“Your turn.” He nods.
I let my arm fire out, the loud crack of my glove smacking against his.
It’s a nice sound. A strong sound. One that ignites a flame inside of my stomach. A tiny fire that burns like a soft ember, begging to be stoked, to be laced with gasoline to overtake my entire self.
“Keep your eyes up,” Rocco admonishes gently. “Don’t look at your feet or your arm. Forward.”
I swallow, pulling my arm back to jab it forward once again.
“Better,” he encourages. “But remember to rotate your arm.”
A small smile dances at the corner of his mouth whenever I get it right. A pride that hits him, his face lighting up with accomplishment and conceit.
He’s building a warrior, and it burns a similar fire inside of him like that one that burns in me.
He spends two hours with me; correcting my technique, praising my form, the fist of my glove cracking against his punching pad. My body is covered in sweat, my breath labored, and if I’m honest, like he promised, on the verge of vomiting. But I feel alive. I feel energized and capable and I can’t remember the last time I truly felt like this.
All the while, Rocco’s barely broken a sweat.
“Drink plenty of water, rest your muscles and make sure you stretch.” He speaks as I remove my gloves, hands to his defined hips, authority dripping from his tone.
“Thursday work for you?”
He nods. “I’ll text you a time once I’ve checked my other commitments.”
“Try not to get killed or injured in between now and then,” I bite out teasingly. “This was good. I feel good. I don’t want to have to stop.”
“Obviously didn’t work you hard enough,” he mocks me.
I fight an eye roll.
“You gotta find a purpose for the fight, Camryn.” He steps in my path, stopping me from leaving. “It can’t be revenge or vengeance. You gotta find something for you.”
I let his words sink in.
“What if revenge and vengeance are for me?”
“It’s too easy to fall down a rabbit hole of hate.” He shakes his head. “Fuckin’ trust me on that. Find something meaningful for you.” He points a finger at my chest. “Let fighting be positive. You’ll get more out of it.”
“What do you fight for?” I test. “Fun.”
He looks at me for a beat, a single second in time where he lets his granite walls fall away to show me the pain in his soul.
“Freedom,” he finally speaks.
He turns away, walking to pack away his things. “See you Thursday,” he dismisses me.
I leave his apartment with a heavy ache in my chest. I positioned myself on a path to heal myself, to find a peace I’ve decided I’m ready to find. Never in my wildest imagination was I expecting to find gratitude and sympathy in my heart for Rocco Shay.
Chapter Twelve
Rocco
“Told you I didn’t work you hard enough last time.” I smirk, watching her dry retch into a small metal bucket by the punching bag.
Nothing like bonding over the sound of another person emptying the contents of their stomach as you watch on in eager entertainment.
Standing, Camryn flips me off, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Her chest rises and falls like a balloon inflating only to deflate a second later.
“Do a hundred skip jumps” —I toss the skipping rope her way— “then we’ll use the punching pads again.”
Her eyes watch the rope fly in her direction, her body not moving an inch as it falls at her feet. “Working on not dying right now,” she mutters. “Give a girl a second. I need water.”
I saunter off without another word, retrieving two bottles of cold water from my fridge.
She’s sitting on a workout bench when I approach, one knee bent, chin rested upon it as she chews her thumbnail in thought.
“I found my word,” she tells me. “My focus word.” She takes the bottle from me with a thankful smile.
“Hm.”
“Peace,” she says quietly. “My goal is peace.”
I dropped to the ground across from her, knees bent, body leaning forward, my attention completely hers. “In what capacity?”
She considers my question. “Not in the whole ‘world-peace’ type dream. Personally,” she specifies. “Here.” She taps her temple. “I want to stop being afraid. I want to go to sleep without freaking the fuck out that my demons will stalk me when I’m vulnerable. I want to live in a way that I want to. I don’t want to be controlled by my past. I want to know that no matter what evil works to infiltrate my thoughts, I’m at peace enough in my mind that it doesn’t matter.”
“Freedom,” I cough out before I’ve realized I’ve spoken. “You want freedom.”
Her eyes settle on me, our stare catching and holding on for a drawn -out breath.
“Like you,” she whispers, more to herself than me.
“Like me,” I concur.
An understanding settles between us, one neither of us was ready to come to terms with.
Camryn Rein and I have been fighting our similarities from the moment our paths crossed. It’s useless to continue to fight it. We’re the same because we’re broken. We’re haunted by thoughts that are stronger than anything either of us have come up against. I tackle mine with anger, with fury; more often than not failing. Camryn combats hers by hiding, which is as pointless as what I do with my fists. Her demons are part of her, in actuality, she’s hiding with her greatest fears; isolated and alone giving them more and more power as she becomes weaker.
“Just because we’re the same doesn’t make us friends,” she implores, her eyes drilling into mine in panic.
Calm down, sweetheart.
“Wouldn’t dream we were anything but enemies, beauty.”
“You’re not my enemy either,” she declares haughtily. “That would mean I feel something for you. I don’t. Not hate, not indifference. I feel nothing. To me, you are nothing.”
She’s arguing with herself, forcing that niggling feeling craving my company, to believe her words. “Who you tryin’ to convince?” I tease, not letting myself be cut down by her words.. “Me? Or yourself. You pushed yourself into my world, not the other way around. I couldn’t give a flying shit what you think of me, Rein. But don’t stand under my fucking roof and disrespect me while I’m doin’ you a favor.”
She swallows thickly at the bite in my tone.
“You wanna be indifferent toward me,” I tell her. “But you’re not. No more than I am to you. You might have hate in your sad little heart for me, but you have more for yourself in there. You hate that you crave my company. You fucking despise that you’re starting to believe that I am the one person in your life that might truly understand you and still enjoy being around you. I know all that, because it’s exactly how I feel.”
Straightening her shoulders, her hand brushes her forehead, removing the thick lock of hair that has escaped her ponytail. “I don’t want to be your friend.” The broken whisper is full of devastation, she hates that she’s found herself in this situation, worse, she hates that she doesn’t want to change it.