Page 65 of Their Broken Legend

I try to lift him again. But what if I hurt him more? His spine. His neck. That truth drops me into despair. Tears so hot and fierce, such an influence on my entire body, force my eyes shut. I squeeze them. Wheeze.

My fingers grip.

I can’t help him.

I’m not enough—

Then someone yells, “Let him go!” And I feel his body lifting from mine, realising I’m holding him to me, hugging him with all my strength, with desperation.

Staying.

I’m staying with you, Xander.

But they take him.

They drag him from me, lay him down on the floor, and circle him, so I scoot back to the edge of the shower. I take so many breaths, fast, shallow, uncomfortable until I am panting and bawling relentlessly.

“The girl?” one of them says.

I can’t move now. The water still pelts down on me. It’s seconds…Less than.

Another man answers, “No one important. Just some boxer groupie.”

I watch them work onmyXander.

A blur of happenings.

He’s there.

Oxygen mask.

Then he’s on a stretcher.

Then he’s gone, and I’m still here because I stayed—“I stayed, Xander” —but he couldn’t, couldn’t talk, couldn’t be heard, couldn’t tell them I need to stay with him, and I broke my promise. I’m alone on the tiles, bathed in a crimson pool with my fingers still gripping at space—space he should be filling the moment we fell in love.

CHAPTERNINETEEN

kaya

I’ve showered the blood,sweat, and cum from my skin, and now I’m alone in my motel room. I dart my sad gaze between the plaster cracks behind the door and my phone.

Tears stream from my eyes, and I wait with my hand clutching my iPhone, torturing myself with repeats of the fight on YouTube.

The District News replays the twenty seconds or so that Davos used Xander as a freestanding boxing bag. With each hit, I ask myself:is that the one?Is that the one that broke him?

This footage concludes with amateur recordings made on camera phones of Xander being wheeled out of the changeroom, flanked by his brothers and his dad. The anger and devastation on their faces deepen my concern.

There is a moment missing.

The spectacular moment between us when we fell in love. No one knows about that moment.

Will it be missing from his mind?

My throat fills with tears. Even though I’m clean, my teeth brushed, I can still taste his blood mingling with the salty sorrow, a metallic hint, and two days ago engulfs me with vivid significance.

“That I can taste your soul.”

“So deep it hurts,” I finish.

---