Page 3

The footage hits my inbox at 9:47 PM, and I’m sitting cross-legged on my bed, laptop balanced on my knees, before the download bar even finishes.

Study the opponent. That’s all this is. Film work, same as always, the kind of prep every serious fighter does before a big fight. I’ve watched hundreds of hours of tape on dozens of guys. This isn’t any different.

I tell myself that twice more before I click play.

The first fight loads: some regional title defense against a guy who never had a chance. Zane moves like he owns the air around him, shoulders loose, hands low in a way that should get him caught but never does because his reflexes are absurd, borderline unfair.

I take notes. Footwork patterns. Tendency to circle left when pressured. Drops his right hand when he throws the jab, leaves his chin exposed for maybe half a second, but half a second is an eternity if you know how to use it.

Second fight. Third. I’m three rounds into the fourth when I notice I’ve stopped taking notes.

Zane finishes his opponent with a spinning elbow that shouldn’t work, that no sane coach would ever teach, and the crowd loses its mind. He doesn’t celebrate the way most fighters do, no fist pumping, no screaming at the crowd. He stands over the guy he flattened with his chin tilted up, amber eyes cutting toward the camera like he already knew exactly where the lens would be.

Arrogant. That’s the word for it. The kind of arrogance that should be easy to hate.

I rewind the clip. Watch it again. Watch the way his jaw sets when the ref waves off the fight, that small satisfied curl at the corner of his mouth that isn’t quite a smile.

My mouth goes dry.

I rewind it a third time, tell myself I’m studying his post-finish habits, whether he drops his guard in the aftermath, whether there’s an opening there worth exploiting. That’s the excuse I give myself as I watch sweat cling to his collarbone, his chest rise and fall under the ring lights.

This is film study. This is fight prep.

I don’t believe myself even as I think it.

The fifth fight starts, and I catch myself watching his hands wrap tape around his knuckles in the pre-fight footage, slow and methodical, and there’s no reason for me to watch it. Nothing that belongs in a scouting report.

I slam the laptop shut hard enough that the sound cracks through my quiet apartment.

“Okay,” I say out loud to the empty room. “Okay.”

It’s been two months since David, my ex-boyfriend, and I broke up, and I haven’t looked twice at anyone, haven’t wanted to. Work’s kept me too busy, too focused, too consumed by the version of myself that doesn’t have room for anything but the fight in front of me. That’s what I told Victor tonight. No distractions.

And now I’m sitting here with my heart hammering over footage of the man I’m supposed to hate, supposed to destroy, supposed to prove myself against in front of the entire fighting world.

This is going to be a problem.

I know trouble when I see it. Apparently that doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking.

I don’t open the laptop again that night. Instead, I lie in the dark, staring at the ceiling, telling myself it’s nothing. Adrenaline. Competitive fixation. The kind of intensity that comes from staring too long at someone whose entire existence is built to challenge mine.

It’s not nothing. But I fall asleep telling myself it is.

2

ZANE

The bag swings back on its chain, and I catch it with my forearm before it completes the arc, my knuckles raw beneath the wraps despite the padding. Three hours in. My shirt gave up being useful an hour ago, plastered to my spine, and my lungs burn with every breath I drag through my nose.

I don’t stop.

Right hook. Left hook. Knee, driven up through the center of the bag hard enough that the chain groans against the ceiling mount. I’ve done this exact combination so many times tonight. Around three hundred, I stopped counting and started moving, letting muscle memory take over.

Ironside doesn’t look like the gyms you see in movies. No exposed brick, no scuffed floors that carry forty years of sweat into the walls. Just chrome and glass and mirrors on every surface, overhead lights so white they erase every shadow in the room. My father built it that way on purpose. Said a champion should never have anywhere to hide, not even from his own reflection.

I catch mine now. Jaw tight. Eyes flat. A stranger wearing my face.

“Enough.”