5. Libby
Libby
The Rollin On Gym
“O fficer Tate! Hey!”
I glance up and smile when a group of teens horsing around at the front doors of the Rollin On Gym call my name.
Trouble makers, law breakers, smartasses, they’re the very delinquents I, as a cop, should hate.
But their rebellion is all for show. They’re good kids, and their loyalty for family and their town is fierce.
“Officer! Help me.”
Slowing my steps, I stop in front of the foursome and lift a brow. “Got a crime to report, Miss Kincaid?”
“Yeah!” Evie wears a sports bra, booty shorts, and a thick scrunchy in her hair to keep the wild curls off her face.
She’s sixteen, I think, and has the body that comes with spending her life inside a pro fighting gym.
Defined abs that I secretly envy every day, ropey muscles on her shoulders and biceps, and a mean right hook when someone steps up in the boxing ring.
She’s a champion fighter already, and has lofty plans to go pro when she’s old enough and her daddy says she can.
She can look after herself just fine, so I know her calling me over now has nothing to do with a crime, and everything to do with the two guys that stand at her and her cousin’s back.
“Ya know the sasquatch, right?” She jabs a thumb over her shoulder to Ben Conner, the boy not-so-affectionately known as Sasquatch .
“He made a bet, see? So, one, betting as a minor is a crime. And two, when you lose your bet and cry like a little bitch instead of pay up, that’s a crime in my gym.
Tell him to hand the fifty over, and we won’t have a problem. ”
“Okay, but…” I drop my bag and eye the foursome.
Evie’s cousin, Lucy, also known as Bean, is a fighter just like Evie.
Similar bodies, but where one is light skin, light hair, light eyes, the other is her opposite.
Darker skin, mahogany hair, brown eyes. And where Evie is loud, Bean is humble, often laying her opponents out in silence.
“You’re saying Benny the Sasquatch made an illegal bet? ”
“That’s what I’m saying,” Evie argues. “And now he won’t pay up.”
“But there are two sides to every bet, right? So that means you were also making illegal bets… right?”
“Right!” Her eyes widen. “No, wait…”
“What was the bet? Perhaps I can let it pass if it was reasonable.”
“It was a circuit,” the fourth and last member of the group speaks up.
Macallistar Blair was a fighter until recently, but he had to undergo surgery on his heart, so what was once a promising fighting career is now, according to my sources, over.
He carries anger in his eyes for what’s been taken from him, and I’m not sure anyone else sees that anger the way I do.
Everyone is so focused on the fact he’s alive, when there was a good chance he wouldn’t be, that they don’t see his feelings on his fight career.
He was planning to go pro, and now he’s not even allowed to jump rope.
“ Thirty rounds,” he continues. “Push-ups, sit-ups, hip escape, a thousand kicks, ten rounds of sparring. First to complete wins.”
“Took all damn day,” Evie growls. “The whole effing day! I won fair and square, and now he’s all ‘ but my hamstring! My poor, tender, sissy hamstring was tight ’.”
“You cheated!” Ben growls. “You know you don’t deserve the fifty.”
“How’d you cheat?” I wait for Evie’s bright eyes. “What did you do to have the cop’s son calling foul?”
“She—”
Benny’s voice cuts off on a squeak when Evie throws her elbow back and nails him in the gut. “I did nothing. I won fair and square, and he’s crying like a little bitch. Now I need my money, so I’m coming to the cops.”
“Snitches get stitches,” Benny growls. “I don’t have room in my life for snitches.”
“No.” She rounds on him and plops her hands on her hips. “Snitches end up in ditches. Pay up, Sasquatch, or face my wrath.”
“Alright, see, this is how this is gonna go.” I grab Evie’s shoulder and spin her back to face me. “You’re both making illegal bets, you’re bordering on child abuse with a circuit the size of the one you did, one of you threatened stitches, and another, death. Am I following this so far?”
Evie grins and nods her head.
“Right, so you’re both idiots. Take your problems to the octagon and away from me. Otherwise I’ll toss you both in the tank, separate cells, and you won’t be released until the toilets have been scrubbed.”
Wide-eyed, Evie curls her lips back with disgust. “Ew.”
“Exactly. Still want me to recover your money from the deputy’s kid?”
