Dances with Monsters(3)

Moreover, the fact that he had escaped serious punishment for going AWOL—meaning, indefinite imprisonment–still both amazed him and shamed him. He just couldn't live with himself as a decorated Marine after witnessing his brothers-in-arms and his best friend, Joaquin, getting gunned down in the friendly fire incident, and he'd left. Friendly fire, he mused. The term was so deceptively innocuous.

He had been ordered to several months of counseling but had still received an honorable discharge. Then, he had retreated to John's house to lick his wounds for a little while before picking himself back up and resuming his life.

He almost hated to admit it, but the counseling he had been forced to receive had actually helped. So did having a purpose, a mission, a job in life and finally discovering his true passion for fighting. He knew he was good; he wasn't overconfident and he stayed grounded. He knew he could get knocked out or forced to tap out in every fight; he wasn't invincible and there was always a better fighter lurking around the next corner. He just hadn't come across that fighter or that corner yet. Nonetheless, he trained with that expectation.

His thoughts turned to his family. One of the things that had proved to be a huge surprise to Heath was the relationship that he was cultivating with his new family. It had always just been him and Mom for so long; he'd known he'd had a brother and father of course, technically speaking, but he spent so many years being so angry with them both that it almost just didn't count to him.

Now, though...there was no more Mom. But he had a father, with whom his bond was silent and gradually growing stronger. And a big brother, with whom he was re-developing and re-establishing a friendship. He had a feisty, caring sister-in-law and two beautiful little nieces that had quickly taken possession of his heart with no signs of ever giving it back. And that was enough to make his head spin alone. He'd never known that he could actually experience good things like this given all the tragedy he had seen in his life, but here it was. He couldn't not be cautious, and he still had some walls up; Rome wasn't built in a day, after all. But yet, in the past six months he felt like he'd come further than in his entire thirty years.

With another deep yawn and a quick prayer of deep thankfulness for the chance at a fresh start, he leaned over and flicked off the lamp on his nightstand, bathing room in relaxing blackness.

***

The next morning began like it always did—he woke up at five and went for a long run before coming back to his apartment to shower and eat a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs, turkey bacon, whole grain toast and black coffee. Then, he headed to the gym.

It wasn't a requirement that he be there from open to close, but rarely did he actually ever have anything else he needed to be doing. In those instances, he left Rex in charge but always returned. In addition to office duties—mountains and mountains of paperwork, payroll, processing new applications and the like—he inspected the equipment to make sure it was in top form, conducted private lessons, did his own training, made idle chitchat with the clientele, sparred and in general took care of whatever presented itself as an issue for the day. His days were long, but he chose his own hours and there was rarely anywhere else he wanted to be.

The day went relatively smoothly, although the impending issue with the air conditioning system that had been showing signs of disaster for several weeks finally impacted head on and the entire unit finally went out at three o'clock. Heath instructed all of the employees to prop open doors and windows to get some air circulating and much to the benefit of the clientele, no one seemed particularly troubled by the recent turn of events. However, attempting to get someone to come out and fix a broken air conditioning unit in the late-afternoon on a Wednesday was harder than Heath personally felt it needed to be. He ended up spending two more hours on the phone with an HVAC guy trying to set up a time, and despite the specialist commenting three times he had no appointments for the day, he told Heath the soonest he could come out to take a "looksee" would be tomorrow morning around ten. Heath gritted his teeth, struggling for patience, and accepted the appointment before slamming the phone down and leaning his chair back against the wall, shutting his eyes and swiping his hands down tiredly over his face. He sighed loudly.

"Tough day, boss?" Rex's teasing jab came as he sauntered through the office door, dropping a stack of mail on Heath's desk.

"Sometimes this 'ownership/manager' thing is mad overrated," Heath muttered, righting his chair and reaching for the neat stack of mail, held together with a rubber band. They were mostly bills, as he had anticipated, but a large, glossy envelope caught his eye and despite the fact that it was addressed to "Carter Steele" he tore it open, pulling out a sharply designed, thick piece of glossy cardstock. It was an announcement/invitation to yet another middleweight MMA tourney, and as Heath's eyes scanned the flyer, it was shaping up to be Ultimate Warrior part two, possibly even greater than that. In fact, it was being hosted by another huge MMA corporation, owned by none other than Riley's main competitor Maddox Smith, and it was called "Smackdown".