Beat (The Beat and The Pulse #1) (2 page)

Chapter 2

Ren

I didn't have
anywhere else to go, so I stayed at the studio.

When everyone left
and I was on my own, I explored the galley style kitchen with its giant fridge
and freezer, tested out some of the gym equipment and even the showers. Without
anyone there to look over my shoulder, I could spend time inspecting all the
photographs on the walls. Most were of people I didn't know, boxers, martial
artists, all kinds of fighters. The newer ones were of heavier guys, mixed
martial arts tournament winners and place getters that had trained here over
the past fifteen years.

There were some of my
Dad when he was younger, the way I remembered him. He'd been a champion boxer
back in the day, before he got my Mum pregnant and quit fighting.

When I went to bed, I
stared at the ceiling for the longest time, my mind like a tumble dryer. I had
no idea what I was going to do now that I was here. All I had was a bag and a
broken heart. I didn't even have a job. When I finally fell asleep, I shouldn't
have bothered.

I guess it was about
six am when I got the shock that was the cherry on the cake.

I was woken by the
light flipping on, dousing the entire room with dazzling brilliance. A tall,
glamazon, supermodel type woman was standing over me, her hand on the light
switch. There was a second of awkward silence before she screamed at the top of
her lungs. It was a little much, but then again I never screamed. I hit first,
then asked questions.

“
Dad
,” the
woman shrieked as I sat up, clutching the blankets around myself.

Dad? The blood
started draining from my face. No wonder he stuck me in the storage closet.
He'd set up a new franchise.

“Monica?” I heard my
Dad before I saw him appear in the doorway. “It's okay, sweetie. That's Ren.”

I stared up at him,
watching his expression change into one of panic. He obviously didn't count on
'Monica' busting in on me at six am in the storage room. I wasn't the only one
who was stunned into silence.

“Who is she and what's
she doing here?” the glamazon who was apparently my surprise half-sister asked,
backing out into the hall.

“Mon,” Dad said,
placing a hand on her shoulder. “This isn't how I wanted you two to meet, but
this is Renee. She's your half-sister.”

Monica looked at Dad,
then looked at me, tears welling in her eyes. A moment later, she fled down the
hall, the clang of her footsteps on the metal stairs echoing around the empty
studio. That one had drama queen written all over her.

Dad glanced at me,
then after his super special franchisee, obviously torn as to which direction
he wanted to go.

“Go,” I spat, not
trying to cover my anger in the slightest. “She's obviously important to you.”

He gave me a look
that said 'pained father' and disappeared, calling after Monica.

Pulling clothes out
of my bag, I dressed and peeked out of the door. All was quiet, but I couldn't
hide in the closet forever. Tip-toeing down the hall, I descended the stairs to
the studio floor. Peering into the kitchen, I saw Dad with his arm around
Monica, comforting his super beautiful, perfect daughter. Her face was buried
in her hands and she sniffed. Rolling my eyes, I backed away and that's when I
saw one of the twins lingering in the gym.

“Hey,” he called out.

Smiling thinly, I
nodded toward the kitchen and he shrugged. She must have a reputation already.

Not knowing what I
should do or where I should go, I wandered over to the notice board by the door
and scanned the flyers pinned to it. Meathead Twin number one started pounding
a bag again, the sounds of his fists hitting leather, echoing in the silent
studio.

There were posters
for classes in self-defense, boxing, MMA from beginner to intermediate. Maybe I
should learn how to beat the world into submission instead of letting it beat
me. There was a metaphor if I ever saw one. I needed...I needed something to
dull the hollow ache that had bloomed inside of me the moment I saw the life
slip from Mum's eyes.

I'd tried to find
solace in other things, other people, but at the end of it all, she'd been the
only one who'd looked at me with any kind of love. Hollow sex in the days after
her death didn't help. Alcohol sure as fuck didn't do anything. Even following
her last wish was turning out to be a real banging party.

I was alone and I'd
always be alone. They didn't want me here.

“Ren.”

I looked up to find
Dad standing behind me, a crease in his forehead.

“I can leave,” I
said, my depression starting to tug at the edges of my heart.

“Don't be stupid. I
insist.”

A crash sounded from
the kitchen drawing my gaze over his shoulder.

“Monica is the
studio's nutritionist,” Dad said, scratching his jaw.

Great
.

When I didn't reply,
he went on. “She finished her degree last year and our regular quit, so I gave
her a chance. It's good experience for her.”

“What does she do?” I
asked to be polite. I didn't give two shits what she did. We might share the
same father, but by her spoilt little girl routine, I knew we wouldn't get
along.

“She prepares all the
meal plans and supplements and cooks for Dean and Linc. Training is nothing
without the food to go with it. It doesn't work. She also takes on clients from
the classes and from around the neighborhood. She's getting quite busy.”

The note of pride in
his voice didn't escape me and I felt even smaller again. What did I have on my
resume? DIY palliative care without the seal of approval by the University of
Wherever.

“You never told them
about me,” I stated, tired of pussy footing around it.

He opened the door to
the street and gestured for me to step through into the cool morning air. We
stood on the footpath, the dawn sun drenching everything in an eerie
half-light.

Dad shook his head.
“Sharon never knew I was married when we were...” He trailed off.

I wanted to fill in
the gap with the word fucking, but I didn't have it in me.

“She never knew I had
a wife until we found out she was pregnant. I never told her I had a daughter.
I'd already lost one family because of my fuck ups...”

“You left us, Dad.
Mum was sick and you left us.”

He didn't reply.

