Fighting For Life (published)

Wanna spar?- Aiden's POV

Aiden's POV-

"Oh um... not long," her soft voice finally answered my question as she ignored Brandon's all together.

I flipped on the lights to the gym and saw Aubry clearly for the first time that morning... and I thought that she had looked messed up the day before. That morning, the bruises on her face were on full display. The way her whole face was bruised, cut, contorted, and swollen made me so angry and sick. On top of her injuries, her hair was wet and stringy from the rain, her clothes were soaked and disheveled, and her eyes were red and puffy making her two black eyes look even worse. She definitely had been in the rain for a long while, there was no way that she hadn't been waiting there for 'not long' as she had said. She was certainly lying.

"Right, not long," I said sarcastically and walked away to put my things down.

I gestured for her to follow me when she had not done it automatically like I had assumed she would.
"So, there's a locker room right through here," I said leading the way. I gestured to her new locker, "this one will be yours." I showed her how to open it quickly.

She nodded and stuck her bag in there, grabbing some dry clothes out of it before closing it.

"The bathroom is right over here," I ushered her over to the door. "There's the showers over there. The toilets are over there." She nodded as she followed me further into the clean bathrooms. "It's all unisex... I don't think we've had any incidents, all the members here are pretty cool and keep to themselves. However, if anyone ever even tries something unprofessional or harasses you in any way, let me know." I took a pause trying to convey my sincerity. I didn't want a single member of our gym to feel unsafe or uncomfortable. If there was any funny business going on then I wanted to know about it immediately to take care of it. "Alright, go get changed and we'll begin."

She changed quickly and came back out in a black tank top and grey sweatpants. She was so small, and the more form fitting top showed off how scrawny she really was. I was unsure of how well she would do with some of the particularly strong men that fought in pool.

"Alright... so, usually in the mornings we stick to strictly strength and cardio training only. However, today I want to do a bit of what we were working on yesterday to make sure that you are truly getting it down."

She nodded in understanding and followed me to the same practice dummy that we were working with the day before. I had expected to have to explain it and go over it again to her. But thankfully, much to my surprise, she put out a swift punch to the dummy, and her form was almost all correct. I helped her a little bit as time went on, and positioned her to get more strength with her small stature.

She was catching on better than I had ever seen anyone catch on before. She was swift, calm, focused, and determined. Even though she was so tiny, her punch was becoming more and more powerful with each new hit. It was pretty incredible how much progress she had made from the night before. Her punch would even hurt me by the end of the first part of training that morning, that was quite a feat for someone who had such an awful punch just the day before.

"Okay, I think that is enough for now. You have made incredible progress." I praised. She smiled proudly at the compliment. "It is time for strength training." I said and led her to the weights. "This is important to give you more power throughout your punches and kicks. You are very small, so your strength will be quite important because people will most likely try to overpower you as you fight. We'll do incline press first."

I walked over to the incline press bench and sat on it. Brandon was on the free weights staring at us intently. I could see that he was impressed by her too. Even with all her injuries, she was progressing extremely quickly.