by Ashe, Lila
“That you would hurt me again?”
“Maybe?”
“Don’t worry, sugar. You can’t.”
“Good.” She meant it. “You’re happy, then?”
One of the teen girls on the wall gave a loud laugh followed by a sharp scream.
“What the hell?” Hank twisted in his chair. Anchor leaped off his lap with a complaint.
And before Samantha could even figure out what was going on below, Hank was over the railing, literally. He leaped over her rail, turning in midair as he grasped the edge of a wooden beam. Before she could even lean all the way over the rail, he’d used the drainpipe to steady him as he took the last long leap to the ground. Looking up at her from the ground, he said, “Get me a big towel as fast as you can.”
He dodged a pickup truck and two cars, darting in front of them, smacking one’s hood with the flat of his palm when it almost hit him. Samantha didn’t even have time to draw another breath before he was across the street, vaulting the low wall the kids were crouching next to, huddled over a young man’s prone form. From where she stood, she could see a rapidly growing pool of dark liquid coming from the boy’s head.
Towel. He’d said big. She only had one really big towel, and luckily, it was clean. She grabbed it, and raced out the door, down her stairs, and around the bagel shop. Luckily, there was no traffic coming and she pelted across the street, the white towel flapping behind her.
“Perfect.” It must have been for a tenth of a second—less—that Hank’s eyes met hers, but the warmth of approval she felt in that moment was unexpected. “Perfect.”
From a pocket, he dug out a knife and slit the towel up the middle. He wadded one piece into a tight square and gave it to Samantha. “See that wound?”
How could she not? The boy’s skull seemed to be dented, blood pouring from the cut. He must have hit it against the old anchor that rested on the sidewalk, a favorite of the tourists who often clustered like seagulls around it to take photos. The boy was unconscious but appeared to be breathing.
“Press it against the wound. Firmly.”
A shiver shook Samantha, and then she stepped forward. “You got it.” The boy was younger than he looked at a distance—he couldn’t be more than fourteen. She kneeled and pressed the towel to his head.
“Careful not to jostle him.” Hank wound the other half of the towel into a large U-shape and, reaching under her arm, fitted it around the boy’s head and neck. “We’re just stabilizing him until the ambulance gets here to transport him.”
Samantha’s head jerked up. “911. We have to call 911.”
“Beckie already did it. That’s what you said your name was, right? Beckie?” His hand on the boy’s shoulder, Hank looked up at the girl who was crying the hardest, her phone still in her hand.
She nodded.
“Good girl. You did an amazing job. Hear those sirens? That’s the help you called. They’re going to take good of him, thanks to you.” To Samantha, he said, “A little more firmly. It’s bleeding through a little. No, don’t lift up to look. That’s right. That’s just perfect, Samantha.”
Beckie spoke through her sobs, “Is he going to die?”
Hank gave a short laugh that did more to comfort Samantha than anything else could have. “Are you kidding me? No way. Good old Ralphie here’s going to be fine. That is, if his mother doesn’t kill him for ditching first period with you bozos. I have very little control over whether she kills him later or not.”
One of the other boys who had been standing, frozen in place, gave a relieved and high-pitched giggle.
“That’s perfect, Samantha,” he said again.
But she wasn’t doing it right. She could feel it. She could feel the heat of the boy’s blood seeping through the towel, through her fingers. She was kneeling in the child’s blood. She didn’t know for sure if Hank could actually tell if the boy was going to be fine or not.
But then he said it again. “He’ll be fine, Samantha. Because of you.”
Her hands finally stopped shaking.
After Hank’s coworkers on the ambulance left with the boy, and after the boy’s mother had been tracked down by phone and directed to the emergency room where Hank continued to maintain he would be fine, after Hank had walked her back up the stairs, keeping his hand on the small of her back which Samantha was more grateful for than she’d ever admit, after he’d ushered her into the bathroom, telling her to take a hot shower, and that while she did that, he’d make her a cup of tea—did she like it black or with milk?—after she came out wrapped in her robe because her hands were shaking again, too much to button up her clean jeans, after all of that, when she looked into Hank’s warm brown eyes, Samantha said, “You got the job.”
“Well,” said Hank, handing over her favorite yellow mug and then opening the French doors so a meowing Anchor could come in. “That’s just fine, then.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
HANK, IT TURNED out, was Jim Hind’s height but not near his shape. The padded suit hung loosely at his hips where Jim was wider, but it was tight across the chest. It was itchy, too. And hot. Hank was already sweating, and he’d just put it on a few minutes before.
“You put on your cup, too, right?”
“You know it’s embarrassing for a guy to be asked that, right?”
“Why?” Samantha was looking knock-out gorgeous again—all big green eyes and pink-cheeked, dressed simply in a black tank top and yoga pants. Her outfit formed to her curves in a way that would have made him uncomfortable if he hadn’t been wearing a cup. Luckily, he was, and that was something of a buzz-kill.
“Because we’re talking about my package here.” He made a gesture with his hands toward his crotch. “My large, well-endowed, extremely precious package, might I add?” Stay classy, Coffee.