I guess I wasn't
going to get the answer I wanted right away, if at all. In my eyes he'd been a
coward. He'd run when things got rough and took the easy way out.

I saw Monica talking
to Dean, or at least I thought it was Dean, through the window and scowled. Dad
followed my gaze and sighed.

“It's not how I
wanted you two to meet,” he said with a frown. “I was going to introduce you
this morning.”

“How old is she?”

“Twenty-one.”

I was one when he
fucked another woman? It took him four years to leave Mum and abandon us to our
fate. He was having an affair for years... I felt sick.

“I had an affair,
Ren. I'm not proud of it. I was a different man then. I was struggling with a
lot of things.”

I didn't want to hear
his reasoning. All it sounded like to me was an excuse. A whole lotta blah,
blah, blah. “Is that why you left us? You set up a new franchise?”

“Ren,” he snapped.
“It's done. I can't change it. All I can do now is try and make things right
with you.”

“If I didn't come and
find you, would you have come and found me?”

“No, probably not,”
he said bluntly and I had to give him points for honesty, even though his words
sliced right through my heart.

Tears began to
threaten again and I dabbed the edge of my sleeve against my eyes.

“It's going to take
time for everyone, Ren. You're welcome to stay here for as long as you want.
You can have free run of the place, help yourself to anything in the kitchen.”

“Sure Monica won't
mind?” I asked, trying to keep the resentment out of my voice.

“She doesn't have a
choice. It's my studio.”

Turning on my heel, I
shoved back into the studio striding across to the kitchen. All eyes were on
me, but I didn't care. I couldn't even look up. I was just the abandoned child.
The defective model. When you made something baked from scratch you always made
a test batch before the real thing. I was the test batch. Monica was the real
thing.

One of the twins was
sitting at the long table in the kitchen, a spoon in one hand and an eyebrow
rose at my sudden entrance.

Fuck, what was I
going to do?

“Great first day,
huh?” Meathead Twin said between mouthfuls of some bland looking cereal.

Picking a spot across
the table from him, I said, “I'd say hi, but since it's still my first day and
all, I don't know which one you are.”

He started laughing.
He was cute in a boyish way. “I'm Dean. The difference being, I'm more handsome
than Linc. I'm younger, too.”

“By how much?”

He winked. “Five
minutes.”

“What a spring
chicken,” I said, cracking a smile.

“So, you're kippin'
in the spare room?”

“Spare room?” I
scoffed. “It's a storage closet.”

“Damn fine storage
closet.” He winked, digging his spoon into his cereal again. “I'd fucking live
here.” He eyed me for a second and when I didn't reprimand him for swearing, he
said, “You don't mind if I say fuck right?”

Cocking an eyebrow, I
replied, “I swear like a fucking sailor. Be as foul as you like.”

“I'm going to like
you.” He laughed before shoving food into his mouth like a horse.

Yeah, I wasn't sure I
would get used to having breakfast across from
that
. The spoon looked so
tiny in his hand, it was almost comical.

“Dean?” Glancing up
at Dad's voice, he gave me a small smile. “We're starting in fifteen.”

Meathead Twin mock
saluted him. “Right, Coach.”

Glaring, I turned
around in my chair. What kind of relationship was I supposed to have with the
man? I referred to him as 'Dad', but he was the furthest thing from that that
there was.

“He’s a good guy,”
Dean said. “It’s just complicated, I guess.”

“Complicated when you
don’t tell your family you have another you dumped before them.”

The spoon clattered
into his bowl and he leaned over the table. “I don’t know what kind of guy he
was then, but I know him now, Ren. He’s a good bloke. I’m not saying that shit
won’t be hard, because with Monica…” He shook his head, widening his eyes.

“Like that, huh?”
Fucking great.

“She’s used to being
the center of attention.”

“Snake in the grass,”
I said before I could filter it.

Dean started laughing
and slapped a hand on the table, making the dishes clatter. “You’re just like
him, you know.”

“By all means, keep
digging, Dean.”

“I like to dig.” He
wiggled his eyebrows up and down.

Groaning, I decided
to change the subject. “What are you training for anyway?”

Dean's eyes lit up.
“The upcoming UFC season. The Australian league is still fairly new, but we
hope to go to the States to compete at some stage.”

I stared at him, not
knowing what UFC meant.

Dean chuckled,
pulling out his phone. “Ultimate Fighting Championships. It's mixed martial
arts. Looks brutal, but it's a fucking art form.” He handed the phone to me and
tapped play on a YouTube video. “Have a squizz.”

As the video played,
my gaze turned from skepticism to amazement. The two men on the screen belted
the absolute crap out of one another, but there was a finesse about the whole
thing.
Violent
finesse. Bodies twisted and struck out, they lashed one
another with fists, knees, feet, elbows...any extremity they could to take each
other out. It was a wild, masculine dance.

Dean was right, the
whole thing looked brutal, but I was mesmerized. I could see the technique and
the absolute perfect physique that was required to be able to handle it. In a
way, it was inspiring.

“Shit,” I hissed.
“People do this for a living?”

“It's big business,
Ren. Some fighters get mega bucks.”

“What about you
guys?”

“We've got a buck,”
he said with a wink. “Still waiting on the bucks to go mega. Depends on how the
season goes, I guess.”

“Dean!” Dad's voice
bellowed through the studio.

“Gotta fly, Ren. I'll
be seeing you.” He gave me another wink, pocketing his phone before dumping his
bowl into one of the sinks. “Hey, beginner class tonight at seven.” He tapped
the table and disappeared out into the studio.