Page 52 of Fractured (Not Quite a Billionaire)
I tugged my shirt back over my chest. I’d gained two kilos. Maybe.“If you’re done slagging off my fitness,” I said, “maybe you’d like to start earning your money.”
“Hey,” he said, “don’t be takin’ it out on me. I ain’t the one been lazing around eatin’ everything that ain’t actually on the hoof. Let’s go. Gym.”
When we got in there, he tossed his bag into the corner and told me, “Get on the rower and warm up while I see what we got here with Miss Little Bit.”
I obeyed, keeping an eye on him all the same, and he put a hand on Hope’s upper arm, squeezed gently, and said, “We thinking boxing, maybe? We got a ways to go to build up your upper body, ‘cause you’re just too little.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I don’t want to fight. I thought I could ride the bike or something. I wasn’t really thinking about…”
“You don’t have to hit nobody,” Eugene said. “We can keep it with the bag. You won’t have to worry about getting your nose broke, not like you’re thinking.”
Hope actually shuddered, and I may have done the same inside as well. Hope getting her nose broken wasn’t an image I needed to visualize. I said, “She’s not what you’d call aggressive. Stick to the weights, eh.”
Eugene turned and gave me a glare. “Was I talkin’ to you?” he asked. “I don’t think so.” Then he was back with Hope again. “Time you learned how to be aggressive, then. It ain’t safe not to be able to defend yourself, not the size you are.”
“She doesn’t have to defend herself,” I said.
“Now, what did I just say?” he asked. “You need to shut up when I ain’t talking to you.” My mouth opened, then closed again. Hope had lost the battle not to smile, and as ideas went, this one wasn’t looking like one of my best. “I got some gloves in the car,” he told Hope. “Light ones I use with the kids. We’ll start you there. I’m thinking kickboxing. Get you feeling fierce, walking that way, making anybody think twice about messing with you. Plus get you strong for you, so you can know it. For now, get yourself on the bike and warm up.” He looked at me again, which was good of him, and said, “Five more minutes on that, then get out the jump rope and go. And if you’re thinking I can’t tell that you ate a big breakfast this morning, exactly like you shouldn’t have done, you’re wrong. So pick it up and work it out. One way or another, that breakfast is gonna be gone.”
He left the room, I heard the front door of the apartment close, and Hope, who’d climbed onto the bike and was adjusting the pedals, looked at me and burst out laughing.
“What?” I tried to growl, but Eugene had been right. That breakfasthadn’tbeen any kind of good idea. I was already feeling slightly sick, and I’d be feeling worse soon.
“I think you still look very handsome, even though you’re fat,” she said in her most soothing tone, and when I scowled at her, she laughed some more.
“You just keep laughing,” I said. “Wait until Eugene gets done with you. You think I’m hard on you? You haven’t seen anything yet.”
Of course, I was wrong. Eugene wasn’t nearly as hard on her as he was on me. And whenever I lost my concentration, because I was watching Hope hit the bag Eugene held for her, or because shewason a hand and knee on that bench doing her triceps extensions, he seemed to see it from the back of his head and would be snapping at me, “Focus, man. You getting lazyandfat?”
“Who’s paying who here?” I managed to grit out over the breakfast that was threatening to come up again.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s what you need. Another guy kissing your ass. Quit looking and get going.”
After barely forty minutes, he told Hope, who was panting by now, her T-shirt clinging to her, “You go on. That’s enough for the first day. Besides, I got to whip Hemi into shape. Got to get him concentrating, too.”
She nodded and put up a shaking hand to push the hair back from her face. “I’m going to take a shower and go for a walk, Hemi. It’s either that or lie down and never get up again.”
“Wait a bit,” I said, “and I’ll go with you.”
“No, thanks.” Her breath was still coming hard. “I know you still have work to do, and besides, I need some time alone. I want to look around and get my bearings before tomorrow,”
“I said ‘Wait.’”
“And I said ‘No,’ she answered sweetly. “Have a good workout.” While I was still coming up with a response to that, she told Eugene, “Very nice to meet you. Give Debra my best, please—and thank you. Even though I think you killed me.”
“Nah,” he said. “You might not be too strong yet, but you got some guts.” He barely looked at me when he said it, but I got it. “We’ll keep on going, and it’ll get easier. See you Wednesday.”
I watched her leaving the room in those tiny black shorts, and Eugene looked at me and grinned. “I do love a woman with some sass,” he said. “It ain’t the size, it’s what you do with it, and she’s doin’ plenty, ain’t she? Tough little thing, sweet as she looks. I got to hand it to you, man—you did good.”
When I didn’t answer, just kept on with my lunges, he said, “Now, what you pouting about? That she told you no? Get used to it. That woman’s got a whole lot of push-back in her. And straighten your back and suck in that gut. Use your core.”
“You’re wrong,” I said, doing a final lunge on each side that had my legs threatening to shake, then dropping into my first squat.
“Nope,” Eugene said. “I’m right. And what? She can’t be walkin’ around by herself, because why?”
“You just saw why,” I growled. “You justsaidwhy.”
“Why, that she looks like a man could just eat her up?” He laughed, the bastard. “Yeah, she does. And did she fall in your lap the way you wanted her to? Nope, she didn’t, and she sure ain’t going to be doing it for nobody else. You got to have some faith. That’s the problem with you. You just never had any faith.”
