Page 16 of Pulse
I raised my eyebrows.
Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know.Lincand I were training here back then. We had been for a few years, taking classes and stuff after school. We got into trouble a lot.”
“I bet you did,” I said. “Trouble comes with you pair.”
He laughed, shaking his head. “We kept getting into fights and it was a way to drum some discipline into our heads. Coach was the one who helped set us on the straight and narrow…and competing against Ash.”
I stiffened at the mention of his name, but I was too curious not to ask. “What was he like back then?”
“You know he’s a few years older than us, so he was already on the circuit and in qualifying. He was so up himself it wasn’t funny.”
I snorted.
“We looked up to him in a way, but he was the star of this place, so it was never any competition. Monica on the other hand…”
“Do I really want to know?” I asked, grimacing.
He shrugged. “You asked.”
“Glutton for punishment.”
“Stop being so hard on yourself.” He nudged me with his shoulder. “She knew I was into her and decided to use it to her advantage. She had a huge crush on Ash and I knew it was all a set up, but I was hard for her so I took whatever I could get. She let me kiss her in the change rooms and touch her up. Ash walked in just as she’d planned, but he never said anything. He rejected her without saying a word.”
“And Monica probably cried into her milk for weeks,” I said bitterly.
“We knew each other a long time, Ren. It was a kid’s crush, but it never went away. Deep down I knew she was doing it to make Ash jealous, but he never saw her like that. I should’ve been hurt, but I wasn’t. I’m not. I guess I’m too fuckin’ dumb to let go.”
Deep down everyone just wanted to be loved. If Dean knew what Monica had done to me and Ash, would he still have feelings for her then? Or would they dissolve the same way acid ate through solid metal? It seemed too cruel to do it to him.
“If you ask me,” Dean went on, “Ash lost out big time when he left you.”
I knew he was only trying to be nice, but his words opened up the black hole in my chest again. Standing, I flexed my fingers, ready to go another couple of rounds with the punching bag.
“It’ll get better Ren. It’s just gunna take time.”
“I know,” I murmured.
“Want me to spot? I can stick around.”
“Sure.”
Dean positioned himself at the back of the bag, steadying it. I knew he was right about a lot of things. He might look like a meathead fighter, but he had more than a few brain cells and when they rubbed together, magic happened. He was a good guy underneath it all.
He said it’d take time to get over my broken heart and I wanted to believe him, but after the thing Ash and I had? That’d marked me deep. More than marked…it’d scarred me.
As I rammed a knee into the bag, I wondered exactly how much time I would need to get over that.
Just when things started to even out, a hurricane blew through the front doors of Beat.
I guess that’s the thing about life…it had no qualms about hitting you for six when you least expected it. Nobody had a smooth ride.
Dad had upped my repetitions on the bags to include a total ninja style roundhouse kick. I was having way too much fun with perfecting it when the windows blew in. Metaphorically, that is.
“I’m looking for Renee Miller,” I heard a female voice echoing from the front door.
Turning with a frown, I laid eyes on a woman. She was pretty, with long dark, almost black hair that fell in waves around her shoulders. She wore this little floral dress with a denim jacket. Demure all the way and I didn’t have a bloody cluewhothe hell she was.
