Fresh honey blonde highlights. Manicured nails. And a bruise the size of a fist on my left cheek.

No matter how much concealer and foundation and “light reflecting” powder you pile onto a black bruise, you can never make it look like normal, healthy skin again. Maybe this was what life would just be like for me. Endless hours spent in front of the mirror, daubing on yellowy pigments and hoping that nobody would see the sickly blue tones underneath.

Convinced I couldn’t do any more to hide it, I gave my reflection a smile, tightened my ponytail and reminded myself: I was not going to allow myself to be enslaved by another man’s system. Derek could do what he liked to my exterior, I would keep the inside pristine, even if my only motivation this morning was spite.

I quickly stashed my makeup in my gym bag and then left the washroom. This gym was a dump but in a way, I liked how low key it was. There was no point putting a sparkly finish on it: I was learning self-defense so I could beat the next motherfucker who raised his hand to me. I hoped the other women here wouldn’t notice anything, but if they did, tough. Maybe they could take my stupid life as a warning.

I did some random stretches in the corner and waited for the rest of the class to appear. The teacher was nowhere to be seen, but the flyer had explained that he was an ex-Navy SEAL with a bunch of training and awards under his belt. Made you wonder what such a guy would be doing in a dingy hole like this, but on the other hand, who am I to judge when it comes to reaching rock bottom? I had two grand left in my checking account and I hadn’t had the guts to look at my credit card statement. Rent was due in two weeks and I was unemployed. I stretched my other leg and ignored those thoughts. My safety was paramount. Rent didn’t matter if I was dead, did it?

“Good morning ladies!”

I spun around to see him enter and nearly did a double take. Was that…? Oh shit. I felt the blood in my face drain all the way to my feet as I stood there like an idiot. The guy in the complex. The guy with the… oh shit shit shit.

“Ladies, hello, please can you all gather around, yeah come up close to the front here, and let’s get started!” he said with a big stupid grin on his face. He was even bigger in real life. And taller. This had to be a joke. The same man I had spied on a few weeks ago was now going to teach me self-defense. If I could have told anyone, this would have made a hilarious joke.

I hung out limply in the back row and tried to get my ears to stop buzzing. He was hot. Too hot. The kind of hot that lets you get away with being a total ass. A big hunky ex-SEAL dude with arms like tree trunks a face right off a Rolex ad? You couldn’t make this stuff up. It suddenly occurred to me that he was probably a massive player too. You don’t keep your abs that toned just to treat one lucky girl with respect and loyalty, right? No, I bet he ran these little classes for the express purpose of taking advantage of vulnerable women. What a bastard. I almost didn’t feel that bad for violating his privacy.

Class began swiftly and he rattled off his qualifications and some sob story about his sister inspiring him to start up these classes. I couldn’t stop staring at his body, though. How did people even get their muscles to do what his were doing? Before I could decide whether his physique was attractive or plain old narcissistic, he had us paired off in groups of two where he demonstrated some principles of balance. A cute girl with a black ponytail was paired up with me and we took turns trying to execute a move he showed us – a move that would keep us on balance but disrupt the balance of an attacker and bring him to the ground.

The girl was sweet and I focused on the task at hand, but it was like I could feel him moving around that hall, like I could tell exactly when he was behind me.

I had seen his cock.

It was this totally outrageous secret I had to pretend I didn’t know, but the more I tried to focus on the class, the more I found myself twisting round to follow him as he moved through the room. I misunderstood his instructions because I was too busy looking at his face, trying to see how it could be the same one I had seen twisted in pleasure only a few weeks ago.

Was he looking at me? He was definitely looking at me. The flyer said his name was Max Turner. I first thought, with my radar on supersensitive, that I was imagining it, but I turned more than once to find him looking my way. He came over to correct the girl with the ponytail’s form. He pressed two careful fingers into her shoulders joints and gently straightened her spine.

“Like …this. There we go. You see, most of your strength in this position is coming from here…” and he touched his own abdomen, forcing us both to snap our gaze to it. Then I caught him again. He was staring at me. Could it possibly be that… that this glorious over-the-top specimen of a man was interested in me?

“Katie, was it?” he said and came to stand a little closer after the girl with the ponytail went off to practice with someone else.

“Uh, yeah. Just Kate, actually,” I said and extended my hand.

Ugh. Too formal. He could probably tell I was staring at him too much. Did he know it was me, the one behind the bushes? Had he seen me and was he now going to demand an explanation for what the hell I was doing, stalking him like this?

He shook my hand warmly and gave me a broad, easy smile. Before I understood what was happening, he was pulling me closer in towards him, like he had a secret to tell me. He angled himself close my ear and then lowered his voice. Oh fuck. Oh god.

“I don’t mean to embarrass you, but, uh…”

I felt like my heart was about to explode and kill me.

“You have a little …a little something over here, on your face,” he said, and gently grazed his fingertips against my covered bruise.

