Yanna

A phone call from Vlad woke me just after five. He wasn’t pleased that I ended up hiring Hawk, and he wasn’t pleased when I told him I’m skipping the morning run, because I’m just too tired. But I know my body, and I know when I’m pushing too hard. My life for the past year has been practice, working out, making videos and sleeping. My body is ready for this tournament. The only thing that might not be ready is my mind, but I woke up a lot less tense this morning, and with that early morning knowing that I made the right decision hiring Hawk. That was my first thought when I woke up, and that’s always the right one, I think. During the day, things get complicated, but in the morning your mind and intuition are fresh, and they give you the right answer, the one to trust. I think my grandma might have told me that once, but my memories of her, except for a select few, are hazy.

“Smells good,” Hawk says, startling me because my back was to the door while I’m making eggs and thinking way too much. I turn to see him leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen, barefoot, wearing his jeans and a white t-shirt. It seems like he’s been standing there watching me prepare breakfast for awhile. For years actually. Like this isn’t the first time he’s watched me do this, even though it is. It’s a weird feeling, like we’ve known each other for ages, but it’s no less real for that. However, It is unnerving, so I turn back to the sizzling eggs in the pan on the stove.

“Do you think you can spare some for me?” he asks.

He’s joking, he has to be, because I’m cooking the whole carton of eggs, the empty shells of which are clearly visible on the counter next to me. I also laid out veggies, fruits, nuts, and a couple of slices of rye bread, and made a whole blender full of a kale and banana smoothie, which might last me the whole day, but probably won’t. He’s not entirely wrong to ask though, because I was going to eat most of it myself. I need fuel and I need to regenerate. I woke up feeling very weak, so I know that’s true.

“I made some extra for you,” I say anyway and turn off the stove. “Get a plate.”

He chuckles and joins me by the counter, opens a few of the cupboards before he finally finds the plates and brings two over to me.

“What, no bacon to go with the eggs?” he asks while I’m portioning the eggs out onto our plates.

“Bacon is very unhealthy,” I say, even though I’m sure he’s heard that a thousand times before.

“But it’s also very good,” he says, giving me the answer that’s also a cliché, which we both know very well.

“You don’t look like you eat an excess of bacon,” I say and let my eyes linger on the outline of his stomach, which I’m sure is washboard with no fat visible anywhere.

He’s grinning at me when I finally catch myself thinking this while checking him out, and I turn and start doing something else so fast I knock over a glass of water, which thankfully stays whole but makes a huge puddle on the counter.

“Let me get that,” he says and chuckles, as he reaches for the rag at the same time I do. Our hands touch and it feels like I’ve been electrocuted. There’s no sign of a grin on his face when I look at him, so I’m sure he felt it too. It was just static electricity, nothing else. But it was something else. Something only the two of us can create when we touch. That’s why I shouldn’t touch him. I can’t get any more distracted than I already am.

“I’ll clean it up, you go eat,” I tell him, yank the rag from his hand and dump it over the spilt water.

He does as I told him to do, but waits for me to join him at the small, plastic tablecloth covered table for four before he starts eating.

He takes up one whole side of the table, so it’s more like a table for two right now. I need to stop thinking things like that!

“You make good eggs,” he tells me with his mouth full.

“When you eat as much as I have to, you learn to cook well,” I say, which makes him smile, but it’s just a simple fact. The thing is, I also don’t go out to eat much, because I have very few real life friends, and I practice all the time. I can’t even remember the last time I had breakfast with a friend. Maybe with Anna, before she moved to Florida. But that was two years ago. I’m sure I had breakfast with someone after that. No?

“I eat a lot, and I never learned how to cook very well,” he says.

“Because you’re a man,” I counter.

“What? Men cook. I know a few who cook very well,” he counters. “Just not very often, I’ll give you that.”

“You don’t have to give me anything. You’ve already given me enough,” I say and laugh, even though it wasn’t actually funny, and I’m not even sure why I said it, but he makes it so hard for me to think before I speak.

“Nah, I still got more to give you,” he says and this time I know I’m blushing, because my face is on fire and the eggs I just swallowed are stuck in my throat.

This is not the time for me to act like a love-struck teenager. This is the time to be serious. But he makes it so damn hard.

“You don’t look or sound like any computer nerd I’ve ever met,” I tell him, since two can play at this making each other uncomfortable game.

“Yeah, I never fit very well into any box,” he says and looks at his bicep as he flexes it, making the tiger tattoo he has there move. I have a tiger tattoo too, but on my back. I got it around the same time I got my nickname. Right now, I want to know why he got his.

