KNIVES
Sara
The space pulls tighter around me the moment Chris leaves the house.
Cash shifts beside me, but I keep my focus elsewhere. A sudden awareness crawls under my skin, leaving me oddly restless. Maybe it’s the way his presence weighs on me now that it’s just us.
I wrap my arms around myself.
This might’ve been a mistake.
Cash turns, his eyes landing on mine, reading the unease there. “Hey,” he says. “You okay?”
I nod too quickly.
“Okay,” he says slowly. “Before we start, I want you to know this.”
I lift my head.
“We’re not doing anything today you don’t want to do. If training hits a breaking point or goes too far, I need you to speak up. Right then. Don’t tough it out. Tell me. No questions asked, we stop.”
His tone isn’t teasing. It’s not flirty or condescending or even protective. It’s sincere. He’s laying ground rules for a dangerous game and trusting me to play my part.
I hadn’t realized how much tension I was carrying in my spine until now. My arms loosen, shoulders drop.
“Okay,” I say more or less confidently.
He cracks a crooked smile. “Good. Then let’s throw knives at stuff.”
The way he handled that moment makes me look forward to what the day has in store for me.
Since the weather’s horrible, we turn the living room into a makeshift training arena.
Cash finds a big chunk of firewood from the porch, then drags over a few thick blankets and cushions from the couch to protect the floor.
We push the coffee table against the wall and stack anything breakable safely out of the way.
He asks me to show him what I’ve already learned from Chris.
I go through a series of stances and a few defensive movements.
He watches closely, correcting my posture here and there, never once laying a finger on me.
His whole demeanor changes during training.
The usual cocky grin is gone, replaced by a seriousness I wouldn’t have expected.
He doesn’t flirt or joke. His professionalism strips the session of its absurdity.
A strange kind of trust forms between us. He makes sure I’m comfortable, lets me feel safe. It shouldn’t work, but it does. Am I really that easy?
He gets the knives. Each one is laid out with reverent precision, like a priest arranging sacred vessels.
Some are short and curved, others long and lean.
Different designs, different intentions, all meant to erase a person.
Violence as art. He’s an artist. His medium is ending lives, and I’ve agreed to let him teach me the first brushstrokes.
“This one’s for close quarters,” he says, tapping a stubby, wide-bladed one. “Fast. Dirty. No finesse.”
I swallow hard. My brain screams danger, but I don’t move.
“This one’s for slashing.” He picks up a longer, elegant blade, spinning it easily in his palm. “Good reach. Bad if it gets stuck.”
Stuck. Like in a body?
My blood runs cold.
“And this one,” he says, grabbing a slim, balanced dagger and turning to face the wooden target, “is perfect for throwing.”
He steps back, breathes in, then moves.
The knife flies from his grip in a flash and lands in the wood with a solid thunk that makes me flinch. The sound triggers something in me. He hit his mark perfectly. Instead of being scared or even disgusted, I’m just... mesmerized. I shake my head, smiling despite myself. “That was insane.”
He gives me a blade and measures the range between me and the wood, between me and him.
Starting slow, he shows me how to hold the knife properly, balance it between my fingers, handle it without cutting myself. His knuckles graze my shoulder blade as he nudges it into place, barely a touch, but enough to rewire my posture and my pulse.
The way he maneuvers around me excites me, as if I’m gravity and he’s in orbit, keeping just the right distance to avoid being pulled in.
Throwing is harder than you’d think. I miss a lot. The knife drops into the cushions more times than I can count. Cash is patient in a way I didn’t anticipate. One knife ends up in the wall, far off from where it should be, and sticks there. I brace for him to laugh, but he doesn’t.
“Good. That was close. Adjust your wrist.” He steps behind me and gently places his fingers over mine, guiding the motion. “Try again.”
Finally, I hit the mark. It’s not perfect, but the blade stays put. A fierce joy explodes in my chest. Pride. It’s been absent for so long it takes me a second to recognize it. It’s reflected in his eyes too. "You’ll get dangerous real fast,” he says.
Hours blur past as we keep going. When I go back home, I won’t be the same girl who left.
◆◆◆
We take a break on the couch. Cash offers me a bottle of water, his fingers grazing mine briefly, maybe accidentally.
“You good?” he asks, sinking down beside me, so close his heat sears against my skin.
I nod, taking a big sip. “Yeah, I think so.”
He rests his arms on his knees, rotating the bottle, then glances at me. “How does it feel? All of this.”
I follow his gaze around the cabin. The rearranged furniture, a knife sticking out of the wooden target, the stairs leading to the spa-like bathroom. None of it belongs to the life I came from.
“I don’t know,” I say, fully aware he’s not only asking about the training. “Surreal. Not as bad as I thought, but there’s a strange sense that everything’s been set up, or preplanned, and I don’t get a say in it.”
Cash huffs but doesn’t say anything.
“But also...” I trail off, watching the raindrops slide down the windowpane. “I think this whole ‘boot camp in the woods’ thing... somehow, it’s working. The anger isn’t constant anymore. I’m not as frustrated as I used to be.”
He glances sideways at me, listening without pushing.
“I can’t forgive him,” I add. “My father, I mean. But I can picture going back, enduring his presence until I’ve finished school. Then getting away from him and starting a life of my own. A life that’s mine.”
He answers with a small nod, opens his mouth as if to say more, then stops himself. He averts his eyes before standing abruptly and offering his hand.
His expression has shifted to instructor mode again.
“Let’s roll,” he says.
I let him pull me up, and we’re back to the knives.
Cash takes my hand, wraps my fingers around the handle, and adjusts my grip. “Thumb here. Index around, not too much pressure. You’re not swinging it like a sword. You’re controlling it, holding it close.” His fingers reposition mine. I try to fix my attention on the technique, not the touch.
We switch to footwork, practicing stances again with my weight on the balls of my feet and my knees bent. He guides me through shifting forward, pivoting, sliding, the blade steady the entire time.
“You’re not charging anyone,” he says. “You’re reading them. Reacting. Waiting for the opening.”
I’m clumsy at first, off balance, but I stick with it. The more we run through the drills, the more the flow settles into me, strengthening the connection between hand and foot and eye. I’m neither strong nor fast, but I pick up patterns easily.
“You’ve done this before?” Cash asks, only partly joking.
I grin. “Only in my head.”
“If you’re ever close, and you can’t run or throw, you stab,” he says. “There are places on the body that shut everything down if you hit them right. You don’t wait to find out if it worked. You stab, and you get the hell away.”
I tip my head in acknowledgment and stand taller. The air thickens again.
He picks one of the knives from the towel and gives it to me hilt-first. Then, without warning, he grips the back of his shirt and yanks it forward, peeling it over his head.
My brain blanks as I take in a body even Hercules would envy: broad and massive, built with the kind of power that doesn’t only look dangerous, but is.
Every inch of him is sculpted, every muscle put there with purpose.
His torso is wide and solid with abs etched in clean lines that ripple with every breath.
His arms are thick and veined, flexing effortlessly as he tosses the shirt aside, strength coiled beneath the skin, ready for action.
Nearly all of it is covered in ink. Skulls woven into intricate patterns, symbols and ornamentation flowing together as if they belong to the body as much as the muscle underneath.
The tattoos start at his wrists and wind upward, climbing over his forearms and shoulders, spreading across his chest to his collarbones.
He looks less like someone wearing art and more like someone made of it.
I know I should turn away, be cool, but my eyes are drawn to the lines of him. I can smell the salt on his skin, the faint tang of sweat and soap and a scent entirely his own.
I don’t know if I’m breathing right anymore. I don't know if I'm thinking anymore.
A corner of his mouth lifts slightly as he waits patiently for me to stop ogling him. “Focus,” he murmurs, and steps closer.
He takes my wrist gently and lifts my hand, the one holding the knife, to his neck. My fingers tremble slightly. He doesn’t acknowledge it.
“Here,” he says. The knife’s point rests below his jawline, where the skin is soft. “Jugular. If you go deep and fast, it’ll be over in seconds. Blood pressure drops. They won’t stay standing.”
“Mm-hmm,” is all I can get out.
His hand keeps mine steady as he brings it down slowly, over his collarbone, and presses it right beneath his rib cage. “Liver,” he says. “Hard to hit clean unless you know the angle. If you get it, it’s done. Severe internal bleed. Not immediate, but close.”
I swallow, watching the way his ribs rise and fall. I’m the one holding a knife against him, but somehow, I’m also the one who ends up exposed.
He shifts my hand upward, guiding the blade to the gap between his ribs. The tautness of bone resists the steel, followed by the sickening give of flesh. I loosen my grip instinctively, worried I’ll break his skin, but he doesn’t budge. His breathing is steady; mine definitely isn’t.
“Lung. Collapse one and they’ll have trouble getting air in. Collapse both, well, it’s fatal.”