Page 48 of Iridescent
“N-No. I—”
Jesus fucking Christ. Speak human, idiot.
My discomposure must be written across my face, because her expression softens before she huffs out a laugh. The sound sends a quick, disarming current of warmth through my veins, and the corner of my mouth betrays me with the faintest shift.
“Relax,” she says. “I’m pulling your leg. No need to look so wounded.” Her attention moves over me with open assessment, not quite mocking. “Unless you are disappointed. In which case, speak now.”
She folds her tanned, muscled arms beneath her chest, the movement tightening the black sports bra against her ribs. Tape wraps her knuckles. A thin sheen of sweat trails along her collarbone.
She looks so… mythic.
“I’m not disappointed,” I manage.
“Good.” Her smile deepens, revealing dimples. “I’d hate to bruise your ego before your face.”
I blink. The bite lacing her words is a goddamn contradiction to the seraphic smile on her face.
She passes me, produces a set of keys, and locks the door behind us.
All the while, I am disgracefully preoccupied with the trace of vanilla trailing in her wake.
“Well.” She jingles the keys. “Now you’re stuck with me, Xavier.”
My name in her mouth lands with disproportionate force, and for one absurd second, I feel weightless.
I swallow.
This is untenable. I need to request another coach. Someone less distracting. Someone whose mouth doesn’t make my brain abandon basic function.
I can’t focus like this.
???
Forty minutes into whatever private hell my coach considers a beginner’s session, she finally calls time.
Sweat has saturated the back of my shirt, my shoulders throb with mutinous intent, and I am no longer certain my lungs are still cooperating.
My coach, unfairly, looks barely winded. I never doubted her ability, but now I understand why Karras trusts her with his fighters.
We started with a skipping rope, which I resented within the first minute, then moved on to stance, guard, footwork, and the humiliating revelation that knowing how to endure pain did not translate into knowing what to do with my feet.
When she strapped on the pads, I thought I understood the mechanics. Hit what she presented. Simple.
I threw the combination.
“No.”
My jaw tightened. “I did what you asked.”
“You used force,” she said, adjusting the angle of the pad. “I asked for control.”
Except nothing about her was simple. She called combinations without raising her voice, adjusted angles I didn’t know existed, and made me repeat the same movement until my muscles burned with something close to insurrection. “Cleaner,” she said every time I hit harder. “Not angrier.”
I limp to the bench where my hoodie lies, every shred of dignity left somewhere on the canvas behind me.
She must think I am pathetic by now. A twenty-six-year-old man who knows how to absorb punishment but not how to return it.
Not that I would find it offensive. Weakling is an old verdict, one I learned to stop flinching from years ago. Hearing it from one more person should mean nothing.
