Free Fight For You by Kayla Bain-Vrba Page A

their way deep into the men's sector, daily life was already under way. The men held the same occupations as women, and she recognized the stretches of a group of dancers. They passed a few other runners, some sweat drenched, others just heading out. It seemed that Berlin was a common sight in the men's sector; the occasional man nodded at her or even greeted her by name. Seeing Berlin with a companion, however, was apparently not the norm, and Cherry drew intrigued glances when they passed.
    As a dancer, Cherry thought she was in good shape, but by the time they finally stopped back at the house Berlin lived in, she was gasping for air and drenched in sweat. She pulled off her shirt and shook out the lightweight material, glad that her tight pants were too dark to show sweat. A few feet away, Berlin had dropped her hooded shirt to the ground and was stretching out her leg muscles. A thin sheen of sweat swept across the dimples of her lower back, visible above the low rise pants she wore. She tugged off her boots to stretch out her feet and calves, and after a pointed look, Cherry did the same.
    Berlin offered her a skin of water, saying, "You've got ten minutes. Then I'm going to kick your ass."
    Kick her ass, she did. Cherry wasn't sure if Berlin was making fun of her, if fighting was a turn on for her, or if she just got off dominating Cherry, but every time Berlin got the opportunity, she always seemed to be touching Cherry:  a slap or grab at her ass as she passed, a rough close-mouthed kiss when Berlin bore her to the ground, a firm thigh between her own as they wrestled. At first, the intimate contact startled Cherry off her guard, but by the end of the first day, her personal bubble was popped irrevocably.
    As exhausted as she was at the end of her first day, Cherry walked to the north gate of The Zone. It was locked, as always; it was almost curfew anyway so there was no one trying to get in or out. She slung her arms through the iron rungs and looked out at the dirt road leading away from her home of the last six years. The sun was setting; in the capitol, families were sitting down to dinner together. She wondered what her father was doing just then, if he was happy, if he was even alive. For a moment, she wondered what she would be doing if she hadn't been sent to live in The Zone until their debt was paid.
    Above her, the stars were beginning to appear. She supposed they looked the same in the capitol as they did within The Zone, but inside her cage, they seemed terribly distant and unreachable. Maybe in the capitol people looked up at the stars and didn't feel trapped and insignificant. When she was out there, she knew she would never look at the stars that way again.
    Reluctantly, Cherry left the gate and made her way back to her room.
    "You almost missed curfew," Berlin informed her when she closed the door of their room behind her.
    Cherry didn't answer. It wasn't a question anyway.
    Her pallet was on the opposite side of the room as Berlin's, tucked neatly into the corner beneath a single shelf that held her few possessions. Despite the hour, she could hear the muffled sound of conversation coming from the nearby rooms. She was used to the sound. As a dancer, she had lived in a house with twenty other girls, most of them as young as she was. She had fallen asleep more times than she could count to the sound of new girls crying and older girls attempting to comfort them—or telling them to grow up and get used to it.
    "You should sleep."
    Cherry glanced over at Berlin, lying naked on her belly and partially covered with a blanket.
    "We're going running again in the morning before we hit the breadline."
    Cherry nodded, suddenly more tired than she could fight. Without bothering to undress, she crawled onto her pallet and tugged the woolen blanket up to her chin, curling up against the corner.
    *~*~*
    The breadline was chaos.
    It was early in the morning, the start of one of the worst mornings of the week.