We’re close again when I’m standing. Too close. Our bodies nearly bump. My front brushes his chest. For a half-second, we’re just… there.
“You okay?” he asks quietly, searching my face.
I swallow. “Define okay.”
His mouth twitches. “Dizzy?”
“A little.”
“From hitting the floor?”
“Sure,” I lie.
His hand lingers on my arm a beat longer than it needs to.
Then he steps back, pulling in a breath like he’s reeling himself in on a line.
“Show me more,” he says. “What else did you learn?”
We spend the next half hour trading techniques. I show him how to break a chokehold, how to use an attacker’s forward momentum against them, how to throw a knee that will drop a guy twice my size.
He corrects my stance, adjusts my balance, points out gaps a real fight would exploit.
We sweat.
We laugh.
At one point, I try to demonstrate a spinning elbow and nearly whack the lamp. He yanks me out of the way at the last second, arm around my waist, and we both stumble into the couch in a heap of limbs and breathless cursing.
“See?” I gasp, half-laughing, half sprawled across him. “Deadly.”
“Yeah,” he says, looking down at me with something like awe and something likeyou’re going to kill me one of these days, “that’s one word for it.”
We untangle.
Eventually, our bodies remember we have personal space. We end up standing side by side again, hands on hips, catching our breath.
“You’re good,” he says finally. “Better than I thought.”
I bump his shoulder with mine. “Is that a compliment from the great Knight Hayes?”
“Don’t let it go to your head.”
“Too late.”
His smile fades into something more serious.
“When they come,” he says, no question in it, “use this. Don’t hesitate. Don’t be nice. You hear me?”
I nod.
“I mean it, Lark. If someone breaks the door down, you don’t worry about whether they’re going to shoot me or you or both. You break something vital and you run.”
I sober.
The playfulness drains, leaving behind the steely core I keep for the worst days.
“I can do that,” I say quietly.
