Chapter 25 Lance
Lance
Training Genevieve is a terrible idea.
I knew it a week ago when I agreed to it, and I know it now as she steps onto the mat at Lovers’ Alcove, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail and her jaw set like she’s preparing for war.
We’ve fallen into a rhythm, the two of us. A dangerous one.
Every morning, I bang on her door at dawn.
She curses at me through the wood, stumbles out looking like she wants to commit murder, and we run.
Cavall bounds ahead, deliriously happy, while she wheezes creative insults at my back.
We end up here, and I teach her how to throw a punch without breaking her thumb.
How to use her size to take a grown man down with a joint lock.
How to stay alive if someone bigger and meaner corners her in the dark.
Then she goes to work at the tavern, and I disappear underground to train Percy, and we don’t talk about the hours in between.
Art hasn’t been by once. He’s conveniently gone out of town on last-minute business for his dad—the visit he promised her, the one that was supposed to happen “sooner rather than later,” quietly shelved.
He texts me. Campaign stuff. Party prep. Asks how she’s doing. I tell him she’s fine. Safe.
I don’t tell him the other things. Mainly because they’re things I shouldn’t be noticing, and partly because every time I try to type the words “you should come see her,” my hands won’t do it.
“Feet wider,” I say, circling behind her. “You’re standing like you’re waiting for a bus.”
She glares.
“Wider.”
“They are wide.”
“They’re not.” I stop behind her. “You want a stable base. Something no one can knock you off of.”
“Maybe if you actually showed me instead of barking orders—”
I hook my foot around her ankle and sweep.
She goes down hard, catching herself on her palms. “Ouch.”
“Lesson one.” I crouch beside her. “Don’t trust anyone. Even the people teaching you.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“We’ve established that.” I hold out my hand.
She stares at it, probably weighing whether to take it or spit in my face, but she grabs it. Her palm is warm against mine, and when I pull her up, she stumbles forward, landing flat against my chest.
We both freeze.
Her hand presses right over my heartbeat, and I wonder if she can feel how hard it’s suddenly beating.
Great. This is how it starts. With a heartbeat that gives you away through someone else’s palm. Art trusted me with her because I’m supposed to be the one person who’d never cross that line.
I am the one person who would never cross that line.
She pulls her hand back, and I clear my throat.
“Again,” I say. “Feet wider this time.”
She gets into position.
“Drop your shoulders.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
I reach out and place my hands on her. Her skin is warm through the thin fabric of her tank top, and it takes everything in me to not skim my fingers along her arms, just to see if her body would react.
“Here,” I say, pressing on her shoulders gently. “Loose. Tension keeps you slow and weak.”
Her breathing hitches and she nods.
I give in. My palms slide against her soft skin, fingers grazing the inside of her forearms as I guide her elbows into position.
She trembles, and every single thing I know about distance and discipline and keeping my hands where they belong burns down to one useless thought: Do it again.
Art used to talk about her in the early days.
How she’d fall asleep on his shoulder during movies.
How she made him feel like the best version of himself.
Like his life was a little bit lighter. I remember thinking: good.
He deserves that. Someone soft and real who loves him for him, not for his last name.
I step back.
“Throw a punch. Show me what you’ve got, Half-Pint.”
She turns and throws a right hook. Better than before.
“Again. Rotate through your hips.”
She throws another, and I catch her wrist mid-swing, using her momentum to spin her back against my chest. Her body collides with mine, and my arm wraps around her torso, pinning her. My other hand comes up to rest on her throat.
Her pulse flutters wildly against my fingers, and her hair smells like my shampoo, and that shouldn’t make my grip tighten against her waist, but it does.
“What do you do now?” I ask, and my mouth is too close to her ear.
“I don’t know.”
“Think. Someone grabs you from behind. What’s your first move?”
“Scream?”
“And if no one’s around?”
She’s quiet. Her throat bobs beneath my palm.
“Your hands aren’t pinned,” I say.
