feel on the edge of blacking out with rage?
“No,” Sarah Collins answered, still using that snooty-ass tone that had put me on edge.
The other woman pouted. Okay, it was more of a frown, but it sent my blood pressure soaring either way. And my eyelid….
I had literally just asked him about a secret marriage or a girlfriend, and he’d said there was none of that. He wouldn’t lie to me. She could be anyone. There was no reason for my eyelid to start jumping all over the place and for me to assume my vision was about to go dark. No way.
I needed to get the fuck out of here.
Sliding my palms over my thighs, I faced the older woman and said, “You’re more than welcome to wait. There are a few water fountains and a juice bar straight ahead if you want something. Let us know if there’s anything else you need.”
And like the chickenshit I apparently was now, I turned around and headed back the way I had come.
Fucking shit. Fuck.
A part of me genuinely hoped that this woman really wasn’t related to Jonah, but my sixth sense said she was. That was just my luck. If I could take the exchange back, I wouldn’t. She’d been a bitch and so had I, but what was I going to do? Bend over and take it?
Yeah fucking right.
And then there was the woman with her. Shorter than me, slim, really fucking pretty. Asking about Hema. Who was she and why did I care so much?
I was losing it. I really was.
I needed to cool it. I needed to breathe, and I could tell meditation wasn’t going to do the trick. Not when I was this riled up.
Luckily, the solution came to me instantly.
Peter was on the floor when I got into the building, working with a small group. I kicked my boots off inside my office, sending both of them flying toward my desk. Today was his day with the lesser-experienced amateur fighters. What that meant was that they weren’t good at fighting both standing up and being on the ground. But they weren’t total noobs. The eight guys and three girls were on the mats. From the look of what Peter was trying to demonstrate, they were going to be working on handstand rolls, which meant that they were lined up in three rows and would go from a standing position to a handstand, then allowing themselves to roll out of it to get back into a standing position.
It was a lot of balance and control.
I had done it a ton in judo. Most fighters did it a ton, period. You had no idea how many muscles it took to stand up without using your hands. You also had no idea how important it was to be able to get up without using them either. The faster the better.
“Need some help?” I asked him, knowing what answer he would give me.
He eyed my pants for a second then smiled. “Show them how it’s done.”
I hoped I didn’t regret this.
I eyed the floor for a second, wondered for another second when the last time I had done a handstand was—not since I had started showing while I’d been pregnant—and decided, fuck it. I’d done these a hundred thousand times in my life. If I lost my balance, so what? They were still learning how to do them.
I tucked my shirt into my pants and went into a handstand that wasn’t as steady as they once were, but at the same time my muscles said I remember this, and let the memory of it kick in.
I did them over and over and over again, until I was sweaty and my collared shirt was damp and had fallen out of where I’d tucked it into my pants and rolled into my neck each time I went into one, until eventually, Peter and I were helping one person at a time work on their handstands against the wall furthest to the back, bodies leaning against the wall until arms and shoulders shook, until sweat dripped off faces and made tiny little watery pools all over the blue surfaces. I was catching my breath when I noticed someone with a right arm that was giving out on them and stepped forward to help them out of it.
That was when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a big figure making his way across the floor in our group’s direction. The biggest