After passing a brick building, we come upon a small park, and we both turn into it without a word.
“What’d you do?” Charlie tosses his empty cup in a trash can before refocusing on me.
“An anxious client gave me an idea. She was nervous from the start, which was understandable. Treyvon simulated realistic kidnapping scenarios, and those are terrifying even if you know they’re fake. But we were still going over removing handcuffs when she just broke down sobbing in the middle of the room.” I chuckle, thinking back on the day and all of our stunned faces. We weren’t a group equipped to deal with tears. “Then she said, ‘I can’t do this. Not in a weekend. Not in a month. I don’t know how to become this person.’” I’m able to repeat the words perfectly because they were the ones to put me on a new path. They’re burned in my brain. “That’s when it clicked.”
“What?” Charlie asks in a hushed voice, and I’m proud of the way I’ve captivated him.
“She was right. Survival is a lifestyle, and we were trying to cram the new mentality into a handful of days.” I make a sweeping motion with my hand, imagining all the skills we taught those people seeping out from between my fingers, just like it would leak from their minds with disuse. “Treyvon’ssimulation was great for showing people what a real kidnapping would be like. But if someone wanted to know how to get out of one, they’d need more training. You don’t learn how to drive a car by doing it once and then never again until you’re in an emergency. That’s how you wreck.”
“You broke off from Treyvon’s company?” Even as Charlie asks, he gestures to a bench, and we settle onto the seat side by side.
“More like I became another branch. I gave that woman my number and told her to call me with days and times she’d like to go over the skills. That we’d practice until they were as easy as getting dressed in the morning. And when we reached that point, she’d come back for the simulation. She was my first client, and she directed some of her friends to me.” I turn to fully face Charlie, hearing the passion in my own voice as I discuss this topic that I’ve built my career on.
“Part of escaping is strength, and part of building enduring muscle is your diet, so my skill sets all naturally grew together until I became the self-defense dietitian. Now I train my clients for weeks or months, sometimes years, and part of that training is to go through Treyvon’s different simulations multiple times. He’s never minded me breaking off since I’m still the main person funneling him business.”
Charlie taps his knuckles against the old wood of the bench as he seems to get lost in whatever thoughts fill his head. “You work with all famous musicians?”
“They’re my main clientele because a lot of my business is from word of mouth and that first woman I took on was a country singer. But I also work with some actresses, a handful of businesswomen, and even two politicians.” As I mentally tick through my past customers, I sip my treat.
“I think you’re amazing.”
Charlie’s statement has me sucking up too much milkshake in shock. I swallow hard and fight off a brain freeze.
“You what?” The question comes on a scoff, but my fake husband just smiles. The tension in my spine disappears as his natural ease automatically relaxes me.
“I think you’re amazing,” he repeats. “You’ve got this impressive skill set, and I just want to get on a megaphone and shout to the world, ‘My wife is a badass!’” Charlie cups a hand around his mouth, miming the megaphone. “Do you ever work with us average folk?”
“I host a self-defense class at the gym where I used to work. Once a month. Anyone is welcome to come, but I mainly get women.” I stare toward the sky, not sure I can handle the intensity of Charlie’s gaze on me. “And last year, we updated all the videos.”
There’s the lightest sensation on my cheek, and I glance over to find Charlie’s eyes on my face.
“I need to watch every single one of those.”
I snort. “Want to practice all the moves too?”
His eyes grow hot with his slowly unfurling grin. “You can tie me up any day.”
CHAPTER 26
LUNA
Ihalf expect Manuel to open the door when I arrive at Violet’s loft apartment. But the stoic security guard is nowhere in sight when the country singer flings open the heavy metal door to her home.
“Oh good. I was worried you were going to back out on me.” Violet smiles wide, stepping back to wave me inside.
“This is nice,” I offer, gesturing around her place.
The loft is smaller than I thought it would be. Not that it’s small. The place has ceilings high enough for two floors, and I suspect the square footage is the same amount as in my whole house. But from what I can see, this main room is all there is, other than an open door that leads off to a bathroom.
I spy Violet’s bed arranged against a brick wall on the far side of the space.
“I like an open floor plan,” the singer explains, striding over to the kitchen area, her bare feet padding lightly across the hardwood floor.
I guess this apartment makes sense when I connect it to Violet’s personality rather than what I expect her net worth is.Open, airy, honest. And then there’s the array of instruments hanging on the spaces of wall between each tall window.
The complete exposure makes it even clearer that Manuel isn’t around, unless he’s hunkered down in the claw-foot tub.
“No security shadow today?” I follow her to the butcher-block kitchen island and see a neatly arranged selection of finger foods. A lot of them we bought together on the grocery store run.
