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Like weirdo niggas who’ve decided your body belongs to them…

I didn’t say that aloud so I wouldn’t make shit awkward. And sure, my vulnerability was being corrected now, butshit.

It kept eating at me.

If I’d decided on my own that I’d needed training months ago, would I have been able to fight Kev off more? Would he have ever even thought he could handle me that way?

Or,if my guard had been up like it should, and I’d answered the door still armed… would he just be dead now and I wouldn’t have to feel like this?

“I need youfocused,” Jenn warned, batting me upside the head with one of the mitts I was supposed to be avoiding. “You’ve gotta be present.”

“Yeah. Sorry,” I said, shaking off my thoughts so I could give this my full attention. Blaming myself and ruminating about the ways things could have been different wouldn’t get me anywhere.

And it wouldn’t change anything that had occurred.

No matter how badly I wished I could turn back the clock, there was no dodging the reality of my situation, only moving forward. The issue with that was, it was approaching a month and a half since the assault and mentally… I felt like I was in the same damn place.

Maybe worse.

The move hadn’t helped like I thought it would, the wholehitman shooting Onyx so everybody is on lockdownthing hadn’t exactly been great for my anxiety, and the nightmares I’d been so relieved to not be having?

They’d arrived.

It didn’t help anything that not being out and about like I usually would had me bored out of my mind. And the wholecan’t turn myself on, can’t orgasmthing?

Well, that was driving me up a wall.

Oddly enough,thatwas the thing that drove me to finally call the therapist Alicia had recommended, someone she used often when bringing her former peers in from the cold. I could only imagine the shit that therapist had heard with formerRosesandThornsas her patients, so I’d figuredmysituation, as fucked up as it was, might be damn near a “break” from the usual trauma.

Obviously, I didn’t ask.

I just tried to lean into it, knowing that professional help was what I needed. I’d only had two virtual sessions, but she’d already got in my ass about downplaying my feelings and thinking something was wrong with me because my process didn’t look like the stories I’d seen and heard on the internet.

A kick in the pants I needed more than I’d realized.

Most importantly though, she’d assured me I would be okay – whatever that meant – and I believed her.

I just had to accept that it may not be on any specific timeline, or linear at all.

Expect bumps,she’d said.

“Focus, Tate!” Jenn snapped, knocking me upside the head with the mitt again.

Shit.

“Sorry,” I told Jenn, tryingagainto keep my attention fully on my task. I poured myself so fully into the mental connection between her commands, “Break the hold – block – cross – dodge – cross – jab – jab – block – cross – dodge – jab – jab”,and my execution that I didn’t even realize Brandon and Onyx had finished up what they were doing and had come to watch me.

“Whew,” Brandon whistled, after one particularly sharp jab, once I’d started imagining Kev’s face on the mitts and hit it so hard I actually staggered Jenn a bit. “I’d hate for my head to be on the receiving end ofthat.”

“Call one of my bikes ornamental again and I’m socking you,” I teased, keeping my attention on him to avoid the powerful urge look at Onyx.

“Oh I believe you.” Brandon laughed. “Tati used to hand out two-pieces to whoever wanted one, girl, boy, that shit didnotmatter,” he said, talking to Jenn and Onyx.

I raised an eyebrow, using my arm to wipe the sweat off my face. “Oh,nowyou’re proud?”

“I was always proud.”

My mouth dropped. “You used to tell me to stop!”

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