Page 9 of Break Your Fall

I pop back up. I need to move around—I think as I’m sitting on my ass.

The mice agree with an affirmative squeak.

My ass deserves a bench right now. Not exactly for my melancholy, lackluster approach to an opportunity not a lot of athletes get to have—although that’s a given—but for the work out I managed earlier. I’m not working on everything I’m supposed to, or as hard as I should, but I’m doing something. Even if it’s more to burn through this unrelenting adrenaline—and through the struggle of giving Reyna the space she asked for—than to keep up my routine.

I’ve obviously been lax with my training. But it’s my last semi-free summer. I’ve slacked before. And I’ve never failed to make a good impression. I’m fine. It’s fine.

It’s not fine.

My foot hauls to kick the box even farther away when there’s a knock at my door.

I sigh and rub my face. “I’m—” I cut myself off, eyeing the boxes scattered on the floor, still empty, showing I’m not exactlybusy. “What?” I call out instead.

It’s probably my mom or my dad, wondering what’s crawled up my ass lately. They don’t know I’m wondering the same about them. They don’t know I’ve heard the fighting. They try to hide it, but I catch the harsh whispers, the slightest slam of a door, and it’s not because I’m good at seeking.

“What?” I call out again when I get no response.

I jump up to the second bout of silence and yank open my door, a heavy exhale deflating my chest at the sight of Camille giving me a tight smile.

“Why didn’t you just come in?”

“You didn’t tell me to.” She shifts and holds up my hoodie. “And it wouldn’t be a proper break up if I didn’t wait for you to open the door so I could return a piece of your clothing,” she jokes, and I catch the hoodie after she tosses it to me. “You left that at my place. I washed it for you.”

“The rain already did that,” I say, adding to the jokes, while losing patience for them. “Thanks. You can go back toyourplace now.”

“Tommy—” She jams her boot against the door as I try to shut it, and I swing it back, my face hard before conceding to her raised brows and pleading stare.

I walk back to my bed, toss my hoodie to my pillows and assume my previous position.

“That’s a lot of air you’re taking with you,” she says to the empty boxes as she closes my door. “I’m sure there’s plenty of that already at Blareton,” she adds as she drops down beside me. The mice let out a protest.

I drag her an unamused look. “Funny.”

“Your parents know something’s up,” she says.

So do I.

“A lot of things are up,” I point out with a side-eye that she ignores.

“When are you going to tell them?”

“When I have something to tell them,” I snap, then decide next, “I’m not. I’m going to pack my air, show up at Blareton, and go from there.”

Camille chuckles. “Write that down for Pauline.”

I realize what I’ve said rhymed, and I chuckle back. Camille took a poetry class our sophomore year and my grandmother criticized almost every piece she’d read for her, becauseit isn’t poetry unless it rhymes.Camille made surenoneof her poems rhymed to ruffle my grandma’s feathers. Her naturally big hair would rise like static electricity around her deepening scowl. But my grandma liked the poems, at least some, because she allowed Camille to read them in the first place and would compliment her in secret.

“Well, I see howyou’redoing,” Camille comments with another look around before not-so-subtly segueing into the real question. “How’s Reyna?”

“Why don’t you find out yourself,” I say as I pull the box I’d kicked back to my feet. She stares down at it, mouth zipped. “Yeah,” I add, a snide in my voice. “You don’t want her to know you actually give a damn.”

“Of course I don’t,” she agrees before giving me an adamant stare. “I don’t even want to forgive her. You have no idea how it felt when I thought Grumbles was gone. Andsheput me through that, just because she could.”

“We’ve all put each other through shit,” I cut in over her last words. “That’s what people do. That doesn’t mean you give up. Reyna never gave up on you.”After all the shit you’ve given her. After abandoning all of us.“You’re the only one who’s ever done that.”

“Look who’s doing a one-eighty,” she says to me with a scoff, then rolls her eyes. “No one’s giving up.” She holds my stare with a hard, defensive look. “We just got together. We’re finally happy. We’re allowed to stop and enjoy it for one damn minute.”

We.Her and Julian.

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