These Battered Hands Read online

  These Battered Hands

  Published by Laurel Ulen Curtis

  © 2015, Laurel Ulen Curtis

  Cover Design by Hang Le

  Formatting by Champagne Formats

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Table of Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  DESCRIPTION

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  EPILOGUE

  ACKKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  OTHER BOOKS BY LAUREL

  To my B x 3 girls who would drop anything and everything for me—

  Thanks for proving to me that I’ve got it better than anyone else.

  xx

  This story is an Adult Contemporary Romance taking place in the Summer of 2016.

  His eyes were like actual pools of water—moving, flowing, and changing color along with depth. Each time his focus shifted, so did mine, zeroing in on a new fleck of deep blue and trying to help it float through the much more abundant aqua. Their magnetism made it hard to focus on his words, but I wouldn’t have traded those moments spent studying their nuances for all of the words in the dictionary.

  Sure, looks were shallow and words could mean everything, but in those split seconds when his eyes changed before my own, I would have sworn on my every Olympic medal it was the opposite.

  And right now, I needed the comfort of that feeling. I needed it to swaddle me in its warmth and make everything feel right again.

  The word wrong had never been a concept worthy of my focus, but as I tried to make sense of what was happening, denying its existence was no longer an option.

  Up felt like down and left very nearly tricked me into believing it was right.

  Voices called out to me constantly and on repeat, but none of them were the one I wanted. Like they were speaking through water, every pronunciation of my name seemed foreign and unwelcome, and my brain did nothing but scream another.

  I tried valiantly to talk my uncooperative body into bending to my will, but for the first time in my life it wouldn’t.

  Digging deep down into my gut, I found the last vestiges of my energy and willed them into one single action.

  Into one single word.

  “Nik.”

  Priorities shifted and silence mocked me.

  My entire life had been a series of events all specifically driven toward this very moment. I’d known all of my work was meant to culminate in a flourish of glory and significance. I’d known there’d be a second in time when I knew why each part of my life had played out the way it had. Why I’d worked, why I’d sweat, why I’d fought to keep going well after most people’s journeys were done.

  I’d even known it would probably happen now—on this stage, in front of all of these people.

  I’d just had the timing wrong by about three minutes.

  But I knew now.

  This was it.

  The thing I found myself wanting most during this moment—that was everything.

  He was everything.

  Ripping the last lingering piece of loose skin off of my palm and ignoring the accompanying sting, I threw it in the garbage and bent down to grab my Bars bag from its place against the wall. After three hours of hard work, the tape at the top of my left ankle was starting to curl into itself, pulling away from the pre-wrap and skin and fraying at the edges. I mindlessly studied the threads of its composition, sticking to the perimeter of the large room to avoid having to pay attention.

  When you walked through an actively occupied gym, awareness was something you couldn’t afford to be short on. Learning new skills and flipping your body through the air while practicing some new form of contortion (or torture) took enough concentration on its own. Therefore, we had a running rule that the person not actively involved in some form of gymnastics was the primary party accountable for safety. By sticking to the unused two foot board around the outside, I abdicated myself of the tedious responsibility.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t care, or that I didn’t have the same goals as nearly every athlete in the building, but I had something that they didn’t.

  Time.

  A fucking lot of it.

  Having just turned twenty-six, I was now officially the oldest elite gymnast in the country. With two trips to the Olympics under my belt, I was headed for a third—and feeling every bit of my age.

  Not only did my body deny me things it once agreed to with abandon, but the entire sport had taken on an air it never had.

  Put simply, I was lonely.

  One of the things I’d always loved about gymnastics is that I’d never felt alone. No task was independent, even when it very much was. Support came in bountiful supply and radiated from all directions. But in the last couple of years, for me, all that was once there had started to dwindle.

  People resented a woman who couldn’t be happy with two trips to the Olympics. Every spot was precious, goddammit. Why in the hell did I need to take one when I’d already lived the dream twice over?

  Half of the time, I didn’t even know the answer. But my drive never dwindled, and each time someone said I couldn’t or shouldn’t, I turned their naysaying into fuel for my fire.

  Add that to the painfully obvious age gap—most of these girls were in their early teens—and it made for a complete cultural divide. What could we possibly have in common?

  As it turned out, not much.

  Their Justin Bieber giggles were the sounds of my nightmares, and, for me, gossiping about homework and boys lost its interest about ten years ago. They knew the pain of a hard week’s worth of bumps and bruises and the sting of a bucket full of ice water.

  But they didn’t know what it felt like to be past the point of help, their bodies demanding real rest and care that no tape or Ace bandage could provide.

