Page 9 of Reclaim Me

“Have you eaten?” I repeat, like it makes total sense to ask someone in Hunter’s state of mind about their eating habits.

“You think I want to die because I missed a meal?”

“No, but I do know you shouldn’t make any big decisions on an empty stomach.”

“So if I told you I had a five-course meal before I got high for the first time in two years and came up on this roof, you’d be okay with me stepping off of it?”

The image he paints makes my blood run cold. It’s so vivid, so raw, so terrifyingly specific I’m stunned into a brief silence. Hunter chuckles, and it’s a dark, condescending sound that tells me he thinks I know nothing about the kind of pain he’s in. I resent that laugh and the assumption it represents. Pain is a familiar bedfellow of mine. The physical torture of dancing on open blisters and ingrown toenails. The emotional agony of holding my mom’s hand while an oncologist explained that the chemo regimen she’d been following for months hadn’t so much as slowed down the cancer.

It doesn’t come from the same source, but pain is pain.

“Did you?” I ask, finally finding my voice.

“Did I what?”

“Have a five-course meal before you relapsed?”

“No, Rae, I didn’t, and I don’t think anyone would care if I left this world with an empty stomach.”

“I would. I would care.” My declaration gives him pause, and I use it to my advantage, choosing to fill the space with an offer I hope he won’t refuse. “Which means you should let me buy you a meal.”

4

HUNTER

Now

“He bit my fucking nipple, Hunter!”

Mallory Kent’s inappropriate declaration is punctuated by the sound of her taped and gloved fists colliding with the pads in my hand. She packs a hell of a punch, but there’s not enough force behind it to make me move. When she realizes that, she spins and hits me with a roundhouse kick I’ll happily take if it means that she’s less likely to lose it on her son, Eric, who’s apparently a little too enthusiastic about breastfeeding.

“Do three-month-olds even have teeth?” I ask, swinging the pads down so they absorb the brunt of the kick. There was a point in time when Mallory and I would train, and the only words I’d speak would be directives and critiques, but somehow—probably because of that one time years ago when I agreed to an impromptu session that ended up being more talking than fighting—this is our new norm.

Mallory talks.

I try to get her to shut up and fight.

She throws out a few combinations to show me she remembers that I’m her trainer, not her therapist, and proceeds to treat me like one anyway.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

I’d be more upset about it if she wasn’t such a good client, friend, and now business advisor. That last part of our relationship is still pretty new, something that happened when Mallory came to me with an investment proposal from the venture capitalist firm she works for and grand ideas about franchising. That was a little over a year ago, and now there are multiple Legacy Training Centers around the state, most of them in college towns, so we can serve young women in the same age range Mallory was in when she found me. All the new changes have been good for business, and even better for my pockets, but I won’t lie and say that becoming the face of a brand that extends beyond New Haven hasn’t been daunting.

I never wanted the gym to be more than what it was when I started it, when a dream that didn’t spark in my heart became mine to make a reality, but here I am, doing branding shoots and filming self-defense videos for a YouTube channel that’s seen by more people in a month than I’d ever want to know in a lifetime.

“That little jerk does,” she says, huffing her way through a combination she used to execute with ease before her pregnancy with the twins. Now that she’s fully recovered from her cesarean, she’s determined to get back to where she was before becoming a mom.

“Widen your stance.”

Her brows fold in on each other as she throws a jab that will cause her to stumble because her weight isn’t evenly distributed. “My stance is fine,” she grunts, following through with the move and proving me right. She stumbles forward, and I catch her, releasing her as soon as she’s steady.

“Your center of gravity has changed, Mal, but you’re still throwing moves like it hasn’t. If you keep it up, you’re going to hurt yourself or someone else.”

Both of her shoulders drop, curved with defeat as she twists her lips to the side. I watch her process my words, the reluctance to accept the truth of the statement dancing in her brown eyes. Finally, she nods and begins to unwrap her hands.

“I guess we’ll have to work on that later this week.”

“You got it,” I tap her on the shoulder with one of my padded hands and give her what I hope is an encouraging smile. “You still did good today. Not bad for a mom with a fucked up nipple.”

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