Caged: Cellar Door Series by K. Pars Page A

slowly, holding all the extra energy I felt burning through me tight into myself, I walked from the living room back to my bedroom. Once I got the door shut, I ripped my shirt up over my head, tossing it to a corner before unbuttoning my jeans and pushing them down over my thighs. I stepped out of them and kicked them to the same corner the shirt had ended up in, both landing in front of the hamper. I reached in my drawer and grabbed a pair of Under Armour boxer briefs and my fight shorts. Beyond that, I didn’t go to a fight with anything else but tapped knuckles. Bare fucking minimum. No flourishes and shit for me and quite frankly, mouth pieces were for pussies but we were required to wear them so that would be added right before I entered the cage.
    My shorts weren’t extra long with shit on them like some fighters liked to wear.  My opponents didn’t need anything else to grab on to. Slipping a pair of sweats over my fight shorts, the elastic band snapped at my waist as I released the fabric and bent over to grab my hoodie off my bed. I pulled the cotton blend over me, the fabric bagging over my torso and pulled the hood up, all black, just like my mood. Shouldering my gym bag, I walked back towards the living room not sparing Matt a glance before I passed through our front door and got in my truck. It was fight night. Time to get serious. He would meet me there. He always did.
    Parking my truck around back at Cellar Door, I slammed the door shut, my gym bag over my shoulder and moved towards the doors I’d been so damn in need of passing between two weeks ago. My head got stuck, but my body kept moving. Two weeks ago I’d been in the main club area having a drink when Kylee had showed up. Two weeks later I was where I wanted to be and pissed because of it. If I believed in it, I’d swear karma was at work. Good thing I believed in skill, not that fate driven bitch that seemed to fuck shit up.
    I didn’t have to pull ID; the doors were pulled open for me by the bouncers, club regular employee’s that had been working the basement for as long as I’d been fighting down there, likely even longer. I tossed a nod to them and took a sharp right, another set of door’s opening. This set only the fighters and their crew got to enter. A chin tip towards the dudes watching those doors and I was off striding down the hall that would take me to the locker room I’d use to warm up in. Each fighter on the card had one. The basement was better built than the club floors upstairs but most folks would never know it. The real cash was made down here. Go figure, my cash flow was funded from the bottom of a pit. Yup….so my fucking scene.
    I was pulling my hoodie off when the door to my room opened and shut. My back was to it but I didn’t tense. Not just anybody could get back to these rooms and I knew exactly who was at my back. It wasn’t somebody that would put a knife in it. Matthew Layne had been in my life as long as Kylee had and probably had put up with the worst in me. I tried to unload him of that burden but he just refused to be cast off. Matt had stuck around with me even on my darkest days. Fucker was a glutton for punishment. Had to be.
    He didn’t speak, just grabbed the roll of tape from my bag and moved around in front of me. I automatically laid out one arm, spread my fingers apart so he could begin running the tape around my hand, my wrist, through my knuckles and start all over again until my hand was done up right.  Switching, I pulled my right arm to my side and slid out my left, letting him repeat the process on that hand. He didn’t speak, I didn’t apologize. It was fight time, I was in my zone and Matt had as much cash on the line as I did. He wasn’t about to fuck with my mojo but I knew he wasn’t done. Matt wasn’t a push over. He’d have his say but it would be on his terms, now wasn’t the time.
    I locked my fingers together; flexing them against one another after Matt tore off the