  I didn’t begrudge them their health, and I certainly didn’t wish my aches or pains on anyone. But as the divide grew on the inside, the outside did a valiant job of trying to keep pace.

  Unzipping my grip bag, I pulled out my grips and clutched them in one hand, freeing up my acce
ss to the wristbands below them.

  The grips tucked easily under my arm as I pulled each band onto my wrists, settling them into the position I’d learned was just right. Not too high and not too low, the Goldilocks sweet spot was secure and comfortable at the same time.

  At twenty-six, I’d spent so many hours with grips and lion paws (wrist supports) on my wrists, that the absence of them made me feel as naked as a stripper on her first night. Any touch of fresh air pebbled the unsuspecting skin.

  But like this, with my wristbands on and my grips velcroed tight, everything felt right in my world. At least on the outside.

  Sauntering up to the chalk bowl, I grabbed the wire brush and roughed up the already worn leather of each hand. A water bottle hung on the edge of the bowl, but people like me—well versed in practical experience—knew that I had my own personal moisture maker at my disposal that was a far better option.

  Don’t ask me the science behind it, but spit just worked better. Period. It wasn’t sanitary or PC, but neither of those things were ever the kind of discouragement known for stopping me.

  Pulling each hand up individually I spit into the palm of the left and then the right, going back for seconds when my first hand lacked the coverage I’d been seeking. I’d done it a million times, but as I dipped both hands into the bowl, the sound of a very male, very deep throat clearing alerted me that this would be a time like no other.

  Startled, my eyes jumped from the chalk to him, and my spit-soaked hands stayed artfully pressed into the loose powder at the bottom of the bowl.

  Vivacious, vivid blue eyes launched themselves toward me as if assisted by catapults and a knowing smirk settled into the corner of some of the plumpest lips I’d ever seen. They were perfect in a completely un-ridiculous, normal way, and the shock of his starkly black, overabundant hair made it nearly impossible to get lost in any feature other than those two.

  I wanted to explore the rest of him, as you do on any first meeting, but he ruined it with words.

  “Calia?”

  “Yeah,” I replied cautiously, fully registering that he was a stranger in my gym—my safe place—for the first time.

  “Nikolai Bagrov,” he said by way of introduction, shoving a hand out toward me to shake.

  My eyes flicked quickly from him to my spit hands, still tucked safely in the harbor of the chalk bowl, and back again. It wasn’t something I’d ever been conscious of before, but I’d never been propositioned for a handshake directly after either.

  He followed my eyes a beat behind, realizing what had me balking quickly.

  A low, sexy chuckle swept out his mouth and across his face, completely transforming his features from intimidatingly handsome to warmly welcoming in a heartbeat. I’d never been one for theatrics, but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t some small twinge deep in the valves of my heart that realized how disarming it was.

  His hand never even threatened to retreat. “I’m not scared of a little spit. Shake my hand, Calia.”

  “Callie,” I corrected as I reached for his hand, heedlessly minding his command. Normally, I went with the flow of my name, accepting it as it came and swallowing my insecurity at its formal version. But with him, I wanted to hear him call me Callie from the beginning.

  “Callie,” he repeated, shaking my hand with a nice, solid pump before taking his hand back and sliding it into the pocket of his perfectly fitted, blue athletic pants.

  I immediately knew I’d made the right decision at the sound of my name on his lips, a delicate shiver making my spine sashay slightly from side to side.

  Moments passed, and an awkward silence started to take shape. He seemed to be mulling something over in his head, but he wasn’t saying anything and I had nothing to go on. And my own thoughts raced at too quickly a speed, making any attempt to latch on to one or all futile.

  “Can I—” I started at the same time he blurted, “You can—”

  Relieved to not be in charge, I gestured for him to continue and zipped my mouth.

  He took one more deep breath, and then started over. “I’m a new coach here.”

  “Oh, cool,” I shrugged, relaxing for the first time since he’d opened his mouth.

  People cycled in and out occasionally, but aside from the occasional consult, I was largely in charge of myself and I liked it that way. My parents owning the gym not only helped in the way of funding such an expensive sporting endeavor, but it also gave me the freedom to train how and when I wanted.

  “No,” he replied, confusing me by answering my non-question with what I thought was a completely unrelated answer. He shook his head, looking a little nervous. “I’m your new coach.”

  “What? Says who?”

  “Your—”

  “My father,” I finished for him, knowing the answer as soon as I asked the question. If one of my parents was going to meddle, I could pretty much guarantee it would be the one with the Y chromosome.

