The Trainer’s Rules

The crowd was a storm without rhythm—cash, beer, sweat, breath. Noise that beat against her skin instead of her ears.

Lia adjusted her mouth guard with her tongue. The plastic tasted of mint and iron.

Fluorescent light buzzed overhead, uneven and mean. It turned sweat into silver and shadows into bruises before the hits even landed.

Someone yelled from the edge of the ring. “Two to one on the girl in red!”

Someone else: “Make it three—she won’t last a round!”

She flexed her fingers inside the taped gloves until her knuckles popped. The crack sounded like punctuation in the chaos.

Her heartbeat tried to count the seconds before the bell. One—two—three—breathe. It never reached four.

Across the ring, Kendra paced like a cat that had already eaten. Shorter by two inches but heavier through the shoulders, her expression easy, confident, almost affectionate. She smirked at Lia as if to promise this won’t take long.

The ref’s arm lifted. The bell split the air—too sharp, too sudden.

Kendra came first. Always the confident ones did. A jab, another. Gloves thudded against Lia’s guard, muffled by sweat-soaked tape. The crowd responded, a single collective ohhh, hungry for blood they wouldn’t have to bleed.

Lia pivoted. Mat squealed under her soles. She smelled rubber and antiseptic and the faint sweetness of someone’s cologne bleeding through the stink.

A hook grazed her ear. Pain bloomed like feedback in an amp—instant, hot, gone.

She countered with two quick jabs. Not enough to hurt, just to say I’m still here.

Her breath came wrong—ragged, uneven.

“Guard up!” Ethan’s voice cut through the blur.

She found him without looking—somewhere behind the cage mesh, close enough that his panic pressed against her spine.

She ducked a wild swing and felt the wind of it brush her braid. The crowd roared again, and the sound pushed her heartbeat faster.

Kendra taunted, voice rough through the mouth guard. “You scared?”

Lia didn’t answer. Talking costs oxygen.

Instead, she exhaled slow. The sound hissed through her nose like a leak in a pipe.

You fight for rent money, not trophies. Cassian’s old voice flickered through her memory—flat, instructive. That means you fight to end it fast.

She shifted weight, feinted left, watched Kendra bite. There—a half-second opening. Lia drove a right cross through it.

Impact. Bone under leather. A shock up her forearm so pure it felt clean.

Kendra stumbled. The crowd turned wild. Money changed hands mid-cheer.

“Finish it!” someone shouted.

She didn’t. Not yet.

Her pulse steadied into music—left, right, breathe, pivot.

Kendra lunged again, desperate now, swinging heavy. Lia sidestepped, caught her with a knee to the ribs. Felt cartilage fold under pressure. Heard the breath leave Kendra’s lungs in a sharp grunt.

“Come on!” the ref warned, half to keep order, half to stay relevant.

Lia ignored him. She pressed forward, combinations automatic. Left, right, elbow, step back.

Every strike another heartbeat. Every heartbeat another second she still existed.

Then—clean contact.

Kendra’s guard dropped, eyes wide with surprise. Lia’s last punch hit the jawline.

The sound—wet, hard, final.

Kendra hit the mat like a question answered too late.

For a moment, nobody moved.

Lia stood there, chest rising, sweat slicking her temples, heart still trying to catch itself.

The ref grabbed her wrist and lifted it. “Winner!”

Noise detonated again. Flashbulbs popped. Journalists leaned forward, pens ready, cameras trembling in their hands.

She turned her face, chin down so the light caught cheekbone, not eyes.

Don’t look at them. Don’t let them see you.

Someone shouted her name wrong—Leah! Another Lisa!—and it almost made her laugh. Almost.

She stepped through the ropes before the interviewer could reach her. Gloves still on, chest still burning.

The hallway behind the ring was narrow and wet with condensation. A single bare bulb buzzed overhead. The concrete floor stuck to her shoes.

She stripped one glove, then the other, teeth tugging at the velcro. Her hands looked raw, knuckles already purpling.

A man with a camera tried to corner her near the lockers. “Quick word, champ—”

She brushed past him. “No interviews.”

He followed anyway. “Name, then? You’re trending already.”

