Chapter Three
Liz
I’m safe. I’m safe. I’m safe.
I repeated the mantra as Nate brought his arms forward and fastened his hands around my throat.
My breathing had picked up to the point I was all but doing Lamaze.
I’d had hands around my throat before. Never with applied pressure, but more than once with an implied threat.
Looking back, I didn’t know how I didn’t see the massive red flags.
Now, I was living with the post-traumatic consequences.
I shut my eyes, trying to bully my lungs into calming the fuck down, but it was no use.
All I saw was my ex’s face. All I felt were his hands.
Being trapped was terrifying. It brought up memories of my last relationship that I would rather forget.
Then suddenly, the hands were gone from my throat and instead resting gently on my biceps.
I opened my eyes to see Nate ducking down until we were eye to eye.
“Just breathe Liz. In through the nose, out through the mouth.” I did as he instructed, listening to the softness in his voice and reminding myself that it wasn’t him.
That Kyle was in my rearview mirror, and I had escaped.
With no small amount of effort, my breathing slowed.
“Let’s take five, grab some water, okay? ”
I nodded. I was loving the mix of physical fitness and learning a new skill. I wasn’t loving what it was bringing up for me mentally.
I had never been hit. That was what I had held onto when my sister told me that Kyle was abusive. Now, from this side of the situation, I could see that abuse had a much wider definition than I thought it did. He had done a number on me mentally even if physically he never left a bruise.
Nate sat next to me where I was leaning against the wall, water bottle in hand. “Do you know anything about unicorns?” Of all the things he could have said to me, that was the last I expected.
“Unicorns?”
“Yeah, Paisley is obsessed with them. She keeps asking me all these questions. What do they eat? What color are their hooves? Where do they live? I mean, they aren’t real, right? But she doesn’t accept that as an answer.”
“I’d just tell her the answer for horses, but add some glitter and rainbows to the mix.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“You’re a good dad. I’m going to be an aunt soon. My sister is pregnant. I can’t wait to spoil that baby.”
He leaned his head back against the wall. “The kid will have a big truck driving, martial arts fighting aunt. Lucky kid. You are an interesting woman, you know that?”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
* * *
I worked on taking calming breaths in my truck at work the next day.
We were working on putting a pipeline in along the highway which involved moving a lot of earth.
It was strange to see a big patch of dirt and gravel butted up against thick trees and towering cliffs.
I loved having time to myself when I was driving, just me and the beautiful scenery.
Of course I had to be paying attention. Construction sites were dangerous places and the dump truck I drove could do some damage if I hit something.
Still, I could use this time to talk myself through my reaction to my first MMA training session.
The training was for me. To learn a new skill and to feel safer.
It had nothing to do with my ex, the note writer, or any other man for that matter.
I was going to be an aunt soon. I had a very gentle-hearted sister who wouldn’t hurt a fly, although her husband, Jake, would defend her to the ends of the earth.
Still, I was doing this for them and for me.
To be strong and able to protect those I loved.
The training would only be helpful if I was able to separate the goal from the motivation.
Sure, someone leaving an asshole note on my car pushed me to seek training with the best gym in town.
Yeah, I had let a man go too far physically in the past because I was in love.
That was the motivation. The goal was to be able to kick ass if I had to.
To keep who I cared about safe. The note writer thought I was weak because I was a woman.
That I was less capable or less worthy. I didn’t have to prove to anyone that I wasn’t weak unless something happened.
Then I wanted to be able to react effectively and decisively and wipe the floor with whatever stupid fucker thought he could push me around.
During my next training sessions, I would hold on to that, I’d focus on moving past the could-have-been and focus on what I could be with enough hard work.
******
Two lean, strong arms wrapped around me from behind.
His body was flush against mine: pecs against my shoulder blades, hips against my lower back.
My arms were pressed to my sides, immobile and useless.
I could feel his heat. I could smell his skin.
His breath danced across the back of my head, fanning the hair that had escaped my ponytail.
I froze. I tried to focus on the blue of the mats, or the sound of traffic flowing by outside the front doors. This was a private lesson. It was just the two of us. It hadn’t felt intimate when I’d arrived but it sure as hell did now.
His arms tightened around my upper stomach, close to the bottoms of my breasts but not quite making contact.
My breath caught in my chest as the bones of his wrists dug into my ribs and my feet almost left the ground.
He moved my weight like it was nothing. Like I was a toy to play with.
In our first few lessons, my heart rate kicking up had been fear.
Pure and simple. After more than a few mental pep talks, I’d been able to see this as a skill to learn and separate it from my past. Now though, I had run into a new problem.
Without the fear to distract me, I was all too aware of every place that Nate’s body touched mine.
We’d been training together for a few weeks now.
I was learning a lot and feeling more capable and badass.
