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“You’re not a man!” Ben hollers as she leaves. “Evelyn, you’re not a man! Stop acting like you can square up.”
When the sounds of a chicken clucking echo along the hall and turn the teen’s face red with anger, I pick up my bag and walk toward the locker room. I pass the girl’s mom and shake my head, then I pass Oz – Benny’s stepfather – and laugh when I find him squatting around a corner, listening to his kid squabble with a girl.
“Ben’s an idiot. Seriously.”
“But they’re so cute, no?” Standing, Oz goes from being eye level with my hips, to making me fold my neck back to maintain eye contact. He’s had his sleep too, and now he’s ready to work off the nervous energy before we start back on days on Monday. “Benny’s gotta keepthatunder wraps for like, ten more years before her daddy releases the shackles. It’s so much fun to watch.”
“I’m watching close,” Tina saunters by. Tina is Evie’s mom and almost twin. “Swear to the devil, you keep that boy close, or you’ll have to answer to me.Thatmight be something one day, Lord knows they keep swiping at each other, but we don’t let history repeat around here. School first, then she’ll win a title or two, get a degree and buy a home,thenwe’ll let her date. If Benny can keep his shit together for that decade, then maybe we’ll let him ask her out.”
Oz lifts his hands in surrender. Hat pulled low, wicked grin wrinkling his face, he backs away and chuckles. “I keep him straight. I keep him outta jail. I’m doing the best I can.”
Tina stops and narrows her eyes, but I shake my head and walk into the female locker room to get ready for my workout. Those kids are going to terrorize this town, and despite their parentsthinkingthey have it under control, I know the kids will end up in the back of a patrol car a dozen times between now and when they graduate college. Things get sticky when it’s your dad or your uncle fastening the cuffs, and when the girl is cute as hell and bats her lashes to be let go, Alex and Oz stand no chance.
I’m going to have to be the bad guy, I just know it.
I stop by the lockers on the far wall, push my bag in and snatch my headphones out, then swinging a towel over my shoulders and grabbing my water bottle, I close the door and set the passcode.
I’m not in a rush today. For one day a week, I get to take my time, wander around, slow my sets, and count my breaths. Every other day, I have an hour to get in and out, shower, and run to work before I’m late.
I reenter the hallway and head toward the weights room. I’m not a pump-class or organized sport kind of girl. Instead, I push my headphones in and turn “Love The Way You Lie” up until my ears almost sting. I have somewhere to be at six, so I have two and a half hours to mellow out and feel the burn.
I let myself find the rhythm beating through my ears, but when I enter the weight room and find a broad back imposing on my space, I stop and frown. I normally dump my bottle and towel by that corner. I normally place my things between the wall and the multi station, do a five-minute run on the treadmill, then work on my shoulders and back. But someone else’s ass is using that space, someone else’s shoulders, covered in sweaty ink, are already feeling the burn from the heavy weights.
Put out, since I’m a creature of habit, I reverse and use the opposite corner. I set my things down and growl when I tug a headphone out by accident. I catch the sound of a male grunt as he slowly does his reps, but I push the headphone back in and try to find my zen.
Working outismy zen, and now someone else has put a kink in my plans.
I push my phone into a band wrapped around my arm, and as an extra zing to help me ignore my visitor, I turn the volume louder and head to the lone treadmill. This gym has a whole room set up with the treadmills and ellipticals. This room is just for the weights, but it’s as though the Kincaids have watched me train. They watched my habits, and because I do the same thing most days, they knew I needed the five-minute warmup. A month or so into my membership, a treadmill turned up in this room so I wouldn’t have to mingle with everyone else.
I adore this place, because those that want to talk to each other, do. And those that don’t are left the hell alone.
I turn the treadmill on and start slow, because my body aches from an extra-long sleep. I woke with a numb leg around four, having slept on it at a weird angle for six hours straight. My hand was asleep, my blankets tangled, and my leg stung as I turned and the blood rushed back in. I sleep like the dead on the last day after night shift, exhausted from work and exhausted from screwing with my sleep pattern, I force myself to sleep well into the next day to catch up. Then I have to work out to shed the nervous energy before I can settle back into regular daylight hours.
When my legs begin to warm and my eyes stray to the roaring lion on the man’s back a time too many, I turn the speed higher until I’m sprinting rather than jogging. My chest aches from my racing breath, but everything clears up. Every step I take helps clear my chest, my sinuses, my head. The fatigue that was hanging over me for no reason other than lack of sunlight fades away, to be replaced by the much more preferable physical exhaustion.
I love the burn in my thighs. The simultaneous icy cold and boiling hot in my lungs. I love that the thoughts of a gun and Oz in the same space fade away, and best of all, the leftover fear that my subconscious tossed at me in my dreams.
I woke a little past midnight last night with a sweaty brow, a racing heart and clammy palms. Greedily gasping for breath before dizziness took me under and thrust me back into my dream, I dove out of bed, toward the light switch. I flooded my room with light, then I ran through my apartment and flipped every switch from my room to the front door, because I could have sworn someone was watching me sleep.
Dark eyes in a dark room. Frighteningly broad shoulders, grabbing hands, and an angry grunt when I woke and threw myself out of bed. I raced around and double-checked my locks. I whipped the fire escape window open to make sure no one was out there, then I closed and locked it, shoving a length of wood into the frame to stop anyone opening it again.
I haven’t had a dream like that in… forever.
My breath whistles until my lungs literally feel like they’re seizing up. The roaring lion watches from across the room, but thankfully, his owner does not. I pull the plug on the treadmill before I fall on my face, and holding onto the handles, I jump onto the sides to let the belt slow without having to keep up.
Music buzzes in my ears, my shoulders heave to re-oxygenate my body, but then the endorphins hit and make me smile. The endorphins are why I come here. They’re better than any drug on the market. Better than anything the youth of today try to replicate with synthetic ingredients. Better than anything my father peddled and got rich on.
I would know.
When the treadmill stops, I step back onto the belt and reorient myself for a second, then stumbling off with a grin, I snatch up my water bottle and take a fast sip. My music plays, I keep my eyes down, and though I know someone else is here, I mind my own business and head toward the free weights.
I’m here to work out, not to study ink or men.
Stopping by the mirrors, I grab a long bar and begin loading it up with heavy plates. Eighty pounds on one side, and eighty on the other. Setting it in place on the floor and trying my damnedest not to look when my song switches over and, in the silence, I hear my neighbor’s grunts, I pat my hands on my thighs as though that helps them not ache from the bar. I don’t havelady hands. I have hands callused from the bar. Callused from the handle of my gun. Callused from hard work and my inability to be anything but a tomboy.
And I’m okay with that. I won’t ever be weak again.
When a new song comes on, I time the beat to my moves, and when the chorus thrums, I begin my first of many deadlifts. A hundred and sixty pounds make my arms sing. They make my shoulders burn. The small of my back strains, but it’s the best strain of them all. Being strong makes me happy. It gives me the freedom I never had when I was a child, the same way becoming a cop gives me freedom. I’m not at the mercy of others anymore. I’m the law, I uphold it fairly, and when an asshole points a fake gun at one of the only people I consider family, I get to smash faces and dislodge teeth.