I let go of her waist and drag my touch up her side, and then down her arm, until I’m hovering over her knuckles. She sucks in a breath, and something low in my stomach tightens as I guide us up together. “Find my fingers.”
She reaches, wrapping around my pinky and ring finger where they rest against her throat.
“Good. Now peel them back. Hard.”
She does, bending them backward, and I grit against the pain, letting her feel how even a small amount of leverage can drop someone twice her size.
“Don’t stop. Use your whole body.”
She wrenches my hand to the side, rotating her torso, and I let her take me down, guiding the fall. My knee hits the mat first, and she follows through, still gripping my fingers, forcing my arm into an angle behind me. The pressure is sloppy, but it works.
For a second, neither of us moves. She’s standing over me, breathing hard, flushed all the way down her neck, eyes lit up with a look I’ve never seen on her before.
My heart stutters at the sight.
“Now what?” I ask from the ground.
“I run?”
“You run. Don’t stay to finish the fight. Create distance and get out.” I push to my feet, rolling my wrist. “Not bad, Half-Pint.”
She beams. “I just put you on the ground. I think it’s better than ‘not bad.’”
“I let you put me on the ground.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Must be embarrassing, getting taken down by someone half your size.”
“You talk a lot of shit.” I grin. “Let’s go again. This time I won’t make it easy.”
“Sadist.”
“You keep saying that.”
Cavall lifts his head from where he’s been dozing near the water, decides we’re fine, and drops back down with a sigh.
We go another forty minutes. By the end, we’re both drenched in sweat, the midmorning sun beating through the trees. The waterfall roars behind us, mist drifting over the alcove.
Genevieve stands at the edge of the mat, hands on her hips. “God, it’s hot for October.”
“So cool off.”
She looks at me, then at the water. “Seriously?”
“We’re done for the day.”
She chews her lip. Then she peels off her tank top.
My throat goes dry.
Underneath, she’s in a black sports bra. But it doesn’t matter. All I can see is the curve of her waist, the dip of her lower back, freckles scattered across her shoulders.
“Turn around,” she says, her hands on the waistband of her shorts.
I turn. Behind me, there’s a shuffle of fabric. I stare at a tree and count the knots in the bark. Try to remember the capital of Montana.
Art’s face. Think about Art’s face.
But Art’s face keeps getting replaced by the sound of her laughing at breakfast, or the way she says “Champ” like it means something, the weight of her hand on my chest this morning.
A splash. “Okay, you can look.”
I blow out a heavy breath. Get it together. She’s just a girl.
When I turn, she’s in the water up to her waist, wet strands clinging to her neck. Her shorts are in a pile next to her tank top.
Which means she’s in there in her underwear.
Water drips from her collarbone, travels down her chest, over the fabric of her bra, and falls into the pool below. I drag my eyes to the sky, and then to the trees again—at every single thing in this clearing that isn’t wet and half-dressed and ruining my life.
“You coming in?”
“I’m good.”
“Wow.” She tilts her head, water lapping at her shoulders. “The great Lance Calloway, afraid of a little cold water.”
“I’m not afraid.”
“I don’t know,” she singsongs. “Maybe my self-defense prowess intimidates you.”
“Yeah, that’s definitely it.”
She sends a wave in my direction. It catches my shorts and soaks them to the knee.
“Oops.”
“Did you really just do that? What are you, five?”
She does it again.
“Oops,” she repeats, grinning.
I pull my shirt over my head and wade in, both because I need the cold water for reasons I’m not going to examine, and because apparently the only way to shut her up is to prove a point. I sink up to my hips and let it cool the fever under my skin.
Cavall launches himself in with a spectacular splash. Genevieve shrieks as the wave hits her, then she’s laughing, shoving water at him as he paddles around her in delighted circles.
“Your dog’s a menace.”
“He’s probably picking up bad habits from you.”
She laughs again, and I smile at the sound.
Cavall eventually tires out and paddles to the shallow end. Genevieve floats on her back, arms spread, eyes closed, her hair fanning out like copper streaks.