I had come to look forward to my time in the gym, mostly because I loved the euphoric feeling of kicking ass.
But also, because I got to roll around with the man I had recently named my shower head after.
We had started out with me being the attacker and him showing me how to escape.
Then he had gone over the scenario again before he put his hands on me.
My mind had gone momentarily blank. My instinct was to lean back into him.
To close my eyes and settle into his chest. My survival instinct was lost somewhere behind my libido, and it was no longer calling the shots.
I closed my eyes for a moment and forced myself to think about how I’d felt when I’d first found the note; I gave my head a mental shake.
The first step was for me to bend at the waist. The idea was to get my upper body away from him so he couldn’t pick me up.
As I did the move, however, the reality was my ass bumping against the front of his shorts.
A few images raced through my mind that I couldn’t afford to explore.
His grip on me loosened, and I went through the motions of an elbow to the face and darting across the gym to safety.
“Awesome form, Liz.” He flashed me a smile.
Fuck, I could say the same about him. He had the body to wear the skintight clothes I saw on the bodybuilders at the gym but instead went for a looser-fitting pair of shorts and t-shirt.
They still told me a lot about his dedication to fitness but there were a few things I’d have to get him naked to find out. Such as:
Is that a cucumber in your pocket or am I going to need a lot of lube before I attempt that bent-over position again?
We reset to try a different position. Once again, I was wrapped up in him. This time, the move called for me to cock my hip to the side, smack him in the nuts with my fist, and slide out under his arm.
This is actual torture.
I had to focus on his dick, but not in the way I wanted to focus on his dick.
No matter what I did, the dick was the focus, and my mind couldn’t hold onto any other information.
I took a steadying breath and reminded myself why I was there, and it had nothing to do with what hung between Nate’s legs.
There might be someone who meant me harm.
I didn’t know who that person was or what they were willing to do.
I had no intention of quitting my job as they had demanded in the note.
So, that left me with the option of learning to defend myself or going to the cops.
Since the note didn’t actually have a specific threat, I doubted that would help.
The guy needed to be stopped so, of course, I had been thinking about who could have left it.
The list seemed like it could include any misogynist who didn’t believe women belonged in the trades, every bored teenager in a city of a hundred thousand people, one of my coworkers who didn’t think I belonged, or a case of mistaken identity.
There was one important factor to consider that I kept coming back to.
The person who left the note knew which car was mine.
The parking lot was packed for the event, but the note was to me.
That meant either they were watching me, or it was someone I knew.
My ex, Kyle, crossed my mind. Our relationship had been toxic, we’d broken up a million times before it finally stuck.
He wasn’t capable of this though, was he?
That was why I needed this training.
With that in mind, I managed to pay attention long enough that I felt better by the time the session ended.
Not exactly invincible, but like we had covered enough scenarios enough times that I wouldn’t panic and freeze if something happened.
Not that anyone knew how they would react to something like this, but I was being trained by one of the best in the business.
Despite that he was a distraction, I was learning something.
I stepped out of the studio and into the evening light.
The sun was starting to set and the tree-lined streets of downtown had a pretty orange glow.
My condo wasn’t far from the studio and parking was a pain in the ass, so I had been walking to and from the sessions.
It was a nice warm-up and cool-down, not to mention some extra movement given that I sat on my butt in a truck all day at work.
I looked both ways with the intention of crossing the street and froze.
There was an older model silver coupe parked a short way up the street.
Any levity I felt drained out of my feet.
It was literally one of the most popular cars in North America, but I was sure I had seen it before.
I noticed it parked across the street from my building a few days ago.
The license plate, rather than being in the center of the front bumper, had been put off to one side.
It hung a little crooked. I remember thinking it looked like a loose tooth.
Yesterday, I saw it parked at the back of the lot at work.
Same loose tooth license plate. Both times, there had been someone in the driver’s seat.
They had worn a hat and sunglasses. It had been impossible to know more about the driver than that they were probably human. Didn’t really narrow it down.
Logically, I knew that I lived in a small city, and I could have been mistaken about the whole license plate thing. Try telling my nerves that. I was frozen in place, my chest tight. I couldn’t peel my eyes off the car.
What the fuck was I supposed to do?
It was late enough in the evening that many of the little shops on the street were closed.
There were still lots of people milling around and the streetlights were bright.
In theory, I was safe. I couldn’t just stand around on the sidewalk all night.
I didn’t really want to walk right up to my front door with whoever this was tailing me.
I could just walk over, tap on the window and tell the guy to fuck off. Be awkward if I was wrong though.
As I was going over my options, I saw movement and the engine sparked to life. The headlights came on, casting a shadow behind me. Instinct took over. I took a step back and then another, ultimately ending up with my back flush against a hard surface that was not a brick wall.