Logan reached her back.
Naomi protected.
He adjusted.
The choke began.
Controlled.
At first.
Then he whispered.
“You don’t belong on this mat.”
And thirteen years of memory woke up.
Not competition.
Her brother.
Andre Carter had been twenty-seven when he died.
Funny.
Reckless.
Talented.
The kind of man who put hot sauce on food before tasting it and bought used motorcycles without telling anybody.
He had also trained.
Everyone in the Carter family trained.
Calvin coached.
Naomi competed.
Andre competed.
Jasmine left earlier than the others but remained connected to the gym.
Then Andre began getting headaches.
He dismissed them.
Athletes dismissed many things.
Calvin told him to rest.
Andre hated resting.
Naomi was twenty-nine and had spent her entire life believing familiarity with bodies was close enough to expertise.
Andre asked whether she wanted a light round.
She hesitated.
Then agreed.
Halfway through, he said something felt strange.
Naomi stopped.
Andre insisted he was okay.
They continued.
Later that night, he collapsed.
Two days after that, he died.
Brain hemorrhage.
Doctors never established exactly when it began.
They could not tell the family whether training worsened it or simply happened close to a process already underway.
Uncertainty filled the spaces certainty could not.
Calvin became angry.
Naomi became guilty.
Then grief turned both against each other.
“You should’ve known.”
Calvin said it once.
Only once.
That was enough.
Naomi heard it for nine years.
She stopped training.
Returned to school.
Studied physical therapy.
Learned anatomy through medicine instead of competition.
She convinced herself that if she understood injury deeply enough, maybe the past would finally make sense.
It never did.
Now Logan’s forearm tightened beneath her chin.
“You should’ve stayed with the beginners.”
The door behind the crowd opened.
Calvin Carter stepped inside.
He had flown from Detroit because an old friend told him Naomi might be visiting Granite City.
He had not planned a reunion.
He barely had a plan at all.
He simply knew his daughter had entered a martial-arts gym for the first time in years.
Nine years of pride had already stolen enough.
He refused to let it steal the possibility of seeing her.
Then he walked through the door and saw another man’s arm around her neck.
For several seconds, Calvin watched.
He saw something the crowd did not.
Naomi’s breathing.
Hand position.
Shoulder angle.
Stillness.
He remembered coaching her.
Naomi always became quiet before making a difficult decision.
At seventeen.
Twenty-three.
Twenty-nine.
Now forty-two.
Calvin reached the mat.
“Take your arm off her.”
Logan looked back.
“The round isn’t over.”
“It is for you.”
Then came the sentence that changed everything.
“She’s still trying not to hurt you.”
Naomi hated him for saying it.
Because Logan’s pride heard a challenge.
He tightened.
Naomi warned him once.
He ignored it.
Then she moved.
When it ended, Logan sat on the mat while Naomi stood.
Not victorious.
Exhausted.
Angry.
And staring at the father she had spent nine years refusing to forgive.
Malcolm moved everyone into his office after the crowd began dispersing.
Naomi wanted to leave.