I snarled and hit the targets she held out—one-two-three, then again, and again, and fuckingagain. My shoulder muscles burned like they might actually be about to catch fire.
“Who said anything about quitting?” I bit out at her as I followed through with another jab-jab-uppercut. Her long ponytail swung as she received the brunt of my blows with an ease that suggested she could do it all day long.
Layla said, but only to us, never to our teachers.
Only, there was a reason Layla was whining to us and not them. No matter what she said, she wasn’t a quitter. None of us were. And right then, that was feeling like a massive problem for my arms, legs, back, abs. Hell, my ass muscles ached.
Layla continued.
Brady said into my mind while he grunted aloud. He, Griffin, and Hunt were cycling through complicated kicking and striking combinations, hitting Homer’s moving targets first, then Armando’s, then running to the back of their short line to do it again—and all over again.
Brady said.
Layla answered drily with a wince, hanging upside down from a pullup bar, doing sit-ups. Yolanda had ordered her to do five hundred repetitions.
Brady said over the rapid smacks of Griffin’s flesh connecting with the targets.
“You know,” Yolanda said in a loud voice in Layla’s general direction, “if you want to be the best at something, you have to give it everything. You can’t hold back any single thing. You give, give, and give.”
I would have worried Yolanda could somehow hear us talking, but it didn’t take a mind reader to interpret the blatant discontent scrunching up Layla’s face. My friend hissed as she crunched up for another rep.
When she was upside down again, Layla asked, “Who says I’m not giving it my all?”
Yolanda just arched a brow as she held up the targets for me to keep going. “It takes complete dedication to become a master at anything. And we were told you all want to become masters of your bodies and minds,sí?”
“Sí,” I answered even though she wasn’t specifically addressing me.
“We’re loving this,” Brady said with a grin. When he executed a flying kick then spun smoothly to deliver a roundhouse kick, Armando grinned back with an encouraging, “Bom, bom.”
Since he wasn’t currently torturing me, I enjoyed his musical Portuguese. He tacked on a translation for Brady, saying “Good, good,” in case Brady hadn’t already gotten the message, which he had, judging by the pleased smile that continued to tug at his lips.
“Twenty-five more,” Yolanda told me. “Then we’ll take a short break.”
Obediently, I cycled through twenty-five more complete exercises, then sagged.
“Twenty more.”
My stare snapped to her. “What? You said that was it.”
She smiled for a second, then dropped it like the act it had plainly been. “I changed my mind.”
Layla said as she hissed though another crunch,
I scowled at Yolanda but didn’t bother complaining. What was twenty more in an endless succession of them? But I did pull out some extraoomphto put into my next strikes, and I didn’t bother hiding my real smile when she stumbled backward with one of them.
When we all stood around taking our five-minute break and guzzling water, Layla asked our teachers, “Why do you guys care so much?”
As one, Homer, Armando, and Yolanda turned toward her.
“What do you mean?” Homer asked, using a crisp towel to dab at the sweat on his brow. He even sweated elegantly. “Why wouldn’t we care?”
Layla told us before answering him. “Well, it’s not like we’re planning to start competing or fighting or anything. We just love martial arts, honing ourselves, that kind of thing. But it’s nothing official.”
Homer studied Layla long enough that anyone even remotely self-conscious—which she wasn’t—would have squirmed. She just stared back at him, anticipating.
Eventually, Homer said, “The five of you don’t strike us as people who do things halfway.”
