Page 27 of Knot Yours

“It’s very okay.”

Austin pads naked from the room to get his discarded clothes. I opt for some pajama shorts and a tank, foregoing underwear. I enter the kitchen as Austin bends to pick up his shirt. He casts me a playful glare, and my cheeks heat at the wet spot still visible.

He tosses the shirt over his shoulder and steps out onto the back deck. With my face aflame, I open the fridge, leaning in to chill my heated skin. I shop for dinner while I’m cooling, picking out some chicken for a traditional arroz con polo. It’s a comfort dish from home that I make from time to time. It’s not complicated—seasoned chicken and rice—but it symbolizes the few ordinary times my family had together.

Austin returns right as I’m finishing seasoning the chicken. He lets Piper in, carrying her bowls and a dog bed. He’s also wearing a clean shirt. Piper sniffs her way around my living room, quickly finding the basket of tennis gear. I haven’t played in a long time, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of the equipment. Tennis is something Cordero and I enjoyed doing together before the cancer took away his ability to play.

The happy pup bounces into the kitchen with a pink ball in her mouth. She drops it and hits it with her snout, rolling it over to me. Austin smiles, watching our interaction. “I’m sorry, sweet girl. I can’t play while I’m trying to feed your dad. After dinner, ok?”

Austin

Dad.

My heart squeezes at the word, at what I never had. I turn away from the scene of my two girls, one talking with words, the other with whines and barks.

As promised, Marisol plays fetch in the backyard with Piper after the delicious dinner. Watching them play together does things to me. Good things and scary things. Part of me is scared to go all in with a woman again. The rest of me acknowledges the futility of fighting it since it’s already happened.

It’s getting late. I brush my fingertips down Marisol’s cheek. “I guess I better go.”

“You could stay,” Marisol offers in a whisper.

I thread my fingers into her hair. “I’ll stay.”

An hour later, a naked and sated Marisol sleeps against my side. Piper is on her bed in the living room, and I’m wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Eight days. That’s all it’s taken for this woman to get under my skin. Eight days for Marisol to bring this grumpy bastard to heel.

I let her do it. Happily. Now that I’ve taken the leash off my mind, pictures of a different future fill my head. I want Marisol in my space, my real home. Permanently. It’s too soon to ask, but I can still take her there.

I want to date her. I want to cook for Marisol in my kitchen. I want to make love with her on my deck beneath the stars. I want to take her to Montana and let my mom smother her with affection.

One damned week, and I already know I want to marry her someday.

I nod off eventually and wake before my alarm. It’s still dark at four-thirty. Since I didn’t go home last night, I’ll need to get to work a little earlier than usual to clean up and change.

With a kiss on Marisol’s bare shoulder, I slip out of bed and search for my clothes. Piper lifts her head when I walk out and pull on my shorts. Minutes later, we’re on the road, headed for Knot Corp.

I change clothes in my office and head for the gym. The room is empty. Others won’t start filtering in for another half hour or so. Piper trots over, holding her running harness in her mouth. “You too, huh?”

We approach her treadmill, Piper chomping at the bit to get in a good run. I secure her harness, she hops onto the track, and I clip her onto the chain. The muscular Mali lurches forward, starting the slatted belt moving. Within seconds, she’s at top speed, thirty miles per hour.

I hit the treadmill as well but at a more conservative seven miles per hour. Piper runs for a bit and slows for a walk. I’ll have about twenty minutes before she sits down. By then, she’ll be done.

I start a cool down at fifteen minutes, and when Piper lies down on the belt, I step off to free her from the machine. She darts through her mechanical door to her outside play area, and I do a weight circuit before hitting the showers.

Today’s training is on break falls. Once a month, I schedule instructors from a local jujitsu dojo to train our operatives on taking a fall without injury. Hitting the deck, whether intentional or not, is inevitable. How you fall can determine how fast you get up or if you get up at all. A bad fall can cause injury and make you vulnerable to an enemy who won’t give you time to recover.

During these specialized sessions, I’m not in charge. I’m just another student. For today’s session, I’m paired with Aaron “Grim” Hosfeld.

Fall training doesn’t typically involve contact, but when we need these moves for real, it won’t be in a comfortable, air-conditioned gym. We’ll need to be ready to dive from a bullet, miss flying shrapnel, or get knocked off an elevated surface.

For that reason, we pair up and knock each other around while the Tang Soo Do masters observe and correct. To truly test our reaction times, we’re blindfolded when on defense. It’s the one day a month we get to play dirty. Thanks to one incident a year ago, it’s against the rules to pull people’s pants down. Funny as it was, no one wants a repeat performance.

It’s my turn to go first in my group, so I pull down my blindfold. The room is noisy, so I can’t rely on my ears to pick out Grim’s attack direction. He begins by smacking me on the back of the head. I keep my feet moving so he can’t grab one of my legs.

I meter my breathing to keep the wait from rattling me. Hosfeld is taking his time. Wanting to interrupt his planning, I spin, at minimum necessitating a reset on his part. Half a second later, I step on something soft, startling me.

Before I can shift that foot to solid ground, my right is swept out from under me, inside to outside. Somehow, I still manage to bring in my left to roll into the fall, smacking the floor with my left arm, just like we’ve been trained.

I roll onto my back next, shoving the blindfold off. “Nice try, asshole.”

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