The gym was closed. Hours past dark. The only light came from the flickering overheads—cold, electric, casting long shadows over the canvas. The air was thick with the sour tang of sweat, iron, and old leather. Outside, rain slapped hard against the windows, the kind that soaked through concrete and skin. But inside, the world stood still.

He was in the center of the ring, shirtless, his skin slick with sweat and the pinkish smear of blood from a cut reopened beneath his right eye. His chest rose in ragged waves. Hands wrapped in stained white tape, he hovered over the punching bag like it had said something cruel. He wasn’t training. He was bleeding something out. Rage. Guilt. Loss. Himself.

Each punch echoed—dull, angry thuds swallowed by the vast emptiness of the room. His shoulders shook from more than exhaustion. His breath caught and stayed somewhere between his lungs and his heart, like his body was fighting itself. His knuckles split again. He didn’t stop. He never stopped.

Then, quiet steps. Not soft—certain.

She didn’t belong here, not in this wreckage of a place. And yet she did. She always had. Her presence didn’t ask for space—it was space. Wide and heavy, like gravity. Her clothes were soaked from the rain, but she didn’t shiver. Her hair clung to her jaw. Her shoes squeaked once on the floor, then silence.

She stood just outside the ropes. Watching. Breathing him in. His back to her, shoulders carved from stone, streaked with old scars and new ones still purple and warm. His hands slowly dropped to his sides, tape hanging in ragged strips. The bag swayed, moaning on its chain.

She stepped forward—one shoe on the lower rope, one hand on the top. She climbed in, not with grace, but purpose. She didn’t speak. Didn’t touch him.

He turned only slightly. Just enough for her to see his profile, the battered side of his face, the way his lip trembled though he fought it like an opponent. Sweat slid from his temple down the side of his neck, disappearing into the valley of his collarbone.

She stopped in front of him.

Close.

The space between them crackled. Not with tension—ache. Shared, familiar. The kind that builds when you’ve watched someone you love destroy themselves for the world. For glory. For ghosts.

She didn’t reach for his hands. She reached for his chest. Pressed the flat of her palm to his sternum like she could feel the wound beneath the skin, the one no doctor could find.

His shoulders fell. The weight slipped just an inch. Enough.

Rain roared outside. Lights hummed above. The ring held them both like a confession box, like the last place on earth.