Burn (Indigo) Page 21

  Cinder’s eyebrows drew closer, relaying her confusion. Tenders?

  Aja jabbed at Cinder’s crotch, pulling the blow an inch from her target.

  “That would be really bad news for someone dumb enough to attack you,” Aja chuckled, handing the newspaper to Cinder.

  Cinder tested it herself, lightly tapping it against her palm and her thigh. The twist in the tube made all the difference. The newspaper was hard, almost like wood.

  “A roll of aluminum foil is just as good,” Aja instructed. “In or out of its box.”

  Cinder sparred with Aja a little longer, taking a turn with the eskrima sticks and snapping a dowel in half, which hurt her knee a little more than she thought it would. At the end of the class, she thanked Aja, who told her that she’d see her in two days for their next lesson. Her future decided for her, Cinder took a quick shower and dressed in her jeans and cable-knit sweater. She looked for Gian, but his office was empty and his new instructor was finishing the class in the dojo.

  I’ll call him later, she thought. Her gym bag slung over one shoulder, she left to walk home.

  Pedestrian and road traffic was light. The glow of brightly lit storefronts warmed the November night, taking any chill Cinder might have felt. Fall in Webster Groves was very different from that in New England. The few people Cinder encountered had bundled themselves in heavy pea coats, parkas, scarves, gloves, mittens, and knit hats. Compared to the twenty-degree nights she’d known in Manchester-by-the-Sea, Webster Groves’s current thirty-nine degrees was positively balmy.

  Her left thumb hooked through her belt loop, Cinder was comfortable in nothing more than jeans, a thick sweater, and her cross trainers, even with her hair still slightly damp from her shower. She took a deep breath as she walked past Kenary Florist, A-1 Printing, and the other shops lining Lockwood Avenue. Webster Groves smelled like . . . Webster Groves. Fresh and pleasant with the smell of snow, the air was bereft of the scents Cinder most loved: burning leaves, pine trees, crushed crabapples, and wood fires.

  She sighed, not unhappy, but not entirely happy, either.

  New England was home and always would be. Webster Groves had yet to engender that level of comfort and contentment within her. She turned right at the corner of Lockwood and Elm, proceeding south on Elm. Dense canopies of tall sweet gum trees still partially dressed in their fall colors obscured the light from the street lamps. She made a game of her last block home, deliberately stepping into the puddles of light dappling the sidewalk.

  Webster Groves might not yet feel like home, but Cinder was closer to that feeling than she’d ever been. Zae, certainly, had done her best to welcome Cinder into her world, to help her start living her own life again. Sheng Li had been Zae’s greatest gift toward that. Gian and his team were like family. Chip, the older brother she’d never had, was protective almost to a fault. Cory alternated between annoying younger brother and amusing cousin. Aja, now that Cinder had finally met her, was the wise matriarch, someone who existed outside the day to day relationships yet remained an integral part of everyone’s life. Sionne defied explanation, but Cinder knew that he would kill or maim to protect her, just as he would for any other member of the Sheng Li family.

  Cinder paused on her front porch. That was it, really. With Gian at its helm, Sheng Li had become her family.

  She didn’t rush right into the house and up to her apartment. Instead, she set her gym bag on the narrow planks of the wood floor. She swept dead leaves from the porch swing, then sat to wait for Gian.

  The porch swing gave her a great view up and down Elm and of the house across the wide street. The family inside had their dining room drapes tied back, so Cinder had a front-row seat to their dinner hour. A modern-day Norman Rockwell scenario played out before her, with an attractive, smiling mother using oven mitts to set a steaming casserole dish in the center of the dining table. Three children, two boys and one girl, sat around the table. The older boy, surely a high-schooler, talked to his father, who sat at the head of the table. The other two children seemed to be bickering.

  Cinder imagined that the scene before her was occurring in dining rooms throughout the world. What made this one special to Cinder was its proximity. Right before her, she saw everything she had ever wanted, everything she could have for herself. It was near enough to touch.

  Perfect might be too much to ask, Cinder reasoned. I could be happy with good enough.

