I do not own "Warrior." It belongs to director Gavin O'Connor.

Chapter Ten: Cat's out of the Bag (part Two)

Tommy had pictured the first time Jane would invite him into her apartment to go differently than this. Sex is clearly the farthest thing from her mind when she says, "Come on in."

And he knows that he's in deep shit when she tells him, "We need to talk."

He can guess what it is, doesn't ask why as he steps in and she closes the door behind him.

"You lied to me," she says.

Very deep shit.

He doesn't say anything at first.

She folds her arms. She doesn't look completely pissed, doesn't look like the kind of girl who'd get into a screaming bitch-fest, but he could always be wrong. "If you want to explain, I'm all ears. Would you rather sit down?"

He can't talk to her when put on the spot like this. Shit, where does he start…

And as she watches him, she bites her lip and says, "Please just tell me Sparta's the only time you've gotten hurt."

That wasn't the first thing he expected. He was expecting to get chewed out in which case, fuck her; he doesn't need to take any self-righteous bullshit from her. He nods, and as long as they're talking about MMA, it's the truth. "Only time," he says, and he's taken aback at how much that seems to put her at ease. But he's not off the hook. She sort of falls back and asks, "Where does all that rage come from?"

"Life," he tells her. And really, that's the truth, too.

"Life really fucked you over, then," she says. "I mean, holy fucking hell, you just…" she waves her hands, trying to find the words. "You're like a beast in there. You beat the shit out of these people and it's like you're not even thinking while you're doing it. It's like someone's programmed you to kill with your bare hands."

His temper flares. A beast? Programmed to kill? "So this is a break-up?" he says, deciding not to add, Damn. I'd really been hoping to get in your pants before anything like this happened.

Jane sighs, runs her hand through her hair. "No," she says. "Not unless you want it to be. It was just one hell of a surprise, Tommy, Jesus. Half an hour I didn't know what MMA even was and then I got a call from a friend telling me to look you up on YouTube to see the fights you did."

Tommy grits his teeth, folds his arms, takes a few steps. "Okay. You want an explanation? I didn't want to get into it. I fuckin' hate being treated like a celebrity once people know I was on TV for a short time. You make me feel like a normal guy. A guy dating a girl who doesn't give a flying fuck about MMA, about all that shit on the news about the tank, who likes whoever I am without that. You pull me out of that."

Jane's eyes get huge; they take up half her face as she looks at him like he's just pulled a rabbit out of a hat.

"Yeah." She looks down and nods before stealing a glance back at him. "I got the impression you were never in it for the fame or the money like the rest of the guys. Like you were in it for a deeper reason than that."

Now he's the one who feels stunned. Well this girl's just full of surprises, ain't she? How could she know something like that? The only person he told about his plan for the prize money is Brendan, and he knows they've never met, let alone talked about it.

"You think so?" he says. He'd just like to see where this goes.

She hesitates and nods. He wants to catch every breath, every nervous glance. He wants to see how close she gets. "Yeah, I do." She bites her lip, rubs her arms. Yeah, of course she'd get scared around him right now. Look at what she'd just seen him do. It's like she's trying to figure it out herself as she's talking. "Any of the other guys would've given up after dislocating their shoulder. They'd have seen the match as over. You kept fighting. If you'd been in it for the money, you probably would've enjoyed showing off more. But that didn't seem to be of any interest to you. You wanted to fight, and you seemed driven to fight by something more important to you than getting rich and famous. If fame had been a part of it, you'd probably have used walk-out music and done endorsements. And yeah, you would've told me about it and probably expected me to blow you or something because you're kind of famous. And even though I could care less about MMA or UFC or whatever it is I watched."

Her honesty, bluntness, hell, the fact that she alluded to blowing him, it impresses and surprises him. There's the cute, nice girl who doesn't seem to want to get on anyone's bad side and then there's this. Kind of confrontational, but he must have expected this conversation at some point. He was going to tell her. Really. She just found out another way first.

"Don't try to tell me you don't see me any differently than you did before," he says.

Jane shrugs. "Fine. I won't. It would be kind of hard to ask that of me at the moment. I just saw you beat the shit out of some of the best fighters in the world." She gives a short laugh. "I knew you could hurt a guy if you wanted to, though. If you didn't know how to throw a mean punch I might not even be here.

"Do you want water or coffee or something?" she turns back and heads to what he guesses is the kitchen.

