It's like she's on the training floor again, throwing hooks at luminous hexagons, targets without volume or satisfaction, and deciding she needs something solid. A punching bag. A willing friend. Agent York never complained. He obliged Carolina every time she asked, stepping into his armor to stride side by side with her into the arena. Her own Mu ren zhuang. He'd meet her blow for blow, rolling, sweeping, jabbing, never taking it easy and never losing to please her. He'd just lose. And no amount of losing made him like her any less.

Acrimony is lost to warm, sudsy water. She stares into the pool, scowling. Mind thundering raucously like nails thrown round and round in a tumbler.

This sucks.

Carolina feels his eyes burning over her shoulder long before he speaks. When he does, tinny and British and unhelpful, the noise in her head fades to ear-popping silence.

She thrusts her hands back underwater. Better to look like she's actually doing something as opposed to sitting, staring and slowly losing her mind. Even if this something isn't at all how she should be doing it (at this rate she'll punch holes into all her clothes). Whatever. Clean is clean.

Her fists wring out the neck of a ruffly white blouse that she hates, veins chasing down her forearms. "I've never had... so much fun... in my life."

She doesn't know which is the wisest maneuver; scorching him with a glare or dunking his head into the barrel...

Carolina drops the blouse with a wet plop. "Can't you tell?"