Sunlight catches the droplets on her collarbone, her shoulders, her belly button.
Her freckles stand out more when she’s wet, scattered across her skin like stars I want to map.
I wonder if Art’s ever seen her like this. Unguarded and glowing. I wonder if he knows what she looks like when she’s not performing for anyone, when she’s just existing in the world like it belongs to her.
I wonder if he’d kill me for the way I’m looking at her right now.
Fuck.
“I can feel you staring,” she says without opening her eyes.
“Just making sure you don’t drown.”
One lid opens to glare at me, then closes.
We drift in silence. The waterfall roars. Birds call in the trees. Cavall snaps at a butterfly and misses.
“Can I ask you something?” she says eventually.
“Depends.”
“That kid you were training.” She rights herself, treading water. “What will happen to him?”
My stomach tightens. We haven’t talked about her sneaking down to the Lye and seeing me with Percy. I haven’t wanted to, because then I’d have to admit I saw her, and I liked knowing she was there.
“I don’t know.”
“But you admit you’ve been training him.”
“Not by choice.”
She swims closer. Her questions are specific, like she’s cross-referencing, or testing what I’ll tell her against things she already knows. I clock it, but I don’t call her on it, because I’d do the same thing in her position.
“How does the Lye work?” she asks.
“You’ve been down there.”
“Yeah, but… I mean the operation, not the place.”
The smart thing would be to shut this down. Telling her could put her in more danger, or burden her with truths she might not really want to hear.
But she’s treading water next to me and asking questions no one else has ever cared enough to ask, and there’s something about the way she’s looking at me that makes me want to answer.
Besides, no one in her life is being honest, and I can’t find it in myself to become another one who keeps her in the dark under the guise of safety.
“The Lye is pretty new. Something Freddy cooked up to try and be the god of Rosebrook Falls, I don’t know. Before then I’d get carted around.”
“To where?”
“Basements. Warehouses. Backyards. They moved us into different states, different cities, so no one could track the operation.”
“Us,” she repeats.
“I’m not the only one stuck down there. The other fighters rotate through their own locations. Percy, too.” My chest tightens. “The Lye is my place now. People pay to put someone in the cage, and they either tell me to lose, or tell me to make sure they don’t get back up.”
“So it’s about money.”
“Money and death, Half-Pint. The two most powerful forces in the world.”
“And the footage… You said they record it? Have you ever tried to find it? Maybe then you could be free, I’m sure I could get my father to represent you. You don’t have to do this.”
An ache forms in my ribs and pulses outward until I can barely breathe. “I’m sure they’re not stupid enough to leave it somewhere people could find.”
“And if they were?”
I press my lips together and look away. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Okay.”
She doesn’t push. But after a few seconds, she reaches out under the water and finds my hand.
My entire body locks up.
Her fingers thread through mine, and she doesn’t say anything. Just holds on.
Pull away.
This is my best friend’s girl. The woman Art asked me to protect, not to hold hands with in a waterfall like some tragic fucking fairy tale.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.
I let go. I don’t deserve her, but maybe this way I’ll get to relive this moment when I die.
She drifts away, giving me space.
“We should head home,” I say. “You’ve got work, and it’s getting cold as shit.”
We swim to the shallow end, and I climb out first, keeping my back to her while she pulls on her clothes.
When I turn around, she’s standing there in her soaked sports bra and damp shorts, arms wrapped around herself, shivering as the air hits her skin.
I grab my hoodie and hold it out.
She blinks at it, then takes it and pulls it over her head. It swallows her. The sleeves are past her hands, the hem hitting her mid-thigh. She looks ridiculous. And perfect. Something surges through me so fiercely it nearly buckles my knees.
We walk back in silence, Cavall herding us like sheep.
At the door, she stops and turns to face me.
“Thank you,” she says. “For today. For all of it.”
I can’t find my voice, so I bite the inside of my lip and nod.
She studies me. Then she rises on her toes and presses a kiss to my cheek.
“See ya later, Champ.”