Do not adjust your device screen! (unless you need to in order to be able to read better, that's okay, I won't stop you for that) You are indeed seeing an update from me! Not only that! You are indeed seeing an update of Sink or Swim, a story that has been on (unintentional) hiatus for almost two years. Life has been pretty crazy lately, and I'm not just talking about the global pandemic we're dealing with. Late last year I made the decision to quit my job in the childcare industry in order to look out for my own mental health as the environment of the place I worked was pretty toxic. I have since enrolled to study library and information services and it's taking up a lot of my time. Which means no time for writing (insert sadface here). I have, however, just finished a section of units and my next assessment piece isn't due for another two weeks, so I decided I could devote some time to fanfiction. Yay! (Sorry for the long note, I'll let you get on with the chapter now...)

Chapter 29

My training progressed in the same way for the next several weeks. Brandon was curt, and unforgiving, but not so dispassionate that he'd allow me to suffer without cause. I learned very quickly to follow his instructions to the letter and not ask questions. I did not, apparently, need to know the reason behind the various ridiculous training sessions he forced me to complete with his daughter and her classmates, nor would it end well if I demanded answers as I had in that second week after a particularly humiliating martial arts lesson. It had taken me a little bit, but I'd finally found a comfortable coexistence in this foreign land.

But all the while I couldn't help but be riddled with guilt.

At least three times a week, Brandon had us practicing hand to hand combat or take down methods in a private room at the local gym. That had to be costing a small fortune. I'd joined a gym during college with the deluded thought that I'd finally get fit and healthy. It had been expensive just to join. (And pointless, to be honest). And then there were even more fees on top of that participate in a class or workshop. If that was anything to go by, hiring a private room for an hour, let alone several hours a week, had to be expensive. I'd tried to ask him about the fees and if he wanted more payment than simply 'keeping fuel in his car' like we'd agreed, but he'd silenced my sincere concerns with a barked command to get back on the treadmill. (Okay, so I might have been using the conversation as an excuse to take a break and catch my breath. Sue me.)

On top of the money he was probably haemorrhaging - which brought to mind Ranger and his investors, and how he'd had to cut off the help and support he'd been providing for me because of the costs - there was the fact that Brandon was spending all day, every day with me. There was barely time left over to spend with his daughter, let alone attend any job he may currently hold. Was it any wonder that Imogen had still failed to warm up to me?

I understood her hesitance to accept adult female into her life, given her past, and I'd done my best to be patient with her as Aunt Beth had instructed, but the whole job thing surely wasn't helping with that. How was Brandon supposed to support his daughter and keep up with household bills if he wasn't working? I'd been in that position – I was frequently in that position – and I knew how stressful it could be, but Brandon didn't appear concerned at all. He refused to engage on the topic of payment, or anything else that was not directly related to the task at hand. It was only in rare moments of down time that I managed to get a glimpse into the man he was when he wasn't playing the part of my trainer.

Even then, they were only small insights. He doesn't like pickles. He prefers his water chilled. He's left-handed. The ladies at the grocery down the road from his house like his butt. None of it useful in truly knowing a person.

"You're lagging behind again, Stephanie," Brandon called over his shoulder, snapping me back to reality. That was another thing: he still calls me Stephanie. It was better than 'Ms Plum,' but it was still a distancing move that made me bristle every time he addressed me by name. "If we beat you to the park you'll be doing burpees until Imogen's ready to go home."

I put on a burst of speed to catch up, even gaining an extra couple of feet of lead just to be on the safe side. I was excited to be able to go to the park today instead of having to exercise and study like usual, and I wasn't about to let that get taken away by my own distracting thoughts. It was unusually nice weather for England, by which I mean I could actually see the sun, and I wanted to take full advantage of it while I still could. I was pale before arriving here, but I was sure I'd be positively ghostly by the time Brandon saw fit to allow me to go back.

As I reached the gate, Imogen sped past, making a beeline for her friends I could see sitting on top of the climbing frame. I paused, feeling Brandon's presence behind my shoulder, and I tried to relax as I waited for his verdict. Technically, Imogen had beat me. Technically, I should be doing burpees for the next several eternities. Technically, I was going to die of exhaustion. But my sentencing was not delivered. I was given a reprieve.

