As he watched, Bella stood, and so did Benson. They moved around the table, closer to each other. Benson bent over.
Tyrone wanted to scream, to pound himself on the sides of the head.
The worst thing he could imagine happened. Benson kissed her.
No, there was something even worse than that — she kissed Benson back. Tyrone saw their mouths working and knew it was a tongue kiss. Benson put one hand behind her, put it right on her butt. Pulled her closer.
Bella let his hand stay there.
It lasted forever. A million years.
Finally, they finished. Benson turned and went one way, Bella the other.
Tyrone stood frozen, a worn-out statue of old bronze, unable to even blink. It was like the time on the parachute ride in Florida, that big free-fall drop. His belly fluttered, came all the way up to his throat. He was paralyzed on the outside, even though his guts roiled like a nest of beheaded snakes.
What should he do? Should he go out and confront her? Tell her he was just passing by? See what she said? Would she lie to him again?
Did he want to know that?
Oh, man, oh, man! He wanted to die. Right here, right now. Just go up in a blast of fire and smoke and be dead and gone and not have to know this, not have to think about it, not have to deal with it.
Bella had betrayed him. That was it, that was it, there was no way around it. She could have explained being in the mall, maybe even explained meeting Benson by accident and having lunch, but no way could she explain the last part. The kiss. The hand on her ass.
Right now, he hated Jefferson Benson so much that he would have killed him if he could have figured out a way to do it and get away with it. Maybe even if he couldn't get away with it. But Benson wasn't the real problem. Tyrone knew that. Bella was the problem. What really hurt was that Bella had let him kiss her. That Bella had wanted him to kiss her. That she had enjoyed it.
She wanted somebody else. Instead of Tyrone.
That was the thing that made Tyrone sickest.
What was he going to do?
How could he live with this?
At that moment, he couldn't see any way. No way at all.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Julio Fernandez stood in the cold at the start of the obstacle course, next to the chinning station. The morning trainees had come and gone, and the afternoon group didn't come on until after lunch. Some civilian feebs ran the course at noon now and then, along with senior troops trying to stay in shape, but right at the moment he was the only one at the chin racks.
He spent five minutes warming up, rolling his shoulders and stretching his neck. If he didn't do that he would probably strain his traps, and walking around with a sore neck for the next week didn't appeal to him, especially given his already gimpy status.
There were four sets of three bars there — hardwood dowels, each two and a half feet long, an inch and a half in diameter, mounted in six-by-six pressure-treated lumber posts. Each of the crosspieces was set at a different height. The lowest was about six and a half feet off the sawdust, the middle one was a foot higher, the highest a foot above the middle one. Usually he could easily jump up and catch the highest of the bars, but his leg bothered him a little more than he'd let on. Until the muscle got a little less sore, he wasn't going to be dunking any basketballs. Or springing up to catch the top chin bar. But he could grab the middle one easily enough. He did so, palms forward, using a full grip about eight inches wider than his shoulders. It didn't really matter how tall the bar was because when he did chins he pulled his legs up into an L-sit to work his belly muscles anyway. Kind of like a gymnast, although he wouldn't get many points for form. He didn't point his toes enough.
He curled his hips up, pointed his legs — he could even feel that in his wounded leg — then chinned himself, going up at a medium speed, coming back down at the same speed, to a full hang. Anything else didn't work the lats enough.
One.
He repeated the move, then did it again, getting into the rhythm.
… two… three… four…
Doing it in an L-sit made it harder, but that was the point. He wasn't trying to see how many he could do, cheating to a half-hang and then pumping it back up. The idea was to make the muscles work.
… five… six… seven… eight…
Some guys used a false grip, with their thumbs hooked over the bar for more lift, instead of under and around the fingers. And some guys used wrist straps, on the theory that their forearm muscles and hands would get tired before they wore their lats out, and chinning was primarily a lat exercise… nine… ten… eleven…
Fernandez figured that there wasn't much point to his back being so strong that his hands couldn't keep up. It wouldn't do you much good to have lats like Superman if you didn't have the grip strength to use them… twelve…
He let himself down, lowered his legs, released the bar. He was warmed up pretty good now. He shook his hands and arms out, flexed and extended his fingers, rolled his shoulders a couple of times, then turned his hands around so the palms faced him, and caught the bar in an underhand pull-up grip, this time spaced about shoulder-width. That was the only difference between chins and pull-ups, whether your palms faced away or toward you.
One… two… three… four…
The biceps started to burn first, but the forearms were right there too.
… five… six… seven… eight…
It was getting tough now. He blew out a hard breath, sucked in a deep lungful of air, gutted it out.
… nine…
Come on, Julio, you can make it!
… ten…
He dropped, hung on to the bar for a second, then let go.
"I didn't think you were going to make that last one," a woman said from behind him.
He turned. Joanna Winthrop.
He grinned. "Me neither. Course, if I'd known you were watching, I'd have managed a couple more. I wouldn't want you to think I was a wimp."
She wore running shoes and sweats, dark blue pants, and a matching hooded shirt with the Net Force logo on the front. "I doubt I would think that. Twelve chins and ten pull-ups? On a good day, I might do six of either. Not both."
"Well, I don't want you to feel bad, so how about I just skip the one-handed sets?"
She laughed. "Thank you. I appreciate it."
"So, what brings you out here?"
"Too much time at the desk. Every so often, I have to get away and clear my head."
"I hear that."
"How's the leg?"
"You want the macho answer? Or the truth?"
"Oh, both, please."
"Well, the macho answer is, ‘Ah, no problem. Little old bullet wound like that can't slow a real man down. Hell, I hurt myself worse putting on my socks. I was just about to go run the course. After which I'm probably gonna jog around the compound a couple times, then go find a pickup rugby game somewhere.' "
"I see. And the truth?"
"That sucker is sore, stiff, and if I tried to run the course, I'd get maybe halfway to the first hurdle, cursing like a sailor, before I collapsed and fell down hollering in pain."
She laughed again. He liked that, making her laugh. She relaxed when she did it; she lost some of that tightness in her face that made her look just a little too cool to approach.
She said, "You're going to give macho men a bad name, Julio, admitting something like that."
"I'm trusting you to keep it a secret," he said, his face held as grave as he could manage. "If they found out, I'd be labeled a sissy, and drummed right out of the Manly Men Society."