  God, Fate or some other divine force must have been listening in on her peaceful musing, because at that moment, snow began to fall. Cinder went to the porch rail. She stuck her hand into the night and let the dry, sparkly flakes collect on her palm. More like flecks of ice, the snow glittered in the yellow-gold glimmer of street lights transforming the quaint, tree-lined street. It looked like a scene in a snow globe, until she heard quick footsteps pounding the sidewalk. Gian came into view in his faded jeans and beat-up leather car coat, and right then Cinder realized that she had better than good enough. She had perfect after all.

  She met him with a kiss on the walkway to the front door. She smiled into it, the cold tip of his nose giving her a tickle as it brushed hers.

  “Hey,” he greeted her, his hands at her waist. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  “I didn’t know how long you’d be.” Holding his hand, she led him to the front door of the Victorian. “It’s a nice night. I had a good walk home.”

  “Are you just getting here?” Gian blew on his hands while Cinder unlocked the door.

  “No, I sat out here for a while.” She opened the door, allowing Gian to enter the brightly lit foyer first. “I was watching the family across the street.”

  “Gettin’ the hang of small town life, huh,” Gian said and laughed.

  Cinder closed the door. “I guess.” She bolted the deadlock. “They—” She stopped short, hooding her eyes with her hand to better see into the night. She thought she’d spotted a thread of reddish-orange light zig-zagging within the tall yew bushes lining the front lawn of the house she’d been spying on.

  “What is it, honey?” Gian stood atop the first stairwell leading to the attic.

  Cinder spent another silent moment watching the yew bushes shudder as something within them moved from one end of the house to the other and around the corner. The hairs on her back of her neck and arms stood, and not because of an autonomic response to the cold air. She strained her eyes, trying to make out the creature moving in her neighbor’s front yard.

  Was it a cat in the neighbor’s tall hedgerow? A possum? A person . . . ?

  Her mouth went dry. Her hand trembled on the doorknob.

  “Cinder?” Gian walked down a few stairs. “Are you okay?”

  She might have shared her sudden apprehension with Gian if she hadn’t seen a big gray body with a long, bushy striped tail weave out of the hedgerow and back into it.

  “I’m fine,” she finally answered, relaxing. Joining Gian on the stairs, she wanted to kick herself. No one had seen Karl Lange in days, not since he’d been fired from Grogan’s. She realized how absurd it was for her to think that Karl would sneak onto her neighbor’s property to spy on her.

  Wasn’t it . . . ?

  Chapter 13

  “Aja was wonderful.” Cinder took off her sweater and slung it over the back of a dining room chair. “I learned so much from her. The hour just flew by. I think I might sign up for her class. ” She ran her fingers through her hair to discharge the static electricity the removal of her wool sweater had put there.

  “I think that would be a good idea,” Gian said. “But you’d better do it soon. I’m going to have to set a limit on class sizes, because we were swamped tonight. Although at least a quarter of my new students will quit within three weeks and another quarter will stop showing up within two months.”

  Cinder took his jacket and hung it in the foyer closet. “Don’t be so pessimistic.”

  Gian wearily sank onto the sofa. “I’m just stating a fact. That’s why I give the fre
e trial classes, so that potential students can see what they’re getting themselves into before they make the investment.”

  Cinder sat beside him and let him fold her into his side. “I think you’re going to be surprised. You won’t lose many students. You run a really good shop.”

  “I try.”

  “You’re going to have even more students after the International Martial Arts tournament.”

  “Speaking of that,” Gian started, “you have to think up a name to use in the exhibition match. Zae chose Hippolyta.”

  “She’s getting a lot of mileage out of her fascination with Amazons.”

  “I’m trying to get her to change it to something a little more crowd-friendly.” Gian ran his hand over Cinder’s hip.

  “Why do we have to use pseudonyms anyway?”

  “It’s part of the fun of the exhibition matches.”

  “Why didn’t you put me in the fight round?” Her head on his shoulder, she tipped her face to look at him.

  “Because most of the competitors in your weight class won’t have been taught one-on-one by a seventh-degree shodokan for six months,” he explained. “You’re better trained than ninety percent of the people who’ll enter the tournament.”

