Chapter 8 Lottie
Lottie
Warmth like I’ve never known wakes me. Two solid bodies are pressed against either side of mine, heat radiating from them like living blankets.
For a moment, I breathe it all in. Slowly, suspended in the quiet cocoon of Archer and Oscar, but my throat is parched, and the thirst wins out.
Carefully, I ease myself from between them, untangling limbs and lifting their arms without waking them. Archer grumbles in his sleep but doesn’t stir. Archer shifts slightly, his hand brushing the sheets where I just was.
I pull on the sweatshirt and shorts, then pad out of the room on bare feet.
The cool kitchen tiles are a sharp contrast to the warmth I left behind.
Sleeping between them both quietens the dreams, and if they come at all, I don’t remember them.
Only a distant echo—an ache in my chest, a familiar panic pressing at the edges of my mind, and a dryness in my throat like I was screaming underwater.
I reach for a glass from the shelf, the cupboard creaking as I close the door.
The faucet hisses as I fill it, and the sound feels too loud for the time.
I lift the glass to my lips and freeze as a figure appears in the corner of my vision.
My heart jerks. The water sloshes over the rim, cool against my hand.
Claire.
She stands so close to me, I don’t know how I didn’t hear her approaching, arms crossed. Her knowing eyes flick to the glass in my hand, then to my face. “Nightmare?” she asks softly.
I shake my head. “Not tonight. I woke up gasping for a drink after feeling like I was boiling alive between them both.”
She steps closer, shaking her head and laughing softly. “Should have known they wouldn’t go far after everything. How are you feeling, sweet girl?”
“Tired.”
“Too tired to fight?” My eyes flick to the floor, avoiding the all-knowing look she always gives me. She’s barefoot, like me, but while I’m half-awake and feeling frayed at the edges, she’s sharp, like every move is deliberate.
“I don’t know how to fight this. Lorenzo won’t stop…
” I sigh, placing the glass on the counter with a soft clink.
“But I don’t want to give him that power over me ever again.
I meant what I said earlier when I said I want to fight for myself.
Fight with them instead of them fighting my battles for me. ”
“Come with me,” she demands.
Claire leads me through the hallway, past the living room, and the bedrooms. I realize I haven’t been down this way before.
When I first moved in, I was too scared to explore, but Archer led me around the house by my hand, pointing out all the rooms, and ever since then, I’ve been like a creature of habit, only going to places I was familiar with.
She stops in front of a door I’d never seen open before, half-hidden beneath the staircase. She turns the handle, and it groans softly as the door swings open, revealing a narrow flight of stairs that seems to descend into darkness.
“I’ve never been down here before,” I whisper.
“I know,” she says, flipping a switch on the wall. “No one has.”
Pale light blinks to life, the stairs cast in a dull yellow color. Claire doesn’t wait, just starts down each step while I hesitate at the top for half a second before following. The air changes as we descend. Cooler. Like the air in cellars or old churches.
The room at the bottom doesn’t look like it belongs in this house. Black training mats are covering the floor, weapons lining the wall—wooden staffs, a few short blades. A single punching bag hangs from the ceiling in the corner, worn but still solid.
“So… not a hobby room?” I mutter under my breath, but Claire still hears.
She stops near the center and turns to face me. “Not a hobby room…” Her arms drop to her sides, her eyes settling on me. “This is mine. My room. Made for me, so I could expel the demons that I needed to.”
Something flickers behind her eyes. An old pain… a familiar pain.
I stand here, silently.
“You have demons, too, Lottie. Same kind. Different name, maybe, doesn’t matter, though.
They don’t go away on their own.” She inhales deeply.
“You need to learn to fight. Really fight, and I can’t trust those two up there to do it correctly.
They love you too much to train you the way you need. They’ll hold back. I won’t.”
Claire sighs again. Her arms cross, hugging herself. “When I found out I was pregnant, before I knew it was a boy. I prayed it wasn’t a girl,” she says suddenly.
It stings. Landing like a slap I haven’t braced for, even though she doesn’t mean it like that.
She sees it, of course, she does, and her eyes fill with pity.
“I don’t mean it how it sounds, Lottie,” she quickly tries to reassure me.
“If I had a daughter, I would’ve made sure she was capable just like I am.
But this world, the one Will and I live in?
It’s not kind or forgiving. We thrive in it, yes…
but that comes with a cost. A risk. Someone would have hurt her just to hurt us. ”
I look down, trying to hide the flicker of hurt behind my eyes. “I get it,” I whisper.
