ever happened to me.

I thought of that baby I found.

Dirty.

Soiled.

Barely moving.

I thought of Ricardo’s desperation to abandon her.

Abandon a helpless baby…

The anger. The fucking anger that possessed me was indescribable.

And it was then I felt a surge of power within me. A kind of explosive rage that amplified my strength like nothing else before. I opened my eyes and with all my might, I head butted Animal when he leaned down to shove my arms away. He growled out in pain, half his body falling to my side, and I managed to push him off my hips. I felt like my head was going to crumble from the force of the hit, but I was operating solely on my newfound ability feel that anger – anger that numbed me from the pain’s intensity.

We fought, balled up in each other, hurling punches at one another while the crowd walling us in began to scream from all angles. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t even breathe as I defended myself against a man I’d never have thought of crossing before.

He beat me to a pulp, and even when I was too hurt to breathe and too tired to swing my arms, I still gave it all I got. This was my message to everyone around me. You want to fight me? Be prepared to work for it. I wasn’t going to back down. I wasn’t going to be a pussy and cower in fear of being beaten.

No, I was using my rage and painting his face red too. Proving to everyone that just because I was smaller than him, it didn’t mean I was weaker.

It was strangely empowering. It made whatever fear I had in this place disappear.

The guards eventually broke us up when the intensity of our hits died off, and I figured it was probably under Reaper’s authority to end the fight. I went straight to the medical room, and the entire time they dragged me away, cuffed like an animal in front of all the stunned prisoners, I smiled a sloppy, bloody smile at anyone that could see.

They called me mad as a hatter after that.

*

“You did well,” Reaper said, giving me a pat on the back.

I let out a hiss from the pain and smiled brightly at him. He shuddered at my puffy lips and swollen face. I couldn’t open my eye, and the other only lifted halfway.

“You also look like a fucking blowfish.”

I shrugged, and even that hurt like a motherfucker. “At least I did it, right?”

He just stared at me for a moment as I attempted to eat my morning porridge. And then, out of nowhere, his mouth widened into a grin – one, that I was sure all the ladies flocked to – and he laughed. Just laughed. A real fucking laugh for once. And he shook his head at the same time.

“Ryker,” he said, in between his laughter, “you’re a fucking psycho, man. I really didn’t think you were going to go through with it. Fuckin’ hell, I was just gonna give you a fuckin’ pat on the back for getting near the fucker. You… surprised me. And I’m not usually surprised.”