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I stood, stunned. I didn’t hear Hugo come in for his workout, but he stood beside me, looking at her.
“I know this is not a good sign,” Hugo said, with a sense of admiration, “But her technique is quite flawless.”
I glared at my friend with a new sense of hatred. But he shrugged a dark shoulder before going about his own workout, completely unconcerned.
I approached the woman, and she didn’t stop. Not until I placed the plate down on the elevated boxing ring, and reached out to touch her waist as she was punching. I knew I was taking my life into my own hands as I did it. An errant elbow could knock me the fuck out, and at the rate she was punching…
But thankfully, she stopped moving. When I pulled her towards me, away from the bag, she let it happen, resting her weight on me. I felt her shoulders relax. I smelled her sweat and desperation. She leaned her head back until her hair cascaded down my shoulder. I wanted to kiss her, but knew it wasn’t the time. The urge to wrap my arms around her and never let go was overwhelming.
Normally, I loved watching her fight. It was sensual, strong, and absolutely erotic. But not like this.
She wasn’t fighting now. She was flailing. Maybe it was even a tantrum, like an angry toddler that was fighting for the sake of it, unable to express the big emotions happening in their heart.
“Eat something,” I told her.
And she nodded. With my hand on her waist, I walked her over to the boxing ring where the plate was. She reached out to grab a chicken drumstick and chewed on it. She acted like she tasted nothing. She was doing this to stay alive, not because it tasted good.
I leaned over her to look at the state of her hands, and what I saw made my heart sink.
Her knuckles were bleeding and raw. A streak of blood went down from her pinky, staining a line down her forearm, almost to her elbow.
I felt Hugo’s eyes on us as he did pull-ups in the corner, a chain and weight dangling from his waist, and swinging between his legs. He looked concerned and caught my eye. He smiled, sadly. He understood what was happening to her on a visceral level.
Punishing ourselves physically was not unusual. The physical pain soothed a hurt inside, helping keep a lid on it. But I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would watch my woman put herself through the same thing.
I held her waist tight in my fingers, leaned over, and kissed her temple. But she moved away, murmured a barely audible thanks, then went back to the bag.
The sound of each punch and thwack of the bag was like nails on a chalkboard, making my skin crawl until I was ready to take that bag down and throw it into the Lake.
I’d let her go on for another hour before I did something.
Did Brett know this was going to happen? Did he know that she’d be in this state?
I chose to believe that he didn’t. What father would leave his daughter in this state? Maybe he suspected some emotional turmoil. But he couldn’t have imagined this.
Either way, I had to prove myself worthy. I had to take care of her. If this was a part of who she was, I had to learn how to fix it.
An hour came and went. By now, not only were her knuckles skinned, but so were the heel of her palms, which she used to strike the bag when her knuckles were too bruised to continue. When that wasn’t enough, she started to kick the bag until her shins were similarly bruised and raw.
I changed into my own workout clothes and padded around in my bare feet.
I had to be careful to lure my little vixen from inside the walls she was erecting around herself.
I popped into the boxing ring and shadow boxed for a minute before calling to her.
“Rose, get up here.”
Her head looked up in surprise, retracting in the middle of a punch. “What?”
“Let’s spar,” I told her. “It’s time for you to stop beating a defenseless bag and hit something that can hit you back.
She looked at the bag, which was smeared in her blood, then looked up at me.
She looked me up and down and nodded. “Gloves?”
“No, vixen,” I told her. “Putting wrappings and gloves on your hands will just make it stick to your scabs. We’ll have to do without.”
She looked down at her knuckles as if seeing them for the first time. She created a fist and winced. Was it the first time she had noticed how terrible her hands looked? Jesus. It occurred to me that my unbreakable Rose might be in need of therapy. I put that in my back pocket. If I could convince Sophie to see a professional after her husband’s not-that-tragic death, then maybe I could do the same for my Rose.
