Page 19 of Their Broken Legend

“I thought something similar last night… At my mother’s wake. Don’t you think it’s weird we both don’t want to hear a bullshit sorry right now? ‘Cause she wasn’t a good woman. I had no relationship with her. But everyone wants to give me a ‘sorry’ to makethemfeel better.”

My throat thickens under his statement. The painful panting, the suit, the intensity, falling into place.

His mum died.

But I don’t say sorry.

He doesn’t want it.

We stare at each other, his eyes narrowing on me as though confused. His lips are warm against my finger, and there is a calloused ridge on the lower one where he’s split it and it’s healed—over and over.

This must have happened many times, forcing it to harden to withstand its brutal circumstances. It’s an ode to his wins in the ring. A trophy he carries with him always. His skin adapted from silk to leather, muscles growing, becoming the sport.

Xander’s eyes are glued to mine, then they dart to my palm, and he frowns. Only then do I feel the sting of broken skin from my fall to the ground earlier.

Circling my wrist with his hand, he squeezes it, and I note that his palms are warm, too. Everything about him is torrid. Pulling my hand away from his lip, he studies my grated skin as though he can heal it under his gaze. Catching my attention, a black snake tattoo below his thumb and the words “monsters are made” on his wrist.

I shrug and look back at his face. “It’s just a graze.”

He looks strangely bothered by it. Discomfort floats through me. Such intensity isn’t right between strangers. I attempt to pull my hand away, but it’s no use.

“Let me clean your hand,” he states to my palm, before flicking his gaze to my face. He relaxes with a grin, a crooked curve with straight white teeth and a tiny gap on either side where his smile is bigger than his jaw. I like it too much.

The moment of strange closeness breaks when he backs away and rounds the car. “Jump in, Kaya Lovit.”

Lowering my hand to my side, I scoff, “No.”

He places one foot inside the car, lifting an obnoxious dark brow at me over the shiny black roof. “Why? You got somewhere else to be?”

No. I don’t.

Ugh.

* * *

I still haveno idea how I ended up at the District Gym at seven am in Chloe’s flats and last night’s outfit, which makes every lycra-covered arsehole turn to face me. Or maybe they’re stealing glances from their workout stations because Xander Butcher has me sitting on the gym’s juice bar with a first-aid box open beside me.

There is music pumping through the corner speakers, interrupted by the muted sounds of a workout instructor chanting in another room.

Glass-like mirrors chase reflections on every inch of the walls, and the pride-and-joy of the gym is an elevated platform with a mat bordered by ropes and scaffolding to the right and back with aerial views.

The boxing ring.

No one is inside it.

Xander tends to my palm with a kind of ointment, and my hand is cradled in his like the graze is a crack in the ice, ready to spread and shatter the entire sheet. I don’t know why, but I fuckinglethim take care of it, too fatigued to find his attention misogynistic or belittling. Although, it is.

“Do you know where they are housing you?” he asks, the wide breadth of his hips unapologetically widening my knees, his eyes on my palm as if it’s a precious possession. “They usually put people up when they’re under investigation like this. They need access to everything and can’t have you tampering with evidence.”

“We have other houses.”

“It’s not like that, Kaya.” He frowns at my palm, being the bearer of bad news, but then I read somewhere that Xander Butcher was studying law. So, I listen. “They’ll take the lot. Search everything. Until the investigation is over, and even then, depending on the verdict, you’ll lose most of your belongings to the state.”

My breath shudders out. “Right…” I knew that. I did.

“You’ll be okay,” he declares, his delivery wrapped in a promise that is his to offer. It’s a classic Butcher-Brother tone. Entitled, but rightly so. It’s seamlessly authoritarian. “You won’t be homeless. The state will put you in a motel or something. And you’ll adjust. A change is as good as a holiday.”

I curl my nose, unable to control the rush of anxiety that inflates in my chest before filling my throat.

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