Page 20

TOMMY

“Circle and dip.” I swing out with my padded hand and skim the top of Eliza’s ponytail.

And because she ducks—barely in the nick of time—I follow her around and drive my foot into her gut.

Hard enough to steal the air from her lungs and push her back a half-dozen steps, but not so hard that either of us would consider it anything but training.

“You’re gassing out.” I swing again, but this time, I stop before wiping her out and knocking her head off her shoulders. “You wanna beat Chavez next month, but you’re slow as fuck and puffing like a fat sixty-year-old couch warrior.”

“It’s a hundred degrees in here.” She drops and swoops forward for the takedown, wrapping her arms around my torso and slamming her shoulder into my stomach.

And because she’s quick with her foot, she sweeps it behind mine and uses our momentum to drive me into the mats.

Fast as a viper, she scrambles over top of me and rains fists over my face.

Though I have my training pads to block every single strike.

“Not so slow now, am I?” She sets her hands on my chest and uses me to lift herself up, then slams down again and digs her knee into my ribs. “Not gassed. You’re just fresh, and I’m sparring after six hours in this oven.”

“You’d win more if you talked less.” I trap her hooked leg with mine and throw her to the side, crushing her to the mat and crowding her so she has nowhere to go. No escape. No fucking chance. Not even a kid who spent her life inside a fight gym will beat a guy twice her size.

Not when he’s spent his life in the gym, too.

“You think Chavez is gonna gossip with you in the cage, Lizey-Lou?” I toss my pads and smack her ribs, bare-knuckle and just hard enough to elicit a grunt from the depths of her chest. “You think she won’t consider it her honor to shut your mouth with her foot?

” I hit her again and hold on. She’s a bucking bull, trying to toss more than two hundred pounds off while frantically searching for fresh air.

But we’re both sweaty and every time she tries, her grip slips.

“You don’t turn up to that fight with your war face on, she’s gonna mop the floor with your pretty hair. ”

“Aww. You think I’m pretty?” She twists and slams her elbow into the side of my neck, buying back a little of her defensive positioning and pulling her legs from mine.

She circles my hips instead, locking her feet in and digging her heels into my back.

“I just had it done at the salon.” She whacks me again, stabbing me in the throat with that bony elbow.

“Spent six hours in the chair to look like this.”

“That doesn’t look appropriate.”

Stunned, I wrench my head up and lock eyes with a little boy whose smudged glasses can’t hide the way his pupils grow wide and his cheeks glow red.

But it gets worse. So much fucking worse when I peek to his left and find his mother, her hand clamped over her mouth and her body already half turned back the other way.

Then I look down at a smiling Eliza, her chest heaving, her tits straining her sports bra, and her legs draped around my body in ways that can’t possibly look good.

“Uh…”

“So sorry.” Alana grabs Franklin’s hand and yanks him along with such speed, the poor kid’s glasses skid along his nose. “We’re leaving. We didn’t?—”

“Alana Page…” Entirely too pleased with herself, Eliza lies flat against the mats, dropping her arms so she becomes half a starfish.

But her legs stay put. She makes fucking sure they do.

And because she enjoys setting shit on fire, she twists her neck and presents a smug, beaming smile.

“I heard you were back. Figured I’d see you at some point. ”

“Eliza…” Wary, with a side of straight-up fucking furious, Alana inches back this way and studies the scene we make.

This is shit we do every day in the gym.

Guys and girls. Guys with guys, and girls with girls.

There’s never be en a part of me, not once in the history of my entire life, that has questioned being twisted up with another human like this.

Never have I stopped and thought, ‘ Hey, this looks bad .’ Because it’s not bad. It’s a sport.

But why, now, do I feel Eliza’s heels pressed to my spine and her quiet laughter when I try, and fail, to dislodge those feet?

“You’re uh…” Alana tries, so fucking hard, to keep her focus on Eliza’s eyes and not mine. “All grown up.”

“Not twelve years old anymore.” To make things worse, she hooks her arm over the back of my neck and uses me to pull herself up. If I were to sit on my haunches, she’d come too and would end up sitting right on my lap.

I do not sit back on my haunches.

“You must be Franky?” Eliza practically hugs me, smooshing our cheeks together, and grins like the whole world is her playground. “I was told I had a new summer student coming in today. Sorry, I missed you at your first session.”

