I knot my hair into a barely passable bun—more feral than sexy—and crack my neck like I know what I’m doing. I don’t. But confidence counts, right?
The first few rounds with the body opponent bag are a disaster. Full-on humiliation. I ricochet off it and land on my ass more than once, and at one point, the freestanding brute rebounds so hard it clocks me square in the nose. Rude. But I don’t quit. I’ve never been the type to tap out after a couple of bruises.
I roll to my feet, shake it off, and go again. Each attempt teaches me something—how to duck, how to block, how not to get annihilated by rubberised vengeance.
By the time I nail a basic kick and defence combo, I’m drenched. Drenched in the kind of sweat that clings like betrayal and leaves no survivors. Not cute. Definitely not hot.
Cam looks like a damn Greek statue when he trains—glowing skin, carved muscles, all cinematic perfection. Me? I resemble a radioactive shrimp trying to learn choreography. Right arm, left foot—everything’s a tangle of limbs.
Discombobulated, yes.
But determined? That, I’ve got in spades.
Every time I go back, it’s someone new I’m punishing.
Someone whose hands took too much.
Someone whose smile twisted into something monstrous.
And then it shifts.
Suddenly, it’s his face staring back at me—the one I’ve tried to erase from memory but never could. My uncle. Those heavy-lidded eyes that always looked past me like I was a thing, not a child. The nicotine-stained lips, always puckered around a cigarette. The greying chest hair that used to sprout from his shirts and make my stomach turn.
A walking nightmare wrapped in a family name.
Not today.
Today, I don’t stop.
My fists fly. My foot lands. My body moves with a violence I’ve never allowed myself to feel—not like this. Each strike is controlled and savage. I hit until the sounds of flesh meeting vinyl blur into rhythm. Until the dummy sags at the chest, the synthetic skin misshapen and bruised.
And I don’t stop then, either.
Because this isn’t just training.
This is reckoning.
Stupid me forgot a towel—classic—so I pad barefoot down the hallway, sticky with sweat, trying to keep my steps quiet as I pass the office. The last thing I want is a conversation with Talia. She talks like a drill sergeant, types like thunder, and barely acknowledges I exist unless I’m in her way.
But then I hear it—
A name.
Kyla.
My stomach drops.
It’s not jealousy, not really. I’m not some vindictive girl hoping his wife stays lost just so I have a shot. It’s fear. Because if they’ve picked up a trace of her, if she’s back in the game—it’s over. I lose Cam. For good.
I can’t compete with that.
With history. With vows. With the woman he spent years chasing through screens and leads.
I was never supposed to fall for him. But I did. Hard. And now? Now I’m just wreckage he carried out of a nightmare.
Too broken to be kept.
Too shattered to be loved.
