Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 102731 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 102731 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 514(@200wpm)___ 411(@250wpm)___ 342(@300wpm)
That evening, I dragged myself to Thurso for my first tae kwon do class since returning to Ardnoch. I was feeling a bit out of shape and ready to get back to it. When we were kids, we had to drive all the way to Inverness for a class, but Dad had told me there were two guys running classes in the same sports center where he held his jujitsu school. One of them was one of his security guards at the estate.
I’d signed up online a few nights before Carianne’s revelation. I considered not going to the class tonight, but in all honesty, I needed the physical exertion and somewhere to focus my hurt and fury.
The last thing I wanted or expected was to walk into the class and find Fyfe at the head of it, chatting with Lewis.
No.
They couldn’t possibly be the guys who ran the class.
Dad would have told me.
I turned as if to bolt, but Fyfe caught sight of me. He wore his white dobok. It had the World Taekwondo badge on the chest.
“Callie.” He patted Lewis on the shoulder and headed over to me, his black belt knotted around his waist. Five gold stripes on the end of it told me Fyfe was now a fifth dan black belt. Wow. From the bloke who couldn’t afford lessons, to a fifth dan black belt. He’d surpassed even me. “I saw your name on the list. Glad to have you in the class.”
I tried not to look beyond him at Lewis. “You’re the instructor?”
Fyfe nodded. “Me and Evan Willis. He’s a security guard at Ardnoch Estate. He runs the Tuesday and Saturday classes.”
“Callie.” Lewis approached. He also wore his whites. His black belt had four gold stripes on one end and three on the other. He’d advanced to seventh degree.
My own belt still only had three because I’d stopped going to gradings while I was in Paris. And gradings were where you were tested to advance to the next level. Now seeing the gold stripes on both Fyfe’s and Lewis’s belts, I felt an old familiar competitiveness rise in the wake of my anger.
“You’re taking this class now too?” I practically spat at Lewis.
His eyebrows rose in surprise. “Is that a problem?”
“No.” I shrugged with an ambivalence I didn’t feel. “Just looking forward to kicking your arse.”
He smirked, assuming this was banter, and pointed at my belt. “You need a few more stripes before that happens.”
Oh, I was so ready to pulverize him.
Fyfe, as it turned out, was a hard taskmaster. He’d split the group up by age and then levels. We were a small class of twenty, with the kids at the front, teens in the middle, and adults at the back.
In the row in front of me were two guys and a woman. One guy wore a white belt, so he was a newbie, the other a green belt, and the woman a blue belt with red tape on the ends, which meant she was close to advancing to red.
Lewis and I, the only other two black belts other than Fyfe, stood at the back. The first half of the session, it was easier to ignore his presence. If only because Fyfe’s style of warm-up was utterly exhausting, and I was feeling those three weeks I’d missed training. The stretching was nice. Or it would have been if I hadn’t felt Lewis watching me. I tried to focus on how much I enjoyed stretching and decided I really needed to get back into Pilates too. Once I had my routine at the bakery down, I could start incorporating some home sessions.
After stretching, however, Fyfe hammered us. My thighs burned from tuck jumps, my core from the multiple variations he had us do for the plank, and I was out of breath at one point from running back and forth across the hall.
Finally, once he was assured we were warmed up (and frankly ready to kill him), Fyfe began splitting us up so we could practice patterns.
Lewis tried to talk to me in those moments, and I told him to be quiet.
He had the audacity to appear hurt.
Then, with twenty minutes of class left, we broke into sparring.
Fyfe approached Lewis and I once the kids and teens were started. “I’m thinking, Callie, I could introduce you to Sharon.” He gestured to the woman who wore the blue belt. “And you could spar with her.”
“I want to spar with Lewis,” I insisted. “The two black belts against each other. It’s only fair.”
Fyfe cut Lewis a look.
Lewis nodded, though he glanced at me warily when he did.
A few seconds later, everyone was paired up. No one wore sparring gear, so we weren’t supposed to hit hard. Usually sparring gear was only worn at competition and grading. Or at least, that’s how it had always been at the classes I’d taken previously.