“Being a creep?”
He snorted, lowering his hand from his face to check for blood.
“I like to think of it as checking on you.”
He could be so cute sometimes, but I wasn’t ready to smile just yet. I was still waiting for my thudding heart to slow down, and the tremble in my hands to dissipate. I couldn’t remember what I’d been dreaming about, but waking up to someone hovering over me like that had chased away any good feelings the dream would have left behind.
“Did I hurt you?”
He shook his head, testing his nose again with his fingers, checking their tips for blood.
“You got me good, sweetheart. Nice right hook.”
I used the sofa to drag myself up and hurried around it to get to him.
“I’m sorry! Oh my god. Did I break it?”
Nate started chuckling. “Aw so cute. No, you didn’t break it, but it hurts like a bitch. Have you done that before?”
I lowered my fingers before I even risked touching his skin. His question burned in my chest. Had I done that before? No, how I wished I had. How I wished I’d hit back that first time, so Sean didn’t take my acceptance of it as a template for our future.
“Glory,” Nate whispered, catching my fingers mid-air and squeezing them.
“It’s not like you could have fought back. He would have done more damage. But…” he glanced at the corner of the room and took a deep breath, “but I can help you learn now, so you’re never in that position again.”
Help me learn? He was staring at the mostly empty part of the downstairs space, it was to the side of the pool table, and pinball machine. It was… unused space.
He shot me a grin, tugging me along with him to that area, which I now realised was larger than it looked, and had soft padded flooring.
“This is my uh… like, when I want to run through moves and stuff, I do it here.”
“Moves? Like dancing?”
He snorted. “Yeah… dancing someone’s face off. I do Muay Thai, Glory. It’s a martial art, and it means I’m never caught out by an attacker.”
“Like that’s really a threat for someone like you.”
He hesitated, his eyes narrowing at me. “A biker, you mean?”
“A man.”
“Men get attacked and beaten on too, Glory. Men can be victims of assaults too. You don’t know this, because you were away with him already, but I got bottled in a bar, and nearly lost my eye.” He pointed now to the small scar I’d noticed beside his left eye. Small, but noticeable enough that I’d fixated on it at times, wondering what happened, because he didn’t have it when I knew him.
“Oh my god!”
Nate shrugged, self-consciously lowering his long hair over the side of his face again.
“Doesn’t matter. It was a wakeup call. Be strong. Get stronger. Don’t get caught out. I don’t go around attacking people, but nobody gets the jump on me now.”
A giggle erupted, despite the subject of our conversation, as I glanced back at the sofa.
“But I did.”
His lips twitched as I faced him again, and then he started to chuckle good-naturedly.
“You sure did, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you.”
Proud. He was proud that I hit him. He was proud that I injured him. Sean would have broken something for having the audacity to strike back, even though I’d wished I’d tried. Sean would have seen it as something to beat out of me, but Nate? I think he wanted to nurture it. To help me expand on it. Tobecome more capable and strong. Suddenly, like he’d seen inside my head and my heart before me, I knew it was exactly what I wanted. What I needed. To be strong. To know that I can defend myself.