Page 37 of Come in with the Rain
Aweek later, I have an appointment at Berserkr with Dani. I almost decide not to go, but when I posed the possibility to Abby, she gave me a look that could bend steel.
“You have a duty to me,” she said. “A duty to be the baddest bitch that you can be. You absolutely cannot cancel that appointment.”
And Dani doesn’t even go easy on me, which is amazing. She shows me some of the same moves that she did the last time I was here, how to jab and how to twist my body correctly when I throw a cross punch. But this time she shows me how to do a proper uppercut and how to position my body in the right way so that when I kick, I don’t lose my balance.
She’s starting to show me how to move, ducking and weaving and circling on the balls of my feet, when I get out of breath. I’ve always been good at cardio, but this is different. I forget to breathe when I’m focusing on jabbing and kicking, and now that we’re bouncing around like boxers, I’m completely winded.
“Okay, break time,” Dani says, and we sit there on the mat for a long moment, watching as other people have sessions with their coaches or use the bags and vinyl mannequins for their own means. In the ring, Ford is sparring with a guy, the two of them moving so fast that I can’t even begin to understand how they can anticipate each other’s moves.
I sigh. “I just want to be stronger.”
Dani looks over at me with just her eyes, her head still bowed slightly and her arms resting over her knees. “Strength isn’t just about training.” She looks up at the ring with me, her eyes following Ford and the other guy. “Strength is also about will. It’s about your ability to keep pushing.” She sets her head back against the wall, still watching the men. “My dad was a fighter. He had this underground ring and sometimes he would take me to watch the matches. I would hide in the shadows and no one would see.”
Her eyes are glazed now, like she’s looking behind the walls of Berserkr into some other world. “But he fought with some very dangerous people, and when I was thirteen, I came home from school to find him with a bullet in his head. I’m certain if I had come home five minutes earlier, I would have been dead, too.”
Everything in me has gone quiet, like every cell in my body is trying to listen to Dani’s story. But my mouth has to move. “My God. I’m so sorry.” I look over at Ford, and I wonder what horrors he’s been through. All three of them—Adam, Dani, and Ford—have seen an ugly side of the world that I haven’t. My parents died in a convenience store robbery, the worst thing that’s ever happened to me and Max, but this is something else entirely.
One side of Dani’s mouth turns up, and she shrugs. “I thought he was invincible. He acted like he was. I used to think that everyone had that ability to get back up. To move through the pain. To see the line up ahead and how much sheer effort it’ll take to get there. But after he was gone, I met people who just didn’t have it in them. I’ve been doing this for a long time, and before this, being a marine, and before that, learning how to fight. I’ve seen so many people give up, and the only difference between the ones that give up and the ones that don’t is the will to succeed.”
I set my head back against the wall, too. “You know, you’re kind of my fucking hero.”
She gives a great big belly laugh, like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard. “I’m trying to give you a pep talk so you can be your own hero. I’ve faced down death so many times that it doesn’t even seem scary anymore. Face down your own demons until they look like puppies.”
I roll my eyes at that and push up onto my feet, my muscles feeling plenty relaxed now. “Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be entering any battlefields any time soon.”
Dani stands and looks at me with these narrowed eyes, like she’s trying to decipher something that’s barely visible under my skin. “Everyone has battles, Stella. I know you have your own.”
At her words, all the humor seems to get sucked out of the room, and I feel a vast emptiness. I still don’t have a job, Adam and I haven’t defined what it is that we’re doing, and I feel like I’m floating through a world where everyone knows what their purpose is except for me.
I swallow down all the fear that wants to rise up in me and join Dani at a punching bag instead.
CHAPTER37
STELLA
Adam finished the condo last night. When it was all over, all my furniture put back where it’s supposed to go and the smell of paint barely lingering in the air anymore, Adam and I stood at the front door and admired it like parents looking at their newborn baby through the glass of a hospital nursery. In that moment, I was so happy, so excited by the way the place seemed to gleam with newness, that nothing else could penetrate.
But today, it all hits me.
Adam is done, and Adam won’t be here every day anymore. He won’t be leaning against my kitchen island, drinking cheap beer. He won’t be uttering quiet curse words from various corners as he attempts to fix something. He won’t stop what he’s doing to watch me come in at the end of the day.
And I already miss him so much that the feeling claws at my throat like a hungry animal.
I shouldn’t call him. I should give him space. We haven’t even discussed what we are, if anything at all. I don’t want to be a pest. But the silence in my condo is so loud it’s like a physical ailment. I know he was at the gym all day, helping Ford out with things, but he should be home by now. Is he thinking about me?
I wander around the condo, running my fingers along my new countertops and turning all the lights on so that the shiny new fixtures all sparkle. But it’s all lost its luster. I feel like an addict that’s been without a fix for too long.
I reach for my phone and dial Abby.
“Tell me not to call Adam,” I command as soon as she answers the phone.
“Why? You like Adam.”
I should have known I couldn’t count on Abby to blindly follow orders. “Yeah, but he’s not my boyfriend, and he’s been gone less than twenty-four hours, and if I call him every day like some needy little toddler, he’s going to stop answering my calls.”
“He’s not Mickey.”
I feel like she just punched me. Like stepping into a time machine, my mind races all the way back to that day that Mickey and I fought and Adam tried to come to my rescue. Mickey told me I was clingy. He told me he couldn’t breathe.
