She put a hand on my shoulder. My immediate response was to shrug it off, but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings again, so I bent over to adjust my laces instead, thinking that would do the trick. But Shanti just let her hand slide over my curved back and started rubbing it instead.

The next thing I heard was, “Oh, fuck. I knew it.”

Kat.

I felt Shanti’s hand leave my back, and when I stood up, Kat was in front of us, hands on hips in her endless Superwoman stance. Her mouth and jawline were all hostility, but her eyes and brow said something else. Something like worry. Or maybe: disappointment?

“I can’t believe you chose soft, Daya.”

“What?”

She came right up to my face, hands dropping to her sides. “I said, ‘You chose soft.’ Why the hell would you choose soft?”

After everything Shanti had told me, I knew where all this was coming from. I knew—in my head—Kat was reacting to something completely separate from me. But that knowing wasn’t making it to my gut and my chest. Instead the familiar boiling and hotness were forming.

Daya, what the hell are you doing?

If you box soft, you lose, plain and simple.

The last time I’d chosen soft, I’d lost everything. Even with Shanti right beside me, even with images from the past few days with her still in my mind, I couldn’t stop that sick, hot feeling from overcoming me. I won’t be soft. I can’t be.

“Kat—” Shanti’s voice tried to force its way into the tension between her sister and me.

“Shanti, are you seriously going to screw this up for her?” Kat spat out. “You haven’t learned your lesson?”

Shanti took a step forward. “Daya doesn’t see it the same way you do, Kat.” She looked at me, expecting me to say something, I guess. But I couldn’t. My chest felt like it was on fire.

“Oh yeah?” Kat said, her face still in mine. I could smell her coconut lip balm, she was so close. “How do you see it, Daya?”

Something in her face increased my heart rate. The expectation, the challenge, the disapproval. My jawline tightened to match hers. “No one here is soft.”

A whistle blew from somewhere behind me, signaling the end of the water break. Neither Kat nor I moved.

“Daya—” Shanti tried, placing her hand on my shoulder.

Kat interrupted her. “Prove it.”

Shrugging Shanti’s hand off, I inched closer to Kat. My voice could barely get out through my locked jaw. “Fine.”

Kat smirked, first at me, then at Shanti, who let out a breath of exasperation. I felt a twinge of guilt, but it was quickly overtaken by what felt like thick lava swelling throughout my body. There was only one way to push it back, and soft wasn’t the way to go.