“No.” Turning, she grabs Lucy’s hand and tugs her away. “We’ll settle this on the mats like men.”
“You’re not a man!” Ben hollers as she leaves. “Evelyn, you’re not a man! Stop acting like you can square up.”
When the sounds of a chicken clucking echo along the hall and turn the teen’s face red with anger, I pick up my bag and walk toward the locker room.
I pass the girl’s mom and shake my head, then I pass Oz – Benny’s stepfather – and laugh when I find him squatting around a corner, listening to his kid squabble with a girl.
“Ben’s an idiot. Seriously.”
“But they’re so cute, no?” Standing, Oz goes from being eye level with my hips, to making me fold my neck back to maintain eye contact.
He’s had his sleep too, and now he’s ready to work off the nervous energy before we start back on days on Monday.
“Benny’s gotta keep that under wraps for like, ten more years before her daddy releases the shackles. It’s so much fun to watch.”
“I’m watching close,” Tina saunters by. Tina is Evie’s mom and almost twin.
“Swear to the devil, you keep that boy close, or you’ll have to answer to me.
That might be something one day, Lord knows they keep swiping at each other, but we don’t let history repeat around here.
School first, then she’ll win a title or two, get a degree and buy a home, then we’ll let her date.
If Benny can keep his shit together for that decade, then maybe we’ll let him ask her out. ”
Oz lifts his hands in surrender. Hat pulled low, wicked grin wrinkling his face, he backs away and chuckles. “I keep him straight. I keep him outta jail. I’m doing the best I can.”
Tina stops and narrows her eyes, but I shake my head and walk into the female locker room to get ready for my workout.
Those kids are going to terrorize this town, and despite their parents thinking they have it under control, I know the kids will end up in the back of a patrol car a dozen times between now and when they graduate college.
Things get sticky when it’s your dad or your uncle fastening the cuffs, and when the girl is cute as hell and bats her lashes to be let go, Alex and Oz stand no chance.
I’m going to have to be the bad guy, I just know it.
I stop by the lockers on the far wall, push my bag in and snatch my headphones out, then swinging a towel over my shoulders and grabbing my water bottle, I close the door and set the passcode.
I’m not in a rush today. For one day a week, I get to take my time, wander around, slow my sets, and count my breaths. Every other day, I have an hour to get in and out, shower, and run to work before I’m late.
I reenter the hallway and head toward the weights room.
I’m not a pump-class or organized sport kind of girl.
Instead, I push my headphones in and turn “Love The Way You Lie” up until my ears almost sting.
I have somewhere to be at six, so I have two and a half hours to mellow out and feel the burn.
I let myself find the rhythm beating through my ears, but when I enter the weight room and find a broad back imposing on my space, I stop and frown.
I normally dump my bottle and towel by that corner.
I normally place my things between the wall and the multi station, do a five-minute run on the treadmill, then work on my shoulders and back.
But someone else’s ass is using that space, someone else’s shoulders, covered in sweaty ink, are already feeling the burn from the heavy weights.
Put out, since I’m a creature of habit, I reverse and use the opposite corner. I set my things down and growl when I tug a headphone out by accident. I catch the sound of a male grunt as he slowly does his reps, but I push the headphone back in and try to find my zen.
Working out is my zen, and now someone else has put a kink in my plans.
I push my phone into a band wrapped around my arm, and as an extra zing to help me ignore my visitor, I turn the volume louder and head to the lone treadmill.
This gym has a whole room set up with the treadmills and ellipticals.
This room is just for the weights, but it’s as though the Kincaids have watched me train.
They watched my habits, and because I do the same thing most days, they knew I needed the five-minute warmup.
A month or so into my membership, a treadmill turned up in this room so I wouldn’t have to mingle with everyone else.
I adore this place, because those that want to talk to each other, do. And those that don’t are left the hell alone.
I turn the treadmill on and start slow, because my body aches from an extra-long sleep.
I woke with a numb leg around four, having slept on it at a weird angle for six hours straight.
My hand was asleep, my blankets tangled, and my leg stung as I turned and the blood rushed back in.
I sleep like the dead on the last day after night shift, exhausted from work and exhausted from screwing with my sleep pattern, I force myself to sleep well into the next day to catch up.
Then I have to work out to shed the nervous energy before I can settle back into regular daylight hours.