❧ |That—- wasn’t exactly the answer she was hoping for. She glances down at her hands; frail and slender — breakable. She is breakable. She can’t fight. It’s no wonder she had been easily overpowered back then. Padding closer, she tugs hesitantly on his sleeve. “—-Will you teach me another one of those self-defense moves?”
He glances up, finally, eyes flickering minutely across her small form. He sees it, then, why she’s asking – anyone could take her on without a second thought. So he might as well help; he owes it to someone at her degree of fragility. “Fine. Of course.”
Holden tosses his legs over the side of the couch, standing up and throwing his book aside as he does. He takes her wrists – bony, he notices – firmly, but not too firmly, into his grip. “Knee me in the crotch. As hard as you can. Just go for it.”