"Come on," Brandon said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders to drag me through the gate. "I'll show you the good bench."

Air whooshed from my lungs as my shoulders sagged in relief. We'd been going at my training non-stop since I arrived. I'd been afforded the occasional rest day, but it was never really a full rest. Even if I wasn't physically training, Brandon always had me doing some kind of training. At first he'd attempted to teach me how to do an efficient background search, until he realised that between my ability to dig up dirt and my gut instincts, I was about as good at it as I needed to be. More recently, he'd begun teaching me how to pick locks, so my spare time was spent practicing that delicate procedure. I needed to be faster at it for it to be a truly useful skill, but I could get a standard lock open in under ten minutes most of the time, as opposed to not at all a couple of months ago, so there was that. As Aunt Beth liked to remind me: No learning is ever wasted.

Brandon lead us to a bench that was far enough from the rest of the parents at the park that we wouldn't be obligated to make inane conversation but close enough to the play equipment that we could keep an eye on Imogen as she played. The sun warned my shoulders as a routine silence blanketed the bench. I wouldn't say it was comfortable, it was hard for me to be completely comfortable in Brandon's presence even after a month and a bit, he just didn't give off the welcoming vibes, but it was something I'd gotten used to. That sense that at any moment the mood could change and I'd be instructed to run a lap was just a reality I had to live with.

"Thank you for not making me do burpees," I sighed, slouching down. "You have no idea what that means to me."

"It's important to take time out from time to time," Brandon replied, tipping his head back with his eyes closed to soak up the sun. "I could tell you were getting to the end of your tether. Home sickness is creeping in. You're exhausted. You've hit a wall. You need time to clear your brain or anything we do is gonna be for nothing."

"Th-" I tried to thank him for the reprieve, for the thoughtfulness, but he didn't like that kind of gesture. That was another thing I'd learned about him. He was not a sentimental person.

"I want to take this time to check in with how you're doing mentally and emotionally," he said, cutting off my words.

I rolled my head sideways on the backrest to look at him, brows furrowed. "You pretty much just summed it up," I pointed out. "I miss home. I'm exhausted."

Brandon didn't move. He stayed in that tipped back position, eyes closed, breathing even. "Tell me about your family," he requested.

Odd question. What did my family have to do with my mental and emotional state? I mean, sure they'd contributed to a lot of mental trauma over the years, but at this stage, I hadn't seen or spoken to my mother in two months. "What do you mean?" I asked, rather than blurt out my thoughts as is. I didn't want to go showing him my scars if all he wanted was a family tree.

"Tell me about your relationship with your parents," he rephrased, still not moving. I got the feeling he was deliberately maintaining his posture to try to put me at ease, so that I didn't feel obligated to look him in the eye.

"Well, my dad is pretty quiet, but he seems to understand me a lot more than my mom does. He's like this silent rock, always there for me when I need him. Grandma Mazur is a wild card. Acts like a teenager half the time, but she's supportive too. Encourages me to be myself. My sister Valerie and I have never truly gotten along. We've had periods of low-hostility, but I would say that we're the kind of sisters that are friends."

"What about your mum?" Brandon prompted. Probably, he'd heard a lot of horror stories from Aunt Beth. Probably he knew exactly what my mom was like. Probably, I didn't need to answer that question for him to understand exactly what our relationship was like.

I sighed and leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees as peered out at the playground, looking for Imogen in the crowd of kids. I really didn't want to open that can of worms. I was feeling pretty relaxed about my rest day and I knew that talking about my mom always stressed me out. "Mom doesn't get me," I stated simply. It was an understatement. Some days I wasn't even sure my mom liked me.

"How?"

"What, are you a therapist now?"

"I've spent enough years in therapy to have picked up a few things," he informed me, sitting up straighter, but continuing to avert his gaze. "How does your mum not get you?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "She just doesn't."

Brandon shook his head. "That not true," he informed me, finally turning to look at me. "Your relationship with your parents is a big source for the person you turned out to be. I'd like to understand how that is, so that I can start to help you get past it."

"Get past it?" I questioned. "Are you saying that my parents are something I need to get past in order to function properly?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Aren't they?"

