Page 110 of Reasons We Break

“Simran—”

Simran shakes her off. “They never even get a chance to rebuild because you all keep throwing their mistakes in their faces. As if you’re so angelic? Let’s go throughyourdirty laundry at every party and see howyoudo. I don’t want to hear another word about it.Leave him alone!”

Someone has actually turned down the music in the middle of Simran’s rant. It feels like everyone is watching, but she can’t focus enough to tell. Every face is a blur.

She gets up, chair screeching back, and strides away from the party. If anyone calls after her, she doesn’t hear. Her head is filled with a roaring sound.

She darts to the side of the house, avoiding eye contact with people coming from inside. On her way she bumps into someone—a boy of about twelve, the one who asked about her face at kirtan practice yesterday. He opens his mouth.

“Get out of my way,” she snaps, and his eyes widen. Even while shouldering past him, she feels awful. But she can’t make herself turn back to apologize.

She slows to a stop in the driveway, breathing hard. Maybe everything people whisper about her is true. Maybe she’s not a good person anymore. How can she set an example for kids when she literally came here after doingcocaine,and who knows what else? When she just ruined a good friend’s celebration? When all she does is lie? And there’s more, too—months of mistakes crash down on her. How can she call herself a Sikh when she’s stood by while someone who might’ve been innocent was killed? How can she be an upstanding person when she instigated a gang war, causing an untold amount of death and misery at the playplace and beyond, all because of—she finally admits it—her ego?

That ever-present nausea rises in her throat. She’s always been a gifted liar, and maybe that means she’s also been lying to herself.

Simran whirls and throws up on the side of the house.

“YOU’RE QUIET TODAY,”Kat remarks.

Rajan stares out the window. “I’ve had a lot going on.”

“At work?”

Workdoessuck. His shoulder aches, but the foreman straight-up said he’d be fired if he took another day off. “Work’s fine.”

“I see.” Kat watches him. “These life stressors, what are you doing to cope with them?”

Her question hangs in the air. He has a feeling she’s asking about drugs. Or maybe about the drug relapse they don’t talk about.

He gnaws on a toothpick. Kat can think whatever she wants. Rajandidn’trelapse again, and no one’s more surprised than him after what happened two nights ago. When he finally got home from Simran’s, everyone was asleep. He’d eyed his father’s bottles of whiskey. The one thing Rajan didn’t have, after all, was an alcohol problem.

He was tempted. Maybe it would help him forget the bodies on the café floor, the gunfire, the heart-pounding fear, and the man he almost killed. Possibly, it would help drown his guilt about a promise he made his mother a long time ago.

However, he knew with utter certainty that alcohol could not make him forget Simran. Her hair on his skin, her body in his hands, her sounds when he kissed her. And the way she kissedhim—he wouldn’t forget that even if he was dead.

“Nothing,” he says to Kat. Strangely, he currently has no desire to go do drugs. He does, however, have a desire to go find Simran. God, he resisted her forsolong. But, as always, eventually his control failed him. Now she’s all he can think about.

That counselor from juvie whispers again in his head.You can’t have one thing giving you all your happiness, whether that’s a drug or something else. It’ll suck the life out of everything else. Until that’s all you have.

Maybe that’s why he hasn’t relapsed again. He’s simply found a new addiction. If that’s the case, heshouldgo do some coke to switch back over. At least that way, he’d only be ruining his own life.

Maybe Kat suspects his thoughts are spiraling, because she sets down her pen. “You like working with your hands, don’t you? It might help to start a creative project. A way to de-stress that isn’t self-destructive.” A beat. “You seem...less settled, than the last time we met.”

Rajan plucks another toothpick from his pocket. He’s chewing through these faster than usual. “That’s because I did something bad.”

Kat goes very still. She’s still smiling, but there’s a slight warning in her voice. “Are you sure you want to keep talking, Rajan?”

“I kissed someone I shouldn’t have.”

“Oh.” Kat relaxes slightly. “Well, did they not want you to?”

“No. That’s the thing. She shouldn’t have, either.”

“Are one of you in a relationship already?”

“No.”

Kat’s smile becomes confused. Rajan doesn’t blame her. The barriers between him and Simran are invisible to most, yet insurmountable. He almostwishesit were cheating. Then he could clearly explain why he’s a bad person. Instead, all he can do is try to correct things the only way he knows how: avoidance. He’ll talk to Simran eventually—but only once he has a solid plan to get her out of the Lions.