‘What do you—’
‘Come on. Do your worst.’ He turned his head away from me, closing his eyes tightly as if he was bracing himself for something. So I closed my eyes too and increased the pressure, and that was when it happened. A loudsnap.
Cam screamed. A high-pitched wail that cut through the room like a blade.
‘Shit, sorry . . . I didn’t mean to . . .’ I stumbled backwards, shocked by my own strength, I hadn’t meant that to happen.
‘Holy shit. You broke my finger!’ Cam rolled around on the mat holding his hand in what looked like agony.
The room fell silent, and I could feel them all watching me. Waiting. And so I did what I had to do. I straightened up, and with all the pomp and ceremony I could muster, I cracked my neck from side to side, followed by my knuckles. ‘Who’s the girl now?’ I said. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand; it came away drenched. ‘And next time, maybeyoushould sit it out.’
The room erupted into laughter, but the instructor didn’t look happy.
‘All right, Brown, point made. Let’s get him to the medic.’
‘So when a woman beats someone, she’s trying to make a point, but when a man does, he’s just good?’
You could have heard a pin drop. The instructor turned to me slowly. He was calm, but I could see in his eyes that he was seething. I held his gaze. I had to; I couldn’t show weakness, not now. Not after I’d challenged him like that. My spine locked, my feet dug into the mat and I stared back at him. I knew I’d proved my point, but I also knew that I’d made an enemy that day – probably not the best career move in retrospect, but fuck that. Men like him needed to learn that women weren’t just here to be agreeable, or decorative. We deserved the same respect – if not more, because we’d had to fight twice as hard just to be standing in this room.
I straightened my clothes, wiped the sweat from my brow one more time and then turned and walked off the mat. One of the hardest walks of my life, knowing that every single eye was on me.
But once I reached the bathroom, my bravado crumbled.
‘Shit,’ I whispered as the tears started to come. I tried to blink them away, tilting my head up, trying to fight the gravitational pull, while a strange feeling rose inside me. The feeling was impossible to understand, a mixture of triumph, horror and something else. Accompanying it was a physical feeling of nausea every time I replayed that awful snapping sound in my head. I retched over the sink, but nothing came out. I stared at myself in the mirror. Red face, glossy eyes, tear-stained cheeks. No one could ever see me like this. No one.
Because the second they did, it would be over.
That was the thing about being the only woman in a room full of men. You had to earn your place and prove you deserved to be there more than anyone else. And if that meant I had to break someone’s finger, then I guess that was what I was going to have to do.
I knew the second she had me in that hold that she could break something, and I also knew that the only way to avoid that was by tapping out.
And I could’ve tapped, stood up, made a joke about it – something that would have made all the guys laugh but also left them wondering if she could really have done it.
But I saw her face. She needed this, and for some reason I didn’t understand, I wanted to give it to her.
So I didn’t tap.
I let her break my finger that day.
Truth was, I’d probably let her break every one of them if it meant watching her win like that again.
CHAPTER 27
My day of aesthetic torture finally came to an end. I’d sent Philly photos throughout the horrific ordeal, of my nails being done and my hair highlighted, and then some selfies as I modelled several pairs of revolting-looking sunglasses. She’d found it wildly amusing, my ‘Cinderella moment’. I, however, didn’t see the humour in it.
The day had dragged on at a glacial pace, and by the time I got back to the hotel, it was already five o’clock. The shopping had been on another island, over an hour’s boat ride away. An entire day wasted on hair and nails, and who knew it took so long to put false lashes on! And people did this voluntarily? Insanity. Of the highest order.
But as I walked through the hotel lobby draped in my newly acquired tight white dress, gold sandals and large designer sunglasses, something suddenly became glaringly obvious to me. People treated you differently when you looked like this. Heads turned. Several men glanced up at me and smiled. The women took notice too. Two staff members greeted me with a cheerful ‘Good afternoon, ma’am. Is there anything I can do to help you?’ Their politeness was jarring, because none of them had spoken to me like that since I’d been here.
Even the gardeners cutting the hedges stopped working and created a path for me to pass, picking the leaves off the floor as I went – God forbid my sandal touch any kind of organic matter. It was as if I was walking a red carpet, and the absurdity of the situation suddenly became all too clear. I’d had to squeeze myself into a second-skin dress, be polished, glossed, highlighted, fake-lashed and varnished to be seen in a different light. Looking like this made memore valuable in some way, more worthy of eye contact, leaf-free paths, smiles and courtesy.
Sad, really.
I turned onto the now very familiar path that led to my villa, and just as I was about to turn the last corner—
‘Cam!’ I’d nearly slammed straight into him. ‘What the hell are you doing? You can’t just emerge from the bushes like that.’
‘Li . . .’ He stared at me.