  “What about the other ten percent?”

  Gian’s abdomen jumped as he chuckled, lightly jostling her. “They’d probably play with you for a while before wiping the mats with you.”

  “What’s Aja’s skill level?”

  “She’s probably forgotten more fighting techniques than I’ll ever learn. As good as her physical skills are, her mental skills are even better. Her greatest weapon is her ability to focus. Aja is the perfect example of lethal calm when she fights.”

  “She says that the home is an arsenal,” Cinder told him. “There are at least a hundred weapons in my kitchen right now.”

  “When it comes to combat, most people are ignorant. Not defenseless,” Gian said.

  “She showed me how to use a broom handle to defend myself.” Cinder sat up and faced Gian. “If an attacker came in here, I could throw salt, sugar, even vinegar or coffee in his eyes to buy myself a few crucial seconds to escape. I could hit him with a frozen jug of milk, or club him with a ketchup or salad dressing bottle. The bathroom has even more potential weapons. Will she teach me how to use throwing stars or samurai swords?”

  “I don’t allow my instructors to teach the use of any weapon that could easily be turned against them. If you own a gun, you’d better be prepared to shoot to kill if an intruder gets into your home. Because if you’re not, and he gets the gun from you, you’re the one who’ll end up dead.”

  “I don’t want to own a gun, Gian. I would like to know how to use one, though.”

  He mulled over her request. “There’s a place in Maplewood that could help you out. It’s run by good people, and the instructors are excellent.”

  “Why can’t you teach me?”

  “Cinder, if I never pick up a gun again in my life, it’ll still be too soon.”

  “I’m sorry.” She remembered that Gian knew better than most how lethal guns were. Cinder had no problem with ordinary citizens owning guns. Her problem was that so many of those ordinary gun-owning citizens were also dumbasses.

  Cinder hugged him. “I’ve learned so much from you. Thank you.” She settled into his lap and kissed him.

  “Now these are lethal weapons.” He stroked her lower lip with the pad of his thumb. “My heart stops every time you kiss me.”

  Gian was impressed by the change in her confidence level. Five months ago, she’d looked like a frightened kitten when she first came to Sheng Li to learn how to fight. Though she had never asked him to, she had been overly grateful when he offered to walk her home after class. He’d made certain that if he couldn’t do it, that someone else did. Tonight, she’d gone home alone. Not only that, she’d enjoyed it. Convinced he was seeing the Cinder he would have known had she never been temporarily diminished by Sumchai Wyatt, Gian asked her the one question he’d most wanted to ask her since Labor Day.

  “Will you marry me?”

  “You already asked me that once.”

  “No, I asked you what you’d say if I asked you to marry me. I never officially proposed.”

  She brought her fingertips to her mouth in surprise, her eyes wide. “I’m so embarrassed. I told Zae a long time ago that you’d proposed. And that I’d said yes.”

  “You told Zae that you’d say yes, but you left me hangin’ all this time?”

  “I’ll say yes.” She laughed. “Ask me again, and I promise, I’ll say yes.”

  “I’m offended,” Gian teased. “I’ll ask some other time. Unless I forget . . .”

  “Gian!”

  Grinning, he cleared his throat. “I want to do this right.” He got on one knee and pulled a ring from his breast pocket. He looked up at her, his bright, beautiful eyes shining with every hope and dream two people in love could ever hope to share. He took her left hand. “I never imagined that I would fall in love, until I saw you. I never thought about getting married and building a family, until you. Nowadays, that’s all I think about. I love you. I want to share the rest of my life with you. Cinder, will you marry me?”

  Tears blurred her vision, and emotion clogged her throat. Smiling so wide it hurt, she nodded. Her hand shook as Gian slipped the blinding twinkle of a square-cut, two-carat diamond on her ring finger. Cinder blinked away tears to see that Gian’s eyes were misty, too. She framed his face in her hands, moving in to kiss him. Her lips took his to trigger a response that transformed her mute acceptance into something hotter, more insistent.

  She wanted to marry him. She wanted him.

