Page 11 of Break Your Fall

Reyna was out all night without word—different.

She didn’t want to be found after I found her the first time—different.

She drank alcohol—with her useless mother—to numb pain. Different.

I was there that night. I shouldn’t have left. I should’ve stayed and helped her more, been there for her longer, as long as she needed. We could’ve left for the party together, or skipped it completely. If I had stayed that night, if I had followed her last night instead of immediately listening to her request to return Grumbles to Camille like I had no other choice. . .

I thought I was doing the right thing. By all three of them.

It’s done. I can’t change it now.

“Don’t beat yourself up, Tommy.” Camille rubs my shoulder, feeling the guilt pulsing from my body, the war inside my head.

I’m losing everything, at once, all of a sudden, with no time to ease into the loss.

I can lose basketball if I have to.

I can’t lose Reyna.

I can’t lose my friends.

I’m the only one leaving Bellsby.

Reyna’s voice curls through my head.You’ll leave us, become famous, find a better group of friends, and forget all about the little people.

I feel the slightest laugh clench my stomach.Never.My friends aren’t ‘the little people’. They’re the big people. Ride or die. Always.

“Start over,” I plead with Camille again, sitting up to meet her eyes. Hers shift over mine in thought, and just when I think she’s going to agree to fight and fix this, a ring blares between us, jolting me further away from what would’ve been her answer.

She yanks her phone out of her back jeans pocket and scowls at the screen.

“Who is it?”Is it Reyna?I lean in to peek.

“Mitch.” She chuckles. “He’s probably short and needs to rehire me now. It’s too bad,” she says with mock sympathy, her thumb aiming to silence the call.

Or it could be about Reyna.“Wait! Answer it.”

Camille makes a face. “What? Why—”

“Answer it. Now.”

She slaps the phone to her ear and snaps a “What?” at Mitch, her tone partly from my urging and partly from the call itself. “No, I haven’t seen her,” she says, our eyes connecting with worry. “Did you ask Shelby?” Our eyes don’t disconnect until she says one final thing and disconnects the call. “Yeah, I’ll find out.”

“What happened?” I press her, needing to hear confirmation even when I know.

“Reyna didn’t show for work and hasn’t been in touch.”

Different.

I jump up for the door with Camille at my back, her footsteps keeping up with mine all the way to my car.

She’s at my back again as I bolt through the outside door to Reyna’s bedroom, shoving past me to avoid colliding into my back when I stop dead in my tracks.

“Jeez—” She cuts herself off from chewing me out as her eyes start to take in the room.

It’s trashed.

My first panicked thought is that someone broke in, but as my eyes take in the mess, I see that this was personal. Intentional.

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