As soon as I hang up, I sneak through the entrance in the hopes of avoiding drawing too much attention and briefly look around. I'd expected uneasiness after last night, but everyone is at their stations' training as normal; there's no sign of Hayden or Nico.
I'm about to slink toward a heavy bag when Coach's head swivels like a possessed Chucky doll. His long stare stops me dead in my tracks. After saying something to the boy beside him, he walks over and stops abruptly in front of me. "Detention again?"
"No, I joined Robotics club."
He glances at my reddened knuckle and says, "What's that from?"
"Fighting."
He doesn't say anything for a good few seconds, but he gives me that look that all dads have perfected – the slight furrow of the eyebrows, the downward tilt of the mouth – the look they pull out whenever they want to show their disappointment. The look of death.
"I have one rule," he says.
"No fighting outside of the gym," I finish. This isn't the first time I've heard this, either.
"That's strike two," he says.
I'm about to protest my innocence, but then I recall the incident just after I'd started here, where one of the younger boys taunted me for being unable to throw a hit. I'd let his comments simmer until I was ready to burst, and after my session, when I'd seen him outside, I punched him in the face. He didn't say a word to me after that, but the next day, Coach dressed me down so badly that the shame followed me around for weeks.
"One more, and you're out," he says. "I mean it, Masterson."
"Sir, yes, sir."
He cocks his head, unamused. "You've got an attitude problem."
"You sound like my mom."
"Your mom sounds like a smart woman. Don't mess up again."
With a ruffle of my head, Coach walks toward the ring to assist a boy stuck between the ropes. The tiniest lump starts to form in my throat. Knowing Coach is disappointed in me feels worse than when my parents are, and the anger taking shape in my stomach is not anger at him – it's at me.
For the next hour, I go to town on one of the heavy bags and pretend it's Danny's face. I get so lost in my music, in the rhythm of my gloves as they pound against leather, that at first, I don't notice everyone has stopped.
That's when I see Nico standing in the archway of the gym, with his gym bang casually slung over his shoulder. His gaze roams the gym, over the several hardened faces staring back, and settles on me.
My heart pounds the way it had when I'd watched him defeat Hayden. He raises an eyebrow as a sign of acknowledgment before making his way to Coach. The others return to training again, but there is a shift in the atmosphere, a tension that hadn't been present before, and I realize I'd been right; something has changed.
Turning back to the heavy bag, I force myself to focus. It works for a little while. I manage to burn off most of my anger before stopping to drink. Over in the corner, Nico and Coach are standing beside the ring, talking. Coach mutters something, Nico agrees, and the pair disappear into the office.
It's not long before Nico walks out. Eyes follow him again – including mine – as he heads toward a nearby heavy bag and removes the gloves from his neck. Carefully, he grabs some tape from the equipment box and begins to wrap his knuckles. There is a gracefulness to the way he does it, the white gauze light fluttering gently under the breeze of the aircon. He slips his gloves on, turns to the heavy bag opposite mine, and hits.
I ignore his presence and turn to my bag, but it's hard. Certain people demand to be noticed, and he's one of them. One, two, one, two. My hits come hard, and it's not long before he matches my pace, our jabs in perfect sync. Every so often, one of us switches up the tempo or rhythm, and the other falls into step.
My eyes move to his, focused and steady as they trail down his arms, watching his muscles contract. His gaze does the same, starting at the top of my head and finding its way to my sneakers. It's not uncommon for boxers to size each other up, but something about this feels...intimate.
Breathing unsteady, I focus on the squeak of the bag as it rocks on its hinges, but out of the corner of my eye, I'm watching him. Our approaches to boxing are night and day: I lead with emotion, hitting the bag until the anger wears off or my hands grow tired, whichever comes first. Nico, in comparison, is militant. He sets his watch to three-minute intervals, dropping his hands the second it beeps to have a brief drink. After checking his intake, he sets it aside to monitor his heart rate and starts all over again. And yet, despite his obvious need for control, when he fights, he's impulsive, verging on reckless: it's why I find it hard to look away.
By the time I'm ready to hang up my gloves, everyone besides Nico has left. He pounds the heavy bag, eyes dark and clouded like something is on his mind. Or maybe he's just dedicated – you don't end up beating someone like Hayden without putting in the work. Still, I can't help but feel a little like he's encroaching on my space. The only reason Coach lets me stay late is to lock up; what's his excuse?
I pack away my things, then head to the closet and pull out the cleaning equipment. I don't feel like cleaning with Nico here, but despite my sighs and impatient glaring, he doesn't get the message. Instead, I work around him and wipe down the rest of the heavy bags. He still hasn't finished by the time I'm done, so I work on cleaning the rest of the equipment and circle back around.
Finally, I walk up to him. "Are you nearly done? I need to clean the bag."
He ignores me until the beep of his watch, then steps back from the heavy bag and slowly turns to face me. "All yours."
I slip into the small space he's allowed me and wipe down the heavy bag. Any normal person would have given me some room, but this boy is so entitled that he thinks he owns this place.
"Surprised you came back after last night," I say because I want to knock him down a peg. "You're not a very popular guy." I half turn as I say it, not the least bit surprised to meet his scrutinizing gaze.
"Good job I'm not here to make friends," he says.
"Right," I say, because I have this problem where I can't mind my business, "you're here to coach, but who will want to train with someone they don't like?" I don't have to look at him to know that arrogant gaze is still on me, watching me wipe down the bag.
"They train with Coach, don't they?"
I turn back around as something protective takes over. "That's different. Coach isn't an asshole; he just believes in tough love. Some of the kids here need it."
He waits a beat and then, "Do you?"
"No."
The corner of his lip lifts – just a fraction – enough to let me know he's got something on me. "You got detention today – you sure about that?"
I frown. There's no way he could have known I had detention unless Coach told him. And if Coach told him, the pair were over there gossiping about me. I turn to Nico, arms folded, and say, "You telling me you never got detention?"
"Nope," he says with a glint in his eye, "I was a good boy."
Something about how he challenged Hayden last night tells me this isn't entirely true. "If you say so."
I get back to work, hoping that's it for conversation, but he steps into my line of vision, expression laced with amusement. "Are you always this welcoming, Cassandra?"
My eyes narrow at Cassandra. I ignore him and turn, cleaning the parts of the chain I can reach, but the way he watches unnerves me. When I stop and look up, his eyes are fixed on my knuckles.
"That why you got detention?" he asks.
Embarrassed, I'm about to pull my hands behind my back when he takes hold of my wrist. "Excuse you."
He examines my hand in a disapproving manner. "You've broken your thumb before. You tuck it in when you fight?"
"I used to." It was a rookie mistake I'd made when hitting the kid from the gym, the kind I will never make again.
Nico traces the bruise with his thumb. Under any other circumstance, I'd have snatched my hand back, but there is nothing sensual about this; it's almost clinical the way he assesses me. "You're not throwing a punch properly. I can tell by the placement of your bruises." He looks up now, eyes dark with disapproval. "If you're going to go around hitting people, you should learn to do it properly."
"Are you advocating violence?" I ask.
"Always. Come on."
I'm about to argue that I punch just fine, but he's already pulling the tape out of the equipment box.
A/N
Comment a heart if you want the next chapter! ❤️