CHAPTER 1 #2
A sharp prickle of heat crept up the back of Monique’s neck, settling behind her ears in a way that had nothing to do with the ninety-degree Detroit humidity.
She kept her eyes locked on the horizon.
Monique Gray did not get flustered. Monique Gray had spent her entire high school career turning down varsity football players with two-word sentences and keeping her heart behind a deadbolt.
She stole a quick glance sideways. Denise was looking down at her, her dark eyes open and completely unbothered by her own honesty. When she smiled, her white teeth stood out against her dark skin with a brilliance that seemed almost deliberate, clean and straight and framed by those deep dimples.
"You got amazing white teeth," Monique muttered before she could stop the words from slipping off her tongue. "Makes your whole face pop."
Denise’s laugh was a low, rolling sound that sounded like grease bubbling gently in a skillet. "Why, thank you, Ms. Gray. You’re not too bad yourself."
They pushed through the heavy double doors of the union dining hall, where the air conditioning hit them like a cold wet towel across the face.
The space was loud with the clatter of plastic trays and the dull roar of three hundred students trying to get cheap calories between classes.
Monique reached for a red tray at the start of the line, holding it against her chest like a piece of personal armor.
"This is the first time I’m seeing you around," Monique said, eyeing the steam tables full of graying roast beef and watery green beans.
"Oh, for real?" Denise grabbed a tray of her own, her eyes already scanning the high-protein options. "Well, I’ve seen you a couple times, actually. I’m on the netball team—junior year—so most of my time is split between the fieldhouse and the lab.
And if I might add… you got a hell of a fit body.
I saw you in the gym the other day flexing in front of the mirror near the cable machine, but you didn't see me. I was doing pull-ups on the far rig."
Monique stopped, her tongs hovering over a bowl of brown rice.
Her mind flashed back through the last forty-eight hours, searching through her gym sessions.
"Now that you mention it… pink leggings?
High waist? Doing Bulgarian split squats yesterday with that loud-ass blonde girl by the dumbbell rack? "
"Yup," Denise chuckled, spooning a double portion of grilled chicken breast onto her plate without waiting for the server to offer it.
"Me and my teammate Cindy. She talks too much, but she’s good for a spot.
We ought to work out together sometime. You move like somebody who actually knows what a rep counts for. "
Monique looked at Denise’s shoulders—the clean line of her deltoids visible through the thin gray cotton of her sleeveless shirt, the long, powerful reach of her arms. "Yeah? Six this evening good with you?"
"It sure is," Denise said, her eyes meeting Monique’s with a quiet, challenge-laden clarity that made Monique’s stomach drop an inch. "I’ll be waiting by the squat racks."
They found a small two-top table near the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the cracked basketball courts behind the student center.
The sun was starting to dip behind the high-rise dorms across the street, casting long, purple shadows across the chain-link fence where three guys were shooting lazy jumpers with a ball that had lost half its bounce.
Denise ate like she trained—with purpose and speed, but without any rusticity. She talked with her hands, her long fingers gesturing to emphasize her points as she laid out her life with an easy, unpretentious clarity that Monique wasn't used to hearing on a college campus.
"Biology major," Denise said, using her fork to point toward the science complex down the hill.
"Pre-med if my knees hold out through senior year.
Raised over on the West Side—Grand River and Greenfield area—by my auntie after my mom took a job in Atlanta when I was twelve.
Auntie raised five of us in a three-bedroom house with one bathroom and a wood-panel basement that smelled like old onions and bleach.
You learn to eat fast and speak up, or you go to bed hungry and silent. "
Monique found herself answering questions she usually shut down with a shrug or a cold look.
"Criminal justice," she said, tracing a ring of condensation on the laminate table with her fingernail.
"East side born and raised. Conner and Warren. No sports unless you count the times my Uncle Dave made me spar with his boys in the garage so I’d know how to slip a right cross.
No sisters. No brothers. Just me and my mother trying to keep the gas turned on. "
Denise laughed, her hand coming down on the table with a firm thump. "I knew it! I told Cindy, I said, 'That girl over there doesn't bounce on her toes like a track girl; she stands like she’s waiting for somebody to duck.' That’s east-side weight."