“I always liked computers, but I always liked working out, fighting and riding bikes too,” he elaborates. “Neither made me very popular anywhere until I hooked up with the Devils. Not that I fit in with them too well either, since I am a computer nerd, and most of them don’t know much about computers.”

He shuts up abruptly, like he’s said too much, but he’s grinning when I meet his eyes again.

“So, the two of us are kinda the same,” he observes.

“How do you figure that?” I ask then promptly take both our empty plates to the sink, because I don’t do personal, and I should’ve shut down this conversation awhile ago.

“Well, you look like a model and you fight like a guy, for one thing,” he says.

I’ve never been overly flattered by getting compliments on my looks. They’ve hindered me more than helped me on my chosen path. But I kinda like it that he thinks I’m pretty enough to be a model. No, not kinda. I like it a lot.

“I don’t fight like a guy,” I tell him as I bring two plates full of fruits and veggies to the table. “I fight like a girl, because that’s what I am. And I’m no model. Never wanted to be.”

“Well, you’d make a good one,” he says and picks up a strawberry. “Maybe after your fighting days are done, or something.”

“My nose is too broken and I have too many tattoos,” I say and eat some of the fruit too. I nearly choke on it, as his eyes travel over my skin, searching for those tattoos, but doing so much more besides. His gaze is stirring up secret places deep inside me, secret pools of happiness and pleasure, making them gleam and ripple, finding places no one’s touched in forever, and especially not just with their eyes.

“So you’re wrong, I’m exactly where I was meant to be. Exactly where I belong,” I conclude in a rather shaky voice, because as I watch his smile, and as I see his eyes get even brighter after they settled on my lips while I spoke, I realize that’s not entirely true.

I missed out on a lot of things by shutting myself away from the world, by focusing only on fighting and nothing else. I don’t usually dwell on that, but under his steady, sunny, open sky gaze, it’s impossible not to see it. I guess that’s what he was actually talking about when he said I didn’t belong, and when he admitted to not belonging either.

But life is what you make it. And I’ve chosen to make mine about being the best fighter I can be. To make sure Dima’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain. He could’ve sold me out to the mob all those years ago, could’ve saved his life that way. But he didn’t, and I owe it to him as much as to myself to be a success.

So belonging is neither here nor there. Hawk doesn’t belong in my kitchen right now. Yet he’s here and I like it that way, but I’ve already wasted enough of the morning talking to him.

* * *

Hawk

We finished breakfast in silence, and she didn’t say much to me afterwards either, apart from informing me she’ll be at practice until five and not to disturb her. I liked hearing that I “disturb” her. It means she’s just as into me as I’m into her, and most guys wouldn’t like hearing it said that way, or getting ignored because of it. Hell, most guys I know would take what they wanted from her awhile ago, but I’m not most guys. And what I told her about not fitting in was no lie. It might’ve been too much of the truth too fast though.

My goal was putting her at ease by telling her shit about myself, since I know so much about her and that bothers her. I’m sure it does. It would bother me. But I can’t tell her very much about me. Lives depend on me keeping what I know a secret. But what I did tell her was more than I wanted to share. It’s not like me to slip up like that.

I have networks of informants set up all over, and it’s all mostly based on being a friendly and open guy. But I’m not. There’s always lies mixed with a little truth in everything I tell anyone besides those I trust. I’m good at keeping that act up. But it takes one breakfast with Yanna for me to start spilling secrets I haven’t thought about in ages. And we haven’t fucked yet, so it’s not even the breakfast after.

I wish it had at least bought me some sympathy and greater friendliness from her, but that was not the case. If anything, it made her colder. She seems like such a warm, down-to-earth and talkative person in her videos, but in real life she keeps that side of her well hidden.

She clearly doesn’t like getting close to people in real life, the way she does with all those peeps who follow her online, but I’m gonna be the one to change that. She’s stuck with me now that she hired me, for one thing. And she likes looking at me for another. She likes me looking at her too.

I have some time to kill now, and I’ll spend it following Yuri and Mikhail around like I should’ve done yesterday. Yuri’s the boss, and Mikhail is his right hand man, so they’re the key to figuring out what the Russians are actually up to here in Vegas. I should be the one trailing them to see it before it becomes a problem for us. I trust my team, and I’ve taught them what to look for, but they don’t have all the info the way I do.

Maybe I’ll even have some more news for Yanna afterwards. And I better have something for Cross, because that second meeting is in two days and he doesn’t appreciate surprises. I also better have something good to give him for when I tell him I’ll be protecting Yanna from them.

That wasn’t an empty promise. They’ll have to get through me to get to her. I’m sure my brothers will understand that. But I also know Cross will want it done without pissing off the Russians.