Tommy sighs. Shit, she might just let him off the hook for this. "You got anything stronger?" he asks.

"Sorry. The strongest thing I have is Red Bull," she calls back from the kitchen.

What kind of twenty-one year old living on her own doesn't keep at least a few cans of beer in the fridge? "Then water would be great. Thanks." He looks around. It's a studio apartment; the main space is clean and barely furnished with anything except an old couch, a plastic table and chairs, a dresser and a small desk covered with books. Through the window he can get a pretty good view of a few boarded-up buildings in one direction, slightly better looking apartments and houses in the other. There's a dry-erase board on the wall with a to-do list written in cursive, a weird-looking painted clock on the wall, and a cardboard deer's head mounted on the door. Beyond it is a twin bed covered in a worn quilt and he finds he can't look away from it. Not until Jane comes up to him with the water, sees where he's been staring, and bites her lip, looking as though she wants to comment on it, and hands him the glass.

"You want to sit down?"

"Not really," he says, but heads over to the table anyway. She follows him with her own water and sits across from him. She doesn't say anything at first, but finally says, "You're not getting back into cage-fighting, are you?"

He shakes his head, looking down at the table. "Not for a while, anyway," he says, and looks up. She looks like she wants to ask so much more, probe into things he doesn't want to talk about, doesn't want to think about.

Sure enough, she blurts out, "How is it even physically possible to rip the door off a tank?"

He looks back down at his water. "When your adrenaline's going, there are people who are going to die if you don't do something and you only have one option you just," he shrugs, traces a pattern on the table with his fingertips. "You find yourself doing things you didn't realize your body could do." He takes a sip of water. "I'd, um, I'd really appreciate it if you not ask any more about what went on while I was in the Corps."

She doesn't get pissed, just nods, looking down as well. She gets it. They both let the silence stretch and, as usual, she's the one who breaks it. She hesitates, can't quite look at him when she says, "May I ask you one more question?"

"Depends on the question."

"Fair enough." She bites her lip. "How do you know that last man you fought, Conlon?"

He freezes. He thinks for a second he must've heard wrong, but he knows he didn't. And he knows his reaction's given it away, no matter what he tells her. Yeah, he sure as hell knows Brendan Conlon. There's no point in denying it, so he says, "How'd you get that impression?"

Jane fidgets as she answers, will bring her eyes to his face and back down as she speaks. "It wasn't just the fact that the two of you were pretty much trying to kill each other. I mean, it was the final fight. You would get more violent. It was the second part of the fight where things started to seem off. After you…" she gulps and skips over the obvious 'got your arm popped out of its socket' "he seemed almost as upset about as you did. Didn't seem happy about it at all, even though it sealed the deal for the both of you. And afterward?" she sighs. "I don't know this world, MMA, but I'd assume that, like with any sport, the winner probably wouldn't help up his injured opponent, lend a helping hand like that, especially after you took a beating to him, and treat him with the same humanity with which he treated you. Also," she almost smiles, the ghost of it not reaching her eyes or voice, "I may be going out on a limb here, but you don't strike me as the kind of guy who accepts help from anyone, let alone someone who's done you harm. So it made me wonder; you're both from Pennsylvania, you're both top fighters, maybe the two of you go back somehow. So do you?"

Jesus fucking Christ. He'd never thought of her as stupid, but he wishes she hadn't made that observation. Really wishes she hadn't. He takes a moment to gather his thoughts, think of what to say, how to phrase it. She waits for him. "We're related," he tells her.

She blinks, leans back, looks at him with her eyebrows scrunched up, probably wondering if he's shitting her or not. He wouldn't blame her if she thought so. He can't really believe it sometimes, no matter how real the pain was; the words "I love you" coming from someone who he thought he'd never talk to again, someone he thought he'd spent years of his life hating.

"Are you serious?" she says.

He nods. "We grew up together. Til I left, anyway."

She swallows hard. "Do the two of you talk anymore?" she says, "Or has your relationship been damaged too much for that?"

He shakes his head, leaning back, wanting to declare the conversation over so he can move on. "We weren't talking before the fight, either. There wasn't much of a relationship to damage anymore."

"There must have been something. He must've still cared about you."

He looks away, takes another sip of water. "I know that now." He's done. There's a threshold of what he can talk about at a given time, and he's reached it. "Have you heard everything you need to?"

She nods.

"I understand if you're still pissed," he says.

