BOXER

three

Luke eyes fluttered open to be greeted by the California sun peaking through his window, illuminating an orange tint through his room.

He grabbed his phone off the side table to check the time.

1:32 p.m.

His thoughts had kept him up all last night, and he didn't end up falling asleep until around 4. For some reason, he couldn't stop thinking about Brielle. She confused him. He couldn't figure out why she had been so protective of Tyler last night. The more he thought about it the more he regretted not ignoring Brielle and just beating his ass. He seemed to be a real fucking douchebag.

He would've deserved every punch he got.

Luke could also tell that Brielle wasn't planning on telling anyone about this, and that confused him too.

All of this was bothering the fuck out of him, and he wished that he had just asked Brielle the questions he had last night. He invited her to his next match in hopes of seeing her again, although she didn't seem too keen on going. Luke felt bad that her night was so traumatizing, and for some reason he felt like he owed it to her to make it up.

He also kind of wanted to show off how strong he was.

Luke checked his phone again. 1:40.

This was one of the few days that he had off, as he was constantly training. But he didn't mind, boxing was everything to him. Although, it didn't start off like that.

Luke had been interested in music his whole life. He didn't know exactly what he wanted to do, but he knew he wanted it to be something to do with music.

His mother and father divorced when Luke was fifteen. His mom couldn't stand to live with Luke's father, so she made the decision to leave the both of them. His mom promised to keep in touch, though Luke hasn't heard from her since the day she walked out.

"I love you so much, Luke. But this is what's best for your father and I. I promise to keep in touch and you can come see me whenever you want. I'm so sorry that this has to happen but please remember that I do love you."

What a naive fifteen year old he was for believing her words.

His mom was his biggest fan. When she left, he fell into a depression and lost the inspiration he once had when it came to music. And not only did her absence cause a lot of sadness, it also caused anger.

After she left, his grades dropped dramatically and everything ticked him off - especially the fucktards he had to spend 6 hours with every day at school.

He had an extremely short temper, and the tiniest things would piss him off.

And whenever Luke was pissed off, the only way he knew how to deal with it was violence. He ended up getting into a number of fights of school, most of them resulting from someone shoving him or rubbing him the wrong way.

One of Luke's best friends, Calum, was the one to introduce boxing to Luke. His first time experiencing a match was pretty similar to Brielle's. Except Calum didn't try to force himself onto Luke, thankfully.

Although Calum did get drunk and was loud and annoying and so was the rest of the crowd and if it wasn't for his deep interest in the match he probably would've ended up getting in a fight himself with the way people were shoving him around.

And though he didn't have the best time, he knew that he wanted to be the one in that ring.

So he ended up signing up for the club on his 18th birthday. People didn't take him seriously at first, based on his lanky appearance. But after seeing him perform in the ring, people knew this kid was the real deal. He didn't necessarily focus on his strength, but more on his performance. As long as he had the right execution, he could take on his opponents easily.