“What? Oh, uh,” I sputtered, yanked my hand from his and felt a vicious blush set in. He was still smiling though. What an asshole! Was he laughing at me? Had he seen how eagerly I had leant right back towards him, like some kind of lovesick puppy…

“Hey, don’t worry, it looks great, maybe just touch it up a little on the bottom. Nobody’s noticed. It’s all good,” he said with a knowing smile. Or was it a pitying smile? He was still so close to me. With a sickening roll of my stomach I realized that he just assumed I was some pathetic domestic violence case and that he was being a real gentleman by embarrassing me like this. I wanted to puke.

“It’s not what it looks like,” I hissed at him. The smile fell from his face.

“Hey, yeah, I wasn’t saying anything. Just forget it,” he said and tried to smile again. But it was all awkward now. The moment was ruined. I bet he was used to this, the bastard, always feeling better than everyone else.

I ran off to the bathroom and fixed my makeup again, but when I emerged he was studiously ignoring me. I felt like such a moron. He put us back in groups again and this time, my focus was all over the place, and the girl ended up twisting me back and over her shoulder so roughly I found myself slamming into the floor way harder than necessary. Everyone in the hall turned to look as I cried out.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do that so hard,” the girl was saying, and flapping around me like she had just murdered me.

“I’m OK, it’s nothing, seriously,” I said and hobbled back to my feet.

“Woah woah woah, ladies, do I have to sell tickets for cage fighting here or what?”

We both turned to see him walking over to us with an awkward smile on his face. A bad joke. Nobody laughed.

The rest of the class unfolded but my heart wasn’t in it. The girl had thrown me squarely onto a shoulder bruise Derek had already given me, but I couldn’t let on how much it still hurt right now to have that area ringing with pain all over again. I was enraged. Everyone in the class seemed to be enjoying themselves and getting the moves down, but I felt like a wounded dog, just looking for someone to snap at. Mercifully, the hour was soon over and everyone packed up and made their way out of the gym. After double checking my makeup a third time in the washrooms, I walked out and found I was the only one left. Besides him, of course.

“Hey, Max,” I said. I had already come to my decision. He was a complete and utter asshole, no question, and it didn’t matter how rock hard his chest was. He trotted after me as I made my way out the front door.

“Hey, uh, Katie? Did you enjoy the class?”

I had seen those lips, those eyes before. It was now like seeing them again was embarrassing in itself, and the more I tried to pretend I wasn’t blushing, the harder I blushed.

“It was great, yeah, thanks,” I said nonchalantly. He was standing close again. I could smell the heat off him. I had no idea what Navy SEALS did, but looking at him just then I would have believed that it was nothing more than a training program for looking like a Greek god. I didn’t know where to put my eyes. So I stared into his eyes, which in a second or two also seemed like a bad idea.

“Cool, I’m glad to hear it. Like I said, it’s a new thing I’m trying so I’m glad to hear how people are finding it and all that. Oh and uh…” here he leaned over a little more, and I finally appreciated what he was doing – he was tall enough that he wasn’t leaning closer to talk to me, but leaning downwards. He must have been well over six and a half feet tall at least.

“I’m sorry if I made you feel uncomfortable back there, that wasn’t my intention,” he said and gave a small smile.

“Uncomfortable? About what? No I wasn’t uncomfortable,” I blurted.

Of course I was fucking uncomfortable but I wasn’t about to let him know that. God how I wished he’d stop looking at me. It was so much easier when I was looking at him. The very memory had me blushing all over again.

“But thanks, that was… a very nice lesson. It was great. Clearly you know what you’re doing and…” I was just babbling. He nodded and smiled and I had the distinct impression that he wasn’t listening to a word I was saying. Was he staring at my bruise? Was he judging me?

“Hey, um, I’m still kind of new in this town and uh, well maybe you’d like to come out with me sometime?” he said. My ears rang.

“Out …with you?” I said. He smiled again and nodded.

Oh, I got it. I was right all along – he just zoomed in on the weakling of the herd and was now trying to take me down. He probably thought I was some broken woman who’d be simply thrilled to get a chance with such a stud. The fucking nerve of him. The seconds ticked by as I tried to gather myself but all at once, my rage spoke for me.

“Thanks but no thanks,” I said, smug. “I typically go for men who are a little more… I don’t know, cerebral,” I said and gave a disdainful little look to his massively built bicep.

“Cerebral?” he said. It was like I could see the wind leaving his sails. Good. A man like him could probably stand to be taken down a notch, and maybe I was the bitch who would do him the favor.

“Ok, cool,” he said, but his face hardened.

“Oh and by the way? Just some constructive feedback, with your class being new and all. If you want to cater to women, you need a bathroom that doesn’t look like it was recently bombed, you know?” I couldn’t believe where I was finding the guts to be this mean. He nodded silently and I watched his eyes trail off to the bathrooms.

“Uh, thanks …I’ll look into that.”

Poor asshole. That was probably the first time he’d ever had a woman tell him no. I marched out and drove myself home on a triumphant high. It was only when I reached my home and let myself in the front door, only when I shrugged off my gym bag and kicked off my shoes and flopped down onto the sofa, that I could cry.

It hit me from nowhere. I cried because my arm hurt and because I was embarrassed and because I so deeply wanted all of this to be easier. I cried because I was alone and because I had just turned down what was almost certainly the only shot in life I’d get with a guy who looked like that, and I cried because my face looked like shit and no amount of concealer in the world could cover it.