“You are lying.” The grate groaned as she sat down beside me. A beat of silence, then she tapped my taped thumb. “Is it your hands?”
“My hands are fine.”
“Then you are awake because of why you hurt them.” She watched me closely, her mouth pressed flat. “You walked into that bar wanting a fight.”
I stared down at the street below. “Some guy ran his mouth. I finished it.”
“That is not finishing anything. Letting a stranger crack your lip open is just you trying to drown out thinking about Karter.”
The iron railing bit into my palms. “I got out of his way. That was the right call.”
“You did what was easy.”
A turned to her. “Easy. I gave up my scholarship. I left the only person on that team who actually gave a shit about me. Tell me which part of that was easy.”
Her voice dropped. “You gave up everything to protect him. That is love.”
I grimaced. Hearing my mother use ‘love’ to describe what Karter and I had made me uncomfortable. I shifted on the grate and stared at my sneakers. But I couldn’t bring myself to deny it.
Mama did not let the silence stand.
“Love is not just burning yourself down for someone,” she continued, refusing to let the subject drop. “It is believing you are worth staying in the fight.”
“I made the call.”
Mama shook her head. “No, you decided for him. Then you packed up and ran.”
“I took the fall.”
“You took the exit.”
Mama didn’t raise her voice. Her tone stayed low and steady and absolutely sure, and that made it worse.
“Getting your face split open does not make you brave, Lekha. It just means you know how to bleed.” She leaned forward, forcing me to meet her eyes. “But letting someone actually care about you? That scares you to death.”
I opened my mouth. Nothing came out.
“You think sacrificing your future is noble. It is not. It is hiding.” She pulled her sweater tighter and leaned back againstthe brick. “I don’t know why you do not believe you deserve a good life. But you found a way to wreck it before anyone else could.”
Staring at the rusted metal beneath my shoes, every excuse I had rehearsed all week died right there on the fire escape. Getting punched in a bar made sense—I knew how to take a hit.
But Karter standing in that attic, looking at me like I was the only thing that mattered? I didn’t walk away to save him. I just ran.
Mama shifted on the grate. Reaching over, she lightly grasped the back of my neck, her thumb brushing over my hairline.
“That boy wanted to fight for you,” she said quietly, tilting her head as she held my gaze. “Are you going to let him do it alone?”
With a tired smile, she stood up and climbed back through the window, leaving me in the cold. The iron railing dug into my spine, but I stared past the streetlights.
After a few minutes, I stood and followed her inside. Heading straight to my bedroom, I shut the door and dropped onto my bed. The room sat in total darkness, offering nothing, and my body ached from the long shift. Still, sleep refused to come.
Instead, my mind once again went to Karter. I pulled out my phone and opened the sports app again. The team photo loaded. There he was, standing rigid in the midst of the celebration. I zoomed in on his face until the pixels blurred the image.
Scrolling past the news, I moved to my hidden photo album. A picture waited there. It was of Karter on my bed back at the Ice House, textbooks open between us. We actually studied that night, but I kept staring at his mouth while he explained stats. He noticed and grabbed my phone, snapping a photo of himself with a smirk. ‘If you love staring at me so much, you should set me as your lock screen.’
Remembering his playful grin pulled other thoughts forward in my mind. Karter’s lips, and the way they felt wrapped around my cock, wet and tight.
I shifted on the bed, my hand sliding into my boxers, my fingers curling around my growing erection. Seconds later, I started stroking myself, slow at first, chasing the memory.