  Their clothes were cast away and his flesh met hers, generating invisible sparks that sent a current running through them, one that heightened every sensation, deepened every kiss. Every part of them moved in harmony—lungs and hips pumped, backs and necks arched, thigh and jaw muscles hardened and relaxed.

  Cinder now knew what it truly meant to belong to someone. Not in a possessive, degrading way as practiced by Sumchai Wyatt, but to belong to someone as the sun belonged to the sky.

  Cinder slipped a hand between them to feel Gian’s movement in and out of her. That part of him was so distinct from her own body, yet closing her eyes, she couldn’t tell the difference between her flesh and his. He ended where she began, and that was where she wanted to spend the rest of her life.

  * * *

  Kneeling at the edge of the mat, Gian leaned over and whispered to Cinder. “Sionne is one and seven against this guy. This should be a very interesting match.”

  Cinder wondered which of the huge men kneeling on the opposite edge of the mat was Sionne’s opponent. Each one of them had a chest like the side of a cliff, arms and legs built for crushing, and fists like small canned hams. Cinder knew that Sionne would be fighting someone named Clarence Clark, but when the referee called that name, none of the big men rose. Instead, every head turned toward the archway leading to the locker rooms, where a fighter in a black gi stood with his fists propped on his hips and his chest thrust forward. Cinder gasped. “That’s who Sionne’s fighting?”

  “Clarence Clark’s only loss to Sionne came when they fought the day after Clarence’s pet gecko died,” Gian whispered. “Clarence’s head just wasn’t in the match.”

  “I can’t believe you’re going to let this happen,” Cinder muttered.

  “Sionne can beat him. He’s been training harder than ever. This is his last preparation match before the Internationals tomorrow.”

  Cinder turned to face Gian. “This kid is the size of the sub Sionne ate for lunch.”

  Chuckling, Gian shushed her, and the match started.

  Clarence and Sionne circled each other. Slight and sinewy, Clarence couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen. A beautiful kid with a nut-brown complexion and a sharp fade, Clarence put Cinder in the mind of a Jack Russell terrier circling a buffalo. Agile and quick, Sionne
dropped his weight and lunged at Clarence, who skirted free of Sionne’s grasp to deliver three quick punches to Sionne’s ribs. Whirling in a blur, Sionne got in one blow toward Clarence, who again dodged it, suffering no more than a brush of Sionne’s knuckles at the side of his gi. Sionne gave the contest his best, showing off some of his strongest moves, yet nothing fazed Clarence, who toyed with his much bigger opponent. With no points scored and two minutes remaining in the match, Clarence darted behind Sionne. He used Sionne’s right calf as a step to climb onto the bigger fighter’s back. The boy’s skinny arms captured Sionne’s head in a tight hold.

  Sionne pulled at Clarence’s arms, he turned and shook, but nothing weakened Clarence’s grip. His face reddened, Sionne struggled to breathe, spittle shooting from his lips.

  Gian rushed onto the mat. “Clarence, that’s enough! We don’t choke opponents to unconsciousness in tournaments!”

  His dark eyes innocent, Clarence released Sionne and backed off. “Well, when can we choke somebody out?”

  “When that somebody is trying to shove you into the back of a van.” With a little push to his back, Gian sent Clarence to his coach. “What are you teaching your students? You know the rules of tournament competition.”

  Cinder went to Sionne while the two sensais argued. She roused him with light pats to his cheeks. “Are you all right?”

  “That kid,” Sionne panted. He sat up, shaking his head to jostle his wits back into place. “I hate that kid so hard.”

  Cinder helped Sionne stand, nearly collapsing under his bulk.

  “Would you feel better if you came to Mama’s for dinner with us?”

  Sionne straightened, almost good as new, at Gian’s invitation. “Thought you’d never ask, boss.”

  Sionne’s match was the final for the day. He quickly showered and dressed while Gian emptied Sheng Li. Sionne rode with Gian and Cinder for the short drive to the Piasanti house in South St. Louis. The battle didn’t affect his appetite any. After everyone sat for dinner and Gian said grace, Sionne stacked his plate high at the Piasanti’s Thanksgiving table. Sionne recounted his fight between bites. “This kid is fast. He climbs like a lemur.”