Raw (2 page)

He laughs, but then he must see something in my face. In my stance. Thirst, resoluteness, guts. Maybe I’m wearing my balls in my eyes. He falls sober and swings the door wide open. “Come on in.”

He doesn’t ask for my name.

Guess with one look, he knows he’ll find my name in the dictionary, right next to “determined.”

He leads me to his garage. “Where’d you train before?” he asks.

“Self-taught. I watch videos.”

He scoffs, then shrugs. “Okay, let’s see what you’ve got.”

I eye the equipment across the room. The heavy bag hangs from the ceiling, the leather worn from other fighters before me. There’s a boxing dummy in the corner. Speed bag. Weights. A whole private gym set up here. I drop both my bags, then unzip my backpack and start to put on the gloves without bothering to remove my hoodie.

“Take that off; I need to know what you’ve got. Need to see your form,” Hennesy says.

I clench my jaw. Slowly unzip my hoodie. Take it off and glance past my shoulder, shifting to keep my back from the coach’s view. The guy is clearing the fighting area. Good. We can get down to business. He walks to me when I face him.

“Give it over.” I hand over my hoodie and he tosses it aside, then crosses his arms and looks at me. “Speed bag first.”

I inhale, position myself before the speed bag, and hit.
Wham.

I keep on hitting, lightning fast, my fists making the bag fly.

I would have warmed up first, but I’ve been doing this for days, and I won’t stop until I’ve got myself a coach—and not even then.

I’ve got momentum now, and I pick up speed, my arms moving back and forth, working the speed bag until it’s moving so fast you can’t even see it.

I’m starting to sweat; it’s stuffy in here, but I can’t stop. I need him to take me on. I need one yes to get me in the ring. Just one yes and I’ll do the rest.

“Time.” Hennesy stops me. He signals to the boxing dummy and the heavy bag. “Let’s see you pound the bag.”

I swing out and slam my knuckles on the bag, putting everything into my fists.
Thack, thump, thud.

Hennesy’s composure starts to crumble with excitement. “Holy shit, boy!”

I’m getting into it. I’m in the zone, where it’s just me, the leather brown bag, my fists, and nothing else but slamming the spot I’m looking at.

“I’ve seen enough.” He stops the bag from swinging. His eyes are glassy. “Fill this out.”

I pull off my right glove and grab a pen as he slaps a piece of paper onto a desk at the corner. I bend down to fill out my name and contact information and realize, too late, that I exposed the tattoo on my back.

“You’re his boy.”

I freeze midsignature.

A second ticks by. Then two.

I slowly set the pen down and take one last look at the paper. I might not get to fill it out after all. I turn.

His face has paled.

I wait it out for a few beats. Maybe he’s different. Maybe he can deal with it.

He tosses my jacket at me. “Get out. Nobody wants to see you fight.”

I frown fiercely as I catch my jacket in my fist and edge forward, equally mad now. “That’s too damn bad. ’Cause I’m fighting anyway.”

I keep my eyes on him as I pull off my left glove, shove my arms into my hoodie, and zip up.

I walk out and the door slams behind me. I clench my jaw and shove my gloves into my bag and spot the old, black gloves inside too. I push them down into the bottom of the duffel bag and zip it up.

The season starts in a week and a half. No coach? No fight. I can’t even get into a gym.

But I won’t let anyone or anything keep me from the ring.

I pick up a penny from the ground.

And I spot a girl in workout clothes across the street, tying her shoelaces. She’s a step away from the gym door. I straighten, pull my hoodie over my head, and cross the street, following after her like I belong.

Reese

T
oday is the first day of my very own personal boot camp. One day spent with the Tates and the good news is, there are no tempting Snickers bars in sight. Only green food with organic labels on them. All fresh. Fruits, lean meats, all I need to finally—finally—lose the ten annoying pounds I’ve been carrying with me for the past few years. They come with feelings of insecurity, dissatisfaction, and frustration. They are proof of me having absolutely
no
willpower against my hunger pangs or my cravings. A reminder of why I didn’t go to dances, or—despite my love of the beach—head out in a swimsuit to take in some sunlight. I plan to work out like a fiend.

