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“I’m okay. I was rattled by it, but now I’m mostly angry. Come on and have a seat. It was nice of you to stop byl, but I am doing okay,” she said.
“Julie,” I challenged. I just said her name for the pleasure of saying it, and she looked right at me. Those eyes, God, they could kill a man. That’s what I thought. Maybe I even had a passing thought that I could see why a man might obsess over her.
I sat down on the love seat and she perched on the edge of the cushion beside me. I guess I took up a lot of room because it felt like I towered over her, like I crowded her.
Looking her in the face, I saw the lift of her chin, almost defiant, and how it contradicted the worried furrow between her eyebrows, the alluring softness in her eyes. She needed help, but she was too proud to accept it. I’d known recruits like her in the Marines, men who had to learn to trust their team. Ones too used to being on their own.
“I can show you some self-defense moves. Simple ones that use a man’s size against him,” I offered, thinking she might be willing to take instruction on this, to feel more empowered.
“I had a class about a year ago.”
“Do you remember it?” I asked.
“Some of it,” she admitted.
“I’d feel better about you staying on your own if I knew you could keep yourself safe.”
“I know the statistics, Darren,” she said coolly. “Even with good reaction time, solid training and practice, my odds against a grown man, a sober one, who wants to hurt or kill me are absolute crap. Especially if he’s armed. And don’t give me any nonsense about how it’s illegal for him to have a gun while he’s on parole. What he did before was illegal too and that didn’t exactly deter him from breaking my wrist and my jaw.”
That was it. That was a taste of why my normally calm and rational brother had such an aggressive hatred for Eric. I took a calming breath.
“Is it okay if we at least run through a couple of basic moves, how to get out of a hold?” I offered. She nodded.
“Stand up,” I said, “okay, if you open the door thinking it’s a package or something and he comes out from beside the door where you can’t see him through the peephole, he’d come at you face to face. Like this. I’m going to put my hands on your—”
“My throat. He was always a choker,” she said grimly, and I saw her swallow hard. I shut my eyes for a second to clear my head.
“I’m not going to squeeze at all. I’m going to put my hands high on your shoulders by your neck, not going to actually put my hand around your throat. You’re going to fight your instinct to pull back and you’re going to step in toward me, big sudden step, and duck down and then step away.”
“Okay.”
We practiced that a couple of times. She was quick and steady, followed directions well. Her heart was pounding like a scared rabbit’s when I put my hands anywhere near her neck. I didn’t blame her a bit. I did tell her to slow her breathing, get control.
“Look at me. It’s me. I’m not going to hurt you. This is just practice.”
She nodded. “I know. It’s not that I’m scared of you. I’m scared of what we’re practicing for.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
She remembered how to get away when grabbed from behind, so we moved on to what to do in case he picked her up. I gave her instructions, but once I lifted her off her feet, she seemed to panic, forgetting everything I said. She flailed and kicked, grabbed my head, jabbed her thumb in my armpit, anything to get me let go. Finally, her kicking was so wild that I struggled to keep a hold on her without hurting her. She threw herself to one side and it was enough to throw me off balance. We tumbled onto the rug by the love seat. I turned as we fell so Julie would land on top of me. I hit the floor, but her fall was cushioned by my chest. She tipped her head up at me and started laughing.
“You’re on the floor. That means I won. Okay, I admit, I freaked out,” she said. “Did I kick you in the balls or anything?”
“No, but I’m sure you tried,” I gave her a half smile.
She was so close, and our hearts pounded from the exertion. She stacked her hands and set her chin on them, right there on top of my chest.
“Thanks for breaking my fall. It would’ve been murder if you fell on top of me,” she giggled again. “Now show me how to get out of this hold,” Julie playfully grabbed my wrists and pushed them to the floor on either side of my head, grinning down at me. “Not that it’s fair, because you’re so much bigger than me.”
