Chapter 330 | A Bruise the Color of Spoiled Plums [CASTLE BONUS]

Chapter 330: 330 | A Bruise the Color of Spoiled Plums [CASTLE BONUS]

The first combination Maya threw came at his guard like a freight train with good aim. Left jab snapped his right hand back into his own cheekbone, and before the sting registered she had already pivoted and driven a cross into his body just below the ribs where her Thursday hook had left a bruise the color of spoiled plums. Jordan grunted and dropped his left elbow to cover but she was gone, circling to his open side with footwork so clean it made his own lateral movement look like a man wading through wet cement.

"Hands. Up."

Jordan raised his guard. Maya came again.

Three minutes in a ring with Maya Santos felt like drowning in slow motion with someone timing your breathing on a stopwatch. She moved at sixty percent and still made him feel like he was reacting to punches that had already landed, his brain processing the impact a full beat after his body had absorbed it. His jab found air where her head had been. His cross sailed over her shoulder as she slipped right and answered with an uppercut to his solar plexus that would have folded him in half if she hadn’t pulled it at the last possible inch, her fist stopping close enough that he felt her knuckle graze his stomach through the tank top.

"You telegraph your cross with your shoulder."

"I know."

"Fix it or I stop pulling."

Jordan adjusted his stance, dropping his right shoulder two inches and focusing the rotation through his hip instead. The next cross came cleaner. Still too slow, still readable to someone operating at Maya’s level, but the mechanical improvement was real enough that she let it land on her guard and nodded once.

They reset and went again.

The clinch work started at the four-minute mark. Maya shot in and grabbed his collar, her forearm pressing against his throat as she pulled his head down to break his posture. Jordan fought for underhooks, digging his arms beneath hers and trying to establish control the way she had taught him Thursday. Her body pressed against his chest. The sports bra left her midriff exposed, and the heat of her skin radiated through his damp tank top where their torsos met. Jordan’s brain tried to wander toward places that would get his fingers broken and he dragged it back by sheer force of will, focusing instead on the angle of her hips and which direction she was loading her weight for a potential trip.

Maya punished his distraction immediately. Her knee drove into his inner thigh, deadening the muscle and buckling his leg. Jordan stumbled sideways but caught himself on the ropes, his wrapped hand squeaking against the canvas-covered cable as he pulled himself upright.

"Your mind left," Maya said, her breath steady and even while Jordan sucked air like a landed fish. "For about two seconds you were somewhere else. Where?"

"Nowhere."

"Liar." She wiped sweat from her jaw with the back of her wrist, her dark eyes flat and clinical. "When your mind leaves, your body stays behind like an empty house. I walked through the front door and knocked everything over."

She reset in the center of the ring. Jordan followed her on a leg that felt like someone had replaced the femur with a lead pipe.

The remaining twenty-six minutes hurt with the particular brand of precision Maya had weaponized into a teaching method. She broke Jordan down in segments: footwork first, forcing him to reset his stance after every exchange until his calves burned. Then the inside slip, guiding phantom punches past his ear over and over while he practiced rotating his torso just enough to let leather whistle through empty air. His flinch reflex died around repetition thirty-seven. By forty, he stopped blinking.

Body hooks came next. Maya held the pads low and tight against her ribs, counting each impact out loud in that same flat monotone she used for everything. Fifty per side. Jordan’s shoulders screamed somewhere around twenty-five on the left arm, but Maya didn’t acknowledge fatigue as a valid reason to stop, so neither did he. The right side went smoother until forty-three, when his form collapsed and she made him start the count over.

When she finally lowered the pads, Jordan’s arms dangled from his shoulders like wet rope. The tank top had absorbed so much sweat it mapped every line of his torso, the muscle definition carved by Tune Up now visible in high relief under the clinging fabric. He tried to lift his hands to unwrap them and his deltoids staged a minor rebellion.

Maya stripped the pads off and tucked them under one arm. She wasn’t breathing hard. She never breathed hard. Jordan had started to suspect she had gills hidden somewhere.

"Thursday. Same time. We’re adding counters to the combinations."

Jordan managed a nod because his lungs were still negotiating terms with his diaphragm.

Maya moved to the ropes, ducked under the bottom cable with the economy of someone who had done it ten thousand times, and dropped to the gym floor without breaking stride. She stopped with one hand resting on the ring apron and turned back to look at him. Her expression carried no warmth, but it wasn’t cold either. Clinical. Evaluating. The way someone might look at a project that was showing unexpected progress.

"You’re getting faster," she said, and the words landed simple and clean, devoid of flattery or encouragement. Just an observation. A fact she had noticed and chosen to share before it became something she had to acknowledge publicly. "Your instincts are outrunning your training. I’ve never seen that in a beginner."

"Good genes."

"Bad answer. Same bad answer every time." She shouldered her towel and walked away, her braid swaying between her shoulder blades with each step. Jordan watched her go and then immediately wished he hadn’t because Kyle stood at ringside with his arms crossed and a grin that could power a small city.

"Don’t."

"I haven’t said anything yet."

"Your face is saying it. Tell your face to stop."

Kyle handed Jordan a water bottle without saying anything else, which was somehow worse. They moved to the bag room and worked cool-down rounds in companionable silence, the heavy bags swaying with low, lazy impacts as both of them wound down. Leo appeared twenty minutes later wearing a full Gucci tracksuit and designer slides that had zero business being in a gym that smelled like a locker room from 1987.

"I’m here," Leo announced to the empty bag room, spreading his arms wide. "The machine is ready."