Chapter 3: Blood on the Bag
The heavy bag swung on its chain, a metronome of frustration in the silent, cavernous room. Thump-thump-thump. Matt’s gloves were a blur, the impacts jarring up his wrists, into his shoulders. Leather sighed each time he connected. He’d traded the public gym’s citrus sterility for the private, familiar scent of his own sweat and the clean leather of the bag. It wasn’t helping.
The image wouldn’t leave him. Leo’s hand closing around Dasha’s wrist. The clean, violent grace of her pulling free. I have my own windfall.
He drove a cross into the bag, picturing the smug, knowing look on the face of a director who’d called him a “safe choice.” Another combination, for the whispers in dark corners of premiere after-parties. A hook for the constant, low-grade hum of being perceived, even now, alone in a five-million-dollar house. Especially now.
The door to the gym sighed open. He didn’t need to look. Only one person had the code.
Leo leaned against the doorframe, a shadow in a grey hoodie. He watched for a full minute, the only sounds the impact, Matt’s rhythmic grunts, the chain’s soft creak.
“Could’ve called,” Leo said, his voice cutting through the rhythm. “Your knuckles are gonna be trash for the fitting next week.”
Matt ignored him, working the body. Thump-thump-thump.
“She got under your skin,” Leo observed. It wasn’t a question.
The bag swung back. Matt caught it with both gloves, stopping its momentum, holding it against his chest. He was breathing hard, the sound loud in the sudden quiet. He stared at the cracked leather where he’d been hitting it.
“You don’t get to ask that,” Matt said, his voice low and ragged from exertion. “You don’t get to ask anything about her. Not after what you did.”
He turned. His t-shirt was soaked through, hair plastered to his forehead. In the cool, low light, he looked more like a boxer in a losing fight than a movie star.
Leo pushed off the doorframe, holding up his hands. “It was a misread. I got protective. It happens.”
“A misread.” Matt peeled off a glove, letting it drop to the polished concrete. The skin over his knuckles was raw, angry. “You assaulted a stranger because she existed in my proximity. You investigated her. You presented her life to me like a dossier. That’s not protection, Leo. That’s paranoia. That’s what they do.” He gestured vaguely toward the windows, the city lights sprawling in the distance.
“That’s what I do,” Leo corrected, his own temper fraying. “I’ve been doing it for fifteen years. It’s why you’ve survived. You think the world is full of Dasha Waldorfs? People with their own ‘windfalls’ who just want to spot your bench press? It’s not. It’s full of vampires and climbers and people who see a walking opportunity. Forgive me for trying to spot the difference.”
“You didn’t try to spot anything. You convicted her.” Matt worked the other glove off. A thin line of blood welled from his right knuckle. “She was just… there. Having a morning. And you turned it into a conspiracy. You made it ugly. You made me complicit in the ugliness.”
Leo’s face tightened. The friendship, usually an easy, worn-in thing, felt thin and strained. “I’m your friend first. Manager second. A friend would point out that you’re punching a bag at midnight over a woman you’ve spoken to twice.”
“That’s not what this is.” But even as he said it, Matt knew it was a lie. It was part of it. It was the clear, unimpressed look in her eyes. It was the fact she’d walked away from him in a parking lot, a power move he almost never experienced. It was the pathetic, exhilarating possibility that she simply didn’t want anything from him.
“Then what is it?” Leo pressed, stepping closer. “Enlighten me. Because from here, it looks a lot like you’re mad at me for doing my job, and mad at her for making you feel like just a guy in a gym, which is apparently a feeling you’re desperate to have.”
The words landed, precise and cruel. Matt looked down at his bleeding hand. The sting was clean, honest. “Get out.”
“Matt.”
“Get out of my house, Leo.”
The silence that followed was absolute. In fifteen years, through every negotiation, every crisis, every triumph, he had never said those words. He saw the shock register in Leo’s eyes, followed by a slow, hardening hurt.
Leo nodded once, a sharp, mechanical motion. “Okay.” He turned for the door, then paused. “When you’re done being the tragic romantic hero up here on the hill, call me. We have real work to do.”
He left, the door clicking shut with a finality that echoed.
Matt stood in the center of the room, the expensive machinery around him feeling like stage props. The sanctuary was ruined. Leo’s presence was in the air, his suspicion now a layer of dust over everything. You made it ugly.
He walked to the glass wall overlooking the canyon, pressing his bleeding knuckles against the cool pane. The city glittered, indifferent. He thought of Dasha’s sedan pulling away, taillights dissolving into the flow of traffic. An ordinary exit. A luxury he never had.
He left the gloves on the floor. He didn’t bother with a shower. He pulled on a jacket over his sweat-soaked shirt, found his keys, and stepped out into the cool night air.
The darkness of the Hills was deeper than in the city. He started walking, not toward his car, but up the steep, winding road, the asphalt still holding the day’s warmth. The only sound was his breathing and the distant cry of a coyote. He walked until the burn in his legs replaced the burn in his hands, until the image of a wrist being grabbed was chased away by the stark, sharp memory of a laugh.
Of celebrities who presume? Not so much.
He didn’t know where he was going. He just knew he couldn’t stay in the museum of his own life. Not tonight. Blood from his split knuckle smeared the jacket’s cuff, a dark, imperfect stamp on the pristine fabric. He kept walking, leaving the house lights behind, swallowed by a darkness that felt more honest than any light he owned.