"Everybody staring at you all the time gets old," Denise added, her tone shifting slightly as her eyes drifted over Monique’s face, taking in the small scar near her eyebrow and the dark, sharp line of her jaw. She reached across the small space between them, her long fingers dipping into Monique’s tray and snagging two French fries before Monique could pull the tray back.
"Hey," Monique grunted, though there was no heat in it. "Help yourself, why don't you."
"I did," Denise grinned, popping a fry into her mouth. "You weren't eating 'em anyway. But real talk—it must be exhausting. People looking at you all day trying to figure out if you’re sweet or if you’re gonna bite their head off."
"Hate that fake-ass shit," Monique grumbled, leaning her elbows on the table and looking out at the courts. "People looking at me like I’m a specimen in a jar. Trying to figure out if I’m approachable or if I’m gon' cuss they ass out. Spoiler: it’s mostly the second one.
Unless you give me a reason to be nice, I don't see no point in wasting the breath. "
Denise leaned back in her plastic chair, her brown eyes crinkling at the corners with a deep, quiet affection that made Monique feel like she was being measured for something she hadn't agreed to buy yet.
"I like that about you. Real. This whole campus is full of people performing.
Trying to talk like they from Atlanta or dress like they got money from the suburbs.
You just… exist. You don't ask nobody for shit. "
The campus bell tower three blocks away began to chime five o'clock, its dull iron heavy tones cutting through the glass. Monique blinked, suddenly realizing she’d been sitting at a dirty cafeteria table for nearly an hour, her cold coffee forgotten, talking to a woman she’d known for less than sixty minutes.
She hadn't checked her phone once. She hadn't looked at the clock.
"Damn," Monique muttered, gathering her trash. "I got a study group at five-fifteen for Criminal Procedure."
"Go on then," Denise said, standing up and reaching for her own tray.
Her tall frame loomed over Monique again, but this time it felt like a shade tree rather than an obstacle.
"Don't keep the future cops waiting. I’ll see you at six in the rec center.
Don't be late, Gray. I don't like waiting on people. "
"I’m never late," Monique said, slinging her bag over her shoulder. "Just make sure you bring enough gas to keep up."
The next fifty minutes dragged by in a haze of dry legal definitions and the drone of a graduate assistant talking about search warrants, but Monique didn't retain a word of it. Her mind kept drifting back to the deep indentations in Denise’s cheeks when she laughed, and the way her shoulder had felt when it slammed into Josh Fraser’s face—solid, heavy, unyielding.
By five-fifty, Monique was in the locker room of the campus recreation center.
The space was humid and smelled of chlorine, stale sweat, and damp cedar from the small, unused sauna in the back.
She peeled off her hoodie and jeans, pulling on a pair of high-waisted black compression tights that squeezed her hips and highlighted the deep curve where her lower back met her thick, rounded glutes.
She wore a cropped olive-green tank top that stopped three inches above her navel, exposing the intricate black-ink cursive of a tattoo that climbed up her ribcage—Only The Strong—and the sharp, defined line of her upper abdominals.
She tied her braids up into a tight ponytail at the crown of her head with a thick elastic band, checked her wraps in the mirror, and stepped out onto the polished concrete floor of the weight room.
Denise was already there.
She was standing near the heavy power racks, warming up her shoulders with a ten-pound iron plate.
She wore dark maroon leggings that fitted like a second skin over her long, dense thighs and a matching sports bra that exposed the wide, powerful expanse of her back and the deep vertical groove of her spine.
Her chocolate skin glistened with a fine sheen of sweat under the yellow high-bay lights, looking like dark bronze that had been polished with oil.
When Denise saw Monique walking toward her, her mouth curved into that slow, dangerous smile. "Damn," she said, her voice carrying over the rhythmic clatter of iron plates and the hum of the air handlers. "You came to play for real."
Monique rolled her eyes, though she felt her pulse quicken as her eyes took in the clean, powerful line of Denise’s shoulders. "You ready, or you just gon' stand there looking like a poster for the athletic department?"
"I’m ready," Denise said, dropping the ten-pound plate onto the rubber floor with a dull thunk. "Let’s start with bench. I want to see if that frame of yours is just for show or if you actually got drive behind it."