The Return

He walked into my gym like he still belonged there. I threw a right hook at his face.

Five years. Five years since Dante Reyes had stood in front of me, and my body moved before my brain could catch up. Muscle memory. Fight instinct. The same instincts that had made me the best corner woman in MMA before he'd made me into nothing at all.

He caught my wrist. Of course he did. His reflexes were still sharp, even if the rest of him had gone to hell.

"I deserve that," he said.

"You deserve worse." I yanked my hand back. "Get out."

"Sofia..."

"No." The name on his lips sent ice through my veins. "You don't get to say my name. You don't get to stand in my gym. Get. Out."

My fighters had stopped training. I could feel their eyes on us, Rico in the cage, Maria on the heavy bag, the half-dozen others scattered around Torres MMA. They didn't know who he was. Didn't know that the man standing in our doorway used to be the lightweight champion of the world.

Didn't know he used to be mine.

"I need your help," Dante said.

I laughed. The sound was ugly, jagged. "You've got nerve, I'll give you that."

"I know."

"You left me. You chose your career over me. You..." I stopped. We were not having this conversation. Not here, not now, not ever. "Leave."

He didn't move. That was the thing about Dante, he'd never known when to quit. In the cage, that made him dangerous. Here, it just made him a target.

"I've watched your work," he said quietly. "You've built something incredible here. The fighters you're training, they're the future of the sport."

"I know what I've built."

"You could do the same for me."

"I already did." The words came out sharper than I intended. "Three years of building you up. Three years of being in your corner. And you threw it away."

"I know."

"Stop saying that." I was shaking. I hated that I was shaking. "You don't know anything. You never did."

Behind me, I heard Rico step out of the cage. Protective. He'd been with me since the gym opened, had watched me claw my way from nothing to this. He didn't need to understand the history to read the tension in my body.

"Everything okay, Coach?" he asked.

"Fine." I didn't turn around. "This man was just leaving."

Dante looked at me. Really looked, the way he used to when he was trying to read an opponent. Searching for weakness, for opening.

He wouldn't find one. I'd spent five years making sure of that.

"I'll go," he said finally. "But I'll be back."

"Don't bother."

"I'm not giving up, Sofia." He stepped backward through the door, still watching me. "Not on this. Not on you."

"You gave up on me five years ago."

"I know." That phrase again, the one that meant nothing and everything. "And I've regretted it every day since."

He walked out. The gym door swung shut behind him, and I stood there, fists clenched, trying to remember how to breathe.

"Coach?" Rico's voice, concerned. "Who was that?"

"Nobody important."

The lie tasted like ash.

The rest of the day was a blur. Training sessions, technique corrections, the constant management of a dozen egos and ambitions. I threw myself into work the way I always did when the walls started closing in.

Dante Reyes was back.

After five years of silence, five years of carefully curated distance, he'd walked into my gym like he had any right to be there. Like he hadn't destroyed me.

I punched the heavy bag until my knuckles ached.

I need your help.

He needed help, alright. I'd seen the footage of his last three fights, the losses, the diminishing returns, the champion becoming a cautionary tale. The man who'd been unstoppable was falling apart in slow motion, and everyone in the sport could see it.

Everyone except the man himself.

Or maybe he finally saw it too. Maybe that's why he was here.

I could do the same for you.

He wasn't wrong. I'd made him. Three years of work, of studying opponents, of rebuilding his game from the ground up. I'd been his secret weapon, the voice in his ear that saw things no one else saw.

And when his management said I was a "distraction," he'd chosen them.

I hit the bag harder.

The gym emptied around me. Evening turned to night. I stayed, working through combinations I'd memorized decades ago, trying to outrun the thoughts that wouldn't stop.

He was back.

He would keep coming back.

And some part of me, the part I'd tried so hard to kill, wanted to see what would happen if I let him.

I locked up at eleven, exhausted and no closer to peace than I'd been hours ago.

My phone buzzed. Unknown number.

I'm sorry. For everything. I'll prove I've changed.

I deleted the message without responding.

But I didn't delete the number.

And I hated myself for it.