  To him, his dreams were my own and vice versa. In my world, the one where the gym was my country, and my father was the government, freedom wasn’t really quite free. He had veto power and he used it, but only when he thought it was in my best interest.

  And I wasn’t the one who decided when that was.

  Nikolai shrugged, managing to look both bashful and unrepentant at once.

  I turned away, headed back to the chalk bowl, and started my process all over again, talking through my back as I went. “Listen, Nikolai—”

  “Just call me Nik.”

  I rolled my eyes knowing he couldn't see it. “Listen, Nik, I’ve been coaching myself for the last four years, aside from my time on the actual Olympic team. I think I’ve got it handled.”

  I gasped as his face appeared right in front of mine, his body stooped low with his white t-shirt-covered shoulders curling in toward the front while his eyes worked at pinning my jumpy ones down with a spear-like intensity.

  “All due respect, Callie, but if you weren’t lacking something, you would have been satisfied two Olympics ago.”

  My eye started to twitch way in the back, where the muscles attach to the socket, the way it always did when someone hit a particularly sensitive nerve. He wasn’t saying anything I didn’t know or hadn’t realized, but the fact that he thought he had me all figured out when the complexities of my psyche were still a twisted mess to me really irked me.

  At one point, I’d been so lost inside of my own inner workings, gridlocked by the traffic noise of my insecurities and an equally powerful stubbornness to “hard-work” my way out of them, my mom had suggested I see a therapist.

  I hadn’t done it, obviously; bullheadedness had always been my more dominant emotion.

  After rejecting someone’s psychoanalysis who literally studied, practiced, and got paid to do it, I wasn’t about to let some stranger step into my life one minute and mindfuck me the next.

  My mind wasn’t nearly that loose or easy—even for criminally attractive men with uniquely layered, multifaceted, dangerous-as-fuck blue eyes.

  What an—

  Asshole.

  Opinions are like them in that everybody’s got one.

  In Callie’s case, as a world-class athlete, there was no question in my mind that people fed them to her like potato chips, unable to stick to just one. The salt would no doubt eventually numb her to the taste and the sensation, and I had a feeling she didn’t particularly like Sour Cream and Opinion fucking chips anymore.

  But I had a feeling my vision of her wasn’t far off. She was missing something, and even she knew it.

  I could see it in her eyes, the way they narrowed and twitched. Her face bled emotion despite her efforts to disguise it, and in my experience, no one ever got that annoyed unless faced with the unwelcome truth.

  “Look. I realize we don’t actually know one another—”

  “At all,” she interrupted with a dirty raise of her dark eyebrow.

  Carrying on as though she hadn’t spoken, I expanded on my point. �
�But when it comes to gymnastics, it’s my job to make assumptions about you.”

  I had to judge her as an actual competition judge would, not as though I knew her or the reasons behind her actions, but as though her actions alone spoke for themselves. It was a sport of snap judgements really, deciding in an instant if a toe was pointed enough or if a leg had a slight bend.

  “We’re going to become close over the next eight weeks before training camp, and you’re going to learn to trust me and my opinions.”

  We had to. She had to learn to trust me, and I had to do the things to earn it. If not, I didn’t know where I’d be. And she’d be exactly where she was now, searching for some unknown something.

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself,” she accused.

  “No. I’m not sure of myself,” I corrected. “Not like you’re thinking. I am certain of your determination though. That kind of fight, that kind of grit that goes into the amount of work you’ve put in…”

  She was attempting to win a bid to her third Olympics for God’s sake. There was no doubt the woman knew how to work.

  “There’s no way you’ll let it all go to waste just to spite some asshole coach.”

  She considered my words carefully, her eyes jumping around the room as if searching for a physical loophole. Cognizant of the precarious state of her opinion of me, I had to fight to keep my bubbling laughter from boiling over.

  Eventually, inevitability won out and her pinball eyes transitioned into a much more subdued glare.

  I watched her settle into the anger, accept it, and fuel herself and an equally strong emotional wall with its power. She didn’t want me close, she didn’t want me thinking I could get that way, and anger was a good way to reinforce her point.

  But I honestly didn’t mind. That kind of fire and drive was what made her an elite level athlete, and there’s no way she would have been at this point in her life, needing somebody like me to step in, if she hadn’t harnessed it successfully.

  I wouldn’t have let some random fucknut come in and tell me what to do on day one either.

  Her ponytail swung violently over her slender shoulder as she turned and callously ripped the freshly stuck together velcro of her grips apart. Each ridge of her starkly cut muscles shimmied and danced with the movement, trailing into the darkness of cover provided by her purple, crushed velvet leotard.