“Noted,” Samantha said. “So it doesn’t embarrass you to say that?”
“Nah,” said Hank, glad he had the helmet on and that she couldn’t see his eyes. “Simple truth doesn’t make a man blush.” He held out his arms, feeling a little like the Michelin Man in the get-up. “What now?”
“Now I see if I can make you scream like a little girl.”
“Is that politically correct for you to say? I mean, given that you’re in the job of training women?”
She shrugged and Hank was momentarily mesmerized by the way her bare shoulder rose and fell, the way the top of her breasts looked supported by that bra which was (thankfully) doing a bad job of holding her flatly down. “I train women. Not little girls.”
“Because they scream like I’m about to.”
“Exactly.”
“Glad to know.”
“Now, get onto the mat, okay?”
“Easy for you to say.” Hank couldn’t say with any certainty at all where his feet were going to land, and he was still trying to get the knack of seeing downward out the mesh eyeholes. “How am I supposed to move around in this at all?”
“You get the hang of it.”
“How do you know? Do you ever have to wear this?”
She laughed and bounced on her toes. She was barefoot, which surprised him. Maybe she was going to go easy on him at first. That was fine, he’d take it.
“Yeah, I use it sometimes. Just to remember what it feels like.”
Something about her voice was different. Darker on the last few words. She meant something more, but there was no way in hell he was going to ask her to explain if he couldn’t really see her, couldn’t meet her eyes with his own.
Briskly, Samantha said, “Okay. Are you ready?”
“Will you tell me again what you’re going to do before you do it?”
“Just like you’re getting a pap smear,” she said.
“For God’s sake,” he groaned.
And then she kneed him in the nuts.
Hank dropped to his knees with a shout. “Hey! You said you’d warn me!” It didn’t hurt, exactly, but the pressure of the blow had been so forcefully directed that it was more l
ike it should have hurt.
“I lied.” And she punched him in the head.
“Oh, my God,” he groaned, lying on the mat as he faced the ceiling. “I don’t know why I’m doing this.”
She crouched, moving slowly around his body. It had only been two blows, but it felt like more.
“I think you’re hitting my psyche. Is that possible?”
Samantha straightened. She put her hands on her hips and laughed out loud, such a pretty, happy sound that if he’d been able to figure out how to sit up, he would have, just to get a better look at her. “That’s it!” she exclaimed. “You got it in two!”
“Good!” he said. “We’re done for the day!”
“Just getting started, buddy. But yeah, that’s exactly it. We don’t fight fair here. You lie. You sneak. You attack. You make your prey feel like she’s winning and just when she thinks she has you, you explode into motion again and pin her down until she cries. Then if she doesn’t stop crying, you yell at her and let her up and knock her down again.”
That got him sitting up. Hank yanked off his helmet. “No.”
Samantha looked at him, her lips pressed into a firm line. “It’s fine. Most people can’t do it.”
“I mean, no. Why do you do it this way?”
She walked away, across the room to a blue bag she’d left on the floor. She got a water bottle out, and took a sip. Slowly, she came back toward him and without saying anything, offered him the bottle.
He drank.
“Because it’s important that a woman knows she can do it.”
“You need tricks for that? Lying? Doesn’t seem fair to me.” Hank stuck his legs out straight in front of him. The only thing he could see of his body that he recognized were his work boots, poking out from the bottom of the thick white suit.
Samantha pushed at the bridge of her nose as if she were pushing up the glasses she wasn’t wearing. “You don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
She tilted her head and looked at him as if reassessing him. “No, I love that you don’t.”
“I’m missing something.”
“I love that you’ve never had to think about this. That it doesn’t exist in your mind. It also infuriates me that it doesn’t.” She dropped so that she was sitting on her knees, her legs folded beneath her. “Women don’t get to make that choice. Whether something is fair or not. When a woman is attacked by a guy on the street, he doesn’t ask politely whether she prefers to be hit in the face or punched in the gut.”
Hank winced.
“When a woman wakes up to find a man she doesn’t know kneeling over her in her own bed, holding her down as he rapes her while he holds a gun to her temple, she doesn’t get a polite thank you when he’s done. She gets hurt. She gets damaged, and most of the time she ends up damaged forever. They’re the liars. They’re the ones who usually win. But in here, we win. And we do it fair and square. When one of my students finishes a fight on top, she got there because she fought with her fists and knees and knuckles all the way there, not because she learned fancy moves with names she can’t pronounce that don’t do much more than help her abs.”
She was making total sense, but he hated the fact that he might make a woman cry. On purpose.
In Darling Bay, they just didn’t get the terrible crimes that big cities in California got. This wasn’t San Francisco or Los Angeles. Darling Bay was just a sleepy northern town where their biggest problem was with the pot growers. Dealers tended to be armed as well as stoned, which wasn’t a great combination. But apart from torching their own production shops with alarming regularity when the Feds got too close, creating fires that smelled like an outdoor music festival, the people up in the hills were mostly okay. Very few robberies were committed in Darling Bay, and the police force dealt with no more than one murder a year.