"No." I paused, considering everything that had ever gone wrong in my adult life, how I'd felt about sharing these details with my parents. How my mother made me feel about everything I did that she didn't approve of. "Maybe," I conceded. "Mom might, probably have contributed slightly to some of my… issues."

Brandon nodded, but any reply he might have come back with was cut off as his cell phone began chirping on his belt. "Excuse me," he said, pulling it up to his ear as he stood and paced away.

The conversation he had on the phone looked serious. There was a lot of head shaking and emphatic hand gestures that probably didn't translate into words very well. He was looking increasingly agitated, and when he finally hung up, he tipped his head back, letting out a loud groan as he rubbed a hand over his face. It was the most human I'd seen him. Ever. But after a moment, he appeared to pull himself together and returned to where I still sat on the bench, staring. I had been starting to think that the only person who could get him as rankled as he was right now was me, so it was quite comforting to be proven wrong.

"I have to go in to work," he explained. "A glitch in the client management system is wreaking havoc on literally everything." My curiosity wanted to ask what he did for work, since this was the closest he'd gotten to a conversation on such a topic, but I wasn't given the opportunity as he ploughed straight on through to the next topic. "I hate to pull Imogen away from her friends on such a nice day," he sighed, his gaze wandering over to where his daughter was hanging upside down from the climbing frame, laughing hysterically. I had to agree that she looked happier now than she usually did. "Would you mind watching her for the afternoon?" he asked, turning back to me.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Is Imogen gonna be okay with that?" I countered, knowing how standoffish Imogen remained toward me despite my best efforts to not embarrass her during her training sessions.

Brandon shook his head, but there was the slightest hint of a smile playing at the corner of his lips. "Despite how she acts, she doesn't hate you, Stephanie," she assured me. "she's just being cautious. She knows you're not here to stay, so she's not letting herself get attached. She's actually really impressed with how much you've improved in your soccer footwork."

My gaze narrowed even more, failing to see even the tiniest nugget of truth in his statement. "Is that a fact?" I questioned.

He nodded in that short, sharp way he had, the slight smile still there. "What about you?" I asked.

"My soccer footwork has always been impeccable," he informed me, smile growing a little, obviously pleased with his joke.

"I mean what do you think of me?"

"You're not so bad," he hedged, shrugging his shoulders. "The more time I spend with you, the more I start to realise that my initial assessment of you was a little harsh. I'm realising that the outrageous, spoiled brat I encountered on that school oval in Trenton was a reaction to the circumstances you were thrown into. You were hurting and angry. I can see now that you have spent a lifetime trying to get people to accept you for who you are, so when the one person you thought actually did that and loved you unconditionally dumped you in the deep end without his usual support, you lashed out."

"I certainly learned who my real friends were," I agreed.

"So," he continued, glancing at his phone when it chimed. "Now that your skills and fitness have improved substantially, I'd like to help you in a more personal way, by helping you to understand your emotional responses to people and events so that, in dire situations, you can control your reactions and get the job done."

I perked up at the knowledge that I'd made noticeable strides in my training, and the implications of what he was saying now. "Does that mean no more torture sessions?" I asked eagerly.

"Not none," Brandon assured me. "We'll need to keep working on your skills, but we'll be substituting more therapeutic sessions over the next few weeks." His phone chimed again, and he grimaced at whatever was on the screen. "I really do have to go put out some fires," he said. "Will you be okay with Imogen?"

"Sure," I nodded. "We'll walk home when she's ready."

"Thank you, Stephanie," he said, sincerity oozing out of his pores and into the atmosphere around us. "I owe you one. I'll bring tea home later."

"I'll take my payment in a slice of cake," I informed him, deadly serious.

"Noted."

He took a couple steps away before I finally pulled the courage – boosted by the heart to heart we'd just had – to ask the question that had been bugging me. "What do you even do for work?" I called after him.

"I own a chain of gyms," he called back, the slight smile that he'd been restraining breaking free into a full blown grin. "Fit-tastic Fun-ness!" And then he was jogging toward his daughter and her friends, leaving me to stare after him in stunned silence. Fitastic Funness was the tag line for the gym we'd been utilising for my training. No wonder he didn't want any money for it.


I hope you're all staying safe out there. Stay calm, wash your hands, hug your cat (or dog, I guess).