3. Barbed Words
BARBED WORDS
Ipushed through the locker room door two mornings later, the echo of our latest session still ringing in my ears.
The air hung heavy with the sharp bite of antiseptic spray and the underlying musk of damp towels left too long in bins.
My shoulders burned from the repeated escapes I'd botched, each one leaving me flattened longer than the last. Diego already stood at the bench near the far wall, his back to me as he scrolled through his phone propped against a locker.
He didn't turn right away. The screen cast a faint blue glow across the tiles, highlighting the fresh sheen of sweat along his neck.
I dropped my bag with a thud that bounced off the metal doors.
The footage from our second round played on loop in my head, the one where I'd left my left side open twice in under thirty seconds.
Coach had said nothing, but the silence had spoken plenty.
"Delete that shit," I said, my voice flat.
Diego paused the video. His thumb hovered over the screen before he finally glanced back, one brow arched. The scar through it pulled tight with the motion. "It's not shit. It's data. You keep dropping your elbow on the sprawl. Same mistake you made against me in Atlantic City three years back."
I crossed the space between us in three strides, the rubber soles of my flip-flops slapping wet against the floor. The argument had been building since the final bell, a low simmer that Coach's pragmatic nod had only fed. "We don't need to relive every fuckup. Train and move on. That's the deal."
He set the phone down, the clack of it against the bench sharp in the empty room.
Water dripped from his hair onto his bare shoulders, tracing paths that disappeared into the waistband of his shorts.
"Except your sloppy defense is why we're stuck here together.
That hook you threw left your ribs wide.
I could've ended it in ten seconds if we'd been live. "
The words landed like a jab I hadn't seen coming.
I remembered that fight in Atlantic City, the crowd's roar fading as his fist connected and stars burst behind my eyes.
My defense had crumbled then too, pride keeping me upright longer than sense should have allowed.
Heat crawled up my neck, a tangled feeling, harder to shake.
"You think I don't know my own tape?" I stepped closer, close enough that the heat radiating off his skin brushed mine.
The locker room lights buzzed overhead, casting long shadows that stretched across the benches.
"You're not my coach. You're the asshole they paired me with because no one else can keep up. "
Diego's mouth twitched, not quite a smirk but close enough to twist the knot in my chest tighter.
"And you're still swinging like a brawler who never learned to guard his perimeter.
That pin yesterday? You left your hips loose again.
Same as the night we rolled in the gravel outside that Reno dive. You remember how that ended."
I did. The scrape of asphalt under my back, his weight crushing down, the taste of blood and cheap beer mixing on my tongue. The memory surged fresh, sharper than it had any right to be after all this time. My hands curled at my sides, nails biting into palms still raw from the wraps.
"Shut the fuck up about Reno." The words came out rougher than I intended, scraping my throat.
He didn't back off. If anything, he leaned in a fraction, the faint scent of his soap cutting through the locker room haze. "Why? Because it shows exactly where you fold? You get pissed, you get reckless. That temper of yours is a liability, Blackburn. Always has been."
The sound of my last name in his mouth hit different today, stripped of the usual venom but laced with an edge that made my skin pull tight across my chest. I planted a hand on his sternum before my brain caught up, the shove coming with force.
His back hit the lockers with a metallic clang that vibrated through the room.
The impact jarred up my arm, his skin slick and hot under my palm, muscles flexing against the pressure.
For a split second, neither of us moved.
My hand stayed there, fingers splayed over the steady thump beneath them.
The contact burned, an intensity that didn't match the anger boiling in my veins.
It should have felt like victory, like putting him in his place after years of bad blood.
Instead, it landed strange in my gut, a pull I couldn't label, heavy, electric in a way that made my breath stall.
Why did it feel like this? Not the clean rush of a fight won, but a deeper, unsettling sensation, like the ground shifting under a takedown I hadn't trained for.
Diego's eyes locked on mine, dark, unreadable.
A drop of sweat slid from his temple, tracking down the side of his face.
I yanked my hand back like the touch had scorched me, the absence of it leaving my palm tingling.
The lockers creaked as he straightened, but he didn't come at me.
Just watched, that focused stare drilling in until I felt exposed in the harsh fluorescent glare.
I turned away first, grabbing my bag from the bench.
The strap dug into my shoulder as I slung it on, the weight familiar but insufficient to ground the chaos churning inside.
My truck keys jangled in my pocket when I fished them out, the metal cool against my heated skin.
The door swung shut behind me with a heavy thud, cutting off whatever he might have said next.
The drive home stretched longer than the usual twenty minutes.
Traffic lights blurred past, red to green without registering fully.
My truck's engine hummed steady beneath me, but my mind wouldn't quiet.
The shove replayed on loop, the solid give of his chest under my hand, the way the impact had traveled up my arm and settled somewhere low and unfamiliar.
It should have been pure rage, the kind that had fueled every bar confrontation and staredown across the weigh-ins.
Instead, it carried this other current, one that left me gripping the wheel tighter, knuckles pale against the worn leather.
Why had it felt charged like that? Not the satisfaction of dominance, but a spark that lingered, making my pulse jump in my wrists and the back of my neck prickle.
I'd shoved plenty of guys in my time: training partners, opponents, drunk idiots in parking lots.
None of them left me questioning the aftershocks, replaying the exact pressure of skin on skin.
This wasn't how anger worked. This was a confusion that gnawed at the edges of thoughts I didn't want to chase.
The apartment building came into view, its squat brick facade unchanged from yesterday.
I killed the engine in my usual spot, the sudden silence pressing in.
My reflection stared back from the rearview, jaw set, eyes shadowed.
The man looking out didn't match the one who'd pinned a rival to cold metal and felt the world tilt for reasons he couldn't pin down.
I sat there another minute, the cab cooling around me.
The shove hadn't solved anything. If anything, it had cracked open a door I wasn't ready to walk through, leaving questions that followed me out into the lot and up the stairs.
Diego's face lingered behind my eyelids, that steady gaze after the impact, like he'd seen the fracture before I could name it.
My key turned in the lock, the click loud in the empty hallway.
Inside, the place smelled of stale coffee from the pot I'd forgotten to clean.
I dropped the bag by the door and crossed to the kitchen sink, running water over my hands.
The cool stream did nothing to wash away the ghost of that contact, the unsettling intensity that refused to fade.
Why did shoving him feel like stepping off a ledge instead of landing a blow?
The question looped, unanswered, as I stared at the water swirling down the drain.
It wasn't anger alone. That much I knew.
But naming the rest meant looking at parts of myself I'd kept locked down tight, and right now, with the qualifier looming and our forced partnership grinding closer every day, that felt more dangerous than any takedown in the gym.
The water kept running. I didn't turn it off.