But rape happened. Again, not often, but it did happen. Hank had gone on a call earlier in the year in which a young woman, only eighteen, had been pulled off a running trail at the beach and dragged into the manzanita brush. The rapist wasn’t a Darling Bay person—he been a tourist passing through. They’d never caught him. Hank thought of that girl sometimes, shaking so hard her teeth clattered, begging them to let her shower, Bonnie’s arms around the girl before loading her carefully onto the ambulance, treating her as if she were a broken sand dollar. He wondered if she ever felt safe—really, truly safe. Even if she had a huge boyfriend who worked out—a guy who was a trained bodyguard and carried three guns and a knife—there would be times in her life when she’d be walking alone at night. There would be times she’d be in her kitchen, alone, her spatula poised over the stir-fry, wondering if the sound she’d just heard was the dog in the other room or someone breaking a window.
Hank hated the man who’d done it to her, who’d broken her like that. Who had, in many ways, ruined a large, important part of her whole life. Hank, who knew he would have had a hard time hating the very devil himself knowing that the guy was probably a pretty interesting drinking companion, hated that man who’d no doubt gone on to hurt other women, maybe without ever getting caught.
“Show me,” he said. He cleared his throat roughly. “Show me how to help them.”
Samantha threw her arms around him, catching him off guard. No blow here, just a hug that he could feel all the way through the padded suit. “Hug them first. Hug them when you meet them, and hug them before and after each session.”
He hugged her back. Finally. Something he could probably get right.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HANK AMAZED HER.
He’d thrown himself into the training session, heart and soul. The first time she’d flown at him, he’d stumbled backward, protecting himself naturally with upraised arms. The second time, though? He’d fought back. She could tell he wasn’t coming at her one hundred percent, and of course he wasn’t. His whole job—his whole life—was about protecting people. Not pushing them, pinning them down, bringing them to a point where they could heal themselves.
But Hank had brought maybe eighty percent to their session. It was impressive.
Of course, she knew the moves by heart. She didn’t have to think when she was ripping his arm away from her shoulder, using her lower body weight to flip him onto his back. He got her down once, but she could tell that he hadn’t expected for her to start kicking as hard as she did. Yeah, he’d get used to that pretty soon. A woman’s greatest strength was in her legs, and driving kicks at an attacker from a position on the ground was not only shocking but effective. Good. He’d reacted like a “normal” attacker, whatever that was, automatically retreating from her forward assault.
Breathing hard, she stood and signaled for him to take off his helmet.
“What? Was that wrong?” His face was flushed from exertion, and sweat dripped from the dark hair that hung at his eyes.
How could a man wearing a padded suit be so hot? She shouldn’t be reacting to him like this.
It was his eyes. She had to ignore those dark smoky eyes, the way they seemed to ask something of her, something she couldn’t put her finger on.
She leaned forward, putting her hands on her hips, taking a deep, delicious gulp of air. “No. You’re doing awesome. Perfect.”
“Good!” He frowned. “I mean, not good. Wait. Is that good?”
She laughed. “Yeah. It is. Wanna take that suit off?”
“Damn straight. I’m dying in here.” He unsnapped and unzipped, stripping out of the suit. He’d worn what she’d told him to—a T-shirt, shorts, and his heavy work boots.
The thing was, Samantha hadn’t thought about the fact that she’d get to see him in a whole lot of his glory. Those legs, for example. His considerable height was all in those legs, those extremely muscled limbs. “Do you ride a bike?”
He looked confused. Naturally. “A motorcycle?”
“Nah,” she said. “I hate motorcycles. I meant a bicycle. Your…” She gestured at his legs, feeling suddenly very young and stupid.
“You have a lot of muscles.”
Hank grinned. “Well, thanks. I think you must just be impressed by my black uniform socks tucked into my boots. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got to go…”
Take off the cup. Of course he did.
“And then I need a shower like a rookie on his first house fire.”
“Yeah, yes. I can’t thank you enough. You did great.” She handed him the water bottle, and somehow, watching his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed seemed more intimate than anything else they’d done. He’d manhandled her in the training, and she’d sat on top of his body, her face next to his ear. At one point she’d had him lie on top of her—the way they did with the students who had a history of being trapped by a man in bed—and it had been all business. He’d been the attacker.
But now, the combination of the plane of his jaw, shiny with sweat, the stubble around his mouth, and the way his fingers accidentally brushed hers as he handed back the bottle made something inside of Samantha quake. “You did great,” she said again.
“I want to take you out.”
“Good grief.” He was so blunt. She put the cap back on the bottle, tightening it so much she probably wouldn’t be able to get it off later. “What?”
“I need to tell you that. I want to work with you, professionally, yes. I think what you told me about the way we can help your students is one of the best things I’ve heard in years. If I can help them protect themselves, to make them feel safe, then that’s truly admirable. But damn, Samantha. I want to kiss you so bad I can’t stand it and since I’m never going to do it while we’re training, I’ve got to get you somewhere else to try my luck.”
There was a half-smile on Hank’s face. A sweet smile.
And at the same time it was so sexy her toes curled.
“I can’t. We can’t. Not if we’re going to work together.”
“Okay. I quit.”