But he went home and thought about it for a long time.
The training sessions had changed Blake in ways he couldn't fully explain.
At first, he'd come because of guilt. Because he couldn't stop seeing the look on Emily's face when he'd shoved her father. Because for the first time in his life, someone had beaten him without throwing a single punch, and he needed to understand how.
He made Blake stand still.
"Ten minutes," Daniel said, the first week. "Don't move. Just breathe."
"That's it?"
"That's it."
Blake lasted ninety seconds before he got restless.
"This is stupid. What does standing still have to do with fighting?"
Daniel looked at him calmly.
"Everything. The man who can't stand still can't control himself. And the man who can't control himself will always be controlled by someone else. By his anger. By his pride. By anyone who knows which buttons to push."
Blake opened his mouth to argue. Then he closed it.
Because he remembered the party. He remembered how easily his own anger had pushed him into making a fool of himself in front of a hundred people.
So he stood still. Ninety seconds became three minutes. Three became ten.
"Most fights," Daniel told him, "are won before they start. Or better, they never start at all."
At the youth center downtown, Blake started using those lessons.
The Eastside Youth Center was an old brick building with a leaky roof and a basketball court with faded lines. Kids came there after school because home wasn't safe, or home was empty, or home was just too quiet.
Blake had started volunteering two afternoons a week. Now it was five.
He helped with homework. He refereed basketball games. He taught a small group of boys some basic martial arts, but he spent most of the time teaching them what Daniel had taught him.
Breathe. Stand still. Choose.
One of those boys was a fourteen-year-old named Marcus Bell.