I grinned at her. “You might be a badass hawk, Layla, but you really punch like a girl.”
“Whatever.” She unstrapped the helmet. “Your problem is that you can’t admit I didn’t cheat; I outsmarted you. Two totally different things.”
I didn’t have a quick comeback for that one. “Well, you still punch like a girl.”
“Good thing I’m not planning on fighting any intruders like this then. I’d look stupid fighting in a motorcycle helmet anyway. And,” she said, reaching around behind her to unsnap the black body pad she was wearing, “I can hardly breathe in this thing.”
While she wiggled out of the body pad, I crossed over to the tree with the double trunk. Hanging on its opposite side, sagging on a nub of a broken limb, was Layla’s ivory parka. I grabbed it and walked back over to her, shaking my head. She really had outsmarted me. Again.
I held the jacket open for her and Layla slipped her arms in without bothering to undo her elbow pads. She pulled her phone out of the jacket pocket and looked at the time.
“It’s almost seven,” she said. “C’mon, you know my mom doesn’t like it when we leave the boys alone for more than a couple of hours.”
With that, our training was over for the evening, and I followed her as she tromped back through the woods and towards the house.