That stopped her for half a breath. Trending meant exposure. Exposure meant risk.

She turned slowly. The camera light hit her face.

“Name’s not your story,” she said.

Then she walked out the back door before he could film another second.

The door slammed behind her, and the night breathed different—cold, metallic, wet with drizzle. The air out here was honest.

The alley stretched narrow between brick walls slick with condensation. Steam hissed from a vent above a dumpster, and the neon from the front signage painted the puddles pink.

Ethan stood near the mouth of the alley, hands jammed into his hoodie pocket, foot tapping like he was keeping time to a song no one else could hear.

When he saw her, his shoulders dropped. “Jesus, Lia—”

She held up a hand. “Not yet.”

He swallowed whatever came next. She leaned against the wall, breath still too loud in her ears. The skin under the tape on her wrists itched with heat.

“You killed her,” he said finally.

“She’s breathing.”

“Barely.”

Lia didn’t answer. She pulled at the wrist wrap, tugging until it unraveled, the fabric darkened by sweat and someone’s blood—maybe her own. The air burned her raw skin when it touched.

“Good fight,” he tried, the words wrong in his mouth.

She looked at him. “How bad is it?”

His smile was nervous, crooked. “You won.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He kicked at a piece of gravel, watched it skitter away. “They changed the numbers after the second round. Odds went upside down. I didn’t—”

Her voice came flat. “How much.”

He didn’t meet her eyes. “Hundred and ten. Maybe a little more.”

The night seemed to tilt. The bricks behind her felt too close, pressing at her spine.

She tried to breathe steady. Couldn’t.

“Six figures,” she said. Not a question.

“Look, I can fix it—”

“Don’t.”

He blinked. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t lie.”

He rubbed a hand over his face. The movement trembled. “They said next time, if it doesn’t get paid—”

She stopped him with a look. Her stomach turned cold, the kind of cold that felt clean and merciless.

“I thought this fight was supposed to square it,” she said.

“Me too.”

Her jaw tightened. “So why are you still breathing?”

He laughed, short, humorless. “Guess they like me better scared.”

Water dripped somewhere nearby, regular as a clock.

She bent, picked up the piece of tape that had fallen, wound it slowly around her finger until it pinched. Her pulse beat under it, steady again.

“What do they want now?”

He hesitated. “A rematch. Something big. They’re setting odds already.”

“No.”

He almost smiled at that, small and sad. “You think you get to say no?”

She looked up. Her eyes caught the neon reflection from the puddle; it made them look strange, red and bright.

“I just did.”

He laughed again, weaker this time. “You always think you can fight your way out.”

“It’s what I’m good at.”

He stepped closer, searching her face. “You’re not a machine, Lia. You think you can keep doing this? You think they’ll stop coming?”

She exhaled slow, the sound steady now. “Doesn’t matter what they do.”

She tugged off the last wrap, twisted it once, and tucked it into her pocket.

“I’ll fix it.”

He shook his head. “How?”

“However I have to.”

“You mean fight again.”

She didn’t answer.

He moved closer. His breath smelled like coffee and fear. “They’ll kill you if you lose.”

“They’ll kill you if I don’t.”

He froze. The truth sat between them, solid and ugly.

From the street, someone laughed, too far away to matter. The sound floated down the alley like static.

Ethan’s shoulders sagged. “You don’t owe me this.”

Lia stared at the ground, at the slick patch of water reflecting the pink of the neon. Her reflection looked like a stranger—a woman with blood on her cheek, eyes too sharp, mouth set in something that wasn’t quite a frown.

“I’ll fix it,” she said again. “Even if I have to fight again.”

The words came quiet, but they settled into the space between them like an oath.

Ethan tried to reach for her. She stepped back before he could touch her.

He let his hand drop.

The door to the venue opened behind her, and the muffled roar of another fight spilled out—cheers, shouts, the slap of glove against flesh.

She looked toward the sound, then back at him.

“Go home,” she said.

“What about you?”

She glanced down at her bruised hands, flexed them once. “I’ll find another way in.”

He wanted to argue, but she was already moving, walking toward the mouth of the alley, the sound of the crowd still echoing behind her, fading into the night.

Her lungs finally remembered how to count.