Page 93 of Reasons We Break

Automatically, he shoves Simran down, covering her body with his. But a moment later he realizes nobody’s shooting into the café—they’re shooting at someoneoutside. Nick and the others must’ve run across some Aces.

Rajan presses his face against the top of Simran’s head. A minute passes; sometime during it, her body begins trembling beneath him. Eventually, the gunshots slow and stop. Tires squeal from the front of the store. Sirens blare.

He pulls away from Simran, then peers through a crack at the edge of the door. Coast is clear—Nick finally did something useful. “Okay, let’s go.”

He reaches for the door handle. Glances back.

Simran’s still on all fours, her wide eyes staring at nothing.

“Let’s go,” he repeats, more urgently. Simran covers her face.

“I can’t,” she whispers.

“Whynot?”

“I—I can’t see.”

The hitch in her voice hits him right in the chest. Of course. It’s so easy to forget this isn’t her life. She’s so good at pretending normally that sometimes evenhe’sfooled.

But no. She should be studying calculus right now. Shooting the shit with her annoying-ass cousin. She should be singing, she should be dating Jassa Singh, she should belivingher life, not fighting for it here in the dirt with him.

He kneels at her side. The darkness makes him bolder, and he takes her face in his hand, sweeping a thumb over her fuzzy cheek. She jerks in place. “You don’t have to see. Just—”Trust me, he wants to say, but the words get stuck in his throat.

Simran seems to hear them anyway. She exhales shakily, then presses her truck keys into his palm. “I’m ready.”

So they run.

Rajan begins to relax ten minutes into their drive. He’s been keeping an eye on the rearview, but nobody seems to be following. He takes plenty of random detours in case.

As he’s doing yet another U-turn, Simran says, “You’re not supposed to drive.”

He glances at her. She’s unbraided her hair, and is finger-combing the waves while staring out the window. It’s the first time he’s seen her hair loose and it’s extremely distracting. “I think we’re way past giving a shit about probation, Rapunzel.”

The passing streetlights glint off the glass dust embedded in her arms. The collar of her shirt is torn. Without glasses, her eyes are huge, unguarded. But the bags under them are more pronounced, too. There’s a gash on the inner corner of her nose, next to her eye.

Rajan’s grip tightens on the wheel. “What happened to you before I showed up?”

She shakes her head. “He—hit me a couple times, that’s all. He didn’t know who I was. And it was dark. I think I’m safe.”

He hit me a couple times. She says that like it’s nothing. It’s messed up. “You have to quit.”

“I—”

“I’m not screwing around anymore,” Rajan snaps. “They hit the café because they were looking for the bookkeeper. Foryou. Do you understand that? Do you understand what they wanted to do?”

Simran closes her eyes briefly. “Rajan—”

“I’ve watched you destroy your life for the Lions for months, and I’m done. Fuck theend of Julything. Do you see how dangerous this is now?”

“I’m—”

“Doesn’t matter how careful you are. As long as you’re with them, you’re not safe, you could die, like you almost did tonight—”

“Rajan!”Simran shouts, loud enough that he almost crashes into the curb. She so rarely raises her voice. “I agree, okay? It’s time to leave. I just don’t know how. It’s like you said...I doubt Nick will listen.” Her hand trembles as she pushes up phantom glasses.

Rajan almost doesn’t know what to say now that she’s agreeing. “He might listen to my baseball bat,” he mutters eventually. “We’ll figure something out.”

A foreboding silence falls. Because they both know that’s not a real plan.