I lean my head against the window and let them argue. Something in my chest loosens for the first time in two weeks. This is what a family sounds like. This is what Liam deserves. I’ll be that for him. And maybe he can be that for me too.
We pull up to the Academy gates. Berenice parks and turns to look at both of us. She reaches back and squeezes my hand.
"Take care of each other in there," she says. Not joking now. "Both of you."
"We will," Jack says.
I grab my bag. "Thank you. For everything."
"Anytime, sweetheart. And tell the boys I said hi."
I nod. I get out. Jack hugs his mom for a long time, and I wait by the gate, giving them space. When he finally pulls away, I see Berenice wipe her eyes quickly before she puts the car in drive.
We walk through the gates together. Jack is quiet now, the way he always gets when he leaves his mom. The transition back is hard. I know because I watch him do it every time, the slow reassembly of the version of himself that survives in here.
"She likes you," Jack says after a while.
"She likes everyone."
"Nah. She really likes you. She told me you're good." He pauses. "She also told me to tell you that if you hurt Liam, she'll drive back up here and deal with you herself.”
I chuckle. “I’ll try really hard to never hurt him,” I say, and I mean it. Jack puts a hand on my shoulder. He knows.
Then we're at the main building. When I get back tothe Academy, I feel something I didn't expect: happy. Which means Aspire either failed or succeeded in its mission. Succeeded in making me not hate being here. Failed because I should want to stay away. But that was before Liam. Before him, I couldn't care less if I was in or out. My life sucked either way. Now I'd commit a crime to get my ass back in here.
Our bags get searched. My ID scanned. The guard behind the glass doesn't even look up when he buzzes me through. Everything exactly as I left it. I'm probably the only one walking back in with a smile.
I have to report to Griff, as a leader. Jack follows back to the dorm. I desperately want to hurry there to see Liam.
But I know something's wrong before Griff says a word. It's in the way he's standing behind his desk when I report in. His green eyes find mine, and there's something in them I've learned to dread: the look that means someone fucked up badly. I try to think of what I could have done. Then it hits me. It isn't me.
It's Liam.
"Sit down, Ethan."
I swallow hard. My fingers tighten around the strap of my bag. I sit without taking it off my back.
"What happened?"
Griff exhales through his nose, a slow, controlled release I recognize from MMA, the kind of breath you take before absorbing a hit. "Liam got into an altercation while you were on break. Someone beat the hell out of him."
The bag slides off my shoulder.
"How bad?"
"Bad. Really bad." Griff's jaw tightens. "He won't say who did it. Won't say a goddamn word, which is why he's currently sitting in the hole. I put him there to keep him safe too while we can’t remove the threat."
My blood goes cold. I can feel the temperature drop in my veins, spreading from my chest outward until my fingertips go numb. Liam. In the hole. Beaten to shit, alone in one of those bare concrete rooms with nothing but a mattress and his own thoughts.
"How long?"
"Going on four days."
"I need to see him."
"No." Griff straightens, crosses his arms. The faded tattoos on his forearms flex. "He's in solitary. No visitors, no exceptions. He talks, he gets out. That's the deal."
I want to argue. I want to tell him that Liam won't talk because he's terrified, not because he's being difficult, that putting a kid with panic disorder and abandonment issues in an isolation cell is about as therapeutic as setting a broken bone with a hammer. But I know Griff. I know the system. I’m part of it, or at least I was. I belted him without consent on his first day, and it kills me when I remember that, even if he enjoyed it. I swore no one would ever hurt him again, not the system, not myself.
