Page 15 of Hardline Torque
“I didn’t talk much,” Tane went on.“Didn’t want to.I thought if I kept my head down long enough, it would all just ...stop.”
It hadn’t.
“It didn’t start big,” Tane said.His voice stayed even, but his jaw tightened.“It was shoves in the corridor.Names muttered just loud enough for me to hear.Food going missing.”
Victor’s brow creased, attention sharpening.
“Then it grew teeth,” Tane went on.“Corners.Fists.Being knocked down where no one was supposed to look.”He swallowed once.“Kael noticed before I realized it mattered.He kept asking what was going on.Told me I didn’t have to deal with it alone.”
A breath left Tane that hadn’t fully gone in.
“I told him to leave it.Told him I was fine.He told me to tell the head of the orphanage if I couldn’t handle it myself, despite both of us knowing that I wouldn’t,” Tane said quietly.“Didn’t see the point.Part of me just wanted it all to end.”
Victor leaned forward slightly.“Why?”
Tane’s grip tightened on the wheel.
“My father was an addict,” he said after a moment.“Killed my mother and my sister.My grandmother kept me safe after that and when she died...”
He let the rest of it trail off.
“I’m so sorry,” Victor murmured, the words soft and careful—in Hawaiian.
Tane blinked, then nodded once.“Mahalo.”
He told him about the day it changed.
“Kael didn’t yell,” Tane said, voice roughening just a fraction as the memory sharpened.“Didn’t threaten.He just ...sat with me.Right there on the steps behind the rec yard.Asked me what I thought would happen if I kept taking it.”
Tane could see it again—the cracked concrete, the smell of wet leaves, his hands clenched so tight his nails had cut skin.
“I told him I didn’t care,” Tane went on.“That if it ended me, at least it would be over.”
Victor’s breath hitched, barely audible.
“Kael didn’t accept that,” Tane said.“He told me I wasn’t allowed to decide I was disposable.Not when I hadn’t even tried letting someone stand with me.”
Trust had felt impossible.Dangerous.Like stepping off a ledge and hoping the ground would rise to meet him.
“They asked me to trust them,” Tane said quietly.“Just once.”
He closed his eyes for a heartbeat as the scene replayed in full color.The narrow service corridor behind the rec yard.The walls close enough to scrape knuckles.No cameras.No sightlines.He hadn’t known the word for it then, but later they’d learn it was a perfect kill box.
“I almost didn’t do it,” Tane admitted.“Every instinct I had said run.But I was so tired of hurting.”
So, he’d done what they asked.Led the bullies back there with shaking hands and a plan that was more hope than strategy.They’d thrown rocks.Bricks.Anything they could get their hands on.The bullies had gone down screaming, scrambling, bleeding.
“And when they hit the ground,” Tane continued, “the rest of us stepped out.Different sizes.Different ages.But all of us there, and Kael stood beside me.You can’t break sticks in a bundle, he’d told them.You come for one of us, you come for all of us.”
Victor listened with absolute stillness.
“From that day on,” Tane said, “I was with them.We bled together and for each other.Over and over again throughout the years.”
“What does that feel like?”Victor asked quietly.
Tane considered the question.
“Hard to explain,” he said.“But you’ve got a chance to find out for yourself.”