She shakes her head and looks up at him, dark eyes meeting his for the first time since they started talking. "Not really, no." She kind of smiles. "I guess I like you even more than I thought I did." He can't really understand the look on her face. "I got the feeling early on that you had been through things that you couldn't really talk about. I'd be a lot more upset if you were a convicted felon or a registered sex offender and lied to me about that." And then with a look of worry he can only hope is fake, she says, "You're not a convicted felon or registered sex offender, are you?"

"No."

Jane throws up her hands. "Just checking." She sighs and sits back. "Okay. Maybe a little pissed. I don't like being lied to. There's the whole principle of it, but…I don't know. I can see why you would've." She thins her lips, and with the way she slowly opens her mouth, trying to find the right words, he resists the urge to lean across the table and slip his tongue into it. "Seeing you fight freaked me out a little. Not as much as…" she exhales, finishes like a champ, "seeing you get injured. But still, in spite of all that, there was something about it; something about you in that cage that I kind of liked."

"Yeah? What?"

"The fact that you weren't going in looking for attention. The way you look like it isn't some pissing contest, trying to see who's the toughest guy, trying to prove yourself. I like the lack of performance, how it's like…you don't try to glorify the sport. No trying to dress it up, just getting the job done." She snorts, a small smile working its way on her angelic-looking face, a real one. "You're such a stage ham," she says.

"Yeah. I'm a real whore for the spotlight."

"And I liked that because, well, it's a part of you that I already knew. It was something I could recognize, something I've liked about you since I met you." He doesn't know what to say to that, can't think of a single answer. She realizes this. She seems to know him more than he thought. "I don't know if I can go out today, after this. It's still a lot to take in."

He nods. He thought as much. At least she said 'today' instead of leaving him hanging, wondering if she thought this was a deal-breaker, ending something he was only starting to get the hang of, something he hadn't had the chance to take to the next level, was starting to really look forward to the time it did.

He gets up. "Can I call you or do you want me to wait for you to call me?" he says.

She gets up, too. "You can call me." He feels like he's in a haze, walking to the door, her following him, looking grim, looking worried, looking away. As he reaches the door and before he can say goodbye, she stops him. "There's just one thing I want to do before you head out," she says.

Slap him in the face? If she does, he might not call her after all. He waits.

She wraps her arms around him, pulling him to her. Good God, she's hugging him. He reacts the same way she did the first time he kissed her; he almost pulls away, doesn't know what the hell to do. He doesn't hug. It's just not something he does. He doesn't show that kind of affection. But after a moment he returns the embrace, feeling her breathe against his neck, feeling her heart beating faster than he would've guessed. She doesn't let go for a while, maybe thirty seconds of feeling her breath quicken and then grow steady.

When she pulls away she looks down at the floor, unlocks the door and opens it. "I just don't want to see anything like that happen to you again," she says.

"Neither do I," he says. As he makes for the door, he turns back. "I'll call you," he says. "Make up for today."

She nods as she leans into the doorway. "I'll see you," she says.

"Yeah." He makes his way downstairs, out of the apartment. He's pretty sure if she'd started yelling at him, he'd have walked out and not bothered to call again. He's not interested in anyone who doesn't get why he might just want to avoid talking about his fifteen minutes of attention he didn't want. Yes, he'd lied. Yes, it was the principle of the thing. But he had a right not to get into it.

A deeper reason. He kind of likes that. He's kind of impressed she saw that, and he's pretty sure that even if she asks, he won't be able to tell her what it was.

F

Jane finally slumps back onto the couch and decides not to go back on YouTube. She figures as long as she was keeping something from him she didn't have the right to bust his chops over this.

And he'd hit the nail on the head, telling her how she made him 'feel like normal guy', made him feel like he was dating someone who saw something other than some volatile cage-fighter or sports celebrity. You make me feel normal. Oh man, she can relate.

She figures it was a good idea to hold off telling him she was a recovering alcoholic for today. She can certainly put aside telling him about her mild tattoo fetish for a bit longer still. She had the energy for only one major revelation at a time. She doesn't want to end things. She doesn't want to walk out on him. She has the next date to tell him, because she knows there will be a next date by this point. The way he looked at her bed, the feeling she got letting him in to her crappy studio apartment, realizing that no matter how scared she is of sharing that bed with him, the idea sticks, grows, makes its presence known.

And if she handled this well, she figures he must be able to handle what she tells him without blowing it out of proportion. He kind of owes it to her, right?

Right.