Strike ( Book 4: Stronger Series )

1. Fire

1 Year Later

Sweat dripped from my forehead onto the bright blue mats fifteen feet below me. I held my position over the metal bars, both hands gipping the bars with my legs and feet pointed toward the high ceiling. I had been working on this handstand for a while, and now I wanted to up the difficulty. Shifting my weight slightly, my right hand released the bar while my left held my entire body weight. My muscles and wrist burned under the pressure, while more sweat dripped from my hairline as I focused on my breathing. I widened my legs a little bit into a V and took a deep breath before switching to the other hand.

AC/DC played through the tiny cordless earbuds in my ears, the music not quite loud enough to drown out Clive and Owen sparring each other in the caged octagon behind me. Camaro wasn't too far away, my full-grown rotty dragging a one-hundred-pound weight that was attached to a rope by her teeth – her chew toy victim of the hour. And as I re-focused my attention from my personal training room back to my handstand my world became temporarily at peace.

Last year in April, Darren had given me a very special surprise for my twenty-sixth birthday. He gifted me my very own private gym. There had been weeks of construction going on in the house, but no matter how many times I asked, no one would tell me what it was for. The first time I saw the completion, I felt like Belle from Beauty and the Beast when the Beast opened the doors to her new library, except my library was stocked with enough training equipment to make me drool.

My gym was massive, nearly as big as Darren's, and it had everything I could ever want or need. Four heavy bags of different weights and lengths hung near the padded walls, mats covered the floors in various areas, and a caged octagon took up the entire corner of the gym. I also had a rock-climbing wall, a spring-loaded floor next to a pit containing chunks of landing foam adjacent to a trampoline, dozens of workout machines and weights, a rack of training bo staffs next to a wall of mirrors, a thick rope connected to the ceiling for climbing, and a giant three-level metal jungle gym, which I was currently balancing on my hands at the top level.

I couldn't deny how much I honestly loved my gym. It was my adult playground, and I rarely left it unless it was either nice outside or I absolutely had to. I appreciated that it also accommodated Camaro, and my annoying ass bodyguards. They all might as well train as they were now rather than sit around and watch me do it.

Training was the only thing that kept me sane anymore. The pain I felt from the strain in my muscles told me I was strong enough to withstand it. The air pumping through my lungs from the exertion told me I was still breathing. And the pounding from within my chest told me I was still very much alive. When I pushed myself, I felt in control. I felt powerful because I knew I could accomplish anything. Fuck whatever got in my way. I was fire.

Things had changed so much since that night I killed Jared. It had been a little over a year since then, and I was a completely different animal now. I had allowed so many emotions to slip away from me over the past couple of months: guilt, sympathy, hope, desire, and just fucks in general.

I felt hardened inside as if someone had encased my heart in concrete. I didn't care. I honestly didn't want to feel anything anymore. Not unless it was physical. Physical pain healed eventually. Emotional pain was a different story.

Pain or pleasure – those were my anchors – and so was the man who carried them.

Darren had morphed into a new kind of drug for me. He had become my obsession, just as I was his, but for a completely different reason.

I was obsessed with knowing where he was, what he was doing, why he was doing it, who was involved, and when he would be back. I wasn't privy to any of that information, of course, but I sought for literally anything that could help me anticipate what kind of mood he would be in so I could accommodate accordingly, adapt to what he needed that day, and be the example of absolute perfection.