The Immortal Cure

27. Knuckles

Duke nodded and gave me a questioning look. It was a obvious. My ex-boyfriend was a fighter. He'd do it out of school for the money, using bare knuckles to get what he wanted. He had loads of scars around his hands because of it similar to Duke's.

I dropped his hand and moved towards the living room, sitting down on the couch and tucking my knees up to my chest. Duke followed, exactly like gravity. He sat beside me and held an arm behind my head on the couch, staring at me.

"How did you know that?" He asked, not letting the subject drop
I didn't really want to tell him exactly how I'd known, I was sure the subject of ex's wouldn't be a comfortable topic.

"I just knew someone who used to do it. He had the same scars" I shrugged, watching his expression

"I hope you weren't in anyway involved"

"No" I quickly shot "No I wasn't"

"It was a way to make money back in the day, and I've always had quite the temper for it" He held his face down, clenching his fists open and closed

I moved a hand to his face and with a finger, lifted it back up to meet my gaze.
I was sometimes afraid of his temper and thought about how close I could one day come to losing my head.
But I remained confident that he would never hurt me. I had too.

"I've seen worse tempers than yours"

"You haven't seen me at my worst"

"It doesn't matter" I shifted myself closer to him so that I was right in front of his turned towards body.

"It should" He responded seriously

"It doesn't"

He shook his head at me and began to play with the loose hair around my face

"Can I ask you something?" I dared, wanting to know more

He gave me an unsure look, but nodded

"How did you, die?" I asked, focusing intently on his eyes as they searched around my face

"A fight" He answered simply, not at all surprising me

"A fight?" I repeated

He nodded again before his eyes landed on mine to hold

"It was a serious fight. A revenge fight" He started "It was over my, at the time girlfriend. He'd been attempting to take her away from me for about two years and one night he tried to, get close with her" He continued

"So, that afternoon I made my way to his home. I demanded a fight. It happened later on that night on a neighbour's farm land. People gathered, people placed bets, but it wasn't about that for me" He explained

"So, I guess you lost..." I trailed off, expecting what had happened

"I did. He was too strong, too agile. He beat me within ten minutes, he'd beaten me to a pulp. I was left to bleed out" He admitted, watching me with careful eyes

I tried hard not to imagine him getting beaten up and left for dead. It made me angry, it made me feel sick.

"And how did you wake up?" I asked, begging for more answers

"Darius" He answered simply as I nodded and smiled

"Did you end up getting the man back? What happened to your girlfriend?" I asked, keeping the questions flowing

"I did. She was fine. A mess, but fine, as far as I know she lived a long and happy life" He weakly smiled.

During the rest of the night I edged for more answers about Duke's life before death. He was forthcoming and explained everything with fine detail enough for me to understand.
The only thing neither of us talked about was ex's and our parents. They were particularly sore subjects and we steered clear of them.