He rolls his lips between his teeth and studies her a little longer. Then me. Then back to her again. “Do we have to do what you’re doing in class?” He wrinkles his nose and pushes his glasses up. “I don’t like to hug people like that. Except for my mom.”

Alana drops her head and groans in defeat.

“Well, we were practicing takedowns,” Eliza continues. “And then ground and pound. It’s part of the sport.”

“Don’t call it pound,” I snarl in her ear. “Stop it.”

“Ground and pound is my favorite . Some people prefer stand-up combat, and others prefer takedowns. But me—” She squeezes me tighter and snuggles in as close as humanly possible.

“—I like a good pounding on the ground. Jiu jitsu is where your size doesn’t matter so much.

Your skill does. So even when someone is twice as big as you and maybe even stronger, I still have a decent chance of getting out of a situation.

Plus.” She grips my neck. “The hugs are fun.”

“Come on.” Alana grabs Franky’s hand again and jerks him around. “We didn’t mean to interrupt.”

“Mom—”

“That’s a private training session,” she hisses. “Let’s go.”

“You’re an ass.” I pinch Eliza’s ribs and breathe again when she flops to the floor, her arms and legs falling wide and her taunting amusement beating like a drum in my veins.

“You knew she was coming in, didn’t you?

” I climb to my feet and snatch up a towel to wipe my face.

“You fucking knew, which is why you made damn sure we were rolling right when Alana was due here.”

“I fail to see the issue.” She moves to her elbows and knees and drops her head, giggling.

“You’re a free agent, Boss, and I’m heading to competition soon.

Seeing as how it’s summer, which means a lot of my training time is eaten up with kids, I thought we’d both agreed that it was important I spar with you as often as I can. ”

“We both agreed you’re an ass.” Stellar comeback, Stupid. “You think you’re protecting me with that shit?” I snag my water bottle and start toward the door. “ Poor Tommy Watkins got his heart broken, and now the she-devil is back. Gotta make sure she knows her place ?”

“You called her the she-devil. Not me. And I reiterate; what’s the problem? This is what we’ve always done. Why is it a big deal now?”

I stop in the doorway and peek into the hall because fuck, what am I gonna do if I find her?

Nothing, probably.

I glance back at the girl I would kill for. The sister I would destroy others for. The kid I would trap in a locker room for half a day if it meant annoying her and buying myself a little quiet. But when she only laughs, I turn on my heels and stride into the hall.

I mop my sweaty chest and squirt a little water into my mouth, and though one would expect to need to use eyes to find Alana Page, I’m disgusted to realize I can do it with my nose.

Ten years has done nothing to dull that fucking ability.

I follow the smell of lavender all the way through my gym, the stench of sweat and boxing gloves that never truly dry trying, but failing, to throw me off track.

I walk past the regulation-sized cage and around the row of hanging bags, then past the group of kids who mill around and wait for Eliza to get her shit sorted.

I hate the ball of lead that falls to the base of my stomach when I make it all the way to the sign-in desk and don’t find Alana and her little Franklin.

I should just let her go. Allow her space and, if I’m lucky, drown myself in the dunk tank out back. But of course, I stride straight through the gym’s front door and stop in the blistering sun, shading my eyes with a lifted hand and opening my mouth long before my brain has time to process.

“Alana, wait. ”

She attempts to coax her son into the car, fussing hands and hissed instructions. But the boy doesn’t want to go, and unless she picks him up and lobs him in, I’m not sure she’s gonna win this round.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Though Franklin slams the car door, she opens it again and tries to usher him forward.

Oh, what she would give to be laying rubber on the road already .

“Franky said how he had class at three o’clock, and I was under the impression you wouldn’t be here.

My mother conveniently claims to be too busy to bring him today, so I had to do it. But I?—”

I wipe my face with the towel and start into the parking lot, bare-chested, barefoot, and so fucking filled with rage and bloodlust, I make sure not to toss my water bottle.

I hate to think what would happen to Alana’s pretty little neck if I suddenly had a free hand.

“Class starts in a minute, Franklin.” I come to a stop a few feet from the pair and note his sneakers. His jeans. Glasses. “Go inside and ask Eliza to get you a pair of grappling shorts from the stock cupboard.”

“No, thank you,” Alana growls. “I’ll buy him shorts myself. We’ll come back once we’ve done that.”