"Gigi made me start when I was fourteen. Said a woman who can throw a punch doesn't need a man to throw one for her."
"Smart woman."
"The smartest woman who ever lived, and I will fight you on that."
"I believe you." He holds up the pads, one at face height, one at my ribs, and braces his stance. "Whenever you're ready."
I throw a jab. It connects and the sound is flat and satisfying and I throw another one before the first one finishes ringing in my ears.
"Good," he says. "Again."
I go again. Jab, cross, jab. The combinations come back in pieces, fragments of Gigi's voice in the gym on Eastern Avenue telling me to keep my elbows in and turn my hip into the cross and stop dropping my left hand because a dropped hand is an invitation and she didn't raise me to invite anybody to do shit.
Emilio absorbs every hit. He doesn't flinch, doesn't step back, doesn't adjust. His arms stay locked and his eyes stay on me, watching my form, reading my movement, and I hate how much I like being watched by him. I hate it because it's distracting and I don't get distracted and I definitely don't get distracted by men with crooked grins and too many tattoos and arms that look the way his arms look when they're braced against the impact of my punches.
Fuck.
"You're pulling the cross," he says after a minute. "You've got the rotation but you're stopping short. Hit through the pad, not at it."
"Don't coach me."
"I'm not coaching, I'm observing."
"Observe quieter."
"That's literally not possible for me."
I adjust the cross anyway because he's right and I know he's right and the next one lands with enough force to push him back half a step. The surprise on his face is genuine and brief and extremely satisfying.
"Better," he says.
"I know."
We work for twenty minutes. He feeds me combinations and I throw them and the sweat starts and the breathing gets harder and the thing that's been wound up in my chest since Delaware, the restlessness and the caged energy and the need to do something with my body other than walk corridors and count floorboards, starts to loosen.
He switches to body shots. I work his midsection, hooks and uppercuts, and my arms burn and I'm breathing hard enough that talking would cost me air I don't have. He's breathing too. The tank top is dark with sweat across his chest, and the tattoos on his arms shift when his muscles flex.
I'm looking at his body because he's standing right there and he's built and his skin is flushed and his chest is heavingand his forearms cord every time I hit the pads, and I am a woman with functional eyes and functional nerve endings and the combination of those two things right now is becoming a problem.
He catches me looking. I don't look away because looking away would be an admission, and I don't admit shit to men I've known for four days. Not even men who look the way he looks right now, sweating through a tank top with his hair falling in his face and his arms flexed and his eyes bright from exertion.
"You're staring, vixen," he says. My line from the diner, thrown back at me with a grin that knows exactly what it's doing.
"You're in my eyeline. Move."
"Make me."
I throw a hook that snaps his head sideways. Not hard enough to hurt, not really. Hard enough to make a point. He laughs, and the sound fills the basement, and I want to hear it again, which pisses me off because I am not the kind of woman who gets butterflies from a man's laugh. I am the kind of woman who throws hooks at men who tell her to make me and then thinks about it later when she's alone.
"Gigi taught you well," he says, resetting the pads.
"Gigi taught me everything."
"Everything?"
"Everything that matters." I wipe sweat off my forehead with the back of my wrapped hand. "She died four years ago, and I still hear her voice every time I make a decision. Every time I size someone up. Every time a man smiles at me, and I have to figure out what the smile actually means."
Emilio lowers the pads. The grin is still there but it's quieter, the volume turned down.
