Page 39 of Pulse
“Don’t test me.”
Knowing what was good for me, and a little of it being that I doted on her way too much, I escaped the gym and Violet’s reprimand and went upstairs.
Closing the door to my room, I sat on the edge of the bed, wondering if I should call Ren. I’d said some pretty fucked up things to her. Sighing heavily, I picked up the magazine I’d stared at every day since it arrived in the mail about six weeks ago.
The six page story on Beat dominated the whole thing, but it wasn’t the reason why I kept it. It was a story about the studio where I got my start, but it was obvious that one person shone above the rest. Ren Miller. Spitfire. The next big thing to hit the AUFC qualifying circuit.
There was a full page photograph of her standing in the middle of Beat dressed in her gear and she was beautiful. She was this shining, beautiful, wild star and every time I stared at it I ached like a fucking fool. That was love, wasn’t it? Sometimes love wasn’t enough to fix things, but maybe I had to believe for it to work.
Fuck, Violet wanted me to call her but she was probably qualified by now. Of course she was. She was one of the best female fighters I’d seen in a long time. The Championship started in less than six weeks, the last thing she needed was to deal with me. She’d be training non-stop...
Violet’s words came back and sliced right into my chest cavity. She came back twice.
I picked up the phone I kept stashed in my bedside table, the one that I never used, and brought up her number. Ren had the balls, so I better be able to match them.
I pressed the call button and pressed the phone to my ear, my guts squirming at the sound of every ring. For a moment I thought she wasn’t going to pick up, but just as it was about to flip to voicemail, there she was.
“Hello?”
“Ren?” My voice came out uncertain and it pissed me off.
There was a pause filled with rumbling background noise and I wondered where she was.
“Ash?” she said after a moment.
“Yeah.”
More silence. Shit, I was fucking crap at this.
I didn’t know what else to say, so I just got to the point. “I need to see you again.”
“So do I.”
She wanted to see me. She was probably going to hand my balls to me on a silver platter, but it was a start. At least we were going to be in the same room again. Maybe this time I could do it over. Maybe this time I could kiss her and remember it.
“When?” I asked, too chicken shit to add in the words, I’m wide open.
“Today.”
“I can find someone to come get you…” I began.
“No need,” she said and my heart did a nosedive. “I’m ten minutes away.”
