Not the first time these hands have looked like this. I’ve seen the violence in flashes. Fragments of memory, secondhandglimpses. But today was the first time I felt it move through me like it belonged there.
Another memory hits mid-stride.
I’m younger. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. A ring of bodies pressed tight on a street I don’t recognize, faces lit orange by a single streetlight. Someone shoves me forward and I stumble into the center where another kid is already bouncing on his toes, fists up. He’s bigger. Doesn’t matter.
The crowd noise is muffled, like hearing it through water, but I can feel it vibrating in my ribcage. The energy. The hunger. They want blood, and I’m going to give it to them because when I do, they cheer. When I do, they see me.
When I do, I belong somewhere.
The kid rushes me. I slip left and crack him across the jaw so hard his head snaps sideways. The crowd erupts. Arms around my shoulders. Hands slapping my back. For thirty seconds, I’m not alone. For thirty seconds, I’m somebody worth watching.
I come back to the present with my feet stopped in the sand, twenty yards from the house. My mouth tastes sour and there’s a ringing in my ears. More memories flooding in now. Faster. Louder.
Every one of them shows the same thing: I learned young that violence was the only currency anyone in my life respected. And I got rich.
I should be thrilled that my brain is finally producing useful information. Instead all I can think about is the look on Natalia’s face when she sees my hands.
I wipe them on my pants and walk up the steps to the house.
I stop at the back door. Through the glass, I can see her on the couch. Book open on her lap, eyes fixed somewhere past the far wall. She looks smaller than she did this morning.
I knock. She startles, sets the book aside, and comes to the door. When she slides it open, her eyes do a quick sweep of my face before she steps back to let me in.
“Hey.” She’s quiet. “How was Ronnie’s?”
“Didn’t go. Are you okay? Did your brother?—”
“Johnny.” Her gaze has dropped to my hands. “What happened to your knuckles?”
I don’t have an answer ready fast enough. She takes my wrist and turns it toward the light, and I watch her face change as she gets a real look at the damage, brows creasing in concern.
“Sit down.” She’s already moving toward the bathroom as I take a stool at the island. She comes back with a first aid kit and a clean dish towel dampened at the sink, pulling her stool close enough that her knee bumps the outside of my thigh when she sits.
She takes my right hand and starts cleaning the dried blood away with the damp cloth, then flips open the first aid kit and tears open an antiseptic wipe. The sting when she drags it across the torn skin makes me hiss through my teeth. She eases up but doesn’t pull away.
“Some guys at the bar near Ronnie’s,” I say into the silence. “Jumped me out back.”
She turns my hand over, checking the other side, then moves to the left one.
“And?”
“And I handled it.”
“Clearly.” She still hasn’t looked up.
Quiet settles back over the kitchen. Just the cloth on my skin, the muffled wash of waves outside, her breathing steady and close.
“How bad?” she asks.
“How bad what?”
“The other guy.” She lifts her eyes. “How bad does he look?”
She’s not asking to make conversation. She grew up with men who came home bloody and saidit was nothing.She wants to know if I’m going to lie to her the way they did.
The way I already did, last night. She asked what I remembered and I fed her nothing. She bought it. She was kind about it. And it’s been sitting wrong in me since.
Every instinct I have says do it again. Keep it close. Tell her something easy and move on.
