Everything she was…so was I.
MELODY
She’d held back.
The first time we’d fought, back at the manor, at their wedding, I knew she was good. But I also knew I was stronger. I was sure that without her tricks and games, I was stronger one-on-one, but now as she ducked and brought her fist so close to my nose that I barely had time to back up, I knew for a fact, she was holding back then.
In hindsight, it made sense.
She wasn’t trying to defeat me. She was trying to draw me into her trap. We needed it to look like she’d put up a good fight and taken a few good hits, as well as give us enough time to escape. We couldn’t do so if we were beaten up too badly. I wondered how Liam had missed her head, how I had missed her head. We had both fired. And now I knew why. Her pretty gray eyes weren’t just decorations for her face. Her eyes were faster than her hands, and her hands were bloody fucking fast. All of her senses were sharper than even mine were at her age. It was like she watched us fight from above; not only that, but she also knew my combat style.
The first week I had knocked her down to the mat daily. This week, it was like I just kept missing her. I spent more time blocking her kicks, her jabs, than actually aiming to take her back down to the ground. This wasn’t just skill. This was a memory. That was how her body could keep going, even though I knew she wasn’t at all healed. It knew what to do even if it wasn’t at full capacity.
I barely had a second to breathe, to catch my footing, to protect my sides and then my face…what would happen between us if she were at her full capacity. What would have happened if I were twenty-eight still? Who would win?
Me.
The second I thought that was the second I threw my fist at her first opening in the last hour, right dead on her wound
She gasped, stumbling back, hunched over as the pain ran through her.
It was dirty, but who gave a shit. Dirty hits were a way of life.
“That’s enough for today,” I said to her.
However, she stumbled to the side of the ring and puked, gasping for air. Before cleaning her mouth, she turned back to me with her fist held back up.
“I’m fine.”
With her smiling face and witty comebacks, that fake woman, who entered my son’s life, was gone. Right now, her eyes and face were harder than stone. Her eyes were so cold they looked dead. She’d taken off her mask ever since I’d come to her, and all I saw on her face was the desire to kill. The passion was so strong that she didn’t care about anything else, not even her own face. She’d even pushed her daughter away so she could focus on getting back up to fight.
“You’re going to overwork your muscles,” I said as I unwrapped the cloth on my fist, ignoring the soreness in them as well.
“My muscles are fine; are yours?”
She still had a way to get under my goddamn skin, though.
“Careful,” I said to her. “You piss off your teacher. You won’t get any more classes. We are not doing another round.”
“Fine,” she said and walked past me, facing the wall where Ethan had been sitting, watching us for the last hour unflinching. It was only to him that her face softened, and her smile returned. “Come fight me, boss.”
“Your teacher called it a day,” he said back to her.
“She can stop me from fighting her, but she never said I couldn’t engage with someone else.”
“No, but I implied it,” I shouted over to her. “Go rest, Calliope.”
She waved me off. “Christmas is in two days, Ethan. Let’s wager, consider it my gift to you and your gift to me.”
“And what is this wager?” he questioned.
“If you win, I’ll do what you asked and stay behind. If I win, you stop watching me like a mother hen and accept that I’m going.”
He frowned, rising from his place on the ground. “When I win, you will say it is because you were worn out fighting your teacher.”
“I’m not that petty.” She was exactly that petty. “Besides, I was holding back with her.”
I scoffed. This little bitch.