Chapter 143: 143. He Try To Fight Me Again, And I Humble Him Again! (He’ll Become My Lapdog)

Jay swung.

It was not a terrible swing. It had weight behind it from someone who trained properly, a right-hand shot coming for the left side of Mike’s head with genuine speed. Mike turned his chin to the right and let the fist clear his ear by two inches, felt the air of it, and stepped inside Jay’s reach before Jay could pull the arm back.

He put his forearm across Jay’s chest, not a strike, just a bar, and used Jay’s own forward momentum to walk him backward into the garden wall of the property on their left. Jay hit it at the hip and stopped.

Jay grabbed Mike’s jacket with both hands and shoved, getting his feet under him and using the wall as a brace. He had more leverage from the position, and he drove with it, turning Mike sideways and breaking the hold.

They separated for a half second, both resetting.

"Last chance," Mike said. "You better stop before you make a fool of yourself."

He was breathing normally. This was information Jay received and did not like.

Jay attempted another approach, this time aiming lower with a body shot followed by a clinch, which was a smarter strategy than his initial attempt and indicated his training. Mike checked the body shot with his elbow down, took the impact across the forearm, and caught Jay’s wrist as the punch extended.

He turned it over, not firmly enough to break anything, just past the point where the joint cooperated, and Jay hissed and stepped through the hold rather than pulling back, which was the right response and confirmed that someone had taught him properly.

Jay reset with his hands up and his weight distributed correctly, and Mike thought, with the part of his mind that stayed operational during these things, that Jay was considerably better than most of the people he had encountered in situations like these.

Not better than Mike. But better than expected.

The next exchange lasted about four seconds. Jay threw a combination, a left jab to set the range and then a cross, and Mike slipped the jab by rolling his shoulder and took a partial hit from the cross on the side of his head that he had not fully gotten out of the way of.

It was not nothing, either. It landed with enough force that Mike’s vision sharpened in the way it does when something real has made contact, and he felt the small bright sting of it across his temple.

He took one step back, measured the distance, and waited for Jay to follow.

Jay followed, because that is what trained people do when they have landed something and believe the momentum has shifted, and it was the correct read but the wrong conclusion because Mike had taken the step back on purpose.

When Jay came in, Mike got his head outside Jay’s right shoulder, grabbed the back of Jay’s collar with his right hand, and put his left arm under Jay’s armpit and used the angle and Jay’s own forward movement to bring him down and forward, controlling the fall so Jay’s face ended up against the pavement with Mike’s knee across his upper back and his right arm folded up and behind him at a precise angle that communicated clearly without causing structural damage.

Jay went still.

They remained in that position for a moment, with Jay’s breathing audible and rapid, while Mike’s breathing remained calm and steady.

"You’re done," Mike said.

Jay said nothing.

"I’m going to ask you one more time," Mike said. "Not because I need you to confirm it."

"But... because I want you to say it out loud." He kept the arm exactly where it was, not increasing the pressure but not reducing it either. "Are you FUCKING done?!"

"Yeah..." Jay said.

The word came out, pressed against the pavement. "Yeah... I’m done."

Mike let the arm go, took his knee off Jay’s back, and stood up. He stepped back and gave Jay the space to get up without assistance, which was its own kind of consideration.

Jay pushed himself up from the pavement slowly, first getting to his knees and then rising to his feet, standing with his hands at his sides, his jaw set, and his breathing still shorter than it should have been.

He looked at Mike. His expression had moved through everything it had available and had arrived somewhere that was neither anger nor defeat, something more stripped down than either.

"You could have ended that faster," Jay said. It was not an accusation. It was an observation.

"Yes," Mike said.

"Why didn’t you?"

"Because this wasn’t about winning," Mike said. "It was about ensuring you understood the distance between us."

"Taking you out in ten seconds wouldn’t achieve that; you’d spend the next week convincing yourself it was just a lucky angle." He maintained his gaze on Jay. "Now you know it wasn’t."

Jay looked at him for a long moment.

"Pick up your bag," Mike said.

Jay picked it up.

"Here is where things stand," Mike said, and his voice had returned to the tone it used when it was conveying information rather than conducting a confrontation. "Tyler is safe."

"Your record is clean, and your scholarship is intact."

"Your mother is aware of the situation and will manage it carefully, without involving the university." He paused. "That is the situation as it exists because I arranged it that way."

"If you want it to stay that way, then you stay where you are."

"You do what I say when I say it."

"You don’t ask questions you won’t like the answers to, and you don’t swing at me in the street again." He looked at Jay steadily. "That’s the arrangement."

"It was already the arrangement. Tonight didn’t change anything; it merely clarified the situation."

Jay said nothing for a moment. He was looking at the pavement between them.

"And if I don’t," he said. It came out flat, not as a challenge, just as a question that needed an answer.

"Then the footage reaches the faculty board Monday morning," Mike said. "Your scholarship review takes about three weeks."

"Your mother finds out what happened afterward rather than before, which means she finds out from the university rather than from you, and the version she gets is the official one without any of the context I gave her tonight." He let that sit for a moment. "I’m not telling you this to threaten you."

"I’m telling you because you asked, and I prefer complete information."

Jay looked up. "You always say that."

"Because it’s always true," Mike said.

The street was quiet around them. The sodium lamps cast their orange light across the pavement, the garden walls, and the dark green gate of number eleven, while at the end of Morrison Close, a door opened and closed, and the sound carried in the still evening air.

Jay adjusted his bag strap. He looked at Mike with the expression of someone who has been taken apart and put back together in a slightly different configuration and is still working out what that means.

"Being your fucking lapdog, huh?" he said, testing the weight of the words as he spoke.

"That’s the arrangement," Mike said.

Jay exhaled through his nose. It was not an agreement, exactly. But it was the absence of continued disagreement, which was what the situation called for.

Jay looked away, at the end of the street, at nothing in particular.

"Eight months," he said.

"Yes."

"And she’s just been here, handling everything." He said this with the flat matter-of-factness of someone stating something they already knew and have not fully sat with the implications of. "On her own."

"She handles it well," Mike said. "You know that."

"That doesn’t mean she should have to."