“I know, buddy,” I tell him. “I’m in love with her, too.”
Lovers’ Alcove is different when it’s cold out.
The waterfall still runs, but slower, ice forming at the edges of the rocks like lace. The pool is dark and still, and the trees are almost bare, their branches reaching overhead like a ceiling. Mist hangs over everything, turning the clearing into something out of a fairy tale. Alex’s Lady of the Lake would feel right at home.
I set up on the flat rocks near the water’s edge, and Genevieve stretches beside me, rolling her shoulders, bouncing on her toes. She’s in leggings and a T-shirt under an unzipped jacket, and her hair is in that messy ponytail that’s been making me stupid since the first time I saw it.
Cavall immediately splashes into the shallow water, circles three times, and drops onto a sunny rock like he’s at a spa.
“Priorities,” Genevieve says, watching him. “Wish I had fur so I wasn’t freezing.”
“He’s smarter than both of us.”
“Low bar.”
I snort. “Okay, Half-Pint. Show me what you’ve got.”
We start slow. Footwork first, the same drills I ran her through months ago, except now she moves like she means it. Her stance is wider, her weight centered, and when I throw a slow jab to test her guard, she slips it clean.
“Good.”
“I know.”
“Don’t get cocky. Feet.”
She adjusts without being told twice. I circle her, testing her awareness, and when I feint left and come right, she reads it and pivots, her forearm coming up in the exact block I taught her.
“Better. Again.”
We go back and forth, building speed. She’s faster than she was. Sharper. There’s a confidence in her movement that wasn’t there before, something that lives in her spine now, in the set of her jaw, in the way she watches my hips instead of my hands because I told her that’s where the truth is.
I throw a combination, still controlled, and she blocks the first two but the third grazes her shoulder. She hisses.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. Again.”
“You don’t need to be a hero, Half-Pint.”
“And you don’t get to stop our couple’s therapy. I said again.”
Couple’s therapy.“Cute.”
I come at her harder, and she meets me. Her hook catchesme in the ribs, exactly where Percy landed his hits three weeks ago, and the pain flares bright.
She sees me flinch and stops dead. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. That was a clean hit.”
“Your ribs are still healing.”
“Then I should’ve blocked it.” I roll my neck. “My fault, not yours. Never apologize for landing a shot.”
She studies me. Those green eyes that see everything, that have always seen everything, cataloguing the way I’m holding my side, the tension in my jaw.
“We should stop,” she says.
“We’re not stopping.”
