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My ear smarted from the cut. It hadn’t felt real at first and I made the mistake of touching it with my hand. Now the salt from my fingertips aggravated the cut skin. I poked and prodded at it every few minutes, hoping that perhaps now it had stopped bleeding.
“Want a bandage?” I recognized that smug tone anywhere. Turning on my heel, I glared down the young man who essentially put the cut on me.
I crossed my arms and huffed. I’d beaten him at his own game once today. Fear was no longer in my vocabulary. “I would accept, but knowing you it would be soaked in saline and just hurt more,” I snapped.
Eric smirked, the motion not reaching his eyes. Yeah, he hated me. At least the feeling was mutual. “Next time I won’t bother pretending to give a shit then, initiate,” he said, emphasizing my position to further try and make himself feel better.
“That would be best.”
Spitting blood out from behind my teeth, I twitched as it only made my bloodied tongue hurt more. The sight stilled me for a moment as I watched the glob of body fluids stain the mat beneath me. My arms ached. My sides burned. It would be so easy to give up.
“Stop playing with each other,” Eric ordered. It threw me back to my past failure, and the burn in my gut was stronger than the desire to concede. I rallied and forced myself back onto my feet, charging low and fast at my sparring partner’s center of gravity. My elbow slammed into his gut, and I had an opening to hook my leg around his ankle. We both went down, but I had enough momentum to spring back up.
The balance of the fight shifted and I emerged the winner. I clasped Carlisle’s hand once he shook the daze from his head. Training continued on as my regiment squared off against one another. Settling down on the floor, I watched with limited focus. My tongue still hurt from where I’d bitten it.
“You’ve got something on your face.” I smiled ruefully even with the slight jab and twisted my head to look up at Eric. He surprised me by crouching to my level. He dug around in a pocket and pulled out a bandana. “May I?” he asked.
I acquiesced and tried my best not to flush terribly red as he wiped the drying blood off of my lips and chin. “You didn’t need to do that,” I grumbled, looking definitively at the concrete floor.
He replied, “I can leave if you’d rather.”
That would have been worse, almost. I gripped his hand with mine. “Please don’t,” I conceded.