“Fuck you.”
With that she separated the fingers of her left hand in a move Spock would have been proud of and sent them directly toward his eyes. She heard him howl as she made contact and was able to roll until she was on her back. His hands were on his eyes, probably trying to figure out if they were still there and she struck again with her left palm, slamming it into the upside of his nose. The force of the contact sent him falling backward and she scrambled out from beneath him until she was on her feet.
In seconds he was back on his feet, as well. His eyes were red, but undamaged and only a thin trickle of blood escaped his nose.
“You want to fight?” His voice was low and ominous in a way she’d never heard from him before.
She looked down at her hand, saw her fingers bent at impossible angles and searched the room for the T-shirt she’d discarded. She found it on the edge of the mat and where it was already torn, ripped a strip from the bottom. Steeling herself against the pain, she wrapped the cotton around her three fingers until they were immobilized. Using her teeth to hold one end, she tied it off in a tight knot and grimaced as the broken appendages were pushed together.
“Are you ready?” she asked. Her voice quavered, but she didn’t take notice. This time she attacked without reservation, without consideration, without holding anything back. This time it was her speed and her fury that surprised him. Quinlan staggered when she landed a kick to his solar plexus. He stumbled when the side of her foot made contact with his face.
But soon he was moving again and the punch he landed to her ribs was intense. She bent over to protect that side from further assault, but as soon as she did, she made herself vulnerable. His foot came down on her left ankle and for the fourth time that day she heard the sound of one of her bones snapping.
Instantly, her leg caved and she fell to the floor in a heap of agony. Sabrina could feel her heartbeat shallow out and she tried to pant through the pain, fearing that she would faint. Colors swam in front of her eyes until she couldn’t see. So she closed them. Rolling onto her knees and elbows, she tried to focus on shifting her weight to her left knee. With her left hand, she pushed until she could rock back onto her right foot, but before she was able to stand she lost her balance and was forced to put her right hand down. Her broken fingers protested against the weight and the shooting pain that rifled through her body sent her back down to her knees.
She lifted her head then to see where he was, to prepare for whatever attack was coming next. In her current position, she was vulnerable to anything he might throw at her. But he was just standing in front of her, his arms at his sides. His face was a mass of red blotches that she took special satisfaction in. His left eye was beginning to swell shut.
She wanted to laugh. And she wanted to cry. All she did was shake.
He said nothing, but turned and walked off the mat.
“I didn’t say it,” she mouthed. Only she knew he couldn’t hear her. She sucked in some breath and tried again. “I didn’t say it.” The sound was still too faint to carry the length of the gym. He was almost at the door now. But the dweeb stepped in front of him.
“You’re disgusting,” she heard him tell Quinlan. “You feel like a big man now? Do you?”
Quinlan simply reached out and wrapped his hand around the man’s thin neck forcing him against the wall with enough strength that, if he’d wanted to, he probably could have lifted the dweeb off his feet. “Fix her,” she heard him say.
He reached for the door and this time Sabrina dug deep, breathing oxygen all the way into her stomach.
“I didn’t say it!” She shouted it so loud the words echoed off the gym walls.
Quinlan stopped, then walked through the door without looking back. The dweeb turned out to be a doctor. The first thing he’d offered was a shot to kill the pain, but she refused.
The pain was important, she wasn’t sure why, but she knew that it was.
Later that night there was a soft knock on the door.
“It’s open.” It had been left open for the nurse who had been in and out a few times to check on her.
Sabrina wasn’t all that surprised when she saw who it was. She knew Quinlan would come eventually. She was sitting up in bed watching TV. Her hand was casted, her ankle was casted, her face was a bruised mess and her ribs hurt when she breathed too deep.
For a moment they just looked at each other. She saw that his eye was now completely swollen shut and the skin under both eyes was almost black.
“Are you here to say you’re sorry?” she asked. But she knew he wasn’t.
“No. It was a lesson. I was the one ordered to teach it.”
Quinlan walked over to the bed and gazed down at her. Almost instinctively, he reached out with his hand to brush the bruise along her cheek, but she turned her head at the last second so his fingers wouldn’t make contact. She wasn’t ready for him to touch her yet.
Eventually, she would get over that. Maybe Quinlan didn’t understand the other thing that had happened in the gym today, but she did. Before he’d been her mentor. Her idol in a lot of ways. But the hero worship was gone now. What was left in its place was raw. So raw she wasn’t ready to acknowledge it. Not yet. But someday she would. She wondered if he would, too.
“What was the lesson?” she wanted to know.
“There were two actually. The first one is obvious.”
“Learning how to fight through pain,” Sabrina easily answered.
“Fighting through it, accepting it, tolerating it. Some people freeze at the first hint of extreme pain. They can’t work beyond it. It’s not uncommon. Sometimes the mind shuts down in an attempt to cope.”
“Yes, but I’m a woman.”
His brow furrowed in obvious confusion.
“Women have been known to labor for days to give birth. Makes me think that our bodies are naturally designed to take pain. At least when we know there’s a reason for it.”
His head tilted marginally to the left in acknowledgement.
“And the other lesson? You said there were two.”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
“It’s okay. I think I’ve got that one figured out, too. Trust no one. Isn’t that CIA credo?”
He sighed deeply and folded his arms over his chest.
“You’re one mean and nasty badass. Want to sign my cast?”
That seemed to startle him. She guessed he was expecting rage and howling. Accusations and maybe even a little spitting. She imagined he came to see her because, even though he wouldn’t admit it, he did feel guilty and as part of his punishment he would stand fast against her fury.
But she wasn’t angry. Not at him. She’d learned something about herself in that gym. Something she hadn’t known before. She’d been suffering for a long time. Quinlan had just brought it to the surface. And in doing so had cleansed her.
“This is just the beginning. Isn’t it?” she surmised.
He took the magic marker she’d held out to him and drew the letter Q on top of the cast just under her toes.
“Yes, it is,” he answered honestly.
“I can take it,” she promised.
His eyes met hers and she saw uncertainty. She didn’t blame him. Until today she hadn’t known what she was capable of.
Now she did.
Chapter 14
“You’re not sleeping.”
There was a revelation, Sabrina thought. It could have been because the sun had officially risen and while the heavy curtain kept most of the sunlight out of the room it couldn’t disguise the fact that it was day.
