Hailey stood in front of him dressed in leggings and a tank top, her blonde hair pulled up into a ponytail. Dylan had been hesitant to do this, but she'd made a decent point of needing to be prepared. He had a fight tonight, and there would be more, none of which he wanted her to see. There were also trips into town that she still couldn't step foot in.

Bottom line, Dylan couldn't protect her twenty-four seven, and if she sent him divorce papers, Alex would be determined to track her down. Dylan had done well at hiding his tracks and keeping off the radar, but he wouldn't risk Hailey's life on it.

"There are plenty of things you can do in a fight that require little skill. First, eye gouge. If you use your thumbs, you want to aim closest to the nose. Even if you fail to remove or crush them, you've still done damage and blinded your opponent enough to get away.

"If you find yourself behind your enemy, strike their neck with your elbow, at the base of the skull. If you're in front of them, go for the throat, and there's always the classic kick to the groin."

Hailey laughed. "Oh good, so there are ways of taking someone down without maim or murder."

There were plenty of moves he could show her, and would in time, but until she developed some sort of skill, Dylan needed her to know how to protect herself with quick maneuvers that would take someone down and end the fight.

"Until we improve your skill, you need to be prepared with the basics. In fighting, we don't use our hands as often as you'd think. It's easy to break your hand, so we rely on other things. Elbows, knees, kicks. Elbows deliver a sharp blow, knees have power, and kicks allow you to keep a distance between you and your opponent. Legs are where the power's at, but if you aren't careful, you'll land on your ass.

"That doesn't mean I won't prepare you for the moment where it's their life or yours. You're going to learn how to hold a knife, how to shoot a gun, and how to take them down in a way where they stay down. If someone comes after you, I'm going to make sure you are the one with all the power.

"But the most basic thing you have to learn is to keep your hands up," Dylan explained before he approached her. "It needs to become second nature to you, because as soon as you drop your hands, you leave yourself vulnerable. Left hand by your ear, right hand by your chin. It's called a phone and microphone drill. If you need to throw a punch, you're ready. If you need to protect your face, you're already there."

Dylan positioned her hands, closed them into fists, and arranged her thumbs. "Again, only use your fists if you need to."

Standing this close to her wasn't an easy task. Since the night she'd found him on the couch, something had shifted. Hailey was touching him just a little more, probably to test boundaries without blowing right through them, and Dylan had been allowing himself to gaze at her longer. He'd been tempted to kiss her so many times already, but he had to respect that despite her strength, Hailey was still very much healing.

Learning to fight had given him a sort of confidence he found nowhere else. He found his power, found a passion, and found his release of all the shit trapped in his brain. This was probably the biggest reason he accepted teaching her how to fight. If it was only for protection, it was as easy as learning how to shoot a gun, and remembering to keep it on you at all times. Shooting was also a pretty incredible release, and something he'd been doing for years.

With Dylan's record surprisingly clean considering the very illegal activity to partook in, one fighter suggested he become a cop, and the idea was tempting, but that would mean giving up his other two jobs, which he was too damn passionate about to leave behind.

"Alright, now stand up straight, and place your feet about a shoulder width apart."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Dylan ran his fingers through his hair and let out a low chuckle. "Keep them close together, but not touching, with your lead foot forward so you can shift your weight when you throw a punch."

Hailey dropped her hands to the side and narrowed her dark eyes at him. "You're trying to teach me a lot of crap about throwing a hit when you legit started this conversation, telling me to avoid throwing a hit."

"I'm teaching you boxing stance. Yes, boxing is throwing a hit, but it's a pretty intermediate skill, and one that will show you the basics you can apply to different styles of fighting. You gotta crawl before you learn how to walk. Unfortunately," Dylan continued, "most of what I teach you is going to be useless unless you build up muscle.

"Barbells, resistance bands, push-ups, squats, and lunges to start. We'll start out at three days a week, hour-long sessions. Your body's going to be sore, and you're going to hate me a little. Days off from that, I'll show you fighting moves.

"Now, I'm going to ask you a question about a topic I absolutely don't want to talk about. Is Alex in shape? Does he go to the gym? Take any classes?"

Hailey dipped her gaze to the ground, then kicked a nearby rock with the toe of her sneaker. "Honestly, we barely know each other. I don't think we've had a genuine conversation about our lives since we got married. Just work and nitpicking everything I do. I can tell you he has a lot of affairs, so he gets his cardio in," she spoke with a dull laugh. "And he's in good enough shape to feel confident to berate me about my weight.''

Dylan moved toward her and cupped her face in his large hands, forcing her eyes to look at him. "You aren't fat, Hailey. You're fucking beautiful."

"I'm a size ten. When we met, I was a size four."

Dylan shook his head at her. "Doesn't make you any less beautiful. Not to me."

And it was true. Every night he went out with the guys after a fight, the women who surrounded Elijah were in their early to mid-twenties. Outfits plastered on as they tried to look like badasses, when a two-minute conversation with them proved otherwise. Not that those were the only women at the bars, but the only women who seemed to flock straight for the fighters.

Dylan did his best to be polite to them, but the way they tried to hang on his arm, it didn't last long. He'd always end up going for the women who sat at the bar rather than hang out by the pool tables.

Since he'd gotten back into town a year ago, Dylan had to admit to going a bit overboard with women. Back in Boston, he'd only had a few. Practice. But once he returned to the state he'd grown up in, the state where Hailey lived, Dylan had bedded more than his fair share of women. Whatever it took to get the woman he loved off his mind.

He got himself checked regularly, never had sex without a condom, and never slept with the same woman twice, minus the one brunette because he'd honestly been hammered the first time they'd slept together, and didn't remember her until the morning he woke up in her apartment the second round, and realized how familiar it looked.

While his reckless behavior was certainly better suited for a man in his twenties, it allowed Dylan the ability to free himself from his sexual hangups. It acted as therapy in a morbid sort of way, though he guessed his former therapist would have suggested otherwise.

Dylan dropped his hands from her face and took a step away. "Come inside. I've got a gym set up in the basement."