Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
BAILEY
The night starts as training.
We’re on the mats in the empty gym—just the two of us, the sound of water heaters and distant traffic bleeding through the walls.
The place smells like canvas and sweat and the particular scent of a space where people have learned to trust their bodies.
It’s Friday night. Everyone else has gone.
The surveillance cameras across the street are still recording, but they’re cameras, not people.
They won’t see what happens in the darkness.
Fallon talks me through padwork like it’s an ordinary Friday, like her hands aren’t shaking slightly when she wraps my wrists.
The wrapping is something she does before every session.
The routine is precise. Left hand first. Then right.
The wrapping is tight enough to support the wrist but not so tight that it cuts off circulation.
She’s done this a thousand times. But tonight her hands are different. Tonight the motion carries weight.
“Same combinations,” she says. “Jab-cross. Jab-cross-left hook. Double jabs, circle out.”
I throw. She adjusts. The distance between us is maybe eighteen inches, and it’s been that way for weeks—constant, barely contained, both of us pretending the air isn’t charged with something that gets more dangerous with every passing moment.
The electricity is specific. I feel it on my skin.
I can feel it in the way she’s breathing.
She calls me through a transition into grappling.
Butterfly guard. She’s showing me an entry, and to show me, she has to be on top of me.
Her weight distributed across my hips, her forearms on either side of my head, coaching me through the mechanics.
Her voice in my ear—so close I can feel the warmth of her breath.
Her body using mine as the demonstration.
The position is intimate and professional simultaneously. It’s the reason we do this alone.
“Hip placement,” she says, and her voice is rough. Strained. Like she’s having trouble regulating her breathing. “You’re dropping your hips too early.”
“Show me,” I say, and I’m not talking about the grappling anymore.
I’m asking her to show me something else entirely. The acknowledgment sits between us, unstated and impossible to ignore.
She doesn’t respond. She just holds the position longer than the drill requires.
Her hips are pressed against mine. I can feel every point of contact.
Every moment where her body touches mine.
The specific warmth of her. The knowledge that she’s choosing to hold this position when she could release it.
Then the sky opens up.
The wind starts first—a gust that hits the building hard enough to rattle the tall windows on the west side of the gym. I feel the pressure change in my ears. The barometric shift that means something major is coming. The kind that registers as danger in my nervous system.
“Did the forecast say storm?” Fallon asks, still on top of me but her attention shifting to the external world.
“Nothing strong. Just clearing rain.” But even as I say it, the wind picks up again and the whole building seems to shift. The unlocked windows I opened for ventilation start rattling in their frames. The kind that registers as threat in your animal brain.
The first lightning flash is distant. But the thunder that follows is immediate. Close enough that I feel it in my chest. The impact less sound, more physical force. The kind that reminds you that weather is powerful. That nature doesn’t care about your carefully constructed plans.
“Jesus,” Fallon breathes. She’s still on top of me but now she’s looking toward the ceiling like she can see through it. Like she can see the storm coming.
Then it hits. The next lightning flash is so close I see white spots.
The thunder is instantaneous. There’s no delay between light and sound.
The storm is directly overhead. And the rain starts—not as a patter but as a deluge.
Water hammers the metal roof like someone’s throwing gravel against the building from above.
The noise is violent and sudden and absolute.
The lights flicker once. Twice. Then they die completely.
The gym plunges into darkness—complete, almost overwhelming.
Complete darkness for maybe five seconds.
Absolute black. Five seconds of disorientation, of being unmoored from visual reference.
Then the emergency system kicks in and casts everything in red.
Deep red, like we’re inside something that’s actively bleeding.
Like we’ve stepped outside of time. Like we’ve entered a space that doesn’t obey normal rules.