Chapter 28. Liam
The blue mats smell like bleach, testosterone, and sweat. I kinda like it, not gonna lie.
Three weeks of intense MMA training. The eight of us who were selected are now spending rec time training on top of the mandatory hour before dinner. And before that, after snack, Ethan makes me work out with him and lift weights.
"If you don't do strength training, you'll get hurt," he says. I roll my eyes, but I don't complain. I know he's right, and I like when he spots me, and his dick is incredibly close to my face in those shorts.
"Again," Griff says, and again means again, not a suggestion, even if we're fucking dying.
We run the drill again: two-minute rounds on the heavy bags, thirty seconds rest, rotate.
My hands are wrapped so tight the tape digs grooves into my knuckles, and each impact sends a shockwave up my forearms that I feel in my teeth.
Jab. Cross. Hook. Uppercut. The sequence lives in my muscles now.
My shoulders burn. My lungs burn. Everything burns, and I keep hitting because stopping is not on the menu Griff has prepared for us.
We all spar together, rotating. I spar with Ethan, Jack, Tyler, Reed, Cedric, Dan, Santana, repeat.
"Tighter guard," Ethan says, tapping Tyler's left hand up with the mitt. "You drop it after the cross. Every time." Tyler adjusts, throws the combination again. This time the guard holds.
Cedric catches me with a body shot on day four that folds me in half. I hit the mat, taste copper, and lie there for exactly two seconds before I'm up again, hands raised. I can't stay down for more than two seconds, or Griff will yell.
My body changes, not dramatically, but I'm definitely getting more defined, and I'm starting to understand why people are obsessed with looking like this. Also, I've been eating so much I don't have time to think about anything else.
Reed is so good he basically trains with us for our benefit, because he gets nothing from it.
But Griff spars with him all the time and makes us watch.
Griff is ridiculously good, with forty years of training behind him, even though he's so much older than us.
Reed holds his own, though. He gives Griff a run for his money.
But the real show is when Griff pairs Reed and Tyler.
They have something going on. I don't know if Reed is still angry that Tyler took Mason's place or if it's because Tyler is Ethan's brother, or something else entirely. All I know is that there are sparks flying. Mostly angry sparks.
"Hoffman. Tyler. You're up."
Tyler steps onto the mat first, rolling his shoulders, his face blank in that careful way the Farley brothers both do when they're trying not to show something.
Tyler's been here six weeks and he already moves like someone who's been on these mats for years.
It's infuriating and also, I have to admit, kind of incredible to watch.
Reed follows, and the difference between them is almost comical.
Reed's got thirty pounds of muscle on Tyler easy, his shoulders twice as wide.
He cracks his neck, slow, and smiles, predatory.
"Light sparring," Griff says. "I want to see technique, not a murder scene."
He has to say that every time the two of them go against each other.
Reed's mouth twitches, mean. "Sure thing, sir."
"Touch gloves," Griff says.
They do. Tyler's eyes are locked on Reed's chest. Reed's eyes are on Tyler's face, and there's something in that gaze I can't fully read behind that Joker smile.
Reed throws the first jab, lazy, testing. Tyler slips it easily, moves left, circles. Good footwork. Ethan nods almost imperceptibly from beside me.
"That all you got, rookie?" Reed says, loud enough for the room to hear. "Thought your brother trained you."
Tyler doesn't answer. He throws a jab-cross combination that snaps against Reed's guard with surprising force. Reed blinks, surprised, or just annoyed that the hit landed.
The next exchange is faster. Reed closes the distance, cutting off Tyler's angles, forcing him toward the edge of the mat. Tyler ducks a hook, spins out, resets. Smart. But Reed's already there, already adjusted, and his body shot catches Tyler in the ribs hard enough to make him wince.
"Light sparring," Griff repeats, an edge in his voice.
Reed lifts his hands, palms out, the universal gesture of innocence. "That was light."
Ethan huffs, annoyed.
Tyler rolls his jaw, resets his stance, and comes back harder than before. A three-punch combination, jab, cross, hook, that makes Reed actually have to move his feet. The hook grazes Reed's jaw, just barely, and something shifts in Reed's eyes. His nostrils flare.
"Lucky," Reed says.
"Wasn't luck," Tyler says, and it's the first thing he's said since they touched gloves. "You'll have to admit I'm good."
Reed smiles then, slow and sharp, the kind of smile that would make most guys in this facility take a step back. Tyler doesn't step back. He squares up, chin tucked, hands high, and waits.
What follows is two minutes of the most intense sparring I've ever seen between two people who aren't supposed to be trying to kill each other.
Reed comes forward with combinations he's pulling just enough to keep within the rules.
Tyler absorbs some, slips others, and fires back with a speed that makes Reed work harder than I've seen him work against anyone except Ethan and Griff.
There's a moment where Reed catches Tyler's jab, controls the wrist for half a second, and pulls him in close. Their faces are inches apart. Reed says something I can't hear, something meant only for Tyler, and whatever it is makes Tyler's face go red. Not embarrassment red. Fury red.
Tyler rips his hand free and throws an uppercut that Reed barely gets out of the way of. If it had landed, light sparring would've become a dental emergency.
"Time!" Griff barks. "Separate."
They don't separate immediately. They stand there, almost chest to chest, breathing hard, Tyler's jaw locked so tight I can see the muscles jumping, Reed looking down at him with that infuriating half-smile that says I got under your skin and we both know it.
"I said separate," Griff repeats, his voice dropping to the register that means consequences.
Reed steps back first, hands raised again, still smiling. "Good round, rookie," he says.
Tyler pulls out his mouthguard and walks to the water fountain without looking back. His hands are shaking.
I've seen Ethan do that exact same thing. Walk away rather than escalate, jaw locked, hands shaking. Brothers.
Ethan watches the whole thing with an expression I know well, trying to decide whether he needs to interfere.
Griff would kill him, of course, so he stays put.
He wants to say something to Reed, I can see it in the way his body angles toward him, but he doesn't. Because this is Tyler's fight, Tyler's space, and Ethan's learning, slowly, painfully, that protecting someone and fighting their battles for them are not the same thing.
I catch Tyler's eye as he passes me on the way back from the fountain. He gives me a tight nod that says, I'm fine. Don't. Then he drops onto the mat beside Ethan, who hands him a towel without a word.
The language of brothers.
I look away, giving them the moment.
"Marsal. Hoffman. You're up."
My stomach drops through the floor.
Reed is still on the mat, rolling his shoulders, barely winded from the Tyler round. He turns to me as I stand, smiling like I'm prime prey, but he does that to everyone.
“Light sparring," Griff says again.
Reed comes at me faster than he did Tyler, testing my guard with a jab-jab-cross. I slip the first two and catch the third on my forearm. The impact rattles through my bones. He's pulling his power, I can tell, because if he wasn't, that cross would've put me on the mat.
I circle left, the way Ethan drilled into me. Stay mobile. Don't let him corner you. Reed follows, patient, cutting angles, and I realize he's not trying to hit me so much as herd me, moving me where he wants me.
I recognize the trap. Barely.
I change direction and throw a jab that catches nothing but air but resets the distance between us.
"Good," he says. "You've been working what Daddy taught you."
I blush for a second, but there's no time. He throws a body shot. It lands on my ribs, and my body wants to fold.
I don't let it.
I fire back, making him adjust his guard. Reed's eyebrows lift a fraction, and that's all I get before he closes the distance and ties me up in a clinch.
Then he shoves me back, not hard, just enough to create space, and Griff calls time.
I breathe hard, ribs aching. Reed walks past me toward the water, and as he does, he winks.
Ethan watches him, mouth in a line.
"Marsal. Perry. You're up."
Jack bounces onto the mat, his mouthguard already in, his brown eyes bright with the manic energy of someone who's been sitting still too long. He shakes out his hands, bounces on his toes, and grins at me around the rubber in his mouth.
"Don't hold back," he says, the words garbled but clear enough. "I want the full Liam experience."
"You're going to regret that."
We touch gloves.
Jack's style is the opposite of Reed's. Loose, improvised, full of weird angles and timing that shouldn't work but somehow does. He's watched too many YouTube compilations and absorbed a fighting philosophy that can only be described as pure chaos.
He comes at me with a looping overhand right. I duck it, step inside, and pop him with a clean jab to the chest.
He laughs and immediately comes back at me with a hook I genuinely don't see coming because it arrives from an angle that defies physics. It clips me on the ear.
"Ha!" Jack says. "Got you."
"Lucky."
His grin widens.
We trade for the rest of the round, sloppy, fun, competitive in the way only friends can be. Neither of us is trying to hurt the other, but we're not faking it either, and by the time Griff calls time, we're both sweating and grinning and slightly more bruised than when we started.