Page 132 of Broken Pieces

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His eyes flick to Mason first.

Quick. Measured as if he’s calculating how bad this could get. Then they land on the tools scattered across the workbench, before they glance up to look at me.

“Kid,” he says, voice rough from too many years of smoking. “You wanna lose everything?”

I don’t meet his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means if you keep throwing punches at ghosts, you’ll lose the few things worth holding on to.”

“I’m not swinging at shit.”

He lets out a slow breath, the kind that says he’s seen this story play out too many times and never once with a happy ending.

“Then learn to fight without your fists and start using your fucking head.”

I grit my teeth. “That’s what you think I’m doing?”

He takes a sip of his coffee. “That girl upstairs. The one you can’t stop watching. Yeah, that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

My throat locks up. Words build, but they don’t come out.

Rainer’s voice comes again. “You can’t fix the shit that made you. None of us can. But you don’t have to drag it into what’s left of your life.”

Then he walks off.

Leaves me standing there in the quiet with too many truths.

I stare down at my hands.

“Learn to fight without your fists.”

I know what he means.

And, fuck, I hate that he’s right.

Chapter Twenty-One

Skylar

ThefirstthingIregister is the emptiness.

Not the silence or the cold sheets. It’s the smell of him. It clings to my pillow, my skin, the fucking air.

He’s gone.

I stare at the ceiling, eyes tracking the cracks that crawl through the plaster.

My chest is tight. My throat is tighter, but I don’t cry. Just sit with it… the hollow space where he should be.

He left before the sun came up. Before I could ask if any of it meant something.

Maybe that’s the answer right there. It doesn’t.

My thighs still ache, every throb a reminder of how he fucked me. How much I wanted him, how much I needed it, thinking it would fill something.

Instead, it’s simply carved me out.

I pull the blanket in under my chin, not for the warmth, but for the cover as the shame creeps in.

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