“I know you do,” Claire replies, her voice softer now.
“But let me be clear with you… You are my daughter in every way that counts. You were already broken in ways I prayed no daughter of mine would ever be before you came to us, and I would have protected you with my last breath if I could have, sweet girl… but I couldn’t. ”
Claire steps forward, cupping my face with one hand, her thumb brushing lightly beneath my eye. “But I can now.” I swallow the lump rising in my throat and step back. “Stand there,” Claire points to the left of the mat. “Feet apart, shoulder width.”
I moved without question, grounding my stance the way I’d seen Archer do so many times before. “What now?” I ask.
“Now, we keep this between us,” Claire says happily, smirking. “Will understands my need for this space. He created it for me, knowing what I needed, but he’s a different man when it comes to you.”
I raise a brow. “What do you mean?”
She doesn’t answer at first. Her smile fades, and her expression turns serious.
“Will is… protective of the people he loves. He grew up with a father who was cruel and a mother who deserved more. When he found me…” She swallows hard, a lump forming in her throat that I can hear in her voice.
“I was in the basement of some club. Beaten. Collared. Shackled like an animal. I had a shard of glass clutched so tight in my hand I nearly sliced my tendons in half.”
Claire holds out her palm, and I see the scar—long, jagged, healed but still there. Silver-pink across her skin like a ribbon of memory. “My father sold me after my mom died,” she adds, voice low and slightly broken. “He didn’t look back. Just counted the money and vanished.”
My throat clenches. I hate it. Hate that someone would do that to her. Hate that I knew exactly what that kind of betrayal feels like, but then I watch her straighten, her shoulders rolling back as the vulnerability she was showing before vanishes.
“Men like the ones who hurt us, they don’t stop.
They take and take until there’s nothing left, and even then, they’ll squeeze the last breath from your lungs just to feel powerful.
I’m going to train you until you can stop them…
until you become your own weapon.” Her eyes hold mine.
“You’re going to beg me to stop. I won’t.
You need this, Lottie. Just like I did.”
I nod before she can say another word because she’s right. I need this. I need to be more than what I am now… more than what Lorenzo once knew me as.
The first hit isn’t hers. It’s mine… or it’s supposed to be.
I swing wide—sloppy and impatient. She dodges it like she’s seen it coming before I even decided to move.
“Again,” she calmly instructs, moving back into place.
I pivot, trying again. My second strike is faster, aimed at her side.
She catches my wrist midair, twisting it behind my back so fast my knees buckle and I fall to the ground.
“Again,” she barks.
Sweat beads at my temple as I take a breath, trying to ground myself. “Wait,” I plead, desperate for a break.
“No.” Claire circles me. “They wouldn’t wait, and I promised you I wouldn’t go easy on you.”
I can already feel the bruises on my body appearing, aches that I haven’t felt in a long time making themselves known as I move in ways I never have before. “I just need a small break.”
“Nope. Again. You need to stop relying on your emotions when you strike. Rage feels powerful, can even make your hits harder, but it clouds your judgment. You’re sloppy, precision is off, and that is how you lose.”
I launch forward, this time channeling control. Left jab, right elbow, knee. Claire blocks the first two but steps back on the third. A small win, but at least it was something.
Her lips twitch, not a smile, but a ghost of one. But then she’s serious again, lunging for me before I’ve even had a chance to catch my breath and tackles me to the floor with a thud.
We train for what feels like hours. My muscles burn, my lungs ache, but I don’t stop. Not even when I fall to my knees on the mat, arms trembling, or when the sting of her arm connecting with mine nearly makes me beg her to stop, or when my shoulder cracks back from one of her holds.
Claire doesn’t yell, but she doesn’t coddle me either. She corrects me with firm, direct orders.
“Lower your stance.”
“Follow through, or you’ll get knocked off balance.”
“Stop hesitating.”
She moves like water—fluid, fast, and powerful. Every motion with a purpose, and when I mirror her, something seems to click. I wasn’t perfect, I don’t think I will ever reach Claire’s level, but I’m not fragile either, and for the first time ever, I truly feel like I could fight back.
After what feels like the hundredth repetition, I slump to the mat, panting. Claire crouches next to me, a proud smile on her face, and tosses me a bottle of water.
“You did good,” she proudly tells me.
I look at her, chest still aching. “You didn’t give me a choice.”