Free PULSE: A Stepbrother Romance by Sarah Sparrows Page A

through on that ‘training’ promise from the start. Before the
second weekly brawl, I’d already been introduced to Chen, his dojo owner
contact, and even attended a few sessions. It wasn’t news to me that Gary had
been right – I was unrefined,
and that was painfully clear to me after a few afternoons with the group.

 
    “Discipline,”
Chen told me on the second night. “You lack discipline .
Your body is a heavy block of clay – very powerful, very sturdy. But power
is never enough. Teach yourself discipline ,
and you will learn finesse .” He sized
me up, as so many did around those times, and smiled confidently. “You are a
quick learner, and you do not fear pain. An excellent pupil… I think you will be.”

 
    And so it continued:
brawls every weekend, a roulette of work during the week, and fitting forty
hours of training around it. At first, my training was at the drawing board
– revisions made to how I lift weights and trained my cardiovascular. At
the same time, I was educated in how to throw a proper punch, the right stances
to take, and everything I needed to know about taking critical punches and kicks.

 
    After I had
been retrained in the very basics, I studied for a month under Chen’s
instructors with basic, common denominator martial arts. I learned the
bottom-rung ways to evade powerful jabs to the jaw, catch or deflect striking
kicks, and how to avoid being wrestled to the ground. Optimized for efficiency
and speed, the improvised curriculum was equally brutal on my flesh and taxing
on my exhaustion levels.

 
    However,
results began to slowly appear.

 
    With my
large, powerful build, Muy Thai was a natural fit for me. As a full-contact
style, it required that I utilize hard striking surface that my body supplied
– forcing me to consider my shins and elbows equally viable weapons in
the ring. This meant that I had to harden these surfaces through rigorous body
conditioning, alongside my fists and feet.

 
    The full
curriculum of training involved everything from shadowboxing to weight
training. I began to take less work during the week, allowing my body to rest
from the intensity I faced practically every night in the dojo. I moved from
four nights a week to six, resting the entire day leading up to the weekly
fight.

 
    I could have
stopped at eight months, but I pushed through for two more. Once this was done,
I took my hard, refined body and forced it through two more months of
specialized wrestling techniques, eager to either keep myself on my feet or to
crush whomever dared to get me onto the floor. Thanks to my specialty, I could
be easily devastating in either environment, and my natural affinity for
fighting made me an intimidating contender. On top of this, my body was
hardwired for increased endurance, and I always found a little more stamina in
my veins to pull from when things turned desperate in the ring.

 
    However, I
did lose a few times. Each night that I tapped out or blacked out, Gary
threatened to throw me to the streets again – but I had already proven my
worth, allowing him to charge higher ticket sales. I was indispensible to him
now.

 
    Gary settled
on making me work for his friends for half a week – usually in something
a little more nefarious that my typical work. More often than not, I was acting
as a bodyguard for some criminal element in the city. It was work that made my
skin crawl, but I took it all in stride.

 
    I did what I
had to do.

 
    Slippery Pete
was the closest thing that I had to a friend. His strange blend of
condescending camaraderie even started to grow on me a little. He considered me
his partner in crime, always making sure we wound up on the same team in the
ring. If he held any bitter resentment towards his father obviously favoring
me, he never showed it.

 
    It looked
like he was just happy to have someone.

 
    I couldn’t
begrudge him; I felt the same way.

 
    He filled me in
about Hurricane Katrina,