moved past all that shit. But with embarrassment and humiliation roiling inside me, and the sharp high sound of Joker’s laugh, the memories came rushing back.
My twin brothers, Joshua and Mark, forcing me into the ring at the boxing gym they trained at with my dad, in shoes that were too big and gloves that were too heavy, just for a chance to knock me around. They were both excellent boxers, just like Dad, and when they’d said they were training me, he’d believed them. And after Mom ran out on us, there was no one to question my brothers, who’d always been hard on me for being a little too soft.
But it hadn’t been training at all. It was just a public pummeling. I wondered sometimes if they blamed me for Mom leaving us—or if I just reminded them too much of her, because I had her hair, her eyes, and her slight build. Joshua and Mark were tall, muscled and dark-haired, like Dad. I remembered Joshua dragging me, broken-nosed, into the gym’s locker room and stuffing tissue painfully into my nostrils.
“If you’d stop acting like a fucking pussy,” he hissed, “and act like a man, I wouldn’t have to hit you so hard.”
But nothing I did made them stop hitting me.
Dad never stopped them from “training” me—never asked me about the bruises or the blood, or even if I wanted to train at all. Dad’s career was the only thing he cared about. Especially after Mom left, he acted like looking at me hurt him, and I had a feeling he approved of what my brothers were doing. He probably wanted me to be tougher, stronger, to banish the memories of the woman he’d pushed away.
So Dad ignored me, ignored us all, and threw himself into his own training. He practically lived at the gym. He had fight after fight, clawing his way up the ranks in hopes of going professional, despite his age. He kept fighting better guys, younger guys, faster guys, until one of those guys hit him with a right cross in the temple in just the right way. He dropped in the ring, and died of a brain bleed on the way to the hospital.
After that, Joshua and Mark stopped pretending to train me and just took their anger out on me instead.
I turned away from my reflection, forcibly shoving the memories away. I was so sick of being pushed around. Every time I started to gain a little bit of confidence, it seemed like some asshole bully would bust in and knock me around just a little, as if the universe wanted to prove to me that I shouldn’t get too comfortable. That I wasn’t worth respecting, and that I shouldn’t expect that.
And I was fucking sick of it! I’d been short with Dante at first, sure, but I’d apologized, and he’d accepted. Even if he hadn’t, there was no reason for him to humiliate me in front of everyone else the way he’d done.
A knock on the door pulled me out of my thoughts. I paused in the bathroom doorway.
“Heath?” Dante asked through the closed door. “You in there?”
The anger in my chest flared even hotter. I thought I’d made it clear that I didn’t want anything else to do with his class, that I needed some space. What right did he have to show up at my door like I was a little kid who needed to be scolded for skipping school?
I flung the door open. “What do you want?”
Dante’s blue eyes widened slightly at my sharp tone. He’d never heard me raise my voice before. His surprise pissed me off even further. Well, I was capable of anger—I wasn’t just some meek little kid, and if he’d expected me to be quiet and shy when he was the one who had humiliated me, he had another thing coming.
“That was a real dick move,” I snapped. “You’re supposed to be here to teach us self-defense, not to embarrass me in front of the rest of the club because you can.”
Dante said nothing, opening and closing his mouth briefly, like a fish. Like he hadn’t come to apologize for that. His lack of response pissed me off even more.
“Or was that exactly what you meant to do?” I asked sharply. “Jazz was too good at sparring so you needed an easier target? To prove you’re good enough to be teaching us?”
Dante tilted his head to the side slightly. Now he didn’t look