"Come on!" someone shouted from the edge as Hawley pushed forward again. He caught the other fighter off guard with a lightning-fast left hook followed by a brutal right cross.
I flinched at how easily his strength rendered the man defenseless. This wasn't just training. This was battle. Raw. Unfiltered.
Then it happened. After another quick exchange where he landed several jabs without response, Hawley paused to take a breath. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. Turned in my direction. Our gazes locked for one suspended heartbeat.
It hit me like a freight train. Recognition. Surprise. Painted across his face as if he hadn't expected anyone else would dare step foot in here. In that fleeting instant, something passed between us. Acknowledgment. And something else I had no word for yet.
Then he turned back to sparring without breaking stride.
As my heart resumed its frantic pace, frustration simmered under my skin again. What was this place? Where he hid from everything? The rigid structure of police life? Did he come here not only to stay fit but to escape?
I slipped behind a thick concrete pillar. Leaned in a way that kept me mostly hidden while giving me a clear view. My police instincts took over. Observe. Analyze. Understand the subject. Only this time, my subject wasn't a suspect but my reluctant partner. And I was searching for clues to a different kind of mystery.
The match continued with increasing ferocity. The two circled each other. The rhythm of their exchange punctuated by sharp sounds of leather on flesh and the squeak of shoes on canvas. But it wasn't the technical aspects of the fight that held my attention.
It was Hawley himself.
His movements weren't just athletic. They were loaded with purpose. Each jab, cross, and hook flowed with precision that spoke of years of discipline. But there was something else under the technique. Something heavier. His strikes carried weight beyond their physical force. He wasn't just fighting. He was working through something.
Between combinations, his jaw clenched tight enough that I could see the muscle flex even from my position. His gaze narrowed with a focus so fierce it excluded everything else in the room. Not just concentration. Closer to desperation. When the stockier man landed a solid hit to his ribs, Hawley barely registered it. He absorbed the impact without flinching. Almost as if...
He welcomes it.
The thought hit me with unexpected force. This wasn't showing off. This wasn't even just training. This was punishment.
I shifted my weight. Suddenly uncomfortable with what I was watching. The man I thought I knew, rigid, emotionless, by-the-book, was nowhere in this space. Instead, I saw someone using controlled violence as an outlet for something much heavier.
The match escalated. Hawley pressed forward with a series of combinations that drove the stockier man back. Left hook. Right cross. Left uppercut. Executed with such precision it was almost beautiful, if it hadn't been so brutal. The other fighter raised his hands defensively. Hawley found openings with surgical accuracy.
Then it happened.
As he landed a devastating combination that sent the stockier man staggering, I caught a glimpse of his face in perfect clarity. His guard completely down. What I saw made me step backward.
Anguish. Raw, undiluted anguish flashed across every line. Not physical pain. This came from somewhere words couldn't reach. For that split second, every emotion he kept locked away was visible. As clear as a crime scene under bright lights. Grief. Rage. Guilt. All channeled through his fists in a desperate bid for relief. Or atonement. I couldn't tell.
My chest tightened. This wasn't the automaton I'd been complaining about for days. This was a man holding back something powerful enough to break him from the inside. Something he only let out here, in this controlled space, where the only person he hurt was himself or someone who had agreed to take the blows.
What the hell had happened to him? What kind of investigation goes so wrong that it leaves this kind of mark?
I backed away toward the exit. Suddenly aware I was trespassing on something intensely private. The questions I'd come to ask about the evaluation seemed trivial now. Inappropriate. Replaced by new questions I wasn't sure I had the right to ask. About what drove a man to fight with such controlled desperation. About what he was trying to eliminate with each precisely aimed blow.
As I reached the door, I cast one last glance back. He had his back to me now. Shoulders rising and falling with heavy breaths as he prepared for another round. The line of his spine straight. His stance ready. Every inch the disciplined fighter.
But I couldn't unsee what I'd glimpsed. Underneath the stillness wasn't emptiness. It was something he carried so carefully it hurt him to hold.
I pushed through the door into the late afternoon light. Felt like I'd stolen something I wasn't meant to have. Knowledge about him he hadn't chosen to share.
And worse. The uncomfortable thought that maybe I'd been completely wrong about him from the start.
What scared me most wasn't that he had depths I couldn't see. It was that something in me wanted to find out what was at the bottom, even if I drowned getting there.
Chapter 9: Storm Light, Bare Skin
Luke
Seventy-three minutes before my alarm would sound. Not that I was counting. Rain came in angry bursts against the window. Each drop an accusation. This cramped apartment, too small, too shared, too filled with him, made sleep impossible.
Yesterday's sparring left my muscles aching. A dull throb in my knuckles where I'd punished the heavy bag longer than necessary. That discomfort made sense. What didn't: the awareness of Carlson sleeping just beyond my wall.