When I get back home, I’m going to walk into a crowded room with a great smile and sans my Himalayan butt, looking so pretty Miles Morris is going to drool in his mouth at the sight of me. He’ll admit that it’s always been me and only me for him, and he was too blinded by our friendship to notice.

And I’m going to sleep with him—the first time that I will ever sleep with a guy—and I’ll do it with no insecurities about him seeing me naked because I’m going to look beautiful and slim and, most of all, sure of myself. So sure of myself I’d do it in broad daylight for him if he asked me to.

Pulling my T-shirt a little lower as it rolls up my hips, I start panting and drop the treadmill speed a little bit. If I don’t, I’ll have to crawl my way to day care to pick up my little package and, carrying him back home, I’ll be trailing my tongue on the sidewalk. No, thanks.

I’m on a healthy living boot camp.

Brooke says I look like Jennifer Lawrence and that she envies my hourglass figure. It’s like my torso was cinched with a corset since I was born. Curvy. But I’ll take Brooke’s athletic physique any day. Genetics made my hourglass figure, but athletic physiques take more than genetics; they take hard work and I admire that.

I press the treadmill speed a little bit faster and survey everyone inside the bustling gym. But my eyes come back to the guy who slipped into the gym after me.

He’s at the far end of the room, pummeling a heavy bag. He looks totally concentrated. He’s the only fighter here who’s not talking to anyone and not with a trainer.

I’d say he looks friendless, but it’s more like he doesn’t want to be bothered and doesn’t need friends: he’s got his fists.

The beautiful boy is getting attention from everyone in the gym by now. Maybe because he’s really working out the heavy bag, causing the chain holding it to rattle. But I think, for the most part, it’s because he crackles with passion for what he’s doing. And looks
sooooo
good doing it too.

To my right, I spy one of the front-desk attendants walk into the weights and cardio area. A second one joins her, speculating. “No membership,” I hear.

One heads back to the desk, the open-plan concept making the reception area visible from my treadmill, and she picks up the phone and hangs up just as quickly. “They’re coming,” she says when the second attendant joins her behind the desk.

I keep walking, now focusing on the guy. He’s a badass. I’ve never seen someone hit a bag so hard, and he’s not bothering anyone. Nothing seems to exist to him except that bag he’s hitting.

I’m watching him when a pair of uniformed security guards appears inside the gym.

The lady by the entrance points to the young man. He seems to sense them, and he lifts his head, frowning. And then, he slowly starts walking forward. He stops a few feet away from them and stands there in the cockiest, most challenging way I’ve ever seen. Almost as if he’s
waiting
to be kicked out.

“We need you to come with us and confirm membership at the front desk,” one of the guys says threateningly.

I stop the treadmill and suddenly step down. “He’s with me.”

The guy and the security guards turn in my direction, and I nod quickly. “He came with me.” I pull out my gym card. The guards come over to look at it. One of them brings back a lady from the front desk.

“Have him sign in next time as a guest,” the lady tells me with a scowl.

I nod.

The guards ease out, and I realize the guy is looking at me. Like, really looking at me. He wears sweatpants and a hoodie and an attitude. He stands motionless, the drawstring sweatpants hanging low on narrow hips, revealing a bit of skin on his abs and the sides of his hips, the start of a muscular V. He’s got a head full of black hair and eyes the color of steel that could melt the same metal they seem to come from. He’s got the most quietly intense gaze I’ve ever seen.

And it’s latched to me.

I’m uncomfortable.

And self-aware.

I’m wearing a fuchsia workout top and tight workout pants, my honeyed hair tied in a ponytail. I’m nothing special, not among the girls in the gym, and not among the girls out in the world. As he looks at me, I feel the hairs at the tip of my ponytail brush my back and I shiver like I’ve never done before.

I find his stare really unnerving, so I shoo him away. “Go back to what you were doing,” I say.

He doesn’t move.

His face is young and tanned, all chiseled planes and angles, with eyebrows that are sleek and low, like two angry slashes, a nose too perfect to belong to a fighter, and a jaw that looks unbreakable.

Bewildered by his attention, I head back to my treadmill.

The guy’s eyebrows lower a little more in obvious puzzlement. I lift my own at him in challenge, my look saying,
Are you going to keep staring?

He smiles a little, an unexpectedly gorgeous halfway-there smile.

“Go train,” I say.

He gives me this cocky nod in a way that makes it seem like he’s saying thank you, then heads back to the gym bags, lifting his gloves. He hesitates for a few seconds, frowning thoughtfully as he stares at the bag, as if puzzled about something. He shakes his head to clear it, glares at the bag, and in a flash—
pow, pow, boom!
—hits the bag three times and sends it rattling on its chain.

I notice people are glancing in my direction speculatively. Some appear concerned, others seem to be wondering if he’s really with me. They remind me of my mother a little bit.
Reese, promise me you’ll take care of yourself.

Mother, I’ll be careful. Let me go. Give me wings! I’ve earned them, haven’t I?

I begged for time by myself.

Today is the first day of the new and improved me.

So I put in my remaining half hour, then I go gather my stuff and hurry off to the day care for my little package.

This whole time, never once has the guy looked away from his bags again.

♥   ♥   ♥

“HOW DID YOUR
day go?” Brooke asks later that evening.

“Good.”

“Just good?”

I nod, smiling. I’m not very verbose, and I’m naturally shy and uncomfortable around others. I think this is genetic because, though my mother is chatty, my father is a hermit and mostly keeps to himself aside from the occasional fatherly question like “You okay on money?” or “Your mother told you about curfew?”

I like being with my dad most. He doesn’t make me talk, like my mother does.

We’re the kind of people who appreciate silence.

I feel that sort of bond with Brooke’s husband too.

I met him last night—gorgeous, blue-eyed, strong and quiet, he’s a gentle beast—and after our hellos and a brief smile, he’s comfortable enough with my presence that he ignored me this morning while I had my breakfast and he had his.

I spoke before we finished.

“Why don’t you train in the gym with some of the others?” I blurted out, thinking of the guy I met.

“I concentrate better on my own.” He lowered his iPad, where he’d been reading something. “You can come train with Brooke and me if you’d like.”

“No!” I quickly protested, for a reason I still can’t fathom, and when he looked at me in a rather fatherly, curious way, I added, “I love the gym. Thank you.”

Tuesday, I’m so sore I need to crawl into bed. Wednesday is no better. But I feel energized, am sleeping divine.

By Thursday, I’m perfectly comfortable living with the Tates, and super comfortable with my daily routine. Racer has breakfast early with Mom and Dad, while I shower and get ready for the morning. The Tates drop us off at day care, and I head to the gym a few blocks away. Later, I pick up Racer, play with him in the afternoon, swim, call my mom and a few friends, or spend the evening with Pete or Riley.

I’ve learned that Pete, the guy who drove us from the airport, is Remy’s personal assistant.

Then there’s lazy, friendly Riley, his coach’s second.

Remy’s coach is named Lupe; he’s bald and he’s got a thing for the last member of the Tates’ team, the motherly Diane, Remington’s nutritionist and chef.

All in all, I’m feeling a lot more settled in than I expected to be at this point. There’s this great family vibe with the Tates and their team. I feel like I fit in, they treat me like one of their own.

It’s cool this morning, so I cover myself with an extra layer and wonder if I’ll see Mr. Mysterious from the gym. It rains sometimes, even during the summer. Soft, quiet rain that I’m able to sleep through all night. Some nights, Brooke steals away from Remy when he’s busy talking to the guys and we spend a girls’ night talking about things. I’m very interested in learning how to take care of my body now. It’s something that had never interested me until now.

Brooke told me what to eat after a workout, depending on what I want to accomplish. Fat and proteins for weight loss or muscle building. Carbs for energy. I’ve also been getting frequent calls from Mom and Dad. My parents are loving, and I’m their only child. I never lacked for love or anything I wanted. I never wanted to leave home; I was too comfortable there. Felt safe. But then I realized: I counted so much on my mom and dad, I started letting them make decisions for me. What college? What career? I know my mom and dad have a valid reason to worry about me and a valid reason for wanting to make these choices for me, but I wanted control of my life, so I finally asked them to let me choose on my own. They said fine. And I was shocked to discover, I didn’t know. And as the last decision I let my mother make for me, she called Brooke and asked if I could come.