Page 31 of The Fractured

In the process of running blind through the sheets of rain pelting our faces, I heard a faint crack and glanced down. My phone had slipped from the pocket of my jacket. Not only had it landed in a puddle, but there was now a fracture right across the screen.

“Oh no!” Kira exclaimed. Her curls hung heavy and damp around her face as she watched me pick up the phone.

“Come on. We’re gonna drown in this.” I nodded toward the stoop of the closest brownstone, and we headed up the stairs. I leaned against its door, examining my broken phone with my helmet tucked under my arm again. I wouldn’t be making any texts or calls for a while if I couldn’t turn it on.

“So,” Kira began, holding out her hand to catch raindrops. “What’s the origin story of how Seb became a fighter?”

I half smiled, putting my phone away.

“Well… It was the easiest and fastest way to make money. The original plan was to save up and be the first of the Cook kids to get to college. Make a single mom proud.Butthat kinda fell through... Are you sure you want the full story?”

Kira looked toward the sky and the rain. “We might be here a while anyway.”

“Alright, origin story. Let's see…” I rubbed my jaw in thought. “I never met my dad. I barely finished high school. My first job was mowing lawns and washing cars, and then I worked in a fast-food restaurant until I lost that job for snacking on the job.” I glanced at her to check she was still interested in hearing all of this. Sure enough, Kira was listening with her full attention. “One day, I was playing basketball with a few friends when a fight broke out with the other team over something stupid. I’dnever liked to resolve things with my fists, but we’d gone past the point of talking it through. Some of Antonio’s men happened to be scouting for new fighters at the time and noticed me pretty quickly. I accepted just as fast when I heard of how easy it was to make money. It meant giving my family a secure life for once.

“My mom hated the idea of me fighting, but she’d been a single mom for so long, making ends meet by cleaning houses and working her fingers to the bone, I didn’t want her worrying about money anymore. Fighting earned me enough that she wasn’t scraping her earnings for bills and food.”

“How is she now?”

“She moved out of the city,” I half smiled. “She was over the hustle and bustle, and now works as the manager of a nursing home.”

“Well done to her,” Kira said. “And the roof tiling job? Is that something you got into before or after Antonio?”

“After. He suggested we get day jobs so we had some form of legal money coming in. You know, to keep the IRS off our asses…” I watched her for a second longer. “What’s your origin story, Miss Scott?”

“Well,” she dusted her hands of the rainwater and stepped back to lean against the door too, her brown eyes sparkling. “I’m an only child to two adoring mothers, I was homeschooled in Warwick until we moved to Brooklyn for Mom’s new teaching job; I started high school in Bay Ridge and met Lily; I am a complete nerd when it comes to anything environmental, animals, nature, and biology. And I never went to college. Mostly because I couldn’t stand the idea of being in a classroom any longer.” She grinned at me. “My life isn’t as exciting as yours unless we count the time Lily and I were caught trespassing in an apple orchard during a visit to my grandparents’ place in Warwick.”

“Badass,” I smiled.

“I know. Just living on the edge,” she joked. Her eyes lingered on mine for a moment.

Despite being outside, something about being pressed against the door, encased by a wall of rain cascading from the awning above us, suddenly felt more intimate than it should’ve. We were caught out in the rain, but I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.

The smile on her face softened. “What?”

“You, uh— There’s an eyelash,” I said quickly before gently brushing my thumb across her cheekbone. Her skin was soft beneath my thumb, and the way her eyes dropped briefly to my mouth hadn’t gone unnoticed either.

There was no eyelash.

Too soon.

I took my hand back, pretending to dust the lash away as I plastered on a smile. “Got it.”

Kira needed a friend, not a rebound. Not that I would mind if I was her rebound. I was already fighting every urge to ask if I could kiss her. It wasn’t helping that she seemed to have moved closer. Or maybe I had.

Her eyes fell to my mouth again. “Seb.”

Don’t be a dick— Stop thinking with your dick. Be a friend.

“Maybe we shouldn’t?” My words cut through the air between us, and suddenly the rain seemed louder.

Kira blinked and stepped back. “Right, sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

“It’s my fault.”

“No, it isn’t.”

“I lied about an eyelash,” I admitted. “I’m the one flirting.”