Chapter 2 - THE SWEAT-SOAKED MITT
She might have survived the hour in silence if Trent had been content with an audience. He wasn’t. Halfway through drills, one of the regulars “had to leave,” and Trent immediately called across the room that they needed someone to hold pads. Graham barely looked up. “Grab the new girl. Light drills, Trent. Don’t break her.” The room found that funny. Trent walked over carrying two red focus mitts darkened with someone else’s sweat and tossed one directly at Holland’s chest. “Come on, killer.” The mitt hit her and dropped into her lap. A few black belts grinned openly. Holland stared at the damp Velcro for a second, feeling that old heavy resistance settle into her bones—the part of her that hated spectacle, hated strangers, hated being forced into a performance. But then she stood up, slid her hands into the straps, and raised the mitts to face level without speaking.
At first Trent kept it playful, but not kind. Jab, cross, right hook—hard enough to sting her shoulders, exaggerated enough for the others to enjoy. “Hold your ground,” he laughed when she allowed herself one deliberate backward step. Then he asked for body-level pads and whipped a full roundhouse into them with far more force than a beginner drill required. He expected her to fly backward into the bags. Instead, at the last split second, Holland exhaled, dropped her center of gravity, and anchored through her heels. The kick landed with a crack that echoed through the dojo. She didn’t move. Trent’s leg bounced off, and his standing foot slipped slightly. The laughter around them thinned into confused silence.
His face darkened. “I said hold them, not shove back.”
“I didn’t shove.”
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He didn’t like that answer. He called a faster combination, then abandoned control entirely. The punches came harder, sloppier, no longer about drills but about proving a point. Holland caught each one cleanly on the pads until he lost his temper and fired a looping overhand past the mitts, straight toward the gap between them. The padded knuckle scraped across the top of her left ear and sent a sharp, electric sting down the side of her head. She stumbled once and touched the swelling. Trent gave a small shrug. “Oops. Keep your guard tighter, kid.” Graham finally glanced over. “Easy, Trent. She’s a beginner.” He said it like that solved everything, then looked back at his phone.
For a second Holland stood very still, fingertips resting near the burning edge of her ear. Then the anxiety vanished. Not gradually. Not nobly. It burned off in one clean rush, the way fog disappears under direct sun. She let the mitts drop. They hit the mat with a soft slap. Her posture changed so fast that even Trent noticed it. The slouch disappeared. Her shoulders settled. Her chin lowered a fraction. When she looked up again, there was nothing shy in her face. “I’m not holding pads anymore,” she said. Trent laughed, though it sounded thinner than before. “That’s not how this works.” Holland raised her empty hands into a loose, unusual guard and took half a step forward. “You want to hit something?” she asked